# Chapter 6: Blueprint of Reality
The candle had been dead for an hour.
The smell of tallow lingered, heavy and greasy, fighting a losing war against the draft leaking through the window sash. It was a cold smell. The smell of a butcher shop after closing time.
Sylas sat on the edge of his bed. His feet dangled six inches above the floorboards. The wood was freezing, sucking the heat right through his wool socks, but he didn't pull his legs up. The cold was useful. It sharpened the focus. It kept the biology alert.
The house settled around him. Vane Manor groaned in its sleep. Timbers contracted in the frost, nails popped with sharp retorts like distant gunfire, and somewhere in the guts of the walls, a mouse scratched at the plaster.
Sylas ignored it all. His attention was pinned to the air in front of his face.
To anyone else, the room was empty. Just shadows and moonlight.
To Sylas, it was illuminated by the soft, clinical glow of the interface.
**[ SYSTEM STATUS: ONLINE ]**
It wasn't a voice. It wasn't a hallucination. It was data, projected directly onto his retinas, overlaying the peeling wallpaper.
He raised a hand. The blue light washed over his small, pale fingers.
In his previous life, he had built universes where gravity was a variable and time was a suggestion. He had been a god of code. Now, he was a five-year-old boy in a flannel nightshirt that smelled of lavender and mothballs.
"Menu," he whispered.
The text dissolved and reformed. Three distinct tabs appeared, hovering in the air like suspended panes of glass.
**1. SCAN**
**2. DESIGN**
**3. CONSTRUCT**
He reached out and tapped *CONSTRUCT*.
A harsh buzz sounded in his skull, like a fly trapped against an eardrum.
**[ ERROR: INSUFFICIENT MATERIALS. ]**
**[ REQUIRED: MANA (REFINED), BIOMASS, CATALYST. ]**
**[ CURRENT STOCK: 0 ]**
The tab grayed out. Locked.
Sylas lowered his hand. Logical. You cannot pour concrete without the mix. You cannot weld air.
He looked at *DESIGN*.
He selected it. The interface shifted, becoming a blank grid. A 3D workspace. It waited for input, a cursor blinking patiently in the void. It offered infinite possibility, but a blueprint without materials was just a dream. He closed it for now.
That left *SCAN*.
He slipped off the bed. The floorboards bit into his soles. He padded across the room to the tall, oval mirror standing in the corner. The glass was old, silvered with age, creating a ghostly, distorted reflection.
A small boy looked back. Dark hair, messy from the pillow. Eyes that were too big for his face, dark and serious. He looked fragile. A gust of wind could knock him over; a fever could burn him down.
"Scan target," Sylas murmured. "Self."
The grid slammed into existence.
It started at his feet, a horizontal plane of blue laser light rising upward. It mapped the contour of his shins, the knob of his knees, the curve of his ribs. It stripped him down.
The reflection in the mirror changed. The skin vanished. Muscles appeared, red and fibrous. Then the muscles faded, revealing the skeletal structure, the organs, the intricate web of nerves.
He was looking at his own schematics.
Text began to scroll rapidly down the side of the mirror. The System was not kind. It was not a doting mother. It was a building inspector, and it had found the property condemned.
**[ SUBJECT: SYLAS VANE (AGE 5) ]**
**[ STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS ]**
* **Foundation:** UNSTABLE.
* **Bone Density:** 14% below standard deviation. Calcium deficiency detected.
* **Musculature:** Atrophied. Fast-twitch fibers undeveloped.
* **Cardiovascular:** Pump efficiency low. Murmur detected in left ventricle (Stress-induced).
**[ MAGICAL CIRCUITRY ]**
* **Meridians:** 98% Occluded.
* **Mana Core:** Dormant. Unformed.
* **Flow Rate:** Trickle.
* **Status:** The plumbing is rusted shut.
Sylas read the report. He didn't flinch. He didn't feel shame. He felt the cold satisfaction of knowing exactly how bad it was.
"Trash," he whispered.
The System highlighted his skeletal frame in red.
**[ CRITICAL FLAW: Constitution cannot support high-output mana flow. Attempting to cast spells above Tier 1 will result in structural collapse (Bone fracture/Organ failure). ]**
He turned sideways, watching the wireframe skeleton rotate in the mirror.
This was the trap. This was why the powerful families stayed powerful. They bred for strong vessels. They fed their children elixirs and beast meats to reinforce the container so it could hold the magic.
The Vanes were poor. They ate root vegetables and old chickens. His container was made of wet paper. If he tried to channel the kind of power Elara threw around by accident, he wouldn't cast a spell. He would explode.
He needed a renovation.
