The days after the second dungeon run settled into a rhythm that Leo found himself enjoying.

  Mornings belonged to the field. He worked until midday - watering, weeding, checking the turnip leaves for the yellow spots that meant root rot. His back compined about it, but he was feeling more alive than he had ever been during his old life.

  Leo came home smelling like sweat and green things and sat at the table while the ache in his shoulders unwound itself.

  Afternoons belonged to Sera's restlessness, and increasingly, to Hanna.

  The healer's apprentice came every day. She checked the stitches, changed the bandage, gave instructions in the same brisk, no-nonsense tone that Sera herself used when expining spear technique. Her visits usually sted around fifteen minutes.

  By the fourth visit, they sted an hour.

  Leo came back from the field one day and found them at the table. Hanna's satchel sat unopened on the floor. Sera was leaning forward, both hands wrapped around a cy cup, describing the second floor of the dungeon.

  Hanna's spectacles were pushed up into her hair. Her eyes were wide and sharp, and she was asking questions faster than Sera could answer them.

  A couple more days passed, and the questions had changed. Leo stepped through the door that afternoon and caught the tail end of something different - Sera's voice low and conspiratorial. And Hanna ughed, one hand pressed over her mouth as if she could push the sound back in. Her cheeks flushed pink above her fingers.

  They both went quiet when they saw Leo. The guilty silence of two women who had been discussing someone who had just materialized in the doorway.

  Sera took a sip of water. Hanna adjusted her spectacles.

  "How's the field?" Sera asked, her voice perfectly even.

  "Fine," Leo said. He didn't ask. He was just gd that Sera could make a friend.

  Their dinner was simple - barley and root vegetables from the field, boiled with salt and a heel of rd for richness. They ate in the amber glow of a single candle, the cottage warm from the rebuilt hearth fire.

  Sera set her bowl aside and leaned back in her chair. The wound had closed well. The stitches were out - Hanna had removed them two days ago with steady hands and a small pair of iron scissors - and what remained was a thin, pink line below her left ribs, tender but sealed. She still moved carefully, favoring the side out of habit more than pain.

  "I need to tell you something," he said.

  Sera's eyes found his. The rexation didn't leave her face, but Leo could see her eyes narrow a little.

  "Alright."

  Leo leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. He'd rehearsed this in his head a dozen times during the long mornings in the field, and every rehearsal had been clean and logical. Now that the moment was here, the clean logic dissolved, and what came out was simpler than anything he'd pnned.

  "After the head injury," he said. "When I woke up. Something changed."

  "I know. You were different."

  "Not just that." He paused. "I have a…skill. Something I can do that…I don't think anyone else can."

  Sera didn’t say anything. Her fingers stilled on the bowl's rim.

  "When I touch an object, I can see its structure. Like a drawing that shows its condition and material, but made of light."

  "A drawing made of light," she repeated, her voice ft. Leo knew that she didn’t believe him, but pressed on anyway.

  "And I can change it. Improve it. But it costs energy. It’s like…points. And I earn those points from monster kills."

  Sera was quiet for a moment. Her expression hadn't changed - still patient and attentive. Her head tilted slightly to one side, the way it did when she was trying to decide if someone was being serious.

  "Leo."

  "I know how it sounds."

  "You're telling me you see magical drawings when you touch…things."

  "Well, yes. My crossbow, or our furniture and tools."

  Her mouth twitched, just slightly - the corner pulling up, then deliberately fttening. She was trying not to smile.

  "And you get... points, from killing monsters in the dungeons," she said.

  "Not ‘in the dungeons’ specifically, but it’ll be hard to find monsters outside of them, so... The energy goes to me when I nd the final blow."

  Sera studied his face. He watched her search for the punchline, the "had you going" that would let her ugh and shake her head and move on. When she didn't find it, the humor faded. What repced it was worse: the careful expression of a woman looking at her husband and worrying about his head.

  "Leo, are you feeling alright? Has your head been hurting again? Because Hanna said there could be…"

  "I’m alright. Watch this," he said.

  He picked up the wooden cup from the table - pin, handleless, the pale wood darkened with use. He held it in his hand, and the blueprint materialized in his vision. He thought of the modification - adding a handle. Leo could spare eight energy and ten minutes for a demonstration.

  He activated his skill. One moment, his fingers were closed around solid wood, and the next, they were closed around nothing, as if the air had swallowed the cup whole.

