by ColdT
In a world where every person is born with a lantern floating by their side, power is decided by color. By age seven, every child’s lantern manifests a flame. Red for enhancement. Blue for manipulation. Green for transmutation. Yellow for emission. Purple for specialization. A person’s color decides their future, their status, and their worth. Malik Adebayo’s lantern never changed. While everyone around him awakened their colors, Malik remained colorless. To his classmates, teachers, and even himself, he was useless. But his father never believed that. Every day, he told Malik that he carried a power beyond imagination, and when it finally awakened, he would have to take great care with it. Then Malik’s lantern finally manifests. His flame burns white. Before he can celebrate, Malik rushes home to tell his father and watches his house explode in front of him. Fire consumes everything. The blast knocks him unconscious, and when he wakes, he is in a hospital bed with two police officers waiting to question him. His father is gone. His home is ash. The only thing recovered from the wreckage is a locked box his father had always told him to open only after his color appeared. Inside is a letter, a strange case, and an invitation to the most prestigious hunter school in the world. Lantern Academy. There, Malik discovers the truth: his white flame is not powerless. It is a rare Prism Flame capable of copying, storing, and mastering the abilities of other lantern colors. But if his power is so rare, why did his father know about it? Who destroyed their home the moment Malik awakened? And why does Lantern Academy seem to have been waiting for him? In a world ruled by color, Malik was born without one. Now he may be the only one who can master them all.
