The gap becomes impossible to ignore sometime around my seventh year turning toward my eighth — not because either side of it changes dramatically, but because the space between them keeps quietly, steadily widening, the way two roads diverging by only a few careful degrees end up impossibly far apart after enough distance.
On the sword side, I've stopped losing to anyone my age. Toren still fights me every evening, stubborn as ever, but even he's started admitting — grudgingly, between bouts, sweat dripping off his chin — that the gap between us has become less like a rivalry and more like a lesson he's still catching up to.
"You're not even trying anymore," he complains one evening, flat on his back in the dirt where my last strike put him, more amused than truly frustrated. "I used to at least make you work for it."
"You still make me work for it."
"Liar." He grins up at me anyway, no real sting in the accusation. "Kyle's going to run out of things to teach you before you're ten, at this rate."
He isn't entirely wrong. Kyle's lessons have shifted, these past months, from correction to conversation — less fix your stance and more what would you do if your opponent had longer reach than you, questions meant for adventurers twice my age, questions I answer with an ease that still unsettles me sometimes, late at night, when I let myself wonder how much of it is genuinely mine and how much is simply Basic Swordsman Skill's foundation carrying me further than it should.
The other trainees have noticed too, in ways that range from admiring to quietly resentful. A few of the older boys have started avoiding sparring matches with me entirely, muttering about unfair advantages within earshot but never quite loud enough to say it to my face. I understand the frustration, even if it stings. I remember, distantly, how it felt to watch other children summon flame effortlessly while my own candle sat stubbornly dark. Being on the other side of that particular envy doesn't make it any more comfortable to witness.
Kyle addresses it directly, one afternoon, pulling me aside after a session where the murmuring got louder than usual.
"They'll come around," he tells me, not unkindly. "Or they won't, and that'll say more about them than it does about you. Either way, you keep training the way you have been. Head down. Steady. That's the only answer that's ever mattered, long-term."
"Doesn't feel great in the meantime."
"No," he agrees. "It rarely does. But I'd rather you be resented for working hard than liked for not trying at all. The second kind of liking doesn't last anyway."
Quest Progress: Swing a Sword 84,102/100000
Close now. Closer than I let myself believe most days, for fear of jinxing the steady, patient climb.
The mage side tells an entirely different story.
I can light candles now — reliably, easily, a skill so thoroughly mastered it barely registers as effort anymore. But candles, it turns out, were only ever the smallest, simplest doorway into something vastly larger, and every attempt to walk further through it leaves me exactly where I started: reaching, straining, coming away with nothing but a headache and the same faint, frustrated stirring that never quite catches into anything more.
The other students have moved past me entirely on this side of the yard, in a reversal so complete it feels almost designed to humble me on purpose. The girl who cried from joy at her first flame now conjures small, controlled bursts of wind with barely a thought. One of the twins has started shaping simple illusions, faint and flickering but unmistakably real. Even the boy who cries at scraped knees has managed a passable water-purification charm, something Ava says most students don't attempt until their second year.
I've managed the candle, and the occasional stubborn ripple in still water, and very little else.
"Try the water exercise again," Ava tells me one grey morning, gesturing toward a shallow basin she's set on the low table between us. "Just a ripple. You don't need to move the whole basin, just disturb the surface."
I reach. Nothing.
"Again."
I reach harder. The water sits exactly as still as it did before, mocking in its stillness, and something hot and frustrated rises in my chest that I don't fully manage to swallow down before it reaches my face.
"This is stupid," I mutter, immediately regretting it, though Ava doesn't so much as blink at the outburst.
"It's not stupid. It's hard." She says it evenly, without judgment. "You've been comparing yourself to your own sword progress again, haven't you?"
I don't answer, which is answer enough.
"Lucifer." She waits until I meet her eyes properly. "Sword forms and elemental magic aren't the same kind of muscle. One of them Kyle can drill into you through pure repetition. The other requires you to actually understand something about yourself first — your own shape, your own currents, before you can bend the world's currents to match. You're not behind. You're just working on something that was never going to move at the same speed."
"Then why does it feel like I'm behind?"
She considers the question seriously, the way she considers most things I bring to her. "Because you've spent your whole short life needing to be enough, as fast as possible," she says finally, gently. "That's not a flaw, sweet boy. It's just a heavy thing to carry into every single lesson, whether the lesson deserves that weight or not."
"What if I never get past this? What if the sword's always going to be the thing I'm good at, and this just — stays broken?"
Ava's expression softens, something old and knowing crossing behind her eyes. "Nothing about you is broken. I've taught children who genuinely couldn't manage more than a candle in their entire lives, and I've taught children who mastered illusion magic by age six and never grew an ounce past it. Talent's a strange, uneven thing. It doesn't map cleanly onto effort, or worth, or how hard someone's life has been." She reaches over, tilts my chin up gently until I meet her eyes. "You'll get past this. I don't know when. But I've watched you refuse to quit on harder things than a stubborn ripple. I'm not worried about you. You shouldn't be either."