  Sera's chair scraped back against the stone floor. She was on her feet before Leo could speak, her eyes wide, staring at his empty hand with an expression he had never seen on her face.

  "What did you…" She looked at the table, at his hand, then at the table again. "Where did it go? Leo, what…"

  "This is what happens when I use my skill. Give it a few minutes," Leo said. "It comes back."

  "Back from where?"

  "I don't know exactly. But it comes back."

  Sera stood beside the table, both hands braced on the edge, staring at the empty space where their cup had been.

  "How many times have you done this?" She sat back down, but her posture was rigid, her hands ft on the table.

  "A few. All of them with the crossbow."

  "The crossbow," her eyes sharpened. "The stirrup. And that time when it suddenly got pristine right after you recovered."

  "Yes. I’m sorry for lying to you."

  Sera's jaw tightened. She looked at the empty space on the table, then at Leo. Her fingers drummed once against the wood - a single tap of impatience.

  "How much longer?"

  "Soon. Five minutes."

  She exhaled hard through her nose. Then she stood up, walked to the water bucket, poured herself a cup and drank half of it, then sat back down.

  Leo watched her face. The shock was settling, yering over into something harder to read. She wasn't looking at the empty spot on the table anymore. She was studying his face with the same focused, evaluating intensity she used to assess a dungeon corridor before entering it.

  "Did anything else change?" She finally asked.

  "Just this," he said. "Just the skill."

  Sera nodded. Her mouth was a thin, pressed line.

  Then the cup reappeared on the same spot that it’d vanished from. A smooth handle curved from its side. The grain ran seamlessly into the body as if the cup had been carved that way from the start.

  Sera reached for it slowly. Her fingers closed around the handle first. She turned the cup over and ran her thumb along the pce where the handle met the body, pressing hard, searching for the line where old wood ended and new wood began.

  There was no line.

  "I didn't know what it was at first. I was afraid of what it could mean for us if the wrong person found out," Leo said.

  Sera didn’t reply. Her eyes were on the cup.

  "I should have told you sooner."

  "Yes," she said. "You should have."

  The silence returned. Leo could tell that she was angry, but he also trusted her to understand him. They were just married for a week, and a ‘skill’ that seemed like magic wasn’t something you shared lightly.

  In this world, saying that magic was a luxury was a gross understatement. It existed on a spectrum so far removed from ordinary life that most people encountered it the way they encountered royalty: in stories, from a distance, or not at all. If someone was born with it, which was a very rare occurrence, they got cimed by noble houses or temple orders before they ever learned what they could do.

  For everyone else - farmers, soldiers, merchants, anyone without blood-right or institutional backing - magical power was something you bought. Enchanted equipment, alchemical infusions, artifacts pulled from deep dungeon floors and sold at prices that made silver feel like copper.

  Baron Voss, lord of their entire region, owned a single enchanted sword. It was widely considered the most valuable object in the barony. Vilges like Ashwick didn't have magic. They had hoes, hope, and the contents of their pockets.

  "How exactly do you choose what to change?" After a long moment, Sera broke the silence.

  "I imagine what I need,” Leo let out a relieved breath. “But it can’t be vague. The stirrup, for example, I had to specify how it looked, and the material used. The skill then changed the…drawing, and told me how much energy it'd take. If I have enough, I spend it, and the object changes."

  "You just... imagine it."

  "I imagine it. The skill does the rest."

  Sera sat back, her arms crossed. The hurt was still there, in the tension around her eyes. But threading through it was something vaguely like interest.

  "The energy," she said. "Only your final blows count? How about us?"

  "Nothing. Only my kills count."

  Sera pressed her lips together, processing. Reorganizing the st two dungeon runs through a new lens.

  "There's one more thing," Leo said. He reached under the bed and pulled out the cloth-wrapped bundle. Set it on the table and unfolded the fabric carefully, revealing the resonance bone fragments.

  "From the giant beetle," Sera stared at it.

  "Yes. Well…when I held one of these and used my skill on the crossbow, it showed me something different."

  "Different how?"

  "It showed me a new upgrade possibility that I’m sure can’t be achieved otherwise. If I keep the crossbow drawn for at least five seconds, the shot will be able to shatter armor. But from the look of it, I can use these fragments on other things too. I want to discuss it with you."

  Sera's fingers curled around one fragment of resonance bones. A faint, persistent vibration seemed to travel up from her palm, a low hum that settled in the joints of her wrist.

  Her jaw worked, and she made a decision.

  "Show me."