Inside his room, Ludger sat at the small writing desk, a blank sheet of parchment spread before him, the lamplight reflecting off the ink bottle and pen he’d picked up earlier that evening.

  He exhaled slowly, rolling his shoulders as he set the tip of the pen against the paper.

  All right, he thought. Let’s see if I understood this.

  He began to draw. The first strokes came from memory, the sharp curves and spirals of Linne’s experimental language, the way the runes had curved like spinning wind around her desk. He tried to mimic the same structure, linking the outer glyphs for motion and flow to the central node that represented release.

  The moment he poured mana into it, the lines on the page shimmered faintly, then the glow fizzled out like dying embers.

  “…Nothing,” he muttered.

  He tried again, refining the shapes, adjusting their proportions by millimeters, then channeling mana once more. The runes glowed a bit brighter this time, pale blue light tracing along the ink lines, but then a faint pop sounded, and the glow collapsed into harmless wisps that drifted into the air.

  The mana dispersed before it even reached activation. Ludger frowned, leaning back in his chair. He tapped the paper with the pen’s end. “So the structure’s right,” he murmured, “but the intent’s wrong.”

  He remembered Linne’s words: Runes are language. They answer to the will of the one who writes them.

  He focused again, closing his eyes briefly. He tried to picture the same rhythm she’d had while typing, that strange flow between her mana and the tool. Then he sketched a new pattern, slower, more deliberate, feeding mana in gentle pulses instead of forcing it through.

  For a second, the air stirred. The flame in the lamp flickered sideways.

  Ludger’s eyes narrowed in faint anticipation, then the rune lines bled white and scattered like mist.

  “Still not stable,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The mana just… slips through it.”

  He tried three more times, varying the shape, flipping the grammar, even layering multiple circles together. Each attempt ended the same, faint shimmer, then dispersion. The parchment was littered with failed runes, their ink glinting faintly with residual mana but devoid of power.

  Eventually, he dropped the pen and sat back, staring at the quiet mess of paper and light. So far, all he’d managed to do was waste mana and make the room smell faintly of ozone.

  He exhaled, a wry, quiet laugh slipping out. “Guess the League’s toys aren’t as easy to imitate as they look.”

  Still, his gaze drifted back to the failed runes, and the faintest glimmer of curiosity flickered in his eyes.

  It didn’t fail completely, he thought. The flow reacted, just not in the right direction. Maybe it’s not the symbols that matter…

  Ludger didn’t stop there. He sat still for a moment, watching the last failed rune fade from the parchment, then slowly pushed the paper aside. His hand hovered over the ink bottle, hesitating.

  Linne hadn’t drawn on paper, she’d written in the air. He flexed his fingers once, the faint hum of mana coiling along his skin. Worth a try, he thought.

  Rising from the chair, he stood in the middle of the room, facing the wall where the lamplight fell the strongest. His fingers began to move through the air, tracing the same shapes he’d written a dozen times on the page, arcs, slashes, and loops that defined the wind glyph Linne had shown.

  Faint lines of blue light followed the trail of his fingers, shimmering in the air like threads of fog catching moonlight. When he finished the first circle, the glow pulsed faintly. For a heartbeat, he thought it might work. Then the mana dissolved, scattering like mist in sunlight.

  “…No cohesion,” he muttered, lowering his hand.

  He tried again. Slower this time. He fed more mana into the gesture, steady, focused. The symbol formed, bright and clear, but it wavered, edges fraying as though the air itself refused to hold the lines. When he tried to channel energy into it, it simply bled away, leaking out of the construct until nothing remained. He ground his teeth quietly.

  Again. This time he drew two layers, overlapping the airflow runes like Linne had done to create her barrier. His mana control was sharp, density stable, no surges, no drift. Yet when he sealed the last stroke, the formation sputtered once and collapsed.

  The air stirred faintly, but not from magic, just from his exhale.

  Ludger frowned, eyes narrowing as faint sweat rolled down his temple. Same mana flow. Same structure. Same sequence.

  He stared at the fading traces of blue light. So why isn’t it binding?

  His training as a geomancer had always been rooted in surfaces, in touch, in material resonance. Earth magic anchored through contact, through matter that carried weight and memory. Air was the opposite, intangible, shifting, too free to obey fixed form.

  He tried again, smaller this time, controlling his breathing. The runes lit, hovered, then flickered out before he could even activate them.

  “…Still wrong,” he muttered. “Same density as Linne’s rune, but it disperses like smoke.”

  He flexed his fingers, feeling the faint sting of overuse. The mana was behaving correctly; the problem wasn’t power. It was the foundation.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He stared at his hand, thoughtful. Maybe it’s not just symbols. Maybe the tool—the Compiler, did more than translate. Maybe it stabilized intent.

  He paced once, then twice, his boots creaking against the floor. The faint hum of the city outside filled the silence.

  “I’m missing something,” he said quietly to himself, eyes on the faint blue residue still clinging to the air. “Either the tool channels the will differently… or runes in the air need a pattern I don’t know yet.”

  His mana coiled faintly again, restless. It wasn’t failure that frustrated him, it was ignorance. And he wasn’t about to leave it that way.

  Ludger stood in the middle of his room, breathing slow and steady as the last traces of blue light faded from the air. His fingers twitched faintly, itching to try again, but the result would be the same. The mana flowed correctly, the runes took shape, but nothing stuck.

