The Selections of the Anchor Cards
How is it decided what person receives which Anchor Card?
That, one could say, is the question of the ages. Many may have asked, but not only handful of them have ever tried to really understand.
There are many Anchor cards and they are holding the fundamental force of fate and magic. Unlike magical bloodlines, they are not conferred by inheritance.
Rather, the cards select their bearers; manifesting themselves at the age of sixteen, drawn to a magician by some undefined attraction that, apparently only the cards can comprehend.
Once chosen, the Anchor Card attaches itself into the bearer-as a sign of being connected for the whole life. And the part of the body where it attaches itself to becomes their centre of power.
Out of all the Anchor Cards, ten are the most powerful, most coveted:
The Seer's Hand - a gift of visions but a curse of light, the one who sees beyond time. The Tempest's Wrath - Power like an unrelenting storm-wild, untamed, and unstoppable. The Hollow Veil - master of illusions, bending reality itself to their will. The Chained Abyss - strength drawn from sacrifice, a powerful force both feared and misunderstood. The Everflame - a heart of eternal fire, subsuming the embodiments of both passion and destruction. Silent Echo - the whispering of the forgotten voices revealing truths long buried. The Tainted Crown - a ruler marked by fate; fated to great or abysmal destinies. The Blooded Dagger - means enabling the warrior to have a kill with precision and instinct. The Gilded Mirage - the trickster's Favor; of deception and fortune made one. The Wandering Shadow - one who walks between worlds, unseen yet ever-present.
Each of these cards hold tremendous power and irrevocably changed the fate of the ones they selected.
There was a legend of the time when all ten bearers would have existed simultaneously--a moment when the prophecy trampled with most fear could be challenged by their unified powers. But history had never seen such a gathering. The cards had never come together.
And the prophecy….? Its long lost with history.
But power never comes for free. A price must be paid; to command the magic of an Anchor Card, one must exchange something valuable for it. Some gave gold; others spend fate itself, while the more desperate sacrificed glimmering pieces of their own souls.
Those who failed to keep their end of the bargain risked even more than what they had gained throughout their lives.
The Seer's Hand-One Anomaly in Fate
From the beginning it has always been that the Anchor Cards find their bearers in the moment they thermally become sixteen. Zephyr is the exception.
Days passed and rolled into Months and then into years. But he never got a single card calling for him.
Initially, the magical society thought of him as a abnormality, a magically disabled - someone whose power had been voided by fate.
While some said it was unnatural - "if no card has come to him, no card will ever come."
"Oh! Maybe his magic is broken," said others with a hint of smirking pity.
Those comments weighed him down; suffocating thickly: without an Anchor Card, Zephyr was hardly a magician, just someone invalid. On the fringes of magical society, he did fit into a neither-outcast-nor-accepted category.
A lot changed on the eve of his twentieth birthday.
The Seer's Hand sought him.
It didn't come in a whisper; it wasn't quite that soft like those who received a Anchor Card before. It blazed through him, like molten metal piercing through the chest, through the very being where such an imprint could never be wiped away.
The pain was sheer torture. He had passed out for two days.
When he came to, he was not simply a magician.
He was a phenomenon.
The visions came first in jolts, overpowering flashes of futures yet unfolding. Lives unraveled before one's eyes; destinies tangled together, incomprehensible for the most part.
There was no way for him to control the flood of knowledge and visions that came to him – as there was no one to teach him.
In time, with a lot of trial and errors, he trained himself to what he is today.
In over two centuries, the Seer's Hand had not chosen its bearer. Questions arose about the length of its absence, slowly leading to their doubts of if it would ever return. And yet it had returned - for him.
Unlike those before him, the other Seers with same Anchor card, who could only see glimpses of the future, he could see it entirely. His visions were accurate and to the mark, there were no mistakes or guesses.
This led to a general misconception, spread by few who were jealous that he could alter their fate with his words.
And that sent chills down the back of everyone's spine, forcing them to keep their distance from him.
The magical world withdrew in fear.
How is it that this most powerful of Anchor Cards should rise at so late a time?
Why should it choose an outcast?
To their utter disbelief, the predictions of this anchor card bearer were sharper, clearer, and utterly inescapable: its offered no alternative; the very voices which at one time had been dismissive now began to add their whispers into the mix:
"He was chosen, but late, because there is a reason."
"Visions... no one has seen anything like them."
"Fate-it is possible that the intention was just to bring a late perfection when the right person got The Seer's Hand."
Respect replaced ridicule. Fear replaced doubt.
Zephyr had turned into a man who was able to see everything.
At least that's what he thought.
But that was until eight days ago.
