Jurgis hummed a tuneless melody, the simple act a brittle shield against the ache in his chest. The patch of earth before him was stubbornly compact, packed hard by generations of neglect. He’d chosen it specifically for that reason: unassuming, forgotten, much like he wished to be. He pictured Lija’s smile, her hands dusted with potting soil as she coaxed life from stubborn seeds. A small, wild patch of forget-me-nots, perhaps, a delicate symbol for a love that refused to fade. “Just a little loosening, then,” he murmured, his breath misting in the cool morning air of the Vytis Academy grounds. He extended a hand, palm down, over the recalcitrant soil. In his past life, on a world so distant it felt like a dream, he’d used a rusty trowel. Here, in Vaidima, he possessed an intrinsic power that still felt foreign, a boundless, humming energy that routinely caused more trouble than it solved. He focused, trying to recall the subtle resonance of the earth, the way a true geomancer would. He wasn't trying for anything grand, just a gentle churn, a light aerating of the topsoil, enough for the delicate roots he envisioned. He thought of turning a page in a well-loved book, a quiet, precise motion. Instead, a low thrum vibrated through the ground, a sound that started beneath his boots and quickly intensified to a deep, resonant growl. The pebbles around his feet began to dance, then the very earth beneath the small plot bucked. Jurgis blinked, surprised. This was far more enthusiastic than he’d intended. “Whoa there, easy now,” he muttered, pulling back his hand slightly. But the power, once unleashed, refused to recede. It pulsed outward, a silent wave of incredible force. The small patch of dirt didn't just loosen; it disintegrated into a fine, fertile dust that billowed up like a soft brown cloud, momentarily obscuring his view. Then, the ground beyond it began to ripple. Not like water, but like solidified rock given sudden, violent fluidity. A deep, guttural groan echoed from the distant Ghartal peaks, a jagged spine of rock that had stood sentinel over the school grounds for millennia. Jurgis frowned. That didn’t sound right. Far off, on an upper observation terrace, a young man with a shock of silver hair, Lord Kaustas Radvila, pointed a trembling finger toward the heights. His face was pale, his eyes wide. Beside him, his sister, Lady Sarme Radvila, a girl whose usual expression was one of bored disdain, now had her mouth agape. “Did… did the Ghartals just… shift?” Sarme whispered, her voice uncharacteristically high-pitched. The stone ridge, a familiar and unmoving backdrop, had a fresh, raw scar running through its heart. A chasm, impossibly deep and wide, bisected it, exposing jagged, newly-hewn rock faces that glinted in the morning sun. A faint, lingering shimmer of power, like disturbed air, still hung over the newly formed gorge. Kaustas could only choke on air, his meticulously styled hair falling into his eyes as he leaned over the railing, staring at the impossible sight. “A… a rift. He just… he split the peak in half.” Their stares darted down to the courtyard lawn, to the lone figure standing amidst a cloud of dust, looking rather bewildered. Jurgis, meanwhile, was inspecting the miraculously tilled soil. It was perfect. A little *too* perfect, perhaps. Like powdered silk, ready for the most delicate of roots. He knelt, scooping a handful, admiring the rich, dark loam. “Well, that was… thorough,” he decided, giving a shrug. He still had trouble calibrating his power. A gentle breeze often turned into a localized hurricane. Tilling a small garden plot seemed to have inadvertently redesigned local geography. A shadow fell over him, not from the sun, but a shifting, greasy gloom that seemed to condense the air itself. A low, guttural whimper accompanied it, followed by a frantic, scuttling sound. Duke Volos, his self-appointed butler and a being of such profound shadow and despair that he often made statues weep, materialized beside Jurgis, trembling like a leaf in a gale. Volos was a creature of sharp angles and obsidian eyes, usually cloaked in an aura of ancient malevolence. Now, he was a quivering mess, his spindly limbs knocking together. He clutched a brand-new, gleaming spade in one of his clawed hands, holding it out as if it were a sacred relic. “My… my Silent God of Oblivion!” Volos stammered, his voice a series of dry clicks and rasps. “A… a warning! A message from the Void itself! The mountains… they bowed! They parted before your divine will! This… this is a sign! A truly terrifying, awe-inspiring, utterly magnificent sign!” Jurgis looked up, blinking at the demon lord. “Volos? What are you on about? And where did you get that spade? I was just trying to… aerate the soil a bit.” He gestured to the perfectly turned earth, then vaguely towards the mountains, oblivious to the chasm he’d carved. “Guess I overdid it, huh?” Volos gasped, clutching the spade to his chest. “Overdid it? Sire, you have demonstrated the ultimate truth of your dominion! You speak of ‘aerating,’ and entire mountain ranges are humbled! This, my Lord, is not just an iron spade! This is… a holy implement! Forged in the fires of my abject terror, ready to serve your terrifying, casual might!” He thrust the haft toward Jurgis, his spectral form shivering with terror and reverence. Jurgis took the implement, a mundane tool that felt oddly light. “Right. Thanks, Volos. Just what I needed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get some seeds.” He wasn’t sure why Volos was so worked up. It was just a little garden, a small memorial. Why did everyone in this world insist on making such a fuss over the simplest things? High above, in the tallest spires of the Arcanum Librarium, Archmage Zoritsa Krivos looked out from her private observatory. Her normally placid features were etched with a profound astonishment, her emerald eyes, usually calm pools of intellect, now wide and brilliant. She had witnessed the subtle, invisible ripple of power that had preceded the chasm's birth, a silent scream across the magical ether. No known school of thaumaturgy, no ancient grimoire, no inherited bloodline could produce such a feat. It was raw, unrefined, utterly alien power, tearing through the very fabric of Vaidima’s magical laws. She watched Jurgis, a small, unassuming figure on the grounds below, now holding an iron blade, looking vaguely inconvenienced by the demon lord prostrating himself beside him. The anomaly’s source. The man who had appeared from nowhere, his very existence a paradox, a whisper of a power she had only ever seen in the oldest, most forbidden texts – texts that spoke of cosmic re-creation and primordial forces. Her mission, given to her by the entity that had orchestrated Jurgis’s arrival, suddenly felt infinitely more complex, infinitely more dangerous. She descended from her tower, her steps swift and purposeful, a rare urgency in her stride. She moved through the hallowed halls, past students still murmuring about the seismic event, past professors consulting ancient maps of the Ghartals. Her destination was the small patch of turned earth, the bewildered man, and the quivering demon. As she approached, Jurgis was patting the newly tilled soil with the flat of his blade, already envisioning where the forget-me-nots would go. He looked up as her shadow fell over him, offering her a polite, if slightly distracted, smile. “Good morning, Archmage Zoritsa. Lovely day for gardening, wouldn’t you say?” Her gaze, however, was fixed not on him, but on the impossible canyon in the distant mountains, a fresh wound on the world. Then, her eyes returned to him, piercing and unblinking. The single word left her lips, carrying all known magical theory, all her years of study, all the secrets she kept hidden within her. “How?”

A Simple Request for Soil