He walked back to the bed and sat down cross-legged. He adjusted his nightshirt.
He couldn't change his diet tonight. He couldn't go lift weights. Those were long-term projects.
But he could fix the frame.
"System," he thought. "Open Design. Overlay on Subject."
The blue grid snapped back onto his body.
"Highlight skeletal stress points."
His shins, his forearms, and his spine glowed yellow.
Most mages in this world—from what he had gathered in Lilliana's stories—visualized mana as water. They gathered it in a pool in their stomach (the Core) and let it flow out like a river.
Inefficient. Water is soft. Water requires volume to have force.
Sylas didn't want a river. He wanted rebar.
He closed his eyes. He reached out with that extra sense, the one that tasted the static in the air.
The room was mana-starved. The ambient energy was thin here, diluted by the cold iron of the radiator and the stone walls. But it was there. Tiny motes of potential, drifting like dust.
*Grab.*
He didn't coax it. He seized a pocket of static near the window and dragged it toward him.
It was heavy. It felt like pulling a sled through gravel with his mind. His head began to throb immediately, a dull pressure behind the eyes.
*Pull it in.*
The mana hit his skin. It didn't feel magical. It felt like ice water. It seeped into his pores, stinging, foreign.
The standard cultivation method involved cycling this energy through the blood, letting it settle in the core. Sylas ignored that. His core was a bucket with a hole in it.
He directed the energy to his left shinbone.
*Visualize,* he commanded himself.
He didn't picture a glowing light. He pictured a carbon-fiber weave. He pictured high-tensile steel cables wrapping around the fragile, porous bone of his leg.
*Compress.*
The mana resisted. It wanted to be free; it wanted to float. He forced it down, crushing it against the periosteum, the membrane covering the bone.
Pain shot up his leg.
It wasn't a cramp. It felt like someone had taken a hammer and a chisel to his shin. He gasped, his eyes snapping open. He looked down.
There was nothing to see on the surface. But on the System overlay, a tiny section of his tibia was glowing angry red.
**[ WARNING: STRUCTURAL STRESS. INTEGRITY AT 90%... ]**
"Hold," Sylas hissed through gritted teeth.
Sweat popped out on his forehead, instantly cooling in the frigid air. His hands clenched the bedsheets.
*Do not let go.*
He visualized the mana hardening. He pictured the molecular bonds snapping into place, locking tight. He acted as the kiln.
The pain spiked—white, hot, blinding—and then faded to a dull ache.
**[ INTEGRITY STABILIZED. ]**
**[ DENSITY INCREASE: +0.02% ]**
Sylas exhaled, his breath pluming in the dark. He slumped forward, bracing his hands on his knees.
Zero point zero two percent.
He laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound.
At this rate, it would take him ten years just to make his bones as strong as a normal peasant's.
"Again," he said.
He closed his eyes. He reached out for another mote of mana.
He was an Architect. He didn't care how long it took to lay the bricks. He only cared that the wall stood when the storm came.
***
The sun was a rumor.
It was somewhere behind the gray wool of the sky, casting a flat, shadowless light over the estate, but it offered no warmth.
Sylas sat at the breakfast table. He was tired. A deep, marrow-level exhaustion that made his limbs feel like they were filled with lead shot. He had managed to reinforce three inches of his left shin before his mental stamina collapsed and he passed out.
He spooned porridge into his mouth. It was lumpy, lukewarm, and tasted faintly of burnt pot.
"Eat up, Sylas," Martha said, bustling past with a basket of laundry. She patted his head. Her hand was heavy. "You look like a ghost today."
"I'm fine," he mumbled.
Across the table, Elara was conducting an experiment. She had lined up three peas on the edge of her plate. She was staring at them with intense concentration.
One of the peas wiggled.
Sylas watched. He saw the faint distortion in the air, the clumsy tendril of mana poking the vegetable.
"Don't play with your food," Arthur Vane said.
He entered the kitchen, stamping snow off his boots. He looked worse than Sylas felt. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he hadn't shaved. He carried the smell of the stables—hay, manure, and cold leather.
Elara jumped, and the pea rolled off the plate. "I wasn't playing. I was... inspecting."
Arthur sighed. He slumped into the chair at the head of the table. He didn't reach for the food. He just stared at the wood grain.
"The plow is done for," he said quietly.
Lilliana, who was standing by the hearth stirring a cauldron of soup, stopped. Her shoulders stiffened.
"Can it be welded?" she asked, not turning around.
" The metal is fatigued, Lily. It snapped at the shank. If we try to weld it again, it'll just break somewhere else." Arthur rubbed his face with his hands. "We need a new blade. Ironwood, at least. Steel would be better."
"How much?"
