The Wandsmith [LitRPG, Isekai, Harem]

Nameless was born to a poor family in the lower valleys of Velrith, a rugged, forgotten realm on the fringes of the Material Demiplane. A place where non-humans were rare, and most lived mundane, mortal lives. With loving parents and a quiet, introverted personality, his early years were unremarkable, filled with labour, curiosity, and the small joys and tragedies of a steady rural life.

On a grey afternoon, a bully, emboldened by his father's position as a local magistrate, pushed too far, leading to a scuffle in the village square. He was beaten bloody after words were exchanged. Alone and outnumbered, his heart hammering with fear and anger, he lashed out, not with fists or kicks, but with something darker. His Underworld and Curse affinities awakened violently within him and uncontrolled dark magics manifested to gruesome effect. The bully collapsed screaming, his body twisted by macabre forces.

Terror spread like fire through the village. Whispers turned to torches at dusk and pitchforks by night. The boy fled with his parents that same evening, pursued by frightened neighbours backed by the wrath of a grieving magistrate.

Fleeing the realm of Velrith, he eventually enrolled within a prestigious academy, renowned across a now unnamed realm within the Material Demiplane. There, the frightened child grew into a determined man. It was within the halls of the now unnamed academy that he found refuge within the Chromatic Order, initiating as a journeyman Black Mage. For the first time, he knew joy within his dark magics, how to control his unruly affinities, how to live with the darkness within him, and how to use it to fulfil his goals and lead a productive life. The academic pursuit of curses became a calling rather than a shame.

Within the now unnamed academy, he found others like him, outcasts with dark affinities, students who might have been villains in another life but found harmless mischief instead. Among them was his closest friend, Malric Solvane, a boy as brilliant as he was reckless.

Together, they achieved much. They published pioneering treatises on the interactions between Grace and Mana, reshaping the understanding of how curses could stabilise or unravel paracausal forces. They completed fieldwork once thought impossible, saving cities from paranatural blights and repelling three successive beast tides that threatened the southern provinces of the unnamed realm.

In time, they became High Black Mages of the Chromatic Order, accruing lofty accolades within their pages of fate.

For a hundred years, Nameless flourished. His future seemed boundless, with days filled with exploration, learning, and camaraderie.
Then tragedy struck.

A series of murders and thefts unsettled the academy. Friends vanished without explanation, their absence leaving only silence and an unsettling, slow erasure from the minds of their loved ones, halting investigations before they could conclude.

Driven by the death of a lover, Nameless uncovered the truth. The lies, inconsistencies, and the deaths of colleagues all traced back to Malric.

Every mage of the Chromatic Order cultivated an antithesis to balance their affinity. Malric, however, had neglected his. His pursuit of power hollowed his soul. Malric had already lost his ego, having devolved into an elemental. And upon confrontation, the unveiling of Malric's betrayal came with fire and screams.

During the conflict, Malric unleashed a curse that tore through the academy, not only killing but erasing names from fate. The unnamed academy, once a beacon of learning, was reduced to silence. Friends, achievements, and even memories were swallowed whole.

Nameless survived the battle; however, the life he had built was reduced to smouldering ashes and disappearing memories.

Fuelled by fury and grief, Nameless hunted his former friend across fate, leaving behind shattered realms, with millions stripped from the records of fate.

At first, he was not alone. Other Chromatic Mages, many once illustrious and powerful, joined him on a grand quest to contain the existential threat. For a time, they made headway, weakening the now Greater Elemental of Curses. They faced the creature Malric had become and wounded it.

But it was not enough.

One by one, those who fought alongside him disappeared, not just in body, but in memory. The Name Eater consumed not only its victims but the very knowledge of its crimes. Magi once celebrated became little more than whispers, and then even the whispers faded.

This was how it hid, how it festered. By devouring the threads of fate itself, the Name Eater could traverse realms with impunity, erasing whole cities and those affiliated with them while growing ever stronger.

