Prompt: An Ancient Spell book has been stolen

Fandom: Tales of Zestiria

Characters: All of them?

Seraphim have always been known to be creatures of magic. They would conjure magical powers attuned to their elements and have existed to protect the magic from the greed and corruption of human malevolence. Humans knew them to be protectors, but in the modern day no one believed in the seraphim and resonance in humans was a miracle.

These Seraphim were known to be creatures know to be more ethereal in nature than humans, but truly they were now guardians. Guardians of magical artifacts that they were afraid to let human hands hold. The Seraphim have divided the magical artifacts into four holy shrines: water, earth, fire, and wind.

One evening, a thief ventured into the water shrine and this is where our story begins.

The gentle lapping of the streams in the water shrine always brought Mikleo to ease. He sighed as he looked from the water and over to the books in the room. Guard duty was never something Mikleo ever wanted to do. He was more interested in leaving the shrine. The water shrine was beautiful, but it was boring to spend his whole life guarding these books. It felt like a prison most days.

The other shrines actually had items, but the water shrine only had spell books. He had looked through some of them and they talked about other places and only made his adventurous spirit rise.

Suddenly, he felt a change in the energy surrounding the area.

"An intruder?" His voice echoed in the room.

It wasn't normal that anyone could even see an entrance into the shrine in the first place. Mikleo's violet eyes narrowed at the door.

He summoned his staff and readied for the intruder. It was the only entrance into the library and whoever came would have to overcome him to get the books.

The door creaked open and a man stared out at him.

An aura of malevolence struck him directly. Mikleo fell to his feet and stared at the intruder. The man just laughed as the boy struggled.

"Fair Seraphim. Why even bother? The Malevolence will just infect you anyway. Or do you want to be corrupted, water sprite?" His arrogance made Mikleo roll his eyes.

"Leave at once." Mikleo's voice hardened at the intruder.

He knew he was no match for the malevolence, but he wouldn't hand all of this magic over to the strange human. The aura of malevolence was strong, but he knew there were stronger corrupted beings out there.

"Funny." He grinned and made a motion with his hands.

Mikleo was sent flying into a bookshelf. Books upon books fell onto Mikleo as he tried to get them off and suddenly the shelf went flying down on him.

"Ack!" Mikleo cried as he laid flat, so the furniture wouldn't crush him.

The man walked over to one of the locked cabinets and forced it open. He grabbed a black leather-bound book.

"Good bye, little water sprite." The man left the room just as a stream of water pushed the shelf off of him.

"No! Get back here!" Mikleo cried to no avail.

"In the era of Asgard…" The monotone voice droned on as a class full of students jotted down what the professor was lecturing.

A particular young man seemed into the lecture more than others around him. His pen skittered across the page faster than intended. His soft brown hair fluttered as the air-conditioned room blew around him.

Soon, the class finished and the student, including the young boy, began packing up their books. As the young man started to walk into a hallway he was assaulted by a young girl.

"Sorey!" A short red-headed girl wrapped her arm around his shoulders and dragged him down to her height.

"Ack! Rose stop it!" The girl just laughed at the other's misfortune.

"How was the most boring class in the university?" The boy frowned at her.

"Rose- "

"Rose, stop trying to get a rise out of him." A young woman appeared before the two.

"Ack. Okay, goodie-two shoes." Rose all but dropped Sorey as he massaged his neck.

"C'mon, Rose. Stop." She hummed and laughed at the two.

"I'm hungry. Let's go get lunch. Alisha told me she'd get the tab." Rose grinned ear to ear at the said woman and she glared at her.

"Why I did not! Please do not promise those things." Rose looked delighted that she finally got a rise out of someone today.

"Er, how about you two get lunch? I have to study for a bit and then go look at some ruins for class." Sorey scratched the back of his head and Rose made a vomiting noise.

"Really? Sorey, there are times when you need to stop being a nerd." She dead-panned at the male and he just laughed it off.

"Sorry, Rose. I'm really interested in the ruin. Some say it was a place for conveying feeling from humans to the Seraphim." His eyes shined as he spoke and Rose rolled her eyes.

"You know they are just fairytales, Sorey. That's all." The woman walked away and Alisha looked apologetic at Sorey.

"Go get lunch. I know how she is!" Sorey smiled as he went in the other direction.

Sorey was majoring in anthropology or more specifically in archaeology. History excited him and being able to visit the ruins was as amazing as going on a vacation. He was writing his thesis on the connection between the Seraphim and the ruin sites in the area. Many laughed at his explanations saying he was chasing fairy tales and it would never be accepted in an academic circle.

Yet, Sorey knew he could find key evidence that the people of these ruins revered the Seraphim and had a good relationship with nature as they revered them. A lot of people were like Rose who refused to believe anything you can't see doesn't exist.

Sorey just knew there was something below surface that he was close to scratching, but was not quite there yet.

Mikleo was annoyed. He reported the issue to his grandfather and he told Mikleo he needed to fix his mistake. The silver-haired boy sighed as he walked out of the shrine looking for clues to where the thief may have gone. Fellow seraphs said they had seen him go into the direction of some old ruins.

Why would he go into ruins? Wouldn't he go into those strange cities the humans like so much? Mikleo definitely didn't want to go into a city, but what could he do?

The ruins that the trail lead him too were breath-taking. If he were here to just investigate the ruins Mikleo's heart would soar, but he was here to catch an arrogant thief.

As he walked into the ruins he saw someone, unfortunately it wasn't the thief. It was a young man that seemed to be studying the ruins. Mikleo felt jealous of this human with the freedom he had at that moment, but it seemed to pass quickly as he stared at the other male.

He was…quite beautiful. Mikleo blushed at that thought. His hair was dark brown and it looked like he had feather earrings that seemed to glow in the candle light of the ruin. Mikleo started to walk towards him and stepped on a piece of glass.

Suddenly, the man got up and stared directly into Mikleo's violet eyes and at that moment he could feel his heart stop.