Albert sipped lukewarm coffee as he stared at a blinking cursor. For a long time, the words wouldn't come. He wasn't short on data - his files overflowed with interviews, academic papers, leaked memos - but something about this particular chapter felt... elusive.
Because, for a few brief years, it almost felt like humanity had it under control.
He began typing.
"Every era of false calm feels golden in hindsight. Between the chaos of the Awakening and the horrors that would follow, there was a window - narrow, flickering - where it looked like we might actually figure magic out."
They called it the Breeze Years. It was the media's phrase, not his, but it stuck. The winds of change had passed. People weren't running anymore. They were building.
That was when the first academies appeared - not hidden, not outlawed, but state-sponsored. France opened the École des Arcanes Libres in Marseille. South Korea built the Hana Institute across three vertical campuses. Brazil took over the old University of Brasília's engineering wing and turned it into the Faculdade de Artes Arcanas, graduating their first class of "licensed casters".
Albert smiled, remembering how clumsy the early titles had been. Arcano-Engineers. Spell-Techs. Mana Specialists. Most of them had no idea what they were doing, but they wanted to.
And that mattered.
"We discovered we could store mana," he wrote, "but not generate it artificially. That changed everything."
The term mana had come from the Pacific, a linguistic borrow that predated modern fantasy by centuries. Scholars, casters, and policy-makers all adopted it almost simultaneously - probably because it felt right. A shorthand for something invisible, finite, and fundamental. Like blood, but not. Like breath, but more.
Every living caster has a Mana pool, though its size varies. You can't cast beyond it, like trying to run a car without gas. But Mana can be stored: in bones, quartz, certain glass or silver, and especially in items forged for that purpose.
And so, a new industry bloomed.
Mana rings. Channeling rods. Protective bangles for guards. Alchemical charms. Spells no longer needed to be cast live - they could be bottled, inscribed, imbued. A dangerous spell could be locked into a glyph. A healing touch could be wrapped into cloth and worn like a bandage.
Albert leaned back and looked at a small paperweight on his desk - a rough disc of onyx, faintly humming. It didn't do anything fancy, just stabilized air quality in his apartment. A Green Mage had made it at a weekend fair in Belo Horizonte. Cost him just a couple bucks.
"Magic became useful," he typed. "And the moment it did, we stopped fearing it - at least, openly. We domesticated it just enough to forget how wild it truly was."
Legislations followed. At first, messy and local. Then increasingly global. The Vienna Accord on Magical Practice banned several spell classes, including all Black Magic involving reanimation, mind-altering Blue illusions, and high-yield Red discharges. The Mana Ethics Commission was born, mostly ceremonial, but loud. Insurance companies required certification. Airlines banned mana-bearing jewelry on flights. Urban zones created "casting lanes" for street-level magic.
And yet, under the surface, everything was still moving too fast.
Albert remembered the headlines: Mana Startups Hit 500M Valuation. Green Enchanters Revolutionize Crop Yields. White Mage Guilds Lobby for Trauma Center Contracts. Magic was no longer mystery - it was currency, status, and control.
He frowned.
"No one asked why only some people could cast. Or why the schools emerged the way they did. Or where the boundary really was between using magic - and being used by it."
But that was the next chapter.
For now, in that brief year, society breathed. Built. Smiled. And just barely noticed that the breeze had stopped.