The hunt became Nameless's obsession. He delved deeper into the arts of curse and soulcraft, pioneering techniques to ward himself against the ripples of erasure Malric left behind. His knowledge of curses, once used for defence and healing, became the only tool sharp enough to track the entity through the fading echoes it left in fate.

Yet when he returned to the Chromatic Order for aid, he found betrayal of another kind.

Many scoffed at the idea, appalled by the magnitude of destruction and the evidence Nameless presented. Others grew paralysed with fear and indecision, unable to accept the scale of the failure or what it meant for the Order.

Within a century, only a handful even remembered the Name Eater's existence, and fewer still dared to believe in it.
And now Nameless fought alone.

He made his final stand here, at the very fringes of Twilight, more than a century ago. A battle of curses and black magic. The Name Eater had grown, and their battle shook the bones of the realm itself. His wards against curses barely held, his comprehension of his affinity teetering on the verge of ego death. Curses so powerful left tears in reality, spawning countless Aether Rifts across hundreds of miles. Sigils of ruin clashed against bindings of will. High, Arch, and Prime Magic collided in titanic waves, leaving behind only whispers outside the domains where they fought.

In a moment of inspiration mid-battle, one of Nameless's curses broke through the boundary of Prime Magic, displaying a transcendent-rank effect. Nameless wounded the entity, not physically, for it was no longer a creature of flesh and blood, but conceptually, striking a wound it could never fully heal. For a moment, it faltered.

But his former friend endured.

In exchange for the near-mortal blow, Nameless's body was destroyed. His soul, near unravelled, could not pursue the fleeing elemental. Only a fragile remnant remained, bound not by hatred, but by duty.

Nameless had failed to end the monster he had once loved as a brother.
But he left behind one final chance, a seed of power, backed by the Library of Fate.

Quest: Kill the Name Eater

Nameless tasks you with the destruction of Malric, the Name Eater, an Entity of Power that devours threads of fate, erasing names, histories, and existences from reality itself.
Once a Black Magi of the Chromatic Order, Malric suffered ego death, hollowing out his identity during ascension into a Greater Elemental of Curses, and ultimately became an Entity of Power formally recognised by the Library of Fate.
This Pinnacle (Irregular)-ranked entity has long since exceeded its original bindings, consuming the souls of countless beings across multiple realms, and currently resides within Twilight.
The Name Eater poses an existential threat not only to this realm but also to the standing of the entire Chromatic Order within the Library of Fate.

You have been chosen to neutralise this threat.
You have one hundred days to complete this task.

Reward upon quest acceptance: You will receive the Transcendent-rank Boon: Curse Inversion, a trait that inverts the detrimental effects of any curse, regardless of origin or magnitude, into a force of personal empowerment.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Reward upon successful completion: You will be granted a new Unique Accolade or an upgrade to an existing Accolade.

Failure: Should you fail to slay the Name Eater within the allotted time frame, you will be afflicted with Soul Shattering, destroying your physical form and scattering your soul across fate.

Warning: Defeat by the Name Eater may result in the application of the Pinnacle-rank Curse: Curse of Erasure, removing your name across all timelines, memories, and records, including the Library of Fate itself.

Ori sat in silence as the remnants of Nameless, a once Pinnacle-ranked existence, evaporated into soul dust and swirling peritia. A being near the peak of all existences across fate, had just condensed hundreds of years of life, experience, and mastery into a single, diamond-clear memory. It would take Ori several lifetimes to fully digest, yet, unlike the chaotic aftermath of consuming Eltitus's soul, it had come without any of the destabilising side effects or personality bleed.

He was dazed. The sheer scale of the conflict and the magnitude of the task now imposed upon him was overwhelming. Pinnacle rank, even wounded, the Name Eater was five entire ranks above his Nascent self and three above his practical combat ability. Meanwhile, the magic and forces involved were so far beyond his comprehension that simply recalling fragments of Nameless's battles made him nauseous.

Yet amid the crushing weight of the memories, several things were clear.

