Chapter 17

  Elias woke to the sound of a whetstone gliding slowly over steel.

  The room was dim, lit only by the filtered orange of the forge embers through the back vent. His head throbbed like someone had taken a tuning fork to his skull, and his ribs ached with each breath. When he shifted, something creaked beneath him—not wood, but old leather.

  “You’re lucky it was softwood,” came Harren’s voice, steady and rough.

  Elias blinked and turned his head. The old blacksmith sat nearby, one hand braced on his cane and the other casually dragging the whetstone over a half-sharpened sickle. His thick eyebrows knit together as he looked up.

  “Stupid,” Harren added, softer this time. “But lucky.”

  Elias groaned. “It was supposed to just heat the water. I tested the lines, I thought—”

  “You thought, huh?” Harren cut him off, setting the blade aside with a clatter. “You tried to run before you could walk. Runework’s no joke, Elias. You saw what it did. You’re breathing because the carving was shallow and the wood too soft to contain the pressure.”

  He shifted his weight on the cane and limped closer, grimacing slightly as he sat with effort on the edge of a workbench nearby.

  “I taught you to respect the forge, didn’t I? Same thing applies here. Runes are just another kind of fire—less obvious, but twice as dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Elias sat up slowly, one hand pressed to his ribs. “I just wanted to try it.”

  “I know,” Harren said, sighing. “And I don’t blame you. Curiosity’s a damn strong pull. But next time you feel that itch, you bring someone who knows how to scratch it.”

  There was a long silence.

  Then, Harren added, more quietly, “I saw your mark on that gauntlet you did for the Guild. First one?”

  Elias nodded.

  “It was good work,” Harren said, voice almost gruff. “Clean lines. Good symmetry. Not just showy, either. Functional. You’re not just hammering for pride—you want the piece to mean something.”

  He tapped his cane against the stone floor. “That’s rare. Don’t ruin it by rushing into things half-blind.”

  Elias swallowed hard. He didn’t quite trust himself to speak.

  Eventually, Harren reached over and clapped a heavy, calloused hand on his shoulder. “Rest today. Then go talk to Lee.”

  It was late afternoon by the time Elias limped back into the Guild.

  His hands still trembled faintly from the aftermath—whether from residual mana recoil or the realization of how close he’d come to real harm, he wasn’t sure. The scorched edge of his shirt told its own story, and the faint reek of char still clung to his sleeves like guilt.

  He found Lee in the same side room where the lesson had begun. The chalkboards were freshly wiped, and a new series of tiles lay on the table—this time in polished stone instead of brittle slate.

  Lee didn’t look up when Elias entered. He was rearranging the rune tiles by shape family, hands moving with quiet precision.

  Elias stood there awkwardly, unsure how to begin.

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  Then Lee spoke.

  “You’re alive.”

  “Barely,” Elias muttered.

  A beat.

  Then Lee turned and looked at him directly, arms folding across his chest.

  “You did it, didn’t you.”

  Elias didn’t answer, but his expression said enough.

  Lee sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You’re the third apprentice this year who’s tried to shortcut their learning with a ‘harmless’ test carving.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “No one ever means to. But you can not learn this the same way you learned how to forge. Magic punishes mistakes immediately.” He picked up a tile and held it out. “You get one warning. Consider this yours.”

  Elias took the tile with shaking fingers.

  It was smooth, etched with a standard water-natured Nucleus glyph. Familiar now. But it carried new weight.

  Elias nodded, then added without thinking, “Honestly, it reminds me of my second year in college. I flubbed a casting demo and got kicked out of the lab for a week. Had to bribe the supervisor with a replacement circuit board and half a thermos of black coffee.”

  Lee blinked. “Your what?”

  Elias froze.

  Lee’s brow furrowed. “Your… college?”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “I mean…” Elias fumbled. “Uh. Just something my old master called his workshop. Said it was like a college. Because of how much reading he made us do. It was a joke.”

  Lee stared at him for a long moment.

  Then, mercifully, he let it go.

  “Right. Sounds like a miserable bastard. Now pay attention—your threshold link is too shallow.”

  But Elias barely heard him.

  His mind was spinning. Stupid. Idiot. That had been way too specific. He’d said the word like it was common knowledge—college, circuit board, coffee—all of it might as well have been glowing in neon above his head. If Lee had been sharper with people, he might’ve pressed harder.

  But Lee wasn’t suspicious. Not yet.

  Still, Elias’s gut churned.

  He needed to be more careful. He’d slipped once. He couldn’t afford to again.

  Lee, unaware of the silent panic in Elias’s head, pointed to the diagram. “Fix this connection. And don’t let the mana feed into both arms of the Directive line evenly. That’s how you get instability.”

  Elias refocused with effort and corrected the mistake.

  But his thoughts lingered on what he’d said.

  On what might’ve happened if he’d said it to someone else.

  He couldn’t let it happen again.

  ___________

  Lee didn’t say anything as Elias re-etched the connection line. Just watched.

  The kid’s hand still shook. Not from fear—burned nerves, maybe. But he powered through it with that same mix of focus and raw desperation Lee had seen too many times in his life. It wasn’t just drive. It was the kind of hunger that ate away at a man. The kind that didn’t care how much blood it cost, so long as it meant something.

  Lee had known, of course.

  Not from the word college, though that had all but confirmed it. The first time he’d seen Elias work, there’d been hints. The way he handled tools—too clinical, too conscious of leverage and motion. Like he’d studied them in diagrams before ever picking them up. The precision in his gauntlet shaping. The questions he asked. The questions he didn’t.

  And then the way he looked at the mana lattice, at runes—not with the awe or suspicion most had, but with analytical curiosity. He didn’t see magic as divine or unknowable. He saw it as a system. A puzzle.

  A science.

  Lee had seen that once before. A long time ago.

  He turned away from the board and pretended to busy himself sorting tiles.

  Elias didn’t know he was caught. Not really. And Lee wasn’t going to tell him.

  Not because he was soft. He’d turned in a dozen outsiders over the years, most of them harmless. Not his job to decide intent. Just his job to make the Guild safe.

  But this one… this one reminded him too much of—

  Lee’s jaw clenched.

  No. He didn’t let himself think that name. Not now. Not ever when the forge wasn’t cold.

  Still, the resemblance stuck like soot. The same restless mind. The same pride he tried to hide behind politeness. The same way he stared a little too long at anything built well, like he was memorizing it.

  If he turned Elias in, someone else would get him. Someone without restraint. Without understanding. Some minor noble with a grudge, or a Guild Examiner looking to score a mark. They’d interrogate him, drain him for everything he knew, and bury the rest.

  Lee wasn’t about to let that happen.

  Because while Elias wasn’t his—

  No. Stop.

  He wasn’t.

  But maybe… maybe Lee could still be the man he hadn’t been when it counted. Maybe he could do something right.

  He took a breath, cleared his throat, and kept his tone light.

  “Alright, that’s enough for today,” he said. “You’re sweating on the tiles.”

  Elias looked up, confused, a bit pale still.

  Lee clapped a hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the door. “Get home. Eat something. You’ve got another test tomorrow, and I expect you not to blow up this time.”

  Elias managed a faint, sheepish smile. “No promises.”

  Lee let him go.

  Watched until the boy’s footsteps faded down the corridor.

  Then he turned back to the slate board, wiped it clean with one slow drag of cloth, and stared at the empty surface for a long, long time.

  Quietly, to no one in particular, he muttered, “Don’t make me regret this, kid.”