The past few weeks had settled into a comfortable rhythm for Kor, his days filled with the steady pulse of magical practice. His basic classes, once daunting, now felt almost routine thanks to the countless hours he’d invested. The bronze trim on his robes, though still marking him as a newcomer, felt more earned with each passing day.

  Mana control had become as natural as breathing. Where he’d once struggled to maintain even basic awareness, now the ethereal threads of power flowed clearly through his senses. Lena’s unique signature, a warm violet whisper in his magical senses, was distinct even from several paces. A far cry from the days when they’d needed to sit back-to-back just to practise sensing.

  The familiar musty scent of ancient tomes filled the air of Ether’s Archive as Kor sat across from Lena. He stilled his hands as she examined his first attempt at enchanting. The wooden chair creaked beneath him, a reminder of the weight he was slowly but surely shedding through his rigorous training regimen.

  Lena shook her head, her brows knitting together in concentration. His stomach clenched as she turned the crystal over in her pale fingers. The practice work Terra had assigned them – charging crystals until their fingers tingled with residual mana – had seemed the perfect foundation for his fractal badge project. In theory, it should project a snowflake fractal barrier to protect its user. But theory, as he was learning, often had little to do with practical enchanting.

  His shoulders slumped as he examined the crystal’s scarred surface, each failed attempt etched into its once-pristine structure. Each time he thought he’d saturated the device with his mana, something would jar, like two puzzle pieces that almost but didn’t quite fit, and his work would dissolve like morning frost in sunlight.

  “How many times did you attempt to enchant this, Kor?” Lena’s voice carried a hint of disbelief, her violet eyes catching the light as she looked up at him.

  “Uh... More than I want to admit,” he said, heat creeping up his neck. “Why?”

  Her piercing gaze seemed to pin him to his chair.

  “Stored mana degrades with each failure. As it stands, your enchantment is on the verge of failing entirely.” She held the crystal out, her slender fingers gliding across his in a fleeting, electric touch.

  “Look for yourself.”

  The lingering warmth of her touch faded as he studied the crystal. He’d been so consumed with getting his mana to enshroud it properly while maintaining the essence of his intended enchantment that he’d missed something glaringly obvious. The crystal’s usual subtle gleam was barely visible, its core practically dark.

  “It’s almost out of mana!” The words tumbled out before he could stop them.

  She snorted, a surprisingly inelegant sound from someone usually so composed. “That’s what I was saying.”

  Gathering a thread of energy, Kor dived back into the crystal, his consciousness brushing against its familiar crystalline structure. Unlike the intricate puzzles he sometimes worked with, this power source opened itself readily to his touch.

  His mana flowed carefully into the crystal as he recalled the countless hours he and Terra had spent doing this the previous weekend. What had been planned as a four-hour session had stretched to eight, his apparent talent for charging crystals keeping them working long after their scheduled time.

  The mana flowed smoothly through his channels, filling the crystal with a steady pulse of power. Before long, it approached the optimal level. He’d learned that too little left the enchantment weak, too much and it would crack. The surrounding air grew thick with magical potential, making the tiny hairs on his arms stand up.

  “There!” He released his hold on the device, satisfaction warming his chest as it pulsed with stored power, casting subtle patterns of light across the weathered surface of the desk.

  “At least you’re good at charging the things, Kor.” Lena’s voice held a mix of amusement and critique. “But your enchanting skills are abysmal. You achieved only a basic resonance with the crystal.”

  “Yeah, it’s like this kind of structure doesn’t mesh with my specialisation.” His fingers found his glasses, adjusting them needlessly.

  “More like you’re overpowering them.” She leaned forward, her long black hair catching the light.

  “Enchanting isn’t about brute force – you need to harmonise with the material and your magic, especially your specialisation.” Her voice took on the patient tone he’d come to associate with their study sessions.

  “Finding the commonalities between them and forging a bridge to the desired outcome requires a lighter touch. You can’t rush it.”

  His cheeks warmed at the gentle rebuke, her words echoing in his mind.

  “But,” she said, her expression softening, “for your first attempt, it isn’t bad. Should we head outside and give it a try? I don’t think it’s dangerous, at least.”

  “Sure!” The prospect of testing his creation, however flawed, lifted his spirits immediately.

  They gathered their things, the rustle of papers and soft clinking of magical implements breaking the library’s silence. On their way out, Ether’s presence brushed against Kor’s mind—a gentle, wordless farewell that had become familiar.

