They say there was magic once, that filled the land and ran deep in its bones, but the living core of that magic was ripped from the heart of the earth and snuffed out.
There are still stories of magic that everyone knows, and those who hide in the shadows show tricks with cards and trinkets that are too nimble, and the eyes of the street performers are too honest to be merely performers. Sometimes, rumors will fly- the city guards used magic to kill a man in mid-stride, his heart stopped cold, or a strange creature was seen deep in the pockets of the Brightwood that are still dark and crawling with a power that sends shivers down your spine.
One day, one of the youngest pilots in the newly-established Space Fleet mentions it to her commander, a wild-haired man with a young face and ancient eyes.
"Oh yes," he says, "Once, the people who lived on Lore were all full of magic, like- like cups."
"Cups?"
"Not cups, like- tributaries, sort of? There was a river of magic that flowed through everything, and then it got"- he snaps his fingers suddenly, and the young pilot jumps- "dried up. And then so did everyone else."
"And you know this how?"
"I was there, of course! How else would I know so much?" He knows he is safe- nobody would ever believe him, not so many hundreds of years later. (He does wonder, why he doesn't ever seem to age. Maybe it's the flicker of magic that he still feels in his heart, or maybe it's caused by the same thing that made his memories stick around when everything changed.)
But now, it looks like things are starting to change back, and Cysero's not really sure what he thinks of that. Once, he would have been overjoyed, but... he did like the wild current of magic that used to run through this land.
As the younger pilot leaves, Cysero sighs and looks out over the mountains, to the place where there's still a crater blasted into the ground, and the graves in the center of the crater. The place where the universe was in balance, and everything tipped.
eyho, *hops on board the sys-zero/cysero bandwagon* anyway here's my submission for the first day of DF week- I wrote it in kind of a hurry so I guess it's not v. good