I don't have an answer for that. I just stare at the still water, and try again, and fail again, and feel the gap between what I can do and what I want to do stretch just a little wider than it was yesterday.
The frustration follows me home that evening, sitting heavier in my chest than I know how to explain.
Vereen notices immediately — he's gotten good at reading my silences the way I've gotten good at reading his — and doesn't push for words until we're both settled by the fire, stew gone cold and mostly forgotten between us.
"Bad day?" he asks eventually.
"Magic day," I say, like that explains everything. It mostly does, between us now.
He huffs something that might be sympathy. "Your mother tried teaching herself a bit of herb-craft magic once, you know. Simple healing charms, nothing grand. Took her the better part of a year just to manage the most basic one properly." He says it lightly, though I catch the small hitch beneath the words, the way even happy memories of her still cost him something to offer freely. "She used to get so frustrated she'd throw the practice herbs straight into the fire out of spite. Whole house would smell like burnt chamomile for days."
"Did she ever get good at it?"
"Eventually. Better than good, actually — half the village used to come to her for minor charms before the trained healers arrived." He smiles, faint but genuine. "Point is, some things just take longer to bloom. Doesn't mean the roots aren't growing the whole time you can't see them."
"What if I'm just not built for it? What if some people just aren't?"
Vereen considers the question with the same careful seriousness he gives most things I bring him now. "Maybe," he admits. "I won't lie to you and pretend everyone's equally capable at everything. That wouldn't be honest, and you deserve honest more than you deserve comfortable." He pauses, choosing his next words with visible care. "But I don't think that's what's actually happening here. I think you're eight years old, comparing your second skill to your first, and forgetting that the first one didn't start from nothing either. It started from a card, and even then, it still took you months of your own sweat to make it genuinely yours. You're doing the same thing now. It's just slower this time, because there's no card to jumpstart it."
I think about roots, and invisible growth, and the strange, hidden stats accumulating somewhere behind my own careful bookkeeping — Wisdom, Agility, Reflex, whatever else the overflow's been quietly stockpiling while I wasn't looking. Maybe Vereen's right without even knowing the specifics. Maybe some kinds of growth are always happening beneath the surface, whether or not the numbers I can actually see agree to move.
"Thank you," I tell him, quiet, meaning it more than the two small words probably convey.
"For what?"
"For not just telling me it'll be fine. For telling me the actual truth instead."
Something soft crosses his face — the particular expression he wears now when I say something that reminds him, gently, of who I'm becoming rather than who I used to be. "Your mother taught me that," he says. "Said false comfort was just a kinder-sounding lie. I try to remember that, even when the honest answer's harder to give."
We sit together a while longer, the fire burning low, neither of us in any particular hurry to end the evening.
It happens on an ordinary evening, weeks later, that I finally understand exactly how far the invisible growing has gone.
I'm sparring with Toren — a real bout this time, not a drill, both of us pushing harder than usual after a particularly frustrating magic session earlier that day — when he catches me with a strike I genuinely don't see coming, sharp across my ribs hard enough to actually hurt despite the padded practice gear.
"Ha!" Toren crows, backing off to give me room to recover. "Finally. Was starting to think you'd gone numb to losing entirely."
I don't get angry. I don't even really register pain, not at first. I just feel something shift, deep and sudden, a wave of pure, focused determination that has nothing to do with the sting and everything to do with refusing to let that hit be the last word of the exchange. It rises fast, sharper than my usual calm, fed by weeks of accumulated frustration from the mage yard finally finding somewhere useful to go.
I come back at him faster than either of us expects — faster than I expect, honestly, my body moving on some current of pure stubborn will rather than careful technique — and win the bout decisively, sword tapping his collarbone before he's fully registered the exchange has resumed at all.
Toren blinks up at me, practice sword still half-raised, genuine surprise on his face. "Where did that come from?"
"Don't know," I admit, catching my breath. "Guess I didn't like losing as much as I thought I did."
Only afterward, catching my breath fully, do I notice the familiar hum stirring at the edge of my mind.
Daily Quest Completed: Push Through Pain Will +1
ERROR STAT LIMIT REACHED ADDING TO OVERFLOW
OVERFLOW STATS +1 WILL +3 WISDOM +1 INTELLECT
I go very still, staring at the words longer than the moment probably warrants.
Will. Capped. The last of the five core stats to hit its ceiling, the one that had always, quietly, felt like it was still mine to grow — proof that even without the sword's borrowed foundation, without the mage-side struggle Ava insists is building roots I can't see, some part of me was still visibly, undeniably becoming more than I started as.
Now even that door has closed. Every single stat sits at exactly the same invisible wall, and everything I do from here — every repetition, every honest struggle, every hard-won victory — pours into a hidden reservoir I have no way to measure, no way to access, no way to even confirm is doing anything at all beyond accumulating in the dark.
