For a time, everything seemed to settle into something like rhythm.
Days bled into one another, steady, productive, and strangely peaceful.
Every other morning, I met Elder Harun in his study or the training yard where he'd set up rows of newly discovered measuring stones and mana flow markers.
His enthusiasm for the "Capacity Classification Project," as he now called it, hadn't dimmed since our discovery. He'd developed a series of tests, new glyph arrays that measured a member's core threshold by resistance and endurance.
"It's fascinating," he murmured one morning as we watched a young member tremble while infusing mana into the stone.
"The body rejects excess essence long before the core reaches true saturation. It's like a reflex one meant to prevent implosion."
I folded my arms, observing the faint shimmer of mana flickering out of the members's skin.
"A built-in safeguard. But it limits growth unless trained."
