Magic was supposed to be his birthright.

The Thorne bloodline was ancient—respected, feared, dissected in spellcraft journals and whispered about in the halls of power. Every child born under the Thorne crest was expected to carry the family legacy: elemental control, precision casting, binding magic by blood alone. His eldest brother could bend flame with a gesture. His sister was already teaching at the Academy by seventeen. Another brother was stationed at the Citadel, warding entire cities.

Then there was Ilen.

The magic came early, as it always did. But it didn’t come clean. His first spell was a sigil of light—standard practice for a Thorne child. It should have lit the page in a soft glow.

Instead, it cracked the desk in half and sent his instructor to the infirmary with melted eyebrows and a shattered nose.

They called it an “outburst.” A glitch. Something that would smooth out with time and discipline.

It didn’t.

His casting was always wrong. Not just wild—wrong. Runework twisted under his hands. Elements refused to behave. Color was inconsistent, unstable. His magic would surge when he was afraid, or angry, or grieving. Once, he summoned frost so cold it killed a garden from thirty feet away. Another time, he tried a minor levitation charm and triggered a building collapse.

Still, they kept him home. Not out of kindness—but out of fear of scandal.

He wasn’t exiled. No, exile was too public. Instead, they locked him in the west wing—a crumbling, unstaffed part of the estate laced with wards and containment runes. They said he needed time. Structure. Peace. But they didn’t visit. Not even on his birthday.

He taught himself more than they ever did. He learned how to anchor his spells, how to suppress the voice that rose in his mind when casting ran too deep. He learned how to carve runes in charcoal and blood. He learned silence.

The only living soul who saw him regularly was an old stablehand who left food at the door and never made eye contact.

Then the rumors started.

A noble-born mage, untrained and unstable? That wasn’t a tragedy. That was leverage.

They came for him in the night. They slipped past the outer wards—mercenaries, bounty hunters, maybe worse. He doesn’t know who sent them. He only knows what they wanted. One got close enough to leave a scar across his chest. Another never left at all—his body is still buried beneath the ash tree out back. The roots haven’t grown right since.

The Thorne family finally took notice—but not out of concern. He was a liability now. A ticking time bomb drawing enemies to their doorstep. And so they did what noble houses always do when a problem becomes inconvenient.

They outsourced it.

They sent for someone who didn’t ask questions. Someone who knew how to move things quietly and without fuss. Someone trained in wards, cloaking, and high-threat escorts.

That’s you.

⸻

The hallway you enter is dim, lit only by scattered candles and the afterglow of fading magic. The runes on the walls are fresh—rushed, erratic. Someone cast a ward here not long ago and meant for it to hold.

It didn’t.

You find Ilen sitting on the floor, back against a cracked pillar, a half-burned spellbook in his lap. His shirt is torn. There’s dried blood on his shoulder. The air around him hums with raw magic, uncontained but unfocused, like a storm that hasn’t decided where to strike. He hears you approach.

“Another bounty hunter?” he mutters, voice low, half-broken. “You’re late if so. They already tried.”

Then he looks up.

His left eye is sharp violet—intense, almost glowing. His right is cloudy, scarred from some long-past magical backlash. His expression flickers between exhaustion and guarded calculation.