Daniel Newwyn

Chapter 60

Severa took two steps into the center of the casting square then turned to him. Her brows arched like she was preparing to grade him before he even started.

“I assume,” she began with a voice so weirdly gentle, “you know how to spiral your flame clockwise?”

Fabrisse gave her a sunny smile he absolutely did not feel. “I, well, yes, if I can ignite my flame.”

Her eye...

Chapter 59

“If you find yourself alone, please find someone to accompany you immediately. If you’re not in class, please be in class,” Lorvan had warned Fabrisse.

That was why he’d come to Flame Thaumaturgy I lecture today. And he hated Flame Thaumaturgy.

He didn’t understand why the founder of the discipline had named it Twelvefold Flame, as if setting things on fire twelve...

Chapter 58

Uh oh. Fabrisse realized he’d said something he shouldn’t have said.

He gawked at Lorvan and attempted telepathic screaming by wiggling his brow. How much do I tell him? How much do I tell him?! It did not seem to work.

Rolen leaned back in his chair and set his teacup down. He regarded Fabrisse with the expression of someone watching a cat slowly roll itself o...

Chapter 57

Rolen set down the teacup and steepled his fingers. “What do you remember about the exact moment the dimensional pressure hit? Did your body feel heavy? Were there distortions in sound? Or perhaps, peripheral movement?”

“Well, uh . . .” How do I touch his nose? He’s like two meters away from me. And I don’t have long arms.

“Start with the aether signature,” ...

Chapter 56

Mercy the Clucklebeak loved rye bread. Fabrisse had test multiple types of bread to see if any held Mercy’s attention as much as the beloved rye, and it had proved to be a difficult task.

Mercy paddled in delighted circles across the surface of the North Pond, trailing little spirals of ripples behind him like calligraphy strokes. The moment Fabrisse tossed a chunk of rye bread into the...

Chapter 55

Studying is boring if you don’t understand anything. And that’s what was happening to Fabrisse on his first tutoring session.

He was in the East Archive’s fourth-tier courtyard, seated on a stone bench that was so cold and damp it must’ve absorbed the last three rainstorms. His posture was excellent. His emotional output was garbage.

Across from him, seated on a low-wrought ...

Chapter 53

The date had been set for his Synaptic Resonance practical retake: two weeks from now, on Tuesday. And Fabrisse had become increasingly confident he’d be able to fully recognize the basic synaptic thread in time.

[Basic Synaptic Thread Recognition: 40% Progress]

The fact that he could track his improvements tangibly did wonders for his confidence. If he could keep...

Chapter 51

Fabrisse found himself back in the Stratatal Wing less than twenty-four hours after nearly being disqualified from it. Min Hajin was already there when he walked in, bending over a glass viewing trough that shimmered faintly with internal aether. He didn’t look up. “You’re two minutes early.”

“Good morning, Assistant,” Fabrisse muttered. He made his way to the side counter whe...

Chapter 50

Cuman leaned forward with a triumphant scoff. “See? Even Rhel—”

“—But,” Rhel continued, eyes still fixed on the floor, “Cuman already had flairs drawn. I could feel that, too. And everyone knows how he gets when there’s a crowd.”

Cuman blinked. “Wait. What?”

“I’m just saying,” Rhel went on, still speaking to the marble tiles, “if I’d be...

Chapter 49

The Hall of Conduct was far too dramatic for what it was designed to handle. The arched ceilings and polished runes on the walls were said to be powered from the aether pools contributed by the Archmagi themselves, tuned to detect lies. At the center were three curved benches of disciplinary authority. Behind them sat Magus Exemplar Nora Norraden, famed for breaking a blood-heir’s career with...

Chapter 48

The first person to hear about the incident was Lugano. Luckily, not Lorvan. Liene Lugano.

“TOM!” Her voice hit the far side of the Kinesthetic Ring like a sonic sigil. “Why did you NOT tell me you came back?”

She stormed across the field as she reached the pie shop where Fabrisse and Tommaso were at, the one near the east quadrangle, tucked behind the rune-inscribed water c...

Chapter 47

You could always find Cuman Gollivur in the Kinesthetic Ring.

It was his natural habitat—half athletic arena, half performance stage. At any given hour, he was sparring someone dumber than him or bullying someone quieter than him, grinning like the idea of humility was a stupified Stupenstone.

Right now, he was juggling spellflairs.

Three glowing spheres of compressed aether...

Chapter 46

“So you’re going to stay for the next three months?” Fabrisse asked before shoving the last piece of pie into his half-stuffed mouth.  He balanced his pie tin on one knee, while Tom sat cross-legged beside him, absently flicking sparks between his fingers.

“Yeah,” Tom said. He wasn’t eating any pie. He didn’t even like pie.

They were slouched in their usual spot, ...

Chapter 3

The Eidralith? The stony box that looks like a piece of veined quartz?

He jolted upright in surprise—

—and his satchel tilted.

With a series of cheerful clunk, clink, eleven more hideous, completely useless stones cascaded out and hit the polished sanctum floor like a pocket-sized rockslide. They stopped only when a particularly big ston...

Chapter 45

Fabrisse rubbed his eyes, still not entirely sure he hadn’t inhaled too much channel residue during the Skybrace match.

“W–why are you back?” he asked. “Aren’t you supposed to be off . . . I don’t know, fighting off goblins in the Redscape or throwing fire at warbands in Jorhest?”

Two years older and coming from the same commune of Itakonra as Fabrisse, Tommaso had t...

Chapter 44

The field was emptying.

Instructant Aval had dismissed the class with a casual gesture, and the murmurs of conversation had soon scattered. Fabrisse stayed behind for a moment, kneeling to gather his scrolls at the edge of the chalk circle. Half of them were smeared with grass-stain, the other half crumpled from being sat on.

He needed them. He’d been jotting down notes about quar...

Chapter 43

The whistle pierced the field. Second half.

Cuman’s team came out aggressive.

Verryn and Rhel rