There’s only ever been one magic: the will.

Those first ripples that complicated our smooth little lizard brains into gray matter canyons of possibility—that’s what did it. In the Void, The Way Things Are was forced to deal with an upright monkey that had managed to vault mere animal observation into the idea that maybe it could all be somehow different. Abracadabra.

The very first magic spell was, “Yes, but what if…”

Instinct bloomed into memory, and millennia of stacked memories bange...