THE VOICE OF ETHERPROLOGUE

Once, in a time beyond memory, the world was empty. There were no people, no cities, no familiar rhythms of life. Only the Four Great Elements reigned over the primordial silence: fire, water, earth, and air.

Water became the blood of the young earth, its breath and source of life. It filled hollows, gave birth to rivers and oceans, and awakened nature from its eternal slumber. Thus came Velammo, the Spirit of Water, ruler of the depths and guardian of all living things born in the ocean’s abyss. Alongside him rose his faithful companion from the depths of the sea—a mighty sea dragon. Its scales shimmered in shades of deep, almost midnight blue and the delicate azure of coastal waters, while its pale gray eyes resembled the sea on the eve of a storm.

Fire became the embodiment of both light and darkness, bliss and torment. It warmed the frozen earth and brought light to the shadows, yet in a single instant, it could turn all living things to ash. Fire demanded respect and showed no mercy to the careless. Its spirit was Rarog—a protector and a fearsome judge, generous to those worthy of its favor and merciless to anyone who dared challenge it. When the first ray of sunlight touched the earth, a flame burst forth from its golden glow. And then, high above, Ikir spread its fiery wings—a mighty bird destined to become the companion of the Spirit of Fire.

Earth was the cradle of life and the keeper of ancient wisdom. It received seeds, nurtured forests, sheltered countless secrets beneath its surface, and preserved the memory of every moment that had ever passed. Its spirit was Abu Asu, the embodiment of strength, endurance, and eternal balance. At his side appeared a mighty bull with a massive body and long, sharp horns. It embodied the earth’s unbreakable will, its patience, and its ability to withstand any storm.

Air was the breath of existence itself. Life began with the first inhale and ended with the last. Air brought change, connected distant lands, whispered secrets in the language of the wind, and carried them to places no one else could reach. Its spirit was Sylphida—swift, curious, and free, as though she were movement itself. Through the soft clouds, she brought the wind down to earth, and with it came her companion: a powerful wolf with brilliant scarlet eyes. A fierce protector and loyal guardian, it embodied the untamed force of the air, a power that could never be held captive.

Thus, the Four Great Elements united, and life emerged in a world that had once known only silence. With life came hope—and the promise of a future.

Millennia passed.

In the present day, the Republic of Korea still honors the ancient spirits. The Four Great Families, each bound to one of the elements, preserve their legacy and pass down the power held within their blood.

Above them all stands the royal family, whose element is earth. Gyeongbokgung Palace, located in the very heart of Seoul, remains a symbol of power and grandeur. Behind its walls, the fate of an entire nation is decided in a country where the king, the prime minister, and parliament share the burden of governing.

Yet behind this familiar order lies a world whose existence is known to very few.

We are not merely subjects of the crown. We possess extraordinary abilities inherited from the ancient spirits. Our powers are tied to the elements, and our history reaches back to a time when the world was only beginning to take shape.

Only a handful of people know the truth—those close to the crown, entrusted with guarding the secrets of our world.

And this is the story of us.

My story.

CHAPTER ONETHE UNKNOWN SYMBOL

I woke with such a start that it felt as though someone had dragged me out of icy water and thrown me straight onto my pillow.

The room was silent in the hour before dawn. Beside me, Soyun was curled up beneath her blanket, which she had pulled almost over her head. My best friend. Like me, she possessed the element of water, and she was the only person at the Academy around whom I could truly relax.

Outside the window, the sky was only beginning to turn gray. Dawn was still some time away, but I already knew I wouldn’t fall asleep again.

The dream had been too vivid. Too real.

I had seen a battle. Heard distant screams that made something inside me twist with fear. I had felt water surrounding me from every direction, but instead of flowing, it pressed against my chest, refusing to let me breathe.

And in the middle of that chaos, a strange symbol had appeared.

Two vertical lines. Between them, two curved arrows: one pointing upward, the other downward. They moved toward each other but never touched. Their endless motion seemed to fill the air with an invisible ringing.

