Lee wasn’t in the forge when Elias arrived—he was in the Guild’s main archive room, halfway up a ladder with a dusty ledger under one arm and a scowl that could wither oak. Elias waited politely near the scribing desk until Lee glanced down.
“You’re early.”
“I want to start,” Elias said.
Lee grunted, climbed down, and gestured for Elias to follow him to a side room off the Guild’s main corridor. The walls were hung with scroll racks, aged diagrams, and thin chalkboards. No glowing crystals or humming relics. Just chalk, charcoal, and brass instruments worn by decades of use.
“This is where we teach rune basics to apprentices who don’t get themselves blown up,” Lee said. “You’re technically one of those….for now.
On the center table lay a set of etched tiles—slate squares with fine engravings, each traced with faint glimmers of inert mana. Some glowed faintly, others looked burned out or fractured.
“These are Fundamentals,” Lee said. “We call the system the Runic Axis Model—or RAM, if you like acronyms. It’s structured like a sentence. Every rune has a type, a direction, and a threshold.”
Elias blinked. “A sentence?”
“Right. Each symbol’s a word. Together, they say something to the world. You don’t just write ‘fire.’ You write ‘ignite here at this strength, unless stopped by X.’”
He pointed to one tile etched with three concentric circles and a radial line.
“This one’s a core rune—a Nucleus. Think of it as the subject of the sentence. What you want to affect.”
Another tile: a jagged curve intersected by three clean diagonal slashes.
“This is a directive rune—it tells the core what to do. Project, reinforce, absorb, etc. You pair that with a condition rune, which limits the effect.”
Elias studied the layout. “And the mana?”
“Threaded through the grain lines. You don’t dump it in—you trace it. Like water through a carved channel. If the carve’s wrong, it floods or fractures.”
“Ok, so when can we start.”
“Forty-one years,” Lee said flatly. “And that’s just runes. Not metallurgy, not materials work, not even casting protocols. Just runes. You know what that does to a man?”
“Gives him mastery?”
“It makes you start seeing them in tree bark and spilled ink.” He tapped his forehead. “I’ve memorized over four hundred sequences. I dream in runes now. I once sneezed and accidentally muttered a combustion primer—burned off my eyebrows.”
Elias blinked. “Is that… common?”
“It shouldn’t be.” Lee turned back toward the table and grabbed one of the chalk sticks with the familiarity of someone who knew the exact weight and dullness of each piece. “I’ve copied these onto parchment, clay, bark, iron, leather, bone, glass. Hell, once on the side of a goat. Point is, these fundamentals don’t change. You get them wrong, they don’t ‘sort of’ work. They either work, or they explode. Maybe not big. Maybe just enough to humiliate you.”
He turned to Elias and pointed with the chalk. “But if you want to really learn them, you don’t just trace. You memorize. You internalize the structure until it stops being a symbol and starts being a command.”
Elias glanced at the table again—at the runes lined up like puzzle pieces. “So… you want me to memorize them before we start?”
Lee gave him a long look. Then he pulled out a thin, leather-bound booklet from a nearby drawer and slapped it onto the table. “Start here. First sixty. I’ll quiz you at the end of the week.”
Elias opened it. The first page contained twelve symbols—each drawn with absolute precision. Clean strokes. Notations in tiny print beside them. Runes for light, anchor, silence, bleed, reinforce, vent, null, pulse, shield, mark, bind, and delay.
“These are your alphabet,” Lee said. “Learn them before you even think about linking them. No point building sentences when you don’t know your letters.”
“And you did this with four hundred?”
Lee grinned faintly. “Had to. Back when I apprenticed under Old Merreck, he used to chuck slag clumps at your head every time you misquoted a thread angle. I learned quick.”
Elias flipped through the book. Some of the runes looked simple—one or two strokes. Others were a maze of lines that looked almost random until viewed from a certain angle. A logic emerged as he turned the pages, but it wasn’t human logic. Not entirely. It was more like geometry that wanted to whisper at you.
“How long did it take you to really get it?” Elias asked quietly.
Lee considered. “The truth? I still haven’t. Not fully. Every time I think I’ve seen it all, I find some relic, some backwater array, some mistake that should’ve failed but worked because someone centuries ago understood something we’ve forgotten.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
He looked up. “That’s the real hook, Elias. This system—it’s not finished. Not complete. No one’s cracked it all. But every rune you learn? That’s one more key in the lock.”
Elias set the booklet down with care, a weight already forming behind his eyes—not exhaustion, but anticipation. He had memorized technical sheets before. Lab guides. Alloy compositions. But this felt different.
Older.
Deeper.
Lee, watching him carefully, added one final comment before leaving the room. “Treat these like promises. Because that’s what they are. When you carve a rune, you’re not just making a shape. You’re making a claim. The world either accepts it, or it breaks you for trying.”
And then he left Elias alone with the runes, the old chalkboards, and the steady tick of an unseen clock somewhere in the hall.
Elias sat, opened the booklet, and began to study. The first rune was Lumis—light. Three curves and a half-spine branching upward. Simple. Elegant.
He whispered the name once, then again.
And began to commit it to memory.
__________
The hours bled together like wet ink on parchment.
Elias sat hunched over the stone table, sleeves rolled up, fingertips chalk-dusted, eyes locked onto the same page for what must have been the hundredth time. The runes swam, settled, sharpened. He traced them in the air, on the table’s grain, even on the back of his own hand.
Lumis. Vent. Null. Anchor. Reinforce.
