As Andreas left the office he saw Arden waiting outside, looking nervous.
'I don't think I have ever seen Arden nervous.'
"Young master, are you okay?"
"I am okay Arden. I just want to rest for a while."
"Please do so, young master. Get as much rest as you would like. We can skip tomorrow's lessons."
Arden went quiet after that. He stood there with his grey hair and his old face and all those emotions Andreas could see clearly but could not name, and Andreas looked at him for a moment and waited to feel something that matched the size of what he had just been told.
Nothing came.
He turned and walked to his room.
'I want to sleep.'
---
Andreas's days continued exactly as they always had. Contrary to what Arden seemed to be expecting, he did not blame himself. Why would he. It had happened before he existed in any meaningful sense. It was simply a fact, and not something that required a particular response beyond acknowledgment.
It had been two days since and right now he was training with Kaela.
"Young master."
"What is it Kaela?"
"Are you okay?"
Andreas neither understood the question nor why Kaela would be asking it in the first place.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"It's just..." Kaela searched for something to say and found nothing she was willing to finish. "If you are okay then that's good, young master."
She left it there. The training continued.
When Kaela's session ended Barderossa's magic lesson began, and the moment Andreas saw his teacher's face he forgot about the question entirely.
"Young master, today you will cast your first spell."
'Finally.'
Until now Andreas's magic lessons had been mana control and theory, necessary and interesting in their own way but fundamentally preparatory. The real thing had always been somewhere ahead. Today it was here.
"We should start with something basic. You know the simplest earth spell, correct?"
"Isn't it rock bullet?"
"That is correct. Do you remember its runes?"
*[spell iamge placeholder, *
"Then let us go outside and you shall cast it."
Andreas was excited in a way he hadn't been in several days, a clean and uncomplicated excitement that lived entirely in the present moment and asked nothing of him beyond attention. Truth be told he had always envied the mages he watched casting spells, the way the spell circles appeared and hung in the air with their layered runes before collapsing into something real and physical and consequential. He had wanted to do it himself for as long as he had known what it was.
Today he finally would.
He couldn't contain himself once they were heading toward the training area and began running ahead without making a conscious decision to do so.
"It seems the young master is truly okay," Barderossa said to no one in particular, and followed at a brisk walk.
Once at the training grounds Barderossa straightened and assumed the precise manner he always adopted when instruction was about to begin.
"Now young master, do exactly as I say."
Andreas nodded with his whole head.
"First, draw approximately 12 UM of mana from your core and bring it outside your body. Begin rotating it in a circular shape."
Andreas did it so quickly and cleanly that had Kaela been watching she might have simply walked away from magic entirely and taken up farming.
"Good. Now, because of the Oldten Cohesion Force, once mana is shaped into a circle and set spinning it will naturally maintain that circular form on its own. With that foundation stable, add the earth rune to the first layer. Give it its shape through your focus and hold that image. If your concentration breaks and the image dissolves, the entire structure will collapse with it."
Andreas already had experience with single runes. This presented no difficulty.
"Now create a second mana circle, larger than the first, using approximately 24 UM."
This took slightly longer. Not much.
"And finally, add two push runes."
This was genuinely harder. Holding three distinct runes simultaneously in active focus while maintaining their individual shapes and relationships to each other was a different kind of demand than anything he had practiced before, and for a moment the entire structure wobbled at its edges. But Andreas held it, adjusting his focus, until the spell circle stabilized and sat in the air before him complete and humming with contained intent.
"Now simply imagine casting it."
Andreas did.
The spell circle vanished. A kilogram of compacted rock launched itself across the training ground at twenty meters per second and struck the far barrier with a crack that echoed off the walls.
"Hahaha, Barderossa, can we do it again?"
"Of course, young master. As long as the vicinity remains clear you may cast as many times as you like."
So Andreas did. He cast until his mana ran dry and then Barderossa produced mana potions from somewhere in his robes and Andreas drank them without slowing down. He experimented with other elements as the afternoon stretched on, water, which behaved differently than he expected and soaked half the training ground before he adjusted, and fire, which he got slightly wrong in the placement of the spell circle relative to his own body and nearly removed his eyebrows before the heat made the error obvious. He would have stayed through the night if Arden had not appeared at the edge of the training grounds at dusk with the particular quality of patient presence that meant it was time to return.
Andreas went, still turning the mechanics of the fire spell over in his mind, already planning what he would adjust tomorrow.