Morning found Lumaire already awake.

  Sunlight spilled across the upper streets, catching on banners and canal water as Team Argent made their way through the market quarter with Eis. The smell of fresh bread and roasting nuts drifted between stalls. It should have been an ordinary start to the day.

  They didn’t make it far.

  The Moonlight Chalice’s door was open earlier than usual, its owner standing outside with sleeves rolled up and a look of barely contained panic. He spotted them at once and waved them down.

  “Ronan—thank the stars. You’re just the people I needed.”

  Ronan stopped, already resigned. “What happened.”

  “We ordered the wrong shipment,” the man said. “Half the meat we need didn’t arrive, and if we don’t fix it now, lunch service is ruined.” He gestured vaguely toward the forest beyond the outer walls. “Boar. Big ones. Too close to the farms anyway.”

  Kael snorted. “You want ‘pest control’."

  “I want customers,” the owner shot back. “And I’ll pay.”

  Lira smiled. “You always do.”

  Ronan glanced at Eis. “You up for a short hunt?”

  Eis nodded without hesitation. “Of course.”

  They left the city behind quickly, moving into the wooded fields where the ground was still damp with morning dew. The work itself was straightforward—tracking, positioning, quiet coordination.

  At one point, a boar broke from the brush farther out than Eis liked. Too far for her crossbow. Kael was already lining up on another target, angle tight.

  Eis didn’t hesitate.

  A card slid free. Frost gathered midair, shaping into a narrow spear of ice that launched cleanly across the clearing. The boar dropped hard, skidding through leaves.

  Kael lowered his bow slowly. “…Okay.”

  Lira arched a brow. “That reached.”

  Eis simply said. “It was faster.”

  They finished the job without incident and returned with enough meat to solve the Chalice’s problem—and then some.

  By the time Team Argent stepped back through Lumaire’s gates, the sky had warmed into late-morning gold. The city smelled of dust, leather, and sun-warmed stone.

  Eis walked beside them, steady as ever.

  The escort mission would come soon enough.

  For now, this had been enough.

  Lira’s eyes kept flicking toward them.

  Finally, she stopped.

  “Eis… may I ask you something?”

  Eis turned, calm.

  “…Yes.”

  Lira motioned toward the cards.

  “These. I’ve watched you use them to take out that boar. They aren’t scrolls, talismans, or any standard spell medium I’ve ever seen.”

  Kael nodded.

  “They fire fast. Almost no activation lag.”

  Ronan stayed silent but observant.

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  Lira stepped closer, expression open but inquisitive.

  “I don’t need to know your secrets,” she said gently. “And I’d never pry into your past. But the magic itself… it breaks rules. And I want to understand why.”

  Eis hesitated.

  “…I learned from a friend,” she answered quietly. “They taught me how to imbue spells into objects.”

  Lira absorbed this—then her academic instinct surged.

  “Imbuing into small objects is the strange part,” she said, growing animated. “Spell scrolls, for example, require specialized parchment with mana retention fibers. The ink must be mixed with powdered crystal, ether-infused oils, and layered arrays. Even then, there are limits.”

  Kael blinked.

  “So size matters.”

  “Very much so,” Lira continued.

  “The stronger the spell, the more space the array requires. More storage. More structural reinforcement.”

  She tapped her satchel lightly.

  “Think of it like… well, like fitting a whole library inside a single sheet of paper. It can’t be done. The material simply can’t hold that much information.”

  Her eyes flicked to the thin card at Eis’s belt.

  “That’s why your cards confuse me. They’re too small. They shouldn’t be able to hold the spell you used.”

  She looked up, breath soft with awe.

  “So your friend taught you the technique… but what about the material? How can something so thin hold the structure of a full spell?”

  Eis answered gently, deliberately vague.

  “…My friend made the material as well. I don’t have much of it left.”

  Lira blinked, startled.

  “You mean—this isn’t normal parchment? It’s custom-made?”

  “Yes.”

  That was true—just not in the way Lira imagined.

  Before she could ask more, Eis moved subtly.

  Kael had turned to greet a passing adventurer; Ronan was watching the main hall doors.

  Perfect.

  A faint shimmer of displaced mana.

  A whisper of motion.

  A blank card appeared between Eis’s fingertips, conjured so effortlessly it might have always been there.

  She pressed it into Lira’s palm.

  “For your study,” Eis murmured. “But it contains no spell. Just the base material.”

  Lira held it like something precious.

  “…Thank you.”

  Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  Kael looked back.

  “What’s that?”

  “Research,” Lira snapped immediately, tucking the card protectively into her satchel.

  Ronan nodded at Eis once, quietly supportive.

  They split up shortly after.

  Kael dragged Ronan toward the tavern.

  Eis returned to her inn.

  Lira hurried home with the intensity of someone carrying the most important discovery of her career.

  Bookshelves loomed around her like old friends. Runes and diagrams littered her desk.

  But all of that faded into background noise.

  Because in the center of the desk lay Eis’s blank card.

  Lira sat, breath held.

  She passed a mana crystal over it.

  The crystal reacted.

  A faint shimmer.

  A subtle vibration.

  Lira’s heart pounded.

  “That’s not possible…”

  She pressed a fingertip to the card.

  Warm.

  Not heated—alive.

  It wasn’t enchanted.

  It wasn’t inked.

  It wasn’t layered with spells.

  It was simply raw potential, humming with the quiet resonance of condensed mana.

  Physically, it was nothing but reinforced paper.

  Magically—

  “It feels like pure ether,” Lira whispered, trembling.

  “Like… mana given physical form.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “What kind of mage could create a material like this…?”

  Her fingers tightened around the card.

  And for the first time in years, the boundaries of magical theory felt too small.

  Too simple.

  Eis had handed her something impossible.

  And Lira was determined to unlock it.