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The Sentro Mahika, despite its rather… uninspiring name, is the home to all walks of life in Mahika�"from the herbalists of the Suba countryside to the merpeople in the Kalaluman. Every nook and cranny of the city is full of unsuppressed history and diversity that supercities in the human realm can only dream of.

Located right in the center of the magical realm, the Sentro Mahika is the heart of history, culture, economy, and technology. Over the millennia, the city has developed at great heights, starting from the ancient Mahikans who fled from Ixora Hills’ unstable magic up to the modern-day magical folk working towards their individual careers.

Countless museums and libraries make their home in the sprawling cobblestone pathways, forest edges, and bays of the city. The famed Mahika School of Magic, the premier magical education institute, stands on its soil. Founded thousands of years ago, the institution continues to fulfill its purpose of educating every single magical folk across Mahika. 

Not only that, Sentro Mahika also boasts its mega-market, a massive emporium of shops of every kind. It’s full of vendors and shoppers at every hour of the day, even in the wee hours of the morning. The Payingnan, Mahika’s largest portal system, looms over the massive area with its pearlescent sheen. It houses portals for every city, connecting Sentro Mahika to the rest of the magical realm.

As the second-oldest settlement after the Ixora Hills, the Sentro Mahika has been a witness to several historical moments. One shining example is the Great Mahikan Rebellion, which happened over a hundred years ago. The tyrannical dictator, Leopold Bytywn, was forcibly kicked out by the masses. It effectively ended almost a decade of overt discrimination against magical folks living in the human realm.

The event shifted the political and societal climate of Mahika, paving the way for greater acceptance and inclusion. It also upturned several deep-rooted discriminatory practices inside the magical government. To this day, the institution continues to address these issues and make laws so that the events of the Bytywn dictatorship will not happen again under any circumstances.

The Great Mahikan Rebellion marked the end of the magical paramilitaries across Mahika as well. After the fall of the leader of Callaban, the biggest private armed group in the land, under the hands of a combat magician named the Star, their involvement to the dictatorship was uncovered. Because of that, the succeeding government banned the formation of paramilitaries and broke every single existing one across Mahika.

It also gave rise to a certain individual, whose leadership and discovery was instrumental to the end of what may be Mahika’s darkest age�"Apollo Calaio. A clear magical virtuoso, he’s one half of the duo that led the masses of magical folks down to the Government of Magic in Ixora Hills and heralded the start of the rebellion. The other part of the duo was his eventual husband, Nicholas Calaio.

Prior to the rebellion, he discovered the existence of another realm, called Tunga, a world of silver and its various shades. Its exact location is unknown. It was mentioned in several famous legends, such as the Witch’s tale, but no one has connected the dots prior to Apollo’s discovery. Apparently, it’s a world that exists somewhere in the middle of the magical and human realm. But it’s not connected to the two realms at all.

The discovery of Tunga was instrumental to the end of the dictatorship, as the unrest in Mahika affected the flow of magic within the gray world as well. Several Tungans camouflaged themselves amongst the masses of Mahikans and used their heightened magical senses to fight against every force that stood in their way.

However, Tunga remains as mysterious as ever. Apollo Calaio continues to be the only magician of Mahikan descent that entered the world of gray and made it out alive. 

Tungans are very mysterious people. They are adept at disguising themselves whenever they travel to the magical or human realm. To this day, there is little information known about the world and its residents. 

However, that is about to change. Right inside the four walls of door number two of Krosing Apartments, a certain Agatha Gracia lies awake in a pool of her own tears. Every window of the apartment complex is dark and curtained, except for her own bedroom, where a single light bulb shines so brightly that it may as well replace the sun.

Agatha Gracia, a young adult of twenty-one, rises from her disturbed slumber. Disoriented, she attempts to decipher the clock’s hands without the help of her glasses. Naturally, she fails. Agatha groans to herself, and wipes the tears from her face. 

She sighs at her unfortunate luck. Falling asleep, only to meet a ghost in your past, is one thing.

Waking up soaked to your tears for two weeks is another.

Jamming her square glasses to her face, Agatha surveys her surroundings for any sign of chaos and wreckage. So far, there is none. Agatha looks up to the ceiling and realizes that she has forgotten to turn the light off last night. 

She leaves it as it is. The light is going to be turned off once the sun truly comes out, either way.

Agatha glances at the clock on her nightstand again. The short hand points to four and the long hand points to five. The realization that it’s still the wee hours of the morning makes Agatha die a little inside. She has gone to bed somewhere around midnight, making her slumber amount to less than four hours.

Another sigh leaves Agatha’s lips. There is no use sleeping now. She gets up from her bed and stretches her back, before reverting to her usual slight slouch. Agatha catches sight of her face from the mirror mounted next to her clothes rack. She cringes at how wrecked she looks.

A woman with dull brown eyes stares at Agatha from the mirror. Her usually well-kept, long black hair currently resembles the wayward bushes scattered outside the apartment complex. The bags underneath Agatha’s eyes are heavier than her backpack filled with books and work paraphernalia.

