Chapter Text
There are two forms of magic.
Back in the days of paradise, red magic was commonplace. Oh, to be sure, there is a modern school of magic called 'red magic' by the thin parodies of people that comprise the bulk of the star's current population, but that is not true red magic. It is merely another form of aether manipulation, with a nearly-forgotten name attached.
No, in the days of old, one merely spoke the red words of truth into the world, collapsing the possibility matrix until it was impossible for the statement to be untrue. Until all possible timelines contradicting the red truth were destroyed. Not a form of aether manipulation at all, but a way of constraining reality itself.
By comparison, most modern magic should rightly be categorized as blue magic. It is much more fragile than red magic, but it is far easier to weave. Blue magic is not truth, but rather conjecture: "Suppose this concept were true." Powered by belief, it has a strength of its own and can be built upon, but a single word in red can demolish even the greatest of blue-woven edifices. Useful for demonstrating proof of concept, but not preferred for anything enduring.
But then, at the end of those halcyon days, there was a great Calamity. A truth came into existence that was too awful for the people to bear. And so the people brought forth an enormous new concept to seal it away instead, a shield that would protect the very heart of the star. This concept was fundamentally a lie, of course, but it was a lie born of their love for each other, one they would willingly believe in if it meant they could forget the horrors they had seen, the friends they had lost.
However, a star founded on a lie cannot support truths itself. Any new red magic would still have the original calamitous truth as its foundation, and would tear holes through anything that happened to be in its way. And so even those few remaining people who were present for that ancient era are forced, through necessity, to rely on blue magic in the modern day.
Because to do otherwise would force them to remember what once lived.