Thraxis, that conniving bastard, had led him straight into this. Ori saw it now with uncomfortable clarity, it's deliberate manipulation to lead him here, their clear intentions of him to clean up humanity's forgotten mess, despite the warnings Thraxis himself had given about meddling with other Entities of Power. Worse still, Ori had no natural affinity with curses or Underworld magic. He likely even carried an antithesis to it, meaning that much of Nameless's lifetime of spells, curses, and theory were of little direct use to him.

Finally, there was the deadline, one hundred days. Mere several months to not only seek this hidden monster but also gain enough power to end it? Even if he knew how to progress his classes far enough and earn enough to meet the rank requirements, progress that depended on things such as mentoring, would be impossible in such a short time.

And yet, despite every reason to turn away, Ori could feel the quiet insistence of his White Mage class, urging him towards confrontation.

The very idea of such an entity existing made his skin crawl. Were it not for the fact that he too was an Entity in his own right and needed the power to survive in this messed-up universe, Ori would have already made plans to escape Twilight with his bonds and somehow survive the penalty.

Ori had left the inner sanctum to reunite with Freya and Ruenne'del. They sat in the nook at the bottom of the ravine. Playful tendrils of lightning leapt from Lysara, now returned from scouting, to Ori's outstretched fingertips, her bright and whimsical presence a balm to a mind exhausted by horrors and a life wrecked by grief and failure.

He had spent hours going over what had happened with his bonded, beginning with the details of the quest, before summarising the life experiences of the Nameless Black Mage.

Freya sat beside them, her brow furrowed as her short, navy-blue hair stood on end. She looked up, her dark blue eyes locking onto his.

"Please tell me you don't plan on doing this alone, Ori?"

"What do you mean?" Ori attempted a distracted smile.

"I mean, something tells me you plan to... what was the term, solo it?"

"Not going to lie, if there was a better option, I'd be keen to hear it," Ori sighed.

Freya chewed her lip thoughtfully. "It's not that there isn't a better option, just no better option that doesn't put people you trust at risk, am I right?"

"Even if I wanted to, what good would it do? Putting anyone else at risk of their entire existence being erased from fate? This isn't just another Sovereign threat, Freya. And I can't exactly walk up to the nearest Pinnacle-rank existence and ask for help."

"Ori," Freya sighed heavily.

"I die when you die," Ruenne'del said lightly as if stating a simple fact. "Our souls are intertwined. Your Lifeforce sustains me."

"Then I guess I better not die, then. Either way, it doesn't change anything." His frustrations were growing. "You have no idea what Nameless did just to leave this behind." He gestured to the cave behind him. He hesitated, his gaze dropping to the cracked stone floor. "Besides, I can't trust anyone else with... everything. What I am, how I know what I know. Just the knowledge of the creature's existence would cause panic on a scale I couldn't imagine if word got out."

"Fine," Freya relented. "But we can still help. Outside of battle. Help you in other ways. You are not alone."

For a moment, only the soft crackle of lightning stretched between them.

It was Ruenne'del who broke the silence, her soft voice cutting through the stillness. "You're unsettled. More than you want to show. The memories, what you saw through Nameless, it shook you, didn't it? It would shake anyone."

Ori opened his mouth to deny it, but the words died on his tongue. She was right.

Through Nameless's memories, Ori had witnessed true horror. In the final battle, Nameless had floated amidst the shattered remnants of a medium-sized town, where both he and the Name Eater harvested souls to fuel their magic. The townsfolk were little more than shadows scorched into the ground, consumed in seconds by curses so powerful that, to mortal eyes, they might as well have been nuclear weapons. Even their dust was devoured, transmuted into fuel for conceptual spellcraft beyond Ori's understanding.

Even people in nearby villages, bound by karmic threads to the victims, were drained. Their beings were stripped and burned to empower wards and spells. All pretence had been abandoned. Structures crumbled, families vanished, and entire lineages and cultures erased, not just by the Name Eater, but by Nameless himself.

The Name Eater fed with sadistic glee, savouring the symmetry of survival through annihilation. Nameless, desperate to endure, teetered on the edge of hallowing, casting spells woven from obliterated souls and shattered ties. And even that had not been enough.