"You alright?" Toren asks, noticing my expression. "I didn't hit you that hard."
"I'm fine," I tell him, and force myself to mean it, even though something in my chest has gone tight and strange in a way I don't have easy words for.
We finish out the evening's practice in comfortable near-silence, the way we usually do, but I catch myself glancing inward more than usual, checking and rechecking the same five numbers like they might have quietly shifted the moment I stopped watching. They don't. They won't. I already know that, and still I check anyway, some old, stubborn part of me refusing to fully accept a ceiling until I've tested it myself more times than logic requires.
That night, I check the full status for the first time in weeks, curious despite the ache still sitting behind my ribs.
Status.
———————————— STATUS ———————————— Name: Lucifer Energy: 10 — Measures vitality and stamina Strength: 10 — Measures physical power Speed: 10 — Measures movement and reaction speed Will: 10 — Measures determination and mental fortitude Mind: 10 — Measures cognition, perception, and magical capacity Dominion: 2% — Permanently increases all stats by this number as a percent Resonance: 0% — Description Blocked [Blank Cards: 1] Skills: Basic Swordsman Skill Lv. 8 [Blank Card Used], Swords Mastery Lv. 6 [Learned] Locked Skill: ????? ————————————
Five perfect tens, staring back at me like a wall with no visible door.
I don't know, staring at the numbers, whether to feel proud or hollow. Both, maybe, in equal measure — proud of everything those numbers represent, hollow at the knowledge that nothing I do tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, will move a single one of them even slightly higher.
Skills, at least, keep climbing. Basic Swordsman Skill sits at Level 8 now, three levels past where Kyle's own copy started, growing steadily through nothing but my own stubborn repetition. Swords Mastery — entirely mine, never touched by any card — trails close behind at Level 6, gaining ground faster than I expected once the fundamentals finally clicked into place.
That's something, at least. Something visible. Something I can point to and say, honestly, I built that myself.
But the gap between sword and magic doesn't close, no matter how much Skills-progress accumulates on the sword side of the ledger. If anything, capping every core stat only sharpens the contrast — proof, in cold numbers, that whatever separates my two disciplines has nothing to do with raw potential and everything to do with something Ava keeps insisting only time can properly grow.
I try, lying there, to imagine what the hidden overflow numbers might actually look like by now, after years of quiet accumulation. Wisdom alone must have climbed considerably, given how often it's shown up in every overflow message since that very first afternoon chasing chickens around the well. I wonder whether it's tracking something specific — actual wisdom, the kind that comes from hard lessons survived, or something stranger, something the System understands about me that I haven't yet earned the right to see.
I imagine, for a moment, some hidden second version of my STATUS screen — Agility and Reflex and Wisdom and Intellect, stacked high behind an invisible door, quietly outpacing everything I can actually see. I wonder if the day finally comes when that door opens, whether I'll recognize the person standing revealed on the other side of it, or whether the wait will have changed me into someone even I don't fully expect.
I think of Vereen's story about Aileen and her burnt chamomile, and try to hold onto the shape of patience it was meant to teach me. Some nights, I manage it. Tonight, staring at five identical, unmovable numbers, I mostly just feel the wall for exactly what it is.
I think, too, about the promise I made by a dying fire years ago now — stronger than this, stronger than whatever's out there — and wonder whether strength that stops registering on any visible number still counts toward that promise at all. I decide, eventually, that it has to. The alternative is admitting that everything I've built these past years has been building toward nothing, and I refuse to believe that, however much tonight's particular wall makes it tempting to.
I fall asleep eventually, the way I always do, though it takes longer than usual — turning the number five over and over in my mind, wondering how many more years I'll spend staring at walls before something, anything, finally lets me climb past them.
I don't know yet that the answer is waiting further away than I could possibly imagine. I only know that whatever's accumulating behind that invisible wall, I intend to make sure it was worth the wait — every hidden point of it, whatever it eventually turns out to mean.
For now, there's only the gap — sword ahead, magic behind, five identical numbers sitting patient and unmovable in between. I close my eyes on it, the way I've learned to close my eyes on most uncertainties these past years, trusting that tomorrow will bring whatever it brings, ready or not, and that I'll meet it the same way I've met everything else since the raid — one stubborn, deliberate step at a time, for as many years as it ends up taking.
Sleep comes slowly, but it comes. It always does, eventually.
Somewhere in the last moments before it finally claims me, I think of Ava's words again — nothing about you is broken — and let myself believe them, just a little, just enough to loosen the tight knot the day's frustration left behind. Tomorrow, I decide, I'll try the water exercise again. And the day after that, if it still doesn't work. And the day after that, for as long as it takes, because giving up has never once been the answer to anything that's actually mattered in either of my lives.
The candle by my bedside flickers once, faintly, in a draft I don't remember letting in.
I smile, despite everything, and let the dark take me the rest of the way under.