A Vision Unbidden
Zephyr has not been able to sleep.
His mind would not turn off, tangled instead in the vision which had struck him like a lightning bolt eight days before meeting Ronan.
It shouldn´t have happened.
He should have been used to controlling his power by now. His visions would only came at his calling, wherein he was in control and did it with intent. Gone were the days of sufferings, horrifying flashes of the future bestowed upon him whenever fate deemed it interesting.
And yet...
For the first time in years, an uninvited vision had come.
It had blasted him during that dark night, crashing into the peace of his mind with a force that ultimately left him breathless. He had awoken jerkily, gasping, trembling with exertion as the images burned bright in his mind.
He saw a card drawn.
Not just any card.
The Lover's Bond.
It was not an Anchor Card, but to him, it had same weight that simply could not be explained. It vibrated with power, its golden edges shimmering as unseen fingers held it in place.
Then he heard a voice.
"He does not belong in your fate, yet you will gamble with destiny itself to keep him."
Zephyr had never heard that voice before. It was an alien sound, foreign to the undertow of his visions - it was not a vision. Something beyond that. Something ancient.
A sharp wretched pain shot through his chest; the Seer's Hand recoiled-the very same magic which made him who he was. It withdrew from him, as if it too was bewildered by what it had just witnessed.
Such a happening had never been recorded in history. He couldn't find it anywhere, not in any book, not even in the ancient ones.
And the worst part, he was not able to pull a card himself to check his future. For his Seer's magic refused to give him any vision, not even a glimpse.
Now, days later, Ronan had come.
Zephyr did not believe in coincidences.
He turned over in his bed, staring up at the darkened ceiling with the weight of the vision heavy upon him, like an iron chain.
The Lover's Bond.
A card of union. A card of unavoidable fate.
And the man who had pulled that card now lay sleeping under his very roof.
For the first time in years, Zephyr had a question he could not answer.
Not even The Seer's Hand could tell him how this story would end.
A Morning of Unanswered Questions
The bright morning showed no promise of peace.
In the depth of unfamiliar bed, Ronan stirred; his body would not rise.
His chest had warmth, a leftover feeling that clung there-a feeling as soft and strange as the fading sounds of an echoing melody. Frowning, he realized it was something he could put a name to but was not necessarily unwelcome.
Then all of a sudden, up came memory like a slap upon him. His eyes flew wide open. He had been dreaming.
For one heartbeat, he lay just staring at the ceiling in disbelief.
It was some sort of dream-he dreamed that he was dreaming, terribly, wonderfully vivid and real.
But the more he reached for it, the faster it crumbled, slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. Completely wrong there.
He sat up abruptly, a nasty chill creeping into his bones, notwithstanding the warmth of the room.
He remembered ....
I lost my dreams.
The last bet he played, the one which ruined him, took away everything, including his dream.
"But how come I have been able to dream last night?" He had lost everything to gambling-including his ability to dream.
It remains unclear what has changed, though he does recall dreaming. It was a throbbing between his temples. He struggled to bring back any single shred of it, but it seemed that nothing remained apart from that unsettling fact of it having happened at all.
Swung his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing at his temples. Zephyr might know, but he had enough strange, creepy treasure tucked away behind those silver eyes of his. Still, it kept nagging at him.
It was not just a dream, but it felt different, almost as if, well, it didn't belong to him in the first place.
By the time Ronan shuffled into the living room, he found Zephyr already there, perching stiffly in a high-backed chair with his hands folded in his lap. He gazed far away into nothing in particular.
The hearth had grown cold now, snaking its shadows along the walls. The magician hadn't been bothered to stoke it back to life. Heavy atmosphere within the room-laden with all that remained unsaid.
Ronan halted.
Zephyr looked… somehow different. Not tired per se, but far away, as though his mind had spent the night unraveling things too complex for Ronan to grasp.
Whatever haunted him kept clinging to his aura; a quiet storm behind his face.
Then, the silence stayed. Neither of them spoke.
Ronan shifted on his feet uncomfortably under that weight. At last, he cleared his throat after what seemed to be eternity.
"So…"
Zephyr's eyes flicked toward him and with that, pulled himself back from wherever his mind had wandered. His voice-so calm-but too measured, too deliberate. "So, do you want to continue with the card reading now?"
For a moment, he was taken aback at how suddenly, it had come to the point by Zephyr.
"Okay, but with the same condition as before. I have nothing with which to pay you," he said.
He expected to get mockery, disapproval, or maybe even the slightest hint of amusement. But Zephyr just scrutinized him for a moment before standing.
"First, let's go to the study. We can continue our discussion there."
