What This Page Is
There are eight doors, and each one is a plane, and each plane is a force with its own weight and its own memory. The Eight Doors is the map of the schools — what each one does, what it cannot do, and the circle a mage stands in when the door answers. The mechanics of a cast are in The Veil; the failure of the new world is in Wild Magic. This page is the doors themselves.
The dragons are the scale anchors: each line casts its door's school effortlessly, the way a hand casts a shadow — which is how a reader knows what a spell can be, because the dragon does not think about it.
The Eight Schools
| school | plane | what it does | what it cannot | the dragon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | Plane of Fire | burn, boil, ignite; the heat that does not wait | cool, or hold still — fire is a verb | Ignathar |
| Water | Plane of Water | flow, drown, freeze at the edge; the pressure that does not stop | cut in a straight line — water finds the way | Tidecaller |
| Earth | Plane of Earth | raise, crush, still; the weight that does not move | move fast — earth is the argument that wins by arithmetic | Stonewrought |
| Air | Plane of Air | carry, shear, unmake the sound; the distance that does not rest | hold a shape — air is the verb that leaves | Galeforce |
| Poison | Plane of Poison | rot, corrode, set the terms; the wound that was already losing | strike — poison does not chase, it waits and wins | Scorpion |
| Venom | Plane of Venom | deliver; the wound with an address, the fang, the dart | make the water bad — venom is poison that has learned to aim | Venomfury |
| Dark | Plane of Dark | hide, unmake the light, take the name out of the dark | be seen — dark is the absence that holds the shape | Shadowveil |
| Light | Plane of Light | reveal, heal, hold the line against the dark | kill — light is the answer, not the question | Luminary |
Poison and venom are two doors, not one. Mages who blur the two — who cast a venom as if it were poison, a poison as if it could bite — are the first to die to it, because one of the planes pulls and the other one does not. The distinction is not decoration; it is the difference between the water going bad and the wound going where the hunter points it.
The Circles
A circle is a relationship with the Veil, not a rank. The Veil is the one who grants it, and the Veil is the one who takes it back, and the taking back is the story.
| circle | the relationship | the Exchange it can hold | the stat that gates it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — Cantrip | the hand knows the door | gesture | — (anyone taught) |
| 2 — Apprentice | the door knows the hand | gesture, breath | INT (arcane) |
| 3 — Journeyman | the hand and the door agree on the shape | breath | INT (arcane) |
| 4 — Master | the door answers without being asked twice | reagent | INT (arcane) |
| 5 — Archmage | the hand is the door's | blood | INT (arcane) — or the oath |
The stat gates (the D5 mapping, full table in The Way of the Blade): INT gates the arcane circles, CHA gates enchantment — the voice, the price, the promise, the door Zahlia walks — and WIS gates the ninth door below. A mage who is strong in the wrong stat does not cast badly; the mage casts in a different school, and the school is the one the stat points at.
The Ninth Door (Faith)
Divine casting is not an elemental plane. It is an oath answered: the mage does not pull on the Veil — the mage keeps the oath, and the god on the other side of the oath answers.
- The cost is devotion, not reagent: a rite kept at dawn, a silence held, a name spoken in the dark. The exchange is the keeping, and the keeping is never optional.
- The stat that gates it is WIS — the threshold, the refusal to look away, the nerve that holds the line.
- The door is defined by the oath, not the god. Which god answers is a question the story keeps open — and the one who keeps the oath is Uuaellaen, and the oath is the one under silence, at dawn, and the god is the one the reader meets before the reader knows the name.
The nine doors are the whole of magic in the world. There is no tenth door, and the one who looks for the tenth door is the one the story is about.