[Location: Arcana Antiques – Underground Chamber, Two Years Before Balthazar Meets Dave Stutler]
The air inside the chamber hummed with low, resonant power. The sigil rings I'd carved into the stone glowed faintly blue, circling me like a slow, breathing heartbeat. Sweat rolled down my neck as I traced one last symbol with my finger, whispering the incantation under my breath.
Mana pulsed through me — no longer wild like it once was, but steady. Obedient.
Balthazar leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, his ever-present half-smirk softened by curiosity. "Not bad, Ren. Your control's improving faster than any apprentice I've trained."
"Guess near-death experiences speed up the learning curve," I muttered.
The spell fizzled out gently, the light sinking back into the stone. I exhaled. For the first time, I hadn't felt like I was wrestling a lightning storm inside my bones.
Balthazar stepped closer, his coat trailing faint motes of mana. "You've built something new into the flow. Your energy doesn't move like sorcerer's current — it oscillates."
I nodded. "Quantum variance. I'm syncing mana flow with sub-particle vibration instead of emotional intent. It's... efficient."
He gave me a look somewhere between amusement and alarm. "You make it sound like magic is math."
"Maybe it is. Just not the kind we've figured out yet."
That night, I stayed in the workshop long after Balthazar had gone upstairs. I watched the faint shimmer of my own energy trail through the air. It was different now — sharper, thinner, like light caught between dimensions.
I could feel something tugging at the edge of perception, like a note just beyond hearing. A pull. A frequency.
The Quantum Mana inside me vibrated in response.
I froze. "Not now," I whispered.
The last time this happened, I'd almost torn myself apart.
I tried grounding my energy through the Merlin Circle — focus, intent, release — but the resonance only intensified. The air rippled around me.
Cracks of blue light spider-webbed across the sigil floor.
"Oh, come on—"
A voice echoed from the stairs. "Ren?" Balthazar's silhouette appeared, outlined in gold light. "What are you doing?"
"I think—" My words warped, stretched by the distortion. "—the field's reacting to something outside this world."
"Outside—what?"
The resonance peaked. The Quantum Mana spiraled, no longer confined to my veins — it sang across dimensions. The containment sigils shattered, their fragments suspended midair.
"Ren!"
"Tell Dave… to stay away from Tesla coils," I managed before the world folded in on itself.
There was a sound like glass snapping underwater — and then nothing but white light.
[Location: Camelot – Forest Outskirts, Night]
Rain. Again. Cold this time.
I groaned, pushing myself up from the mud. The air smelled of pine and smoke — not the modern tang of Manhattan ozone. Torches flickered in the distance.
A cloaked rider galloped by, shouting something about "sorcery" and "the king's patrol."
Great.
I wiped the mud from my face and looked at my hands — faint blue lines of mana still glowing beneath my skin.
"New world," I sighed. "New problem."
Behind me, thunder rolled — not weather, but power. The ley lines here were alive, ancient, angry.
And somewhere in the dark, someone was watching.
✦ Epilogue — The Echo Left Behind
[Location: Arcana Antiques – Underground Chamber, Dawn]
The air still smelled of ozone and burned stone. Sigils that once glowed with clean blue light now lay cracked and lifeless across the floor.
Balthazar Blake stood alone at the center of the destruction, his coat brushing the dust, eyes locked on the faint shimmer that still hung in the air — a residue of energy that shouldn't exist.
"Quantum resonance," he murmured, testing the word that Ren had once thrown around so casually. "Not magic… not science."
He crouched, running a finger along a scorch mark. The residue pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
It remembered something. Or someone.
"Idiot boy," he said quietly — but his tone wasn't harsh. It carried the weight of reluctant respect.
Ren had done what no sorcerer should ever have been able to do: cross the Veil itself. And somehow, he'd survived.
Balthazar stood, the sunlight from the upper windows cutting across his face. Behind him, the faint outline of Veronica's old mirror reflected nothing but empty air.
He looked up at it and spoke softly, almost to himself.
"Wherever you've gone… I hope you find what you're looking for."
The mirror shimmered faintly, just once — a pulse of blue light. Then it went still.