The training yard slowly returned to its grueling, repetitive rhythm.
Below the balcony, the knights continued their sparring, their heavy steel blades clashing in steady, metallic bursts that echoed off the high stone walls. Instructors with voices like gravel barked orders, and groups of sweating trainees practiced lunges against wooden dummies that had been repaired so many times they were more splinters than logs.
But Gill barely noticed the martial display. His eyes were still locked on the scorched patch of dirt where the fireball had struck.
It shouldn't exist. The thought looped in his mind like a broken record.
Fire was a chemical reaction. In his previous life, he knew that to create heat, you needed three things: fuel, heat, and oxygen. You needed a spark to overcome the activation energy. But the mage hadn't used oil. He hadn't pulled a match from his sleeve. He hadn't used any powder that Gill could see. He had simply raised a piece of wood, and the air itself had ignited.
Gill leaned forward, his small chest pressing against the cold stone railing. His mind was racing through possibilities. Was it a pressurized gas? Was the staff a delivery mechanism for a hidden flammable liquid? No. The explosion had been too clean, too sudden.
Lilly noticed the terrifyingly intense focus on his face. She tilted her head, her blonde ponytail swaying. "You look like you're trying to solve a complex math puzzle," she remarked.
Gill didn't look away from the training yard. "I am."
Lilly blinked, surprised by the seriousness in his voice. Most boys his age would be cheering for the explosions or asking to hold a sword.
Gill finally turned toward her, his dark eyes narrowed in thought. "That fire earlier," he said, pointing to the blackened earth. "Where did the matter come from? Where was the fuel?"
Lilly shrugged casually, as if he were asking why the sky was blue. "The mage used mana. I told you."
Gill frowned, his brow furrowing into deep lines that looked out of place on a five-year-old. "Yes, but 'using mana' is a result, not a process. How does the energy transition from an invisible state into a thermal one? What is the catalyst?"
That made Lilly pause. She stared at him for a long moment, her green eyes searching his face. She had been raised by tutors and mages, but no one had ever asked about "thermal transitions."
"Well… they gather mana from the air," she said slowly, trying to find words for something she had always just accepted. "Then they use their will to shape it into a spell. The staff focuses the will so the fire doesn't just burn the mage's hand off."
Gill stared at her, unimpressed. "That doesn't explain anything. That's just a description of the gesture. Fire needs a source of combustion. If mana is the source, then mana must have a physical property that reacts with oxygen. But you said mana is everywhere. If it's everywhere, why aren't we all constantly on fire?"
Lilly crossed her arms, her chin lifting defiantly. "It explains everything to people who aren't being difficult. You don't just 'catch fire' because the mana isn't active yet. The mage makes it active."
Gill shook his head, turning back to the yard. "No. There has to be a law. A rule of conservation. You can't create something from nothing."
Lilly stared at him before letting out a sudden, bright laugh. "You think about things in a weird way, Gill Valencrest. You're like a little old man in a boy's suit."
Gill ignored the jab. One of the mages was preparing another spell. This time, Gill didn't look at the staff. He looked at the air between the mage and the target.
The mage closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. Then, the staff lifted.
Gill felt it. It wasn't a sound or a sight. It was a pressure. It was that same sensation he had felt as an infant, but stronger here, in the presence of an active spell. It felt like the air around the mage had suddenly become "thick," like water swirling toward a drain.
BOOM.
The target dummy shattered again, sending a shower of splinters across the dirt.
Gill's eyes narrowed. He turned back to Lilly, his voice low and urgent. "You said mana is everywhere."
"Yes. I've told you three times now."
"In the air? In the ground? Even in us?"
"Yes," Lilly said, leaning against the railing beside him. "Everything that lives has a rhythm. Everything that exists has a spark. That's what my tutor says."
Gill looked down at his own hands. They looked so mundane. So solid. "Then why can't I feel it? If I'm standing in a sea of energy, why does it just feel like... air?"
Lilly blinked. "You really can't feel it? At all?"
Gill shook his head. "I feel a 'ripple' when they use a big spell, but I can't feel the 'sea' you're talking about."
Lilly reached out, her hand hovering near his. "That's because you're looking with your eyes, not your core. You have to focus."
"I am focusing," Gill snapped, frustrated by the vague terminology. "I'm focusing more than anyone in this yard."
"No," Lilly said, her voice turning uncharacteristically soft. "You're thinking. That's not the same thing. Look."
She closed her eyes. Her expression, usually full of mischief, became unusually calm, almost ethereal. "It's like… feeling the wind," she whispered. "But the wind is everywhere at once, even inside your lungs. It's a hum. A vibration. You don't think about it; you just listen for the note that matches your own."
Gill tried to push aside his skepticism. He closed his eyes. He blocked out the clashing swords, the shouting instructors, and the smell of the charred wood. He focused on his own breathing, then tried to "expand" his awareness to the space around him.
If mana was a field of energy, it had to have a frequency. He tried to imagine the air as a grid of mathematical points. He searched for an anomaly, a deviation in the pressure, a signal in the static.
Seconds passed. Then a minute. He felt the sun on his skin. He felt the vibration of a heavy wagon passing in the distance. But the "invisible sea"? Nothing.
He opened one eye, looking at Lilly, who was still perfectly still.
"This doesn't work," he muttered. "There's no signal."
Lilly opened her eyes and laughed softly, the ethereal mask vanishing. "You only tried for sixty seconds, Gill! You're so impatient."
Gill crossed his arms, his face flushed with a rare touch of embarrassment. "In a well-ordered system, a signal should be detectable immediately if the sensor is calibrated correctly."
"Well, maybe your 'sensor' is broken," Lilly teased. "It took me a whole week of sitting in the silent gardens before I felt my first spark. And my tutor said I was a genius for doing it that fast."
Gill stared back at the training yard. The mages were finished for the day, leaning on their staffs and chatting like laborers at the end of a shift.
Invisible energy. A world built on a foundation he couldn't see. For the first time since his rebirth, Gill Valencrest had encountered a problem that didn't yield to pure logic. It was a variable he couldn't account for, a ghost in the machine.
He rested his chin in his hand, watching the dust settle in the training yard.
"A week?" he asked quietly.
"At least," Lilly replied.
Gill didn't say anything else, but his mind was already calculating. He had a library at home. He had his father's ledgers. And now, he had a goal.
The "Small Disasters" of his toddler years were nothing compared to what was coming. If mana was a science, he would find the formulas. If it was an art, he would learn the strokes. But he would not be blind to the world he lived in.
He looked at Lilly. "I'll do it in three days."
Lilly smirked. "Is that a bet, Valencrest?"
"It's a calculation," Gill replied.