Azir's path begins in a frozen, airtight cave where his ancient, eight hundred year old self is slowly dying as the ice claims his feet. Refusing to succumb to time, he intercepts a cosmic summoning frequency, leaving his old, wrinkled shell behind to be pulled across the stars. He wakes up in a dark room illuminated by dim oil lamps, lying in the center of a ten-meter hexagon circle surrounded by six corpses with their throats cut. Reborn as a chubby infant, he immediately faces Mr. Black, a rogue mage with a single black feathered wing and a bloody dagger. On the altar lies Valda, her belly sliced open after her unborn child was ripped out for the ritual. When Mr. Black shakes a glowing amulet to enslave him, Azir simply grins like an idiot to exploit the language barrier. The situation escalates when Valda's husband Yoran and her sister Jade burst through the wooden doors to rescue her. Mr. Black uses his wing to suck the green soul-mist out of Jade, killing her instantly. Seizing his chance when Valda knocks the enslavement amulet away, Azir uses his mana to turn the spilled blood on the floor into a sharp spike, impaling Mr. Black through the chest. He toddles over to the dying mage, drains his life force, and captures Jade's escaping soul. With a display of shocking power, he rams the soul back into Jade's body and electrocutes her chest to restart her heart, leaving a bloody handprint on her forehead. He then pours the stolen life force into Valda, closing her belly wound and restoring her to perfect health. By saving his new family, he secures their absolute loyalty, forcing them to forge birth certificates and keep his monstrous magical talents a secret from the rest of the world.

When Azir is sent to the magic academy, he immediately rejects the snobbish hierarchy of the noble clans. He chooses to sit next to Stella Sable, a commoner with black-and-white hair who is shunned by the class. When a group of bullies led by Louise Siorda tries to isolate Stella and slaps the lunch bread out of Azir's hand, he retaliates with quiet, brutal efficiency. He binds the six bullies with their own clothes, leaving them naked and gagged on a giant statue in the school park. To secure Stella's safety, he uses his clan authority to force Talia Zaitus, Karsen Anja, and a terrified Louise into a study group, effectively adopting them as his followers. The climax of his school arc occurs during the public obstacle course test, designed for clans to show off their heirs. While Olivia Veit uses gravity magic and Karsen melts the boulder with fire, Azir decides to show a real spell. He gathers the natural mana of the area to cast a massive space-time bubble, freezing the entire world in grey silence. While time is stopped, he walks across the mud pool, writes the word slow on the teacher's forehead, and draws whiskers on his cheeks. He scrapes philosophical quotes about time into the dusty ground, levitates to the top of the ten-meter pillar, and casts ten arcane lances that freeze in mid-air. After placing a delayed curse to split the heavy boulder, he walks to the finish line and lets the spell run out. Time resumes in a flash, the lances obliterate the dummies, the boulder crumbles to dust, and the examiner is left staring blankly with painted whiskers on his face. This absurd display of ancient magic leaves the entire audience of noble mages in absolute shock, making Azir a legendary figure and a highly sought-after asset.

The peace of school life is shattered when a dark magician cult kidnaps thirty-four students, causing an auditorium floor to cave into the ancient catacombs. Azir joins the rescue team alongside Inspector Ryland, his grandmother Quarma, and his classmates. Using his honed senses to detect dust particles in the air, Azir guides the group down the correct tunnels. He silently kills a pale, white guard with long earlobes using a forged mana dagger, recognizing the creature as a degenerated version of his old people. In the central cavern, they find thirty of these monsters praying to an altar with a red portal, led by a one-handed summoner wearing a red amulet. When Ryland charges, the summoner lopped off a student's head and fires a fireball that collapses the exit, causing the ceiling to crumble. Azir and his sister Valeria use their mana to form massive tendrils that hold up the falling rocks, but their strength is rapidly depleting. With no other choice, the group flees through the red portal, landing in the freezing, dead tundra of Azir's past world. For three days, the group marches through the snow, covering their faces in the bloody fat of white-furred beasts to survive the biting cold. Azir leads them to a magnificent, dead city of obsidian skyscrapers that dwarf the palaces of Nict. Inside a ruined shop, he uses a block of melted blood to draw a massive teleportation circle on the floor. He successfully teleports the thirty-seven survivors back to Nict, but the spell deposits them directly in front of his old, frozen corpse. His grandmother Quarma screams and crawls backward at the sight of the scarred, eight-hundred-year-old shell. Karsen even snaps an arm off the corpse to inspect its sharp teeth before Quarma incinerates the remains with a light-ray spell, exposing Azir's secret origin to his closest companions.

Following their return, Stella's true identity as the second princess of the Gejene clan is revealed, leading to their official betrothal. The domestic peace is disrupted when Stella's older sister, Sola, corners Azir in a restroom, trips him with her tail, and tries to force a marriage alliance. Stella smashes the door open, throws Sola through a brick wall, and engages in a destructive brawl that trashes three rooms. However, this comedy turns into a tragedy when Stella, who was secretly pregnant due to her mother swapping her contraceptives with vitamins, is caught in a terrorist bombing at a restaurant. Stella turns her skin to metal to shield Sola from the blast, but the trauma causes her to lose the baby. The loss of his unborn child unleashes Azir's dormant, cold-blooded nature. He spots the assassin, Reagan, trying to blend into the crowd, teleports in front of her, and brutally beats her face before crushing her throat. He rams his thumbs into her eyes and uses forbidden mind magic to rip her memories apart, discarding her childhood to find the location of the enemy base. After dispersing her soul into screaming fragments, Azir prepares for war. He equips his warcat, Ghost, with a strength-enhancing collar and takes his robot assistant, Spidey, who has possessed the corpse of a beautiful blonde girl and renamed herself Ivy. Together, they raid the enemy's hidden warehouse. While Ghost mauls the guards, Azir rains arcane lances from the roof and sends metallic drones to ram the survivors. He corners the enemy leaders at their portal, which connects to a massive barbarian army in the north. Before the portal collapses, Azir throws a silver sphere containing an overloaded, highly radioactive nuclear reactor through the rift, obliterating the enemy's main camp on the other side and setting off a desperate race to Dwem to secure the legendary Light of the Emperor helmet.