Ronan scowled. "Okay, but—hold on—"
He straightened, squaring his shoulders. There was something more urgent, more pressing to figure out first.
"But what about breakfast?"
It was meant to be a very nonchalant question, but it came out sounding far more serious than he intended.
Zephyr blinked once, then raised an unimpressed eyebrow.
"You don't understand. I don't know when I'll be able eating next and I refuse to make life-changing decisions on an empty stomach." He pointed to his own chest.
"I'm running on nothing but hope right now, and hope doesn't fill one's empty stomach."
Zephyr sighed somewhat wearily then turned down the hallway.
Ronan's spirits rose. "Was that a yes to breakfast?"
"No."
"But—"
"If you are hungry, then you should probably have thought of it before gambling away your fortune," Zephyr said as he continued walking. "Now come."
Dramatic groan could be heard from Ronan, but he still followed.
"At least give me a slice of bread—!"
A Gamble of Fate
Zephyr led Ronan to the first floor and stopped dead in front of a grand double door. A flick of his fingers sent magic crackling through the air, quietly unlocking them with a click.
The doors opened up to a treasury that left Ronan momentarily breathless.
Gold glimmered here and there beneath the flicker of the candlelight, piled up next to artifacts of untold worth. Some folk's trinkets from forgotten civilizations, ancient scrolls bound in leather, painting that probably cost a fortune—all around him varied wealth were simply everywhere.
And yet, even now when wealth was within reach, he didn't dare to touch anything. A strange weight pressed down on him, an invisible force warning him that not all that was in the room belonged to the world of the living.
Zephyr strode on, as if all the riches meant nothing to him, and led Ronan further back into the room.
Nestled under an elaborate tapestry was another entrance: small and humble but gave Ronan goose bumps.
A secret room.
The moment they stepped into it, the atmosphere change completely. Unlike outside where the magnificence really displayed, the chamber was a simple one.
Its centre occupied just one table with a chair on either side. The air had a faint smell of parchment and candle wax, but something deeper beneath it-the smell of old magic.
Zephyr took his seat with an unreadable expression and motioned that Ronan should follow suit.
Ronan hesitated.
Until now, he had always avoided the magician, fearing his power. Greed was still enticing his fingers to steal something valuable, but fear kept him still. Zephyr was no ordinary man. He was a Seer, and if indeed the stories were true, stealing from him meant a sentence of death.
Reluctantly, Ronan sat down. Then Zephyr's demeanour changed.
He usually aloofness vanished, replaced by something far more unsettling. His gaze turned sharp, calculating, as if peeling back Ronan's very soul.
This, then, was his true business face.
And it was terrifying.
"Let's cut the chase." Zephyr's tone spoke of calm because it was powerful enough to be an unexpressed threat.
"I take it you have gambled everything, including yourself and your luck?"
Ronan swallowed deeply. "Yes."
There was a flicker of something—sympathy? amusement?—crossed Zephyr's face before he went on.
"You should know, the rules of this reading differ from any gamble you've played before. This deck demands truth. If you try to cheat or run... you won't just lose." His voice dropped to something colder. "You'll be cursed."
Ronan tensed. He had spent his entire life based on tricks and lies, half-chance and, well, some real stealing.
But that was not to be for the game here.
"And I am not afraid," he said, though the words barely came out.
Zephyr exhaled, almost as if deciding something.
"I don't usually do this," he admitted, "but I have no choice."
He reached into his coat and pulled out the deck of cards. The very air around them began to shift, filling with the pressure of unseen power behind them.
"Everything else was already up for stakes save the Card of fate itself," he said and caught Ronan's eye.
"Since you don't own it, you cannot transfer it entirely. But you can share it."
Ronan frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Zephyr said,
quieter now, more deliberate, "that from this moment forward, our fates will be bound. We will share the same card... the same destiny." His fingers ghosted over the deck before he revealed the name.
"The Lovers' Bond."
The words jolted through Ronan.
A common fate.
It hit him now.
"It's no wonder Zephyr hesitated before making this offer," he thought to himself
"A Seer, a man who saw the very threads of fate himself, was offering to tie his destiny to that of a reckless gambler."
For the first time in his life, Ronan felt something strange.
Respect.
Not the grudging respect reserved for an adversary, but something deeper. Zephyr was putting himself at risk alone, shouldering something that was never his.
Ronan could have analysed the consequences, weighed his options like any gambler would. But he didn't.
He made the one choice that mattered.
With steady resolve, he met Zephyr's gaze.
"I accept."
Whatever came next-whatever price he had to pay-he would face it.
For the first time in a long time... he had company to share his fate.