I reached out and ran my fingers through the empty space, as though I hoped to feel some trace of what had been there.

Useless.

I had always been the kind of student people called a bookworm. I knew the history of the elements by heart, could recite ancient runes without stumbling, and spent hours in the library poring over books ordinary students were forbidden to access. I loved solving the mysteries of the past. I loved finding answers where others had never even thought to look.

But this symbol…

I had never seen anything like it.

“Are you talking to the air again?” Soyun mumbled sleepily, opening one eye. “If this is another lecture about the history of the Academy, I’m warning you: I’ll smother you with a pillow.”

I didn’t even smile.

“I dreamed about a battle,” I said quietly. “And there was a symbol. I don’t recognize it.”

Soyun propped herself up on one elbow, then sat upright. The sleepiness vanished from her face.

She knew me well enough to understand that if I admitted I didn’t know something, I had truly encountered something unusual.

“Show me.”

I reached for the notebook on my bedside table, grabbed a pencil, and quickly sketched the familiar curved arrows between the two vertical lines.

Soyun studied the drawing for a long time, her brows drawn together.

“It looks like breathing,” she finally said. “Or a pulse. No… That’s not quite right. Something about it feels wrong.”

“Exactly. What is it?”

“How should I know? I’m not you.”

I took back the notebook and looked at the symbol again.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Soyun admitted. “But you know what? You don’t need to spend the entire morning obsessing over it. We have training today, followed by a lecture on the history of magic. If you keep staring at that piece of paper like that, I’ll start having nightmares myself.”

“Very funny.”

“I know. That’s why you love me.”

Soyun dropped back onto her pillow, making it clear that the conversation was over. I continued staring at the drawing for a long time, trying to remember even one ancient legend that mentioned a mark like this.

Nothing.

Eventually, I had to admit defeat.

At least for now.

We left the dormitory when the sun had already risen above the Academy rooftops. The paths still glistened after the night’s rain, and the cool air smelled of wet asphalt and fresh leaves.

Up ahead, Minhyeok and Chimin were walking toward the main building.

Minhyeok belonged to the Lee family, one of the Four Great Families that had helped establish our magical community. His element was fire, and if the rumors were true, he had inherited not only magical power from his family but also a considerable amount of stubbornness. His father ran one of the largest shipbuilding companies in the world.

Minhyeok himself possessed the kind of beauty that was irritating precisely because it required no one’s approval. A confident gaze, impeccable posture, sharp features. He seemed like someone who was accustomed to getting whatever he wanted. Hot-tempered, quick-witted, and devastatingly attractive—that was how the girls at the Academy usually described him.

Chimin, on the other hand, was the embodiment of ease. A member of the Park family, another of the founding families, he wielded the element of air and seemed incapable of taking life too seriously. His family controlled some of the country’s largest media outlets—newspapers, press organizations, and news portals. Sometimes I thought that must be a rather convenient position to be in. When your family owns the media, it’s much easier to decide which stories the entire country gets to hear and which are buried beneath layers of silence.

Especially when you know who stands to benefit from a particular story.

The two of them were laughing about something. Their movements were relaxed, their steps confident. They looked as though the entire world belonged to them and they didn’t even have to try to maintain the illusion.

The most handsome. The most famous. The most desired.

And, of course, the most unattainable.

To people like Minhyeok and Chimin, I was practically invisible.

As they drew level with us, I instinctively lowered my eyes, hoping to avoid meeting Minhyeok’s gaze. I usually managed it. I had long since learned not to attract unnecessary attention.

But this time, something went wrong.

Chimin, who usually managed to make a joke at the expense of everyone he passed, suddenly slowed down. He didn’t look me in the face, but his gaze flicked toward the notebook I was clutching to my chest.

“Hey,” he called over his shoulder, continuing to walk. “If you’re planning to doodle during lectures, be careful. Professor Kang will eat you alive.”