It’s been two weeks of looking like this. Two weeks. Agatha is the type of person to resort to silent suffering until her problems blow over by itself. However, something about waking up in a puddle of tears is stirring something unsettling within Agatha’s insides. It seems to be a matter that she cannot afford to ignore anymore.

For the past five years, the dreams of a man skating in a lake to a despondent tune haunt Agatha in her weakest time of the day. It happens every night without fail. Agatha closes her eyes, descends to the blissful depths of sleep�"only for the dream of wedge in and make things uncomfortable.

On most times, it’s insignificant enough for Agatha to set it aside. Her job as a combat magic teacher and her training with the best battlers in the school are demanding enough to leave Agatha worrying about nothing but the two. However, it catches up to her on bad days, reminding Agatha of its existence.

This time, the dream has taken up a notch in intensity. Agatha remembers the events feeling more real than before�"like she’s truly experiencing an actual event and not simply viewing a movie on the lorgnette-box. 

More accurately, it’s like Agatha’s transported back in time, to a certain memory that she has five years ago. 

On their last day as students of Mahika School of Magic, Amos Diamante, a classmate of Agatha and her friend, skated to the most melancholic of melodies. She can still clearly recall the resignation of his face, as he moves like there is nothing he can do with the future that waits for him. He kept grasping the air, and Agatha wanted to reach back to him.

In retrospect, that’s what she should have done. Agatha reaches to the box lying on a shelf atop her clothes rack and brings out its only content�"a picture of a young man standing in front of an intricate tapestry. Even in the faded quality, his earth-brown eyes twinkle like stars as a small smile graces his face.

Amos Diamante�"wizard extraordinaire, genius, and the most enigmatic person Agatha has ever met. The smile his rose-colored lips give is full of beauty and mystery, blinding mere and insignificant people to look only at the face value. What lies underneath is a world that no one, including Agatha, has ever known.

Amos has disappeared off the face of the realm for five years now. Weeks after their graduation, he simply dropped everything and went off the radar. The teachers in the school tried to locate him, once a lot of magical folks noticed the cease in his activity, but to no avail. Amos used his extensive knowledge in magical cartography to cover his tracks so that no one can find him.

Agatha always finds herself asking why, since Amos is about to reach for greater heights after clinching the highest honor award of their year. A lot of departments in the magical government are dying to have him in their ranks. He has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

But then again, what does Agatha truly know about Amos? With a heavy feeling in her gut, Agatha returns the photo back to the box and heads over to the kitchen. She grabs a cup from the cupboard above her and turns the leaking tap on her sink on. Agatha stares at the faucet as the water comes out and fills her cup.

The dreams have never truly allowed her to let go of the past and accept that Amos may be truly gone for good. Agatha doesn’t know how he is holding up right now, but the continued silence assures her that Amos will continue to hide himself for the foreseeable future. It has been a miserable affair for Agatha for the first couple of years, but she has grown to just accept things as the way they are.

If only her stupid brain can get the memo, then everything will be in order. Her cup overflows, and the excess water goes down to the old wooden floor. It jerks Agatha back to reality, making her hurriedly shut the tap off. Concentrating her magic to fingertips of her left hand, Agatha murmurs a repairing spell to get rid of the leak. 

Then she directs the rest of her magic to the puddle on the floor. Agatha watches in fascination as the water rises off the floor and evaporates at once. A part of her wonders what could be the reason for Amos’ disappearance. Now that Agatha thinks about it, the resigned expression on his face back in the lake made sense.

Has Amos already known by that time that he’d be in a place where no one can find him? And why, of all things, has he chosen to skate in front of her? Is there something that he wants to say that he cannot utter out loud?

Moreover, why does it continue to haunt Agatha? It’s been five years. She is supposed to have moved on already. Yet, there’s a part of her that struggles to let go, and keeps on replaying the past like it will somehow bring Amos back. Agatha clenches her fist and directs her attention to the planks of wood underneath her feet. 

Elena, her friend and former roommate, always tells Agatha that she should never discount the visions that she sees on her sleep. It may be a nuisance right now, but it will showcase something important and life-changing in the future. 

That’s how fate has always worked. It bothers you with things that never made sense first before striking their hand to your face and showing the error of your ways.

However, Agatha never has the heart to tell Elena that she does not want to be reminded of Amos anymore. His disappearance was soul-crushing for her, even if she has fully expected that their paths will diverge right after graduation. 

It’s just that Agatha never expected things to end like this. She has pictured a slow death, not a sudden note flying through her window at seven in the morning, informing her that Amos is missing.

Either way, Elena’s words still make sense. Agatha has no choice but to do something about the dreams now. She just can’t live the rest of her life being tormented like this, dreaming of the past and waking up in misery. Agatha has already shed enough tears. It’s the time to pick herself up and do something that’s been long overdue.

One of the most honored rules in Mahika is that everything begins and ends with magic. It’s what makes the world go round. There is nothing in all the existing realms that cannot be explained with magic. Every single thing everyone experiences in a manifestation of magic. Even the magical folks are made to be vessels of such power.

Agatha Gracia, a young adult of twenty-one, is about to learn what it truly means. She downs her cup of water in one go and sets it down to the sink with an audible thud. The moon continues to shine brightly outside, providing guidance to all souls�"lost or not.