"Forty crowns for Ironwood. A hundred for steel."
The silence that followed was louder than the crackling fire.
Sylas chewed his porridge. He did the math.
The estate had roughly twelve crowns in the strongbox. The next harvest revenue wasn't due for six months. Without a plow, there would be no harvest.
It was a math problem.
*Variable A: Broken Equipment.*
*Variable B: No Capital.*
*Outcome: Starvation.*
"I could ask my brother," Lilliana said softly.
Arthur's head snapped up. "No."
"Arthur..."
"I said no! We will not beg from that... that peacock in the capital. I would rather pull the plow myself."
He stood up, the chair screeching. "I'm going to town. Maybe the smith will take a promissory note."
He walked out. The door slammed, shaking the drying herbs hanging from the rafters.
Lilliana stood by the fire for a long moment. Then she turned. Her face was composed, a mask of calm porcelain, but the System overlay showed the truth.
**[ SUBJECT: LILLIANA VANE ]**
**[ HEART RATE: 110 BPM. CORTISOL LEVELS: SPIKING. ]**
She smiled at the children. "Finish your breakfast. Elara, you have lessons with Father Thomas today. Sylas... try to stay warm."
She left the room, heading toward the library. To look at the ledgers. To count the copper pennies again, hoping the math would change.
It wouldn't.
Sylas scraped the bottom of his bowl.
"Potato," Elara whispered.
He looked up.
Elara leaned across the table. "I can fix it."
"Fix what?"
"The plow." Her eyes were wide, conspiratorial. "I can glue it back together. With the... you know." She wiggled her fingers.
Sylas looked at her.
**[ SUBJECT: ELARA ]**
**[ CONTROL: 4%. CHANCE OF CATASTROPHIC FAILURE: 88%. ]**
If she tried to fuse heavy iron with her unstable telekinesis, she would likely shrapnel the barn or blow her own fingers off.
"No," Sylas said.
"But Papa is sad."
"You will break the barn," Sylas said. "Then Papa will be sad and cold."
Elara frowned. She stabbed a pea with her fork. "You're no fun. You don't have any ideas."
Sylas slid off his chair. He picked up his empty bowl and carried it to the washbasin.
"I have ideas," he said.
He walked out of the kitchen, heading for the back door.
He didn't have a coat. He grabbed an old wool blanket from the mudroom bench and wrapped it around his shoulders like a toga. He shoved his feet into his boots.
He stepped outside.
The cold hit him like a physical slap. The wind knifed through the blanket. The snow was ankle-deep, crunching under his weight.
He trudged toward the barn.
It was a massive structure, sagging in the middle like an old horse. The red paint had peeled away decades ago, leaving gray, weathered wood that soaked up the damp.
Sylas entered. The air inside was warmer, thick with the smell of the two remaining horses and the dry dust of hay.
The plow sat in the center of the earthen floor.
It was a simple machine. Heavy oak frame, iron fittings, and the main blade—the share—lying in two pieces on the ground.
Sylas approached it. He dropped the blanket, shivering instantly, but he needed to move freely.
"Scan," he commanded.
The blue grid washed over the metal.
**[ OBJECT: PLOWSHARE (CAST IRON) ]**
**[ STATUS: FRACTURED. ]**
**[ CAUSE: BRITTLE FRACTURE. CARBON CONTENT TOO HIGH. ]**
He knelt in the dirt. He touched the cold metal.
Iron. Not steel. Cast iron was hard but brittle. It couldn't take the shock of hitting a rock in the frozen earth.
His father wanted to buy a new one. That was the consumer mindset.
The Architect mindset was different. *Don't replace. Redesign.*
He looked around the barn.
In the corner, piled under a tarp, were scraps. Rusted horseshoes, broken wheel rims, a twisted iron gate that had fallen off the garden wall years ago.
"Scan pile."
**[ MATERIALS DETECTED: WROUGHT IRON. LOW CARBON STEEL. ]**
Wrought iron was softer, but tough. It bent before it broke.
Sylas stood up. He walked to the workbench. It was cluttered with dull tools. He found a piece of chalk.
He went back to the dirt floor and cleared a space.
He began to draw.
He didn't draw a plow. He drew a diagram.
He drew a laminated structure. A hard core of the cast iron (what was left of the blade) sandwiched between layers of the softer, tougher wrought iron from the scrap pile.
*Japanese sword smithing technique,* his mind supplied. *Hard edge, soft spine.*
But he couldn't forge it. He couldn't hammer it. He was five. He couldn't lift the hammer.
He looked at his hands.
**[ MANA: 12/100 ]**
**[ FUNCTION: DESIGN - ACTIVE ]**
He didn't need to hammer it. He needed to fuse it.