Ori staggered under the weight of the memory. His antipathy towards Grace, one of the fundamental forces of magic, deepened. Grace was no gift; it was fuel. Love, hope, history, all of it could be used to empower heroes or devoured to feed monsters.

His mind felt like shattered glass, filled with flashes of battles he barely understood and concepts that bent the nature of reality. Sorceries he was nowhere near ready to replicate churned within him, alien and overwhelming and for the first time since fighting Eltitus, Ori was forced to face the true horrors magic could unleash.

He had intended to immediately consume the Aether Rift, to forge the next step of his power.
But that now seemed like suicide in his current state.

Ori sighed and shrugged. "Maybe. I need to think. I need to clear my mind first. Sleep on it. Begin to process all this before I make my next move. If I don't take the time to integrate what Nameless left me, to sort it from who I am and who I need to become, I'll burn out before I even get close to fighting the Name Eater."

"I believe that is wise. Get some sleep, you two, and I'll keep watch," Freya said, settling herself with a determined expression.

"Tada!" Raven said, giving Ori a playful spin.

"Wow. Hot," Ori said, grinning as he sat on her bed within the dreaming, watching her twirl. They had met like this often, using the dreaming as a haven while she updated him on the chaos back on Earth.

She wore a deep indigo cloak that flared as she spun, fastened at the throat with a single red gemstone. Beneath it, a skin-tight, legless leotard hugged every curve, the long sleeves leaving her arms and thighs bare in tempting contrast. Fingerless gloves and sleek black boots completed the look.

Since the world had witnessed her 'miracle,' hysteria had erupted. Conspiracy theories flooded the internet, some claiming her to be the key to all the mysteries of the event, while others branded her an attention-seeking drama queen despite making zero public appearances and refusing all press. Tabloids had offered her hundreds of thousands of pounds for exclusives, but she refused them all. Still, fame clung to her like smoke. Creepy stalkers and even creepier spies lingered outside her university, forcing her to live in constant caution as even going to class had become perilous.

"Always hated my name. Chloe Kumar," she scoffed. "It just sounded... so silly. Then, when I was growing up, there was this character called Raven from Teen Titans. I thought she was cool. And when I found out she had a similar alliterated name, Rachel Roth, well, yeah. I was barely a teen back then. So, now you know."

"Yeah." Ori grinned, a goofy smile stretching across his face. "Still hot though."

Raven giggled "What's sex like? I mean... in the dreaming? Is it like real life?"

"It's like all dream things," Ori said. "If you've done it before, the dream replicates it pretty well. If you haven't... then it depends on your imagination"

"Does it help, you know, with the horniness? Now that I've got feeling down there, it feels like I need to rub one out every twenty minutes," Raven whined In her soft, adorable Scottish brogue.

Ori chuckled. "Ha, absolutely not. It's like peeing in a dream. Worst case, you wet the bed. Best case, you never really feel relieved. I can only imagine what you're going through."

"It's like a second puberty," she sighed. "Now that I can walk, it's like I'm learning to be a person again. Remembering that I don't need help for everything, that I can do stuff myself. I've been learning how to drive, how to cook... There's so much I want to do, but it's been tricky getting out of the house until recently. Things have started calming down now, but when I'm stuck at home..." She leaned in with a mischievous smile. "My mind wanders to naughty places."

She kissed him, slow and eager. Ori turned into the kiss, his hands finding her waist pulling her towards him, before pushing her back onto the bed.

"Despite what you said, you're making a pretty good case for dream sex, Ori," Raven teased, her voice husky.

"I really need to get on with growing my Mana, don't I?" Ori laughed, grinding against her gently, the warmth and sensation of her body beneath enough to drive away the recent horrors.

"No pressure," she whimpered as he licked her neck, her hips arching into his, her eyes rolling back in pleasure. "Though... if this reaction's anything to go by, I definitely need to put this cosplay into the ring."

"Definitely," Ori growled, punctuating his agreement with a long, searing kiss that ended with him nibbling gently on her bottom lip piercings.