Noholm

"Something has changed."

The first to say it were the reclusive Arcanologists --holed up scholars who wouldn't otherwise leave their labs for the end of the world itself. It wasn't long before the highest order of royal magus began echoing their sentiment. Around the world, mana-sensitive children began to mutter cryptic messages. Whispers of a prophecy spelling the nearing doom of humanity, terrifying their unassuming families.

Leading Arcanologists --the greatest magical minds from nations all over the globe joined hands to uncover the cause of this growing disturbance. Spurred on by the impatient funding of opportunistic kings and the power-hungry councils of more democratic nations. Corroborating together, these genius' of their own respective fields manufactured impossibly complex machines. Machines capable of charting the changes in the property of surrounding mana. Acoustic Arcanologists joined hands with Geosculpters to measure the increasing volatile frequency changes in the mana, while Aerologists and Magus corroborated to measure the density of mana in the atmosphere around them. Slowly, their findings began to converge until the truth was brought to light. The answer? ...Mana was steadily fleeting away from this world. In every aerospace regardless of the terrain, which race it was home to, or their affinity towards the arcane. All mana was being slowly siphoned outwards to the edges of the observable world, where man knew they could not yet reach. In the wake of this discovery, these great minds were quickly summoned back to their homelands, commanded to gather whatever mana was left by any means possible. Most complied, building mana reservoirs of inane sizes or imbuing countless 'relics' with as much mana as they could siphon into them. Whether through promises of untold riches, status, or if neither worked, the promise of death to them and all their kin, each once great contributor to the world of the arcane was forced to expedite the complete elimination of magic. Depriving the world they inhabited of the one thing they had dedicated their entire life towards.

In the midst of this emerging cold war, a single soul marches through purgatory. Aware of neither itself, nor the listless land it is bound to meet on the other side.

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Nothing was clear. Not in his head, his heart, or his brain. Every thought was encroached by another that bit on the past's revelation. Every answer leading to another question, another curiosity-laced thorn that needed to be plucked out. And with it, another shallow conviction lost that each was a small piece of himself.

Only a single question remained.

Should he remain watching? Or take control?