He muttered them aloud like a litany, repeating the gestures Lee had demonstrated. The chalk squeaked. His wrist cramped. His shoulders burned.
And somewhere between bind and delay, a strange déjà vu crept in.
He’d felt this before.
Late nights in the university’s east lab, hunched over papers and books.The glow of phosphor screens. Energy drinks stacked like barricades against the creeping fog of sleep. Diagrams pinned to the wall. Lab notes sprawled out like a battlefield of second guesses.
The glow of phosphor screens. Energy drinks stacked like barricades against the creeping fog of sleep. Diagrams pinned to the wall. Lab notes sprawled out like a battlefield of second guesses.
The same push against understanding. The same low, persistent whisper that said: If you just get this right, everything else will make sense.
Back then, it had been metallurgy. Polymer folding. Reactivity thresholds.
Here, it was runes.
But the feeling was the same.
There was a moment—brief, sharp—where he missed it. Not the place, or even the people. Just the chase. The hunger. The sense that even if the world didn’t make sense, he could learn it. Slice it apart and name the pieces.
And maybe, just maybe, put them back together better than before.
He rubbed his temple, blinking the blur from his eyes. The “delay” rune stared back at him, the slanted hourglass curves quietly elegant in their simplicity. He traced it again. This time, it stuck.
Elias sat back, stretched his arms until his joints popped, and let out a slow breath.
It wasn’t just remembering.
It was returning.
The same rhythm. The same obsession. The same fire.
He smiled—just a little.
Then turned the page to rune thirteen.
___________
“That’s enough for today,” came Lee’s voice, rough and sudden from the doorway.
Elias jolted slightly, hand still mid-trace over a chalk rune he’d drawn directly on the tabletop. He blinked up at Lee, eyes dry and a little unfocused.
“You’ve got the basics crammed in, but you’ll melt your brain if you keep trying to brute-force the whole damn lexicon in a day.” Lee crossed the room and plucked the chalk from Elias’s fingers like a parent pulling a knife from a toddler. “And your spacing on Reinforce was starting to get sloppy. Fatigue shows first in the fine lines.”
Elias rubbed the back of his neck, leaning back on the stool with a quiet sigh. “Didn’t want to lose momentum.”
“Momentum’s good. So is not accidentally triggering a burn rune because your hand slipped on a curve.” Lee tossed the chalk onto the desk and nodded toward the shelves. “Now. Before your brain completely turns to paste, we need to step back and talk about the system a bit more and for that I need to get something .”
A minute later, Lee reappeared in the doorway, holding a battered leather satchel in one hand and what looked like an ancient, splintering pointer stick in the other.
Lee stepped back into the room, set the satchel on the table, and pulled out another slate—this one not carved with individual runes, but with overlapping combinations, arranged in branching sets.
“You’ve got the types down—Nucleus, Directive, Conditional. That’s a skeleton. Now we get into the meat.”
He tapped a configuration near the top: a nucleus rune for Motion, paired with a directive for Extend, and a conditional stating When Anchored.
“This here? That’s a textbook launching enchantment. Push something forward as long as it’s tethered to something else. Good for grapples, reinforced bridges, even certain projectile cores.”
Then he tapped another combination with the same directive and nucleus, but the conditional had shifted subtly—one extra slash, one angled curve.
“Same trio. Entirely different effect. This one applies force internally, not externally. Think compression or recoil. It’s not about the symbols—it’s about how they’re nested.”
Elias leaned in. “So the structure matters more than just the runes?”
“Exactly. Runes don’t exist in isolation. They merge. They flow into each other based on order, angle, and proximity. We call it Interlock Priority.”
Lee unrolled a clean sheet of parchment and drew three shapes: a triangle, a square, and a circle. Then, over each, he wrote the same three runes in different orders.
“Same runes. But if the nucleus is written last—like here—then it acts more like a target modifier than a source. If the directive leads, you get volatile effects. If the conditional is in the center, it gates the others. You see?”
Elias stared at the sheet. It was simple… and horrifyingly complex.
“So one combination can have four or five different meanings.”
“Try a dozen,” Lee said, not unkindly. “And once you add Layering—when runes are stacked in three dimensions or split across surfaces—it gets worse. That’s why no one trusts unlicensed enchanters.”
Elias rubbed at his eyes. “And people learn this in an apprenticeship?”
Lee grinned. “Most don’t. Most learn five to ten phrases and repeat them like parrots. But the Guild expects more.”
He tapped the table again, then stood upright and stretched his back until it popped.
“In two hours, I’m going to test you.”
Elias blinked. “What?”
“Not on actual runework, not even close, but on structure.
________
“….Oh dear.”
______________
Explanation of Runic Axis Model (RAM): (Optional, For readers Benefit)
- Core Concepts:
- Nucleus Runes – Define the subject of the enchantment (e.g. Force, Fire, Stone).
- Directive Runes – Determine the action (e.g. Extend, Project, Absorb).
- Conditional Runes – Set limits, triggers, or boundaries (e.g. When Anchored, If Touched).
- Structure Rules:
- Runes are interpreted as a sentence: [Directive] [Nucleus] [Conditional], but this order can vary based on intent.
- Interlock Priority: The order and proximity of runes affect meaning. Same runes + different order = different spell.
- Layering: Runes can be layered physically (stacked) or spatially (around surfaces) for advanced enchantments.
Affinity Axes: Each rune has directional bias: Internal vs External, Passive vs Reactive. Context determines behavior.