He needed heat. But not fire. Fire was messy. Fire wasted energy heating the air.
He needed *molecular agitation*.
He looked at the broken blade.
"System. Create Blueprint: Molecular Weld."
**[ CALCULATING... ]**
**[ WARNING: PRECISION REQUIRED. MANA COST HIGH. ]**
Sylas gritted his teeth. "Just show me the stress points."
The grid overlay appeared on the broken metal. It zoomed in on the fracture. He saw the jagged crystalline structure of the iron.
He placed his hands on the two pieces of the blade. He pushed them together. They grated, heavy and cold.
He closed his eyes.
He visualized the mana again. Not as rebar this time. As friction.
He pushed his mana into the crack. He ordered the atoms to vibrate. To dance. To get angry.
*Move.*
Nothing happened. The metal remained cold.
He pushed harder. He felt the drain immediately. The headache from last night came roaring back, a tidal wave of pressure. His nose started to bleed, a warm tickle running down to his lip.
*Move.*
He focused on a single point, no bigger than a pinhead, right in the center of the fracture.
*Heat.*
A spark.
Inside the metal, invisible to the eye, the iron atoms panicked. They vibrated against each other. Friction generated heat.
The metal under his fingertips grew warm. Then hot.
Sylas didn't stop. He poured everything he had into that seam. He welded the structure from the inside out.
He wasn't a blacksmith hitting metal until it submitted. He was a diplomat convincing the iron that it was actually one piece, not two.
*Fuse.*
A faint hiss. A wisp of steam curled up from the cold iron.
Sylas gasped and fell back, landing hard on his rear in the dirt.
The world spun. Black spots danced in his vision. He wiped his nose; his hand came away red.
He sat there, panting, his small chest heaving.
He looked at the plow.
The crack was still visible, a hairline scar running down the metal. But the pieces were joined.
He reached out and tapped it with a knuckle.
*Ding.*
It rang true. One solid piece.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't the laminated steel masterpiece he had drawn in the dirt—that was impossible for now. But it was whole.
**[ REPAIR COMPLETE. ]**
**[ DURABILITY: 60%. SUFFICIENT FOR LIGHT DUTY. ]**
Sylas grinned. It was a bloody, exhausted expression.
Sixty percent was enough to finish the south field.
He stood up, his legs shaking. He grabbed a handful of dirt and rubbed it over the weld, dirtying the metal, hiding the unnatural smoothness of the repair.
He pulled the blanket back around his shoulders.
He walked out of the barn.
As he crossed the yard, he saw his father's horse coming back up the drive. Arthur sat in the saddle, slumped, defeated. The smith had likely said no.
Sylas waited on the porch.
Arthur dismounted. He tied the horse to the rail. He looked at his son.
"You should be inside, Sylas. It's freezing."
"I was in the barn," Sylas said.
Arthur sighed. "Don't play in there. It's dangerous."
"I wasn't playing."
Arthur walked past him, reaching for the door handle.
"Papa," Sylas said.
Arthur stopped. He looked down. "What is it?"
"The plow isn't broken."
Arthur blinked. He crouched down, bringing his face level with Sylas. "What?"
"I looked at it. It looked... stuck together."
Arthur stared at him for a second, then shook his head. "Sylas, iron doesn't just stick together. It snapped. I saw it."
"Maybe you should look again," Sylas said. He kept his voice flat, innocent. "Maybe the cold made it shrink back."
Arthur looked at the barn. He looked at the house, where his wife was counting copper. Hope is a cruel thing, but Arthur Vane was a desperate man.
He stood up and walked toward the barn. His steps were heavy, reluctant.
Sylas watched him go.
He waited.
One minute. Two minutes.
Then, a shout.
"Lily! Lilliana!"
Arthur came running out of the barn. He wasn't slumped anymore. He was sprinting through the snow, waving his arms.
"It held! By the gods, it held! It must have been a fracture, not a break!"
He ran past Sylas, bursting into the house.
"Get the hot cider! I can finish the lower acre before sunset!"
The door slammed shut, cutting off his jubilant voice.
Sylas stood alone on the porch. The wind whipped his hair. He wiped the last of the dried blood from under his nose.
**[ QUEST COMPLETE: THE FIRST REPAIR ]**
**[ REWARD: 50 EXP. ]**
**[ MANA CAPACITY INCREASE: +0.5 ]**
He looked at his hands. They were blue with cold, shaking slightly.
He was weak. He was small. He was living in a ruin.
But he had just changed reality.
He turned and walked inside. He needed a nap. And then, tonight, he would start on his left femur.
Building a kingdom was exhausting work.