  He let out a quiet exhale, replaying Linne’s voice in his mind.

  “Runes are language. They answer to the will of the one who writes them.”

  “Every rune is different when carved by a different hand.”

  He frowned. Language… not form.

  He’d been copying what he saw, not what he understood.

  Linne hadn’t just typed random symbols, she’d spoken through them. Each glyph had meaning, rhythm, and intent tied to her own logic. Her runes worked because she knew what each character meant when combined, what command it whispered into mana. He didn’t.

  To him, they were just shapes. Hollow. Dead on arrival. He rubbed his thumb against his fingers, feeling the faint crackle of residual mana. “So it’s not the power,” he murmured. “It’s the language.”

  Copying her system without knowing the vocabulary behind it was like reciting a sentence in a tongue he couldn’t speak, mimicking the sounds but not the meaning. Mana, like any listener, simply ignored noise it didn’t understand.

  He turned his hand palm up, watching a faint flicker of dust rise from his fingertips as he gathered mana again. The air shimmered slightly, waiting.

  “…But what if I don’t copy hers?” he said softly.

  The thought came uninvited, but once it landed, it rooted itself deep.

  He could create a rune system. Linne had said it was possible, even if it was difficult and took years. But maybe he didn’t need to invent a new one from nothing. Maybe he already had something close enough, something alive in his mana.

  Earth patterns. Geomantic symbols. The language of stone.

  He’d written them hundreds of times when shaping walls, spears, and anchors, never as words, but as instinct. Every motion of his hand, every pulse of mana through ground or metal, already had grammar. He just hadn’t thought of it that way.

  Ludger’s eyes narrowed, a faint glimmer sparking behind them.

  “Maybe that’s it,” he murmured. “She used a new language. I already have one.”

  He drew in a slow breath and raised his hand again, this time not tracing Linne’s flowing symbols but the angular, weighty patterns that defined his magic, the short lines, pressure nodes, and spirals he used to mold sand and stone.

  The air trembled faintly as the shapes formed, not elegant like Linne’s but solid, heavy, each stroke pulling mana inward rather than dispersing it.

  The glow didn’t fade this time. It held. Weak, unstable, but there. Ludger’s lips curved in a faint, restrained smirk.

  “So it listens,” he said under his breath. “It just needed a language it recognized.”

  The runes flickered once, then shattered like dust, their light scattering across the room.

  Still, his smirk didn’t fade. He’d found the first step.

  Ludger stared at the space where his geomantic runes had flickered out. The faint traces of blue still shimmered in the air like embers refusing to die.

  He flexed his fingers, his mind already turning. So mana reacts to structure and meaning. Then… maybe any structured language could work, if it carries intent.

  His brow furrowed as he thought of Linne’s lecture — how she said anyone could create their own runic dialect, so long as they gave it meaning. But creating one from scratch would take months, maybe years. He needed something ready-made.

  He glanced at the desk, where a half-finished page of notes sat beside the lamp, ink still glistening wet. The letters on it weren’t runes, just normal script. And yet, something about the symmetry of written words tugged at him.

  “Maybe…” he murmured, “some languages are already halfway there.”

  Languages from Earth flashed through his mind, systems that didn’t rely on mana at all, but on intention. Symbols that shaped meaning through thought and rhythm. If runes were just language shaped by magic, then maybe language shaped by humans could be reverse-engineered into magic.

  He frowned. But I never was good with languages. His handwriting in class had always been quick, utilitarian, enough to understand, never elegant.

  Still, he had one advantage. English. His first language. His first structure of thought.

  “Let’s see how you like this,” he muttered, raising his hand.

  Mana flowed to his fingertips, gathering as he began to trace letters in the air, not the spiraling runes of Coria, but simple, familiar English script.

  He wrote slowly, deliberately, channeling mana into each line, each curve, each serif. The air glowed faintly blue where his finger passed, the letters hanging there like glowing smoke.

  W – I – N – D

  As he drew, he focused on what the word meant, not just what it spelled, the movement of air, the flow of pressure, the rhythm of breath and storms. He remembered the bite of wind on Lionfang’s walls, the rush of air when he propelled himself with Overdrive. He fed those memories into the letters, shaping intent the way he shaped earth.

  By the time the final D flared into being, the room had grown unnaturally still. Then the air shifted.

  A faint draft stirred the papers on his desk. The lamp’s flame bent sideways, guttering but not going out. Dust lifted from the floorboards and began to swirl toward the glowing word hanging in the air.

  Ludger’s eyes widened slightly, his expression tightening with concentration. “You’ve got to be kidding me…”

  The word glowed brighter as the gathered air coalesced, forming a faint ripple, a wave of pressure expanding outward. It wasn’t a gust, not even a proper spell, but it was movement. The mana had listened.

  The letters trembled once, then dissolved, releasing a brief pulse that made his coat sway and the window rattle faintly in its frame. Ludger lowered his hand, staring at the empty air where the word had been.

  “…So it’s not just language,” he muttered. “It’s belief. The meaning you put behind it.”

  He glanced down at his palm, faint traces of mana residue still shimmering like dust.

  A slow, satisfied smile tugged at his lips.

  “Looks like my English knowledge finally became useful for something in this world.”