He expected to feel hollow if he kept looking at it, as if all the work he had done would show up as missing pieces. Instead, what he found at his center was weight.
Not a tidy little core, but a deep, calm fullness, like standing on the edge of a very dark, very still well. When he brushed against it with his attention, it did not shudder or shrink. It was simply heavy, more than he knew what to do with.
The lines that ran out of him were not sucking that weight away. They felt more like threads someone had tied around his wrist as a joke and forgotten to cut. Each one led to something he had worked on, and along each thread there was a faint echo of his own magic, a flavor that matched the way he thought while he carved it.
He let his awareness slide along the one that went to the coat. As he did, the pressure in the air, not in his chest, shifted. It gathered around that link, the way dust gathered toward a cloth being pulled across a floor. The coat drank from that thickening air, not from the well inside him.
Gerald had not told him to meditate to keep from running dry. He had told him to do it so Jacob would learn to feel the difference between himself, his work, and the world that answered both.
He tried to go one step further.
If the world was answering, then there had to be a way to meet it halfway. He focused on the heavy stillness outside his skin, on that faint sense of being leaned on from every direction, and tried to reach toward it the way he reached toward a thread that led to his work.
Nothing happened.
His awareness slid over the pressure like fingers on glass. There was no edge to grab, no knot to pull, just weight. He pushed harder, tightening his focus until a dull ache started behind his eyes.
The threads to his enchantments brightened under that effort. The coat, the sword, the broom. Those answered him easily. The world itself did not. It sat there, vast and indifferent, like a full barrel that refused to pour just because he asked nicely.
He tried again, smaller this time, picturing a single drop instead of the whole thing. Catching water from a dripping faucet, not trying to drink the river. He waited for a trickle he could feel, any sign that the pressure had turned into motion.
All he found was the same steady weight and the slow, familiar glow of his own core under it. Whatever Gerald expected him to figure out, this part was still beyond him.
His back had started to complain. Pins and needles crept into his legs. The day of walking, enchanting, and worrying finally settled on his shoulders like another kind of pressure.
Jacob let the threads fade from his attention and opened his eyes. The room was just a room again. Armor on the bed. Blades against the wall. Faint moonlight at the window.
"Fine," he muttered. "Tomorrow, then."
He shrugged out of his clothes, slid under the blanket, and let the heaviness in his limbs pull him down faster than any spell. The last thing he felt before sleep took him was that quiet pressure at the edge of his awareness, waiting.
Morning light pushed past the shutters when he opened his eyes. For a moment, he just lay there, counting the quiet links in the back of his mind. Coat. Greaves. Bracers. All steady, all close.
His stomach grumbled, but the blank sword leaning against the wall caught his attention first.
Breakfast could wait.
He pulled on his shirt and sat on the floor again, setting the sword across his knees. It was good steel, honest and dull in the morning light, waiting for someone to tell it what to be.
The coat's enchantment had been about taking hits and staying whole. The sword needed to be about control. Not only of where it cut, but how that cut would leave him afterward.
He ran a thumb along the flat and let his mind build the shape.
Guidance first. The self-seeking idea he had seen before was just a brute pull, dragging the blade toward a target. That worked for a clean strike, but it did nothing for what came after. He pictured instead a groove in the air between him and an enemy, like a shallow track a cart wheel could settle into. The rune would not wrench his arm toward the nearest throat. It would nudge his swing into that track once he had chosen a line, trimming wasted motion.
Next, he wove in a braking curve along the spine. Not to slow the hit, but to limit follow-through. If the blade met something solid, the pattern would shunt some of that force into a slight redirect, encouraging a slide along armor rather than a dead stop that could lock his wrist.
Then, he needed that part of the lightness rune that gave him the correct leverage. The magical lock that made the enchanted items lighter in his grip but not in reality, he needed the blade to maintain its momentum when he swung it. He also wanted it to be able to pull itself together after a clash, so a self-mending addition would need to be woven into his new enchantment.
The last piece he pulled from the coat. A small, quiet strand that talked to his other work. When he raised the sword in guard, the blade's pattern would nudge him toward angles that lined up with his armored plates, so that if he had to take a blow, it would land where his runes were thickest.
Only once all the ideas sat together in his thoughts as a single twisting mark did he pick up the etching tool and place its tip near the base of the blade.
The first lines were familiar. He carved a compact core of strengthening and sharpness into the steel, tight and dense, just enough to respect the metal rather than bully it. The sword did not need to bite like the shovel. It only needed to cut cleanly when it had to.
From that core, he pulled the guidance track outward, a shallow groove of intent that ran along the flat of the blade. Not a command to seek anything on its own, but a promise: once he began a stroke, the rune would help settle it into the most efficient path between where it started and where he wanted it to end.
His magic flowed smoother than it had the night before, as if the short sleep had settled the silt in the well. No rush, no strain, just a steady pour.
He kept his hand steady as he hooked in the braking curve along the spine. That part resisted at first, the metal unhappy about being told to slide where instinct would have it bite. He frowned and adjusted the pattern, giving it permission to cut but asking it, very firmly, to favor glancing routes when possible. The resistance eased. The lines locked together with a quiet click he felt more than heard.
From there, he spun a thinner strand off the core, running it along the edge itself and back around the weapon. Not enough to fix a shattered blade, but enough to keep small chips from growing, to let the steel remember the shape it was supposed to hold after each clash. To slowly pull itself together when it had some time to rest.
Last, he laced a lightness thread through the grip and into the first hand span of the blade. Not to make it float, just to pull the balance a finger's width back toward his palm so the sword would move as if it weighed less than it did.
Last, he threaded in the small, whispering strand that would talk to his armor. He wrapped it close to the hilt, where the sword met his grip, then sent it spiraling outward in a thin ring that circled the whole blade. That ring tuned itself to the same hum as the coat and bracers, a shared note that made the hairs on his arms stir.
When he lifted the etching tool away, he channeled a bit more of his power into it than usual, and the pattern sank fully into the steel. For a moment, the sword felt heavier, then the weight settled, no more than before. Then it started to feel lighter, like it was moving with him instead of against him.
Jacob stood, rolled his shoulders, and took a testing stance in the middle of the room.
The first cut he threw was slow, a simple diagonal. Halfway through the swing, a subtle tug straightened his line, shaving off a bit of wobble he had not noticed. The follow-through checked itself, the blade dipping just enough that, if it had struck something solid, the edge would have slid down instead of jamming into bone.
He tried a quick series next. High guard, mid cut, low cut, recover. The sword did not drag him, but each motion felt as if an experienced hand was resting lightly on his wrist, guiding, trimming, keeping everything tight. When he shifted into a block on instinct, the blade almost nudged his arms wider, lining his forearms up so that an imagined hit would land squarely on his reinforced plates.
Satisfied, he laid the sword on the bed beside the coat for a moment, just looking at them. The quiet links in the back of his mind pulsed gently. Coat. Greaves. Bracers. Sword. Each one answered when he brushed against it.
From the kitchen, he caught the faint clatter of dishes and the smell of something frying.
His stomach growled loud enough to make him snort.
"Right . . . food," he muttered.