Soyun rolled her eyes.

“Very clever, Chimin!”

He only laughed in response, and a few seconds later, both boys disappeared around the corner.

All they left behind was the faint scent of expensive cologne and the strange feeling that, for one brief moment, the world had become too bright.

I pressed the notebook more tightly against my chest. My fingers went white with tension.

Why did it matter so much whether Minhyeok had noticed me?

And why did I suddenly feel as though he had noticed something far more important than me?

During martial arts training, I tried not to stand out.

I followed the instructor’s movements, kept the proper distance, and shifted my stance at the right moments. Everything was as usual. My body remembered the sequence of exercises better than my mind, which was occupied with entirely different thoughts.

But with every movement, the pressure in my chest grew heavier. It felt as though an invisible hand were slowly squeezing my ribs, preventing my lungs from filling with air.

I tried to take a deep breath.

I couldn’t.

“Pair up!” the instructor ordered.

The students began spreading across the hall, taking their places. I stepped forward, but suddenly the floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet.

First, my vision darkened. Then the edges of the world began to blur, as though someone were slowly pulling me underwater.

I tried to grab hold of something, but my fingers closed around nothing.

And then I saw it again.

The symbol.

Two vertical lines. Two curved arrows, one pointing up, the other down.

This time, it wasn’t simply hanging in the air.

It was pulsing, as though it were alive.

Down.

Up.

Down.

Up.

With every movement, I felt a strange vibration deep inside my body. It was as if the symbol weren’t merely floating in front of me but were connected to something buried deep within me.

As though the air itself were trying to teach me how to breathe.

I wanted to call for help, but I couldn’t make a sound.

And then everything disappeared.

The first thing I felt was a pair of strong arms keeping me from falling.

The second was a scent.

Not the sharp smell of medical supplies, but something warm and woody, touched by the faintest hint of smoke.

I slowly opened my eyes.

Minhyeok’s face was right in front of me.

So close that I could make out the delicate shadows of his eyelashes and the tension at the corners of his eyes. He was looking at me with a concentration I had never seen in him before. Even during competitions, he had never looked this serious.

“Easy,” he said. “You fell. Just breathe.”

I wanted to answer. To ask what had happened, why he was holding me in his arms, and where all the other students had gone.

But I couldn’t.

Because I suddenly realized that I really wasn’t breathing.

I lay in his arms as he held me with such ease that I seemed to weigh nothing at all. His voice was calm, almost uncharacteristically gentle.

“Just breathe, Luna.”

I inhaled.

Then again.

Only then did the world slowly fall back into place.

The infirmary smelled of medicinal herbs and old books. I was lying on a narrow bed beneath a thin blanket, while Soyun sat beside me, nervously twisting the edge of her uniform.

Her expression made one thing perfectly clear: if I got any worse, someone was going to answer for it.

“Finally!” she breathed when she noticed my eyes opening. “Do you have any idea how scared I was? You just collapsed onto the floor like a sack of rice!”

“Thanks for the support,” I croaked.

“Anytime. That’s what best friends are for.”

She tried to smile, but the worry hadn’t left her face.

“And Minhyeok…” she began.

I immediately turned my head.

“What about Minhyeok?”

“He reacted faster than anyone else. He caught you before you hit the floor and carried you straight here. He didn’t even wait for the professors.”

I slowly pushed myself up on my elbows.

“Wait. Minhyeok? The Minhyeok?”

“No, a different Minhyeok. Of course, the one and only!”

“But we’ve never even spoken. Why would he…?”

“Because he’s not a monster, Luna,” Soyun interrupted gently. “He’s just a guy who saw someone in trouble. You don’t have to be best friends with someone to help them.”

I looked away.

She was probably right. And yet, the thought of Minhyeok holding me in his arms refused to leave my mind.

At that moment, a doctor entered the room—a gray-haired man with unhurried movements and a tired but attentive gaze. He checked my pulse, examined my pupils, asked me to follow the light of his pen with my eyes, and questioned me about how I was feeling.