  Outside, the Nexus bathed the entire campus in a light blue glow as the suns shone down brightly. Their combined warmth was a stark contrast to the Archive’s cool interior as they made their way to the practice fields, their boots leaving slight impressions in the springy grass. Lena took up position a dozen paces away, her dark hair stirring in the gentle breeze.

  “It’s only a barrier, Lena, nothing to be worried about!” He called out, voice carrying a false brightness as he reached for the device. “In theory, it should only need a pulse of anybody’s mana to work—”

  The familiar tingle of his fractal mana coalesced somewhere, but he couldn’t see it. Lena’s sudden laughter made him turn around. His mana sense prickled with unexpected feedback, and there, glittering under the twin suns in impossible geometric symmetry, stood his barrier—facing the wrong direction.

  “Divide me sideways.” He stared at his handiwork.

  Lena moved to stand beside him, her presence a warm counterpoint to the cool, magical energy radiating from the shield. The scent of her subtle floral perfume mingled with the crisp tang of active magic in the air.

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  “You’ll need to be specific when you imbue your intent into the enchantment. Common rookie mistake.” Her voice held barely contained amusement.

  “Bet you were thinking something simple like ‘protect me,’ weren’t you?”

  He nodded, heat creeping up his neck as the sunlight danced through the jagged shards of his creation, scattering countless rainbow sparkles across the floor.

  “Next time, ensure you visualise it properly while keeping the properties of the spell intact, Kor.” Her teaching tone was back, though softened by genuine encouragement.

  He dragged a hand over his face. “Care to test its durability for me?”

  “Sure.” The word carried a hint of challenge. Without further warning, she conjured a mana sphere. The projectile launched with impressive speed, especially considering combat magic wasn’t her focus. It crashed against his barrier in a spectacular display of light and energy, exploding harmlessly against the crystalline surface.

  Lena’s eyes widened, her composure cracking. His involuntary chuckle earned him a narrow-eyed glare that only made his grin wider.

  “You didn’t fill that thing with an extra powerful crystal, did you?”

  “No.” His grin threatened to split his face.

  Her response was another conjured sphere, this one spinning with notably more power as she launched it at his shield. The process repeated, each impact sending vibrations through the fractal construct. It took nearly eight increasingly powerful orbs before his barrier finally shattered, dissolving into motes of magical light that drifted away on the afternoon breeze.

  “Even if your enchanting skills are lacking, your barrier certainly isn’t. A snowflake shouldn’t be that strong.” Lena shook her head, genuine amazement written across her delicate features.

  “Well, it is part of my specialisation.” His voice softened.

  She shook her head again, black hair catching the sunlight. “Even so, that’s impressive. If you get the design fixed up, I’m sure that’ll impress your teacher.”

  “Thanks, Lena.” He beamed at her, his heart performing a familiar flutter when she smiled back, her whole face lighting up with genuine warmth. The words he’d been wanting to say for weeks pressed against his lips; asking her out wouldn’t be so hard, surely. But his self-consciousness about his slowly diminishing waistline held them back. Just a bit longer, he promised himself.

  “Well, if you don’t want assistance with anything else, I should get going, Kor.” She squinted against the harsh sunlight, twin suns, now noticeably lower in the sky.

  “No, thanks Lena, you were a big help.”

  “Darkness fend, Kor.”

  “Darkness fend, Lena.”

  He watched her retreating figure until she disappeared around the corner of a distant building, trying to ignore the way his heart seemed to sink with each step she took.

  His thoughts drifted to tomorrow’s combat training, anticipation bubbling in his chest. His badge wasn’t the only thing he’d been developing in secret. He’d cleared even more of the blockages for his meditation practice, with perhaps only a third left until he finished up. However, his growing mana supply surpassed the improved flow. If he didn’t want to wait around for an hour after he ran out, he was going to need to utilise that advanced meditation technique Terrak had given them.

  Yesterday, a return letter from his parents had arrived. Most of the vellum had contained his father’s notes on everything related to fractals. From the basic principles all up to ideas he’d never even heard of, like the fractal uncertainty principle. The dichotomy between fractal self-similarity and what his father outlined on chaos theory suggested possibilities that made his fingers itch to experiment immediately.

  Some concepts were completely foreign to him, terms and theories he’d yet to encounter in his studies. The weight of his own ignorance was both humbling and exciting – there was so much more to learn. Ether’s vast knowledge would be invaluable for this research, he realised. Perhaps it was finally time to face the Archive’s next series of tests, challenging as they might be.

