The shield had been there for as long as 12-year-old Kyian was alive, protecting the town from the toxins that now polluted the Earth. But now, and for some reason in a time when she just had to be alive, the shield was breaking, first it was tiny cracks, then there was the Hole. The whole shield was a massive dome that had a diameter of about 10 miles, and the Hole took was about 1 mile in diameter, one-tenth of the shield. Every morning, the mage on duty would wake up and fix the hole and the cracks around it, a process that usually took well over an hour. If the mage didn’t wake up on time or skipped steps in the fixing, many people could die from inhaling the outside air. Then, the mage who was supposed to be on duty would promptly be killed by being tied with magic-resistant bonds to a boulder which was thrown into the water, a spectacle the whole town generally gathered to see. That was unfortunate, as Kyian had been one of the kids selected to train under a senior mage, and would one day be the one fixing the Hole.