“Physically, you’re healthy,” he finally concluded. “No injuries. Your pulse is normal. It may have been exhaustion. Although…”

He fell silent, as if considering something.

“Although what?” I asked.

“Sometimes magical energy surges occur before the initiation ceremony. Especially in those whose powers haven’t fully awakened yet. But I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

He removed his glasses and looked at me over the frames.

“You should visit your father. He needs to know what happened.”

At the mention of my father, something inside me tightened unpleasantly.

“All right,” I replied quietly.

For some reason, though, I had a feeling that talking to my father would be far more difficult than anything that had happened today.

Every mage who reaches the age of twenty-one must undergo the initiation ceremony. It is one of the most important milestones in our lives—the moment when our inherited magic fully awakens and we gain access to our true power.

That is when a tattoo of an animal associated with our element appears on our bodies.

My element is water. That meant a sea dragon, the ancient companion of Velammo, should manifest on my skin during the ceremony. It would become the embodiment of my power and my protector.

At least, that’s what the textbooks said.

Some mages who reach a high level of mastery can summon their animal at will, allowing it to manifest outside their bodies. I’d witnessed it only a couple of times. Each time, the sight had been so mesmerizing that I’d forgotten everything around me.

I’d always wanted to know what I myself would be capable of.

But now, something else troubled me.

Why had my body reacted that way? And did the strange symbol have anything to do with my approaching initiation?

There were no answers.

Only questions, multiplying with every passing minute.

My father’s office had always seemed too cold to me.

Dark wood, heavy curtains, a massive desk. Even the air felt thicker in here, steeped in the scents of paper, metal, and expensive cologne.

My father sat behind his desk, reviewing documents. When I entered, he didn’t immediately look up.

Only then did I notice the shadows beneath his eyes.

He didn’t look angry.

He looked worried.

That surprised me far more than if he had greeted me with his usual cold stare.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, still looking at the papers.

“Fine. The doctor said everything was all right.”

My father set a document aside and finally looked at me. His gaze moved across my face and lingered for a moment, as though he were searching for signs of something I didn’t yet know about myself. Then his eyes dropped back to the desk.

“Tonight, we’re attending a reception at the palace. The whole family.”

I stared at him in confusion.

“But… I’ve never been to a reception like that.”

“You will be tonight.”

There was no room for argument in his voice.

“You’re part of this family, Luna. Whether you like it or not.”

I clenched my fingers.

I wanted to ask him when he had suddenly remembered that. Why I had become important enough to stand beside him in front of the royal family and dozens of influential people.

I wanted to remind him that society had never truly accepted me. That to many people, I wasn’t a daughter but an unfortunate stain on our family’s spotless reputation. An illegitimate girl whose very existence they would have preferred to forget.

But the words caught in my throat.

I knew how the conversation would end if I allowed myself to say too much.

So I simply nodded.

“All right, Father.”

I left his office feeling as though someone had just pushed me into icy water.

“Get ready, little sister.”

I flinched and turned around.

Seoyul, my older brother, stood in the corridor. Tall, composed, and always impeccably dressed, he carried himself as though nothing in the world could ever disturb his peace of mind.

He was the legitimate son of my father and his wife. The heir no one ever questioned. Someone who had never needed to prove that he belonged beside his own family.

“Tonight, you’ll see what real politics looks like,” he said with a faint smile. “Just try not to say anything inappropriate.”

“I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

“Of course you do.”

He patted my shoulder and headed for the exit without waiting for a reply.

I remained alone in the middle of the cold corridor.

Sometimes I thought our family was like a perfectly functioning machine in which every component had its proper place.

Every component except me.

I didn’t know why my father had decided to take me to the palace tonight. I didn’t understand what was expected of me or what role I was supposed to play.

But for the first time in a long while, I wanted to find out.

“We’re going dress shopping!”

Soyun’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

She appeared beside me so suddenly that it was as if she’d been listening to my thoughts all along and had finally decided it was time to rescue me from myself.

“What dress?”

“An evening dress, obviously. You’re not planning to show up at the palace in your Academy uniform, are you?”

“I don’t even know what people are supposed to wear to these things.”

“Exactly! That’s why I’m coming with you. And don’t even think about arguing. Today, we’re having an adventure.”

Before I could agree or object, Soyun grabbed my hand and dragged me away.

The boutique was warm and heavy with the scents of fabric, perfume, and fresh wood. Rows of dresses lined the walls, ranging from simple and elegant to such extravagant creations that I was afraid even to touch them.

I felt completely out of place.

Soyun, on the other hand, looked as though she’d stepped into her own kingdom.

She pulled one dress after another from the racks, held each against me, studied the result, and immediately returned it to its hanger.

“No! Too boring!”

The next one.

“No! Too bright!”

Another.

“Okay, this one’s better…”

She stepped back, narrowed her eyes, and made her grand announcement.

“This one is perfect!”

I looked at the dress she was holding up. It was beautiful, certainly. But the fabric seemed heavy, and the design was far more formal than anything I was used to wearing.

“Soyun, I won’t even be able to move properly in that.”

“Who cares? You’ll look so stunning that everyone will forget how to breathe.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“And you’re not confident enough in yourself.”

I sighed and disappeared behind the fitting-room curtain to try on yet another outfit.

“And one more thing!” Soyun called. “I heard the Crown Prince will be at the reception tonight!”

I peeked out from behind the curtain.

“What?”

“The Crown Prince! Haven’t you heard? He rarely attends these kinds of events, but apparently, he’ll be there tonight. Can you imagine?”

Soyun pressed her hands to her cheeks as though she could already see him standing before her.

“They say he’s incredibly handsome. And that he almost never smiles. But when he does, every girl’s heart stops within a mile of him.”

“Do you hear yourself?”

“Every word. And I stand by all of it.”

I turned back to the mirror and carefully smoothed the fabric around my waist.

“I’ve never seen him,” I admitted. “Doesn’t he live at the palace?”

“Exactly! Which means you’ll see him for the first time, and he’ll see you for the first time…” Soyun raised one finger meaningfully. “And you’ll be the most beautiful girl at the entire reception.”

I looked at my reflection.

I didn’t believe a word of it.

I wasn’t like the girls who usually found themselves at the center of attention. I didn’t know how to shine in society, keep a conversation going with effortless charm, or smile as though I’d never had a single problem in my life.

But then I looked at Soyun—at her genuine smile and the enthusiasm with which she was trying to make this evening feel special for me—and felt some of the weight pressing against my chest since morning begin to ease.

Maybe I really should give it a try.

Just for one evening, perhaps I could stop feeling like I didn’t belong.

While Soyun was busy arguing with the saleswoman about a discount, I took a folded piece of paper from my pocket.

The drawing.

The same one.

Two vertical lines. Two curved arrows.

I ran my finger over the paper, studying every detail. The longer I looked at the symbol, the more convinced I became that it hadn’t simply appeared in my dream. It felt as though I’d seen it somewhere before—not with my eyes, but with something much deeper.

Then, suddenly, an idea struck me.

The royal library.

If there was anywhere I could find a reference to an unknown symbol, it was there. In ancient books that had been kept behind closed doors for decades, far from curious students and prying eyes.

Of course, getting inside wouldn’t be easy.

But it wasn’t impossible.

At least, I desperately wanted to believe that.

I looked at the drawing again.

And suddenly, Minhyeok’s voice surfaced in my memory.

Just breathe.

I inhaled slowly, held my breath for a second, and exhaled.

And for a moment, I thought the lines on the paper had shifted ever so slightly.

I froze.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Exhaustion. My imagination running wild after the nightmare that morning.

But deep down, I could feel it.

Something had changed.