  In combat class he’d risen through the ranks, his excessive mana and efficient barriers enough to overcome most opponents even without casting a singular offensive spell. The other students had taken to watching his matches with particular interest, their bronze-trimmed robes rustling as they leaned forward from their positions around the practice field.

  But there seemed to be a sharp divide between the average and the elite, as the few times he’d duelled Marcus or even Kelleth, their constant barrage of powerful spells tore into his barriers with extreme efficacy, whereas his bombs were simply too slow to catch them.

  He had a new spell idea to test—thanks to his father’s insights—that just might level the playing field, but that would have to wait. The scent of crushed grass and warm earth filled the air as he took his position.

  Terrak’s voice rang out across the field, rough as granite, “Fight!”

  Laylee’s shadowed daggers materialised within a heartbeat, darkness coalescing into deadly points before tearing towards his fresh fractal barrier. The weapons seemed to drink in the surrounding light, leaving trailing ribbons of shadow in their wake.

  He continued to feed the shield mana, hardening the fractal form as the recursion continued to multiply into smaller and smaller dimensions, forming an impenetrable, segmented snowflake of defence. The familiar crystalline shape spread out before him, each facet catching and refracting the sunlight.

  His strange triangular design still resembled a snowflake, kind of. But his reputation as snowflake boy still carried his deception. The watching students whispered amongst themselves, a few snickering at the distinctive pattern.

  Shadow daggers pinged off his barrier with harsh, metallic echoes, the dark blades spinning away before whipping back toward him. They slammed back down again with renewed force, but the fractal design held firm, dispersing their energy in ripples of blue light.

  He shrugged off the drain as he conjured four distinct mana spheres, his current limit, before firing back. One of them went wide as Laylee shifted, exploding against the ground in a shower of dirt and torn grass.

  Laylee barely even tried to dodge as his remaining balls slammed into her shield, a small crack already forming. Her round face showed no concern, dark hair falling across her eyes as she maintained her focus.

  In return, she collapsed her current daggers, conjuring a pair of sinister serrated blades, each as large as his arm. The new weapons seemed to writhe with shadowy energy, their edges promising pain.

  The mana flowing from her was impressive, but opened her up to another barrage of spheres that cracked her barrier dangerously. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she struggled to maintain both her shield and the massive shadow blades.

  Perhaps one more volley-

  Laylee’s hand snapped out, and the two serrated daggers shot forth like the fangs of a viper. Kor braced, feeding more mana into his defences, feeling the strain as he reinforced the fractal pattern.

  For the first time this day, his barrier was pierced but not broken. The tips breaking through before getting caught at the hilts. The shield creaked audibly, drawing gasps from several observers.

  Kor’s eyes widened in alarm, heart pounding against his ribs. She’d definitely been practising, too.

  As the chubby Netharian tried to pull her blades out, strain clear on her face, Kor snapped off another round of mana spheres. They crashed into her wavering shield with thunderous force, shattering it completely. Her golden student barrier flared to life, signalling his victory in a pulse of protective light that illuminated her frustrated expression.

  Kor let his fractal barrier fall away, stepping over the scarred earth as he said, “Good fight, Laylee! Those daggers have some serious, piercing power.”

  Her face darkened for a moment, a flash of genuine distaste crossing her features before smoothing into careful neutrality. The expression was gone so quickly he might have imagined it, but something in his chest tightened at the glimpse of hostility.

  “Good fight Kor.” She inclined her head before heading off to the sidelines, her footsteps perhaps a touch heavier than necessary.

  Kor suppressed a sigh, walking back to the edge as Terrak called for another duel. The afternoon was wearing on, shadows lengthening across the practice field.

  “Good duel, both of you!” Marcus called out, his ineffable smile brightening as Kor headed over to his side. Something about that smile always seemed to ease the tension in Kor’s shoulders.

  On the weekend, they were supposed to start working as a team, the whole of Marcus’ group. But the only ones who genuinely got along with him were Beth, Willem and Marcus himself. The thought of the upcoming cooperation made his stomach churn.

  Though Kelleth might have been warming to him a bit, his brother certainly hadn’t. The boy shot him a glare as he spoke to Laylee, and he shook his head. The hostility was becoming harder to ignore.

  Hopefully, it would work out fine. Marcus had even brought in some extra members of the Advanced Class into their weekend classes, leaving him to wonder how large this expedition was planned to be. Their group had about twelve people now…

  “3, 2, 1... Fight!” Terrak’s voice issued the start of another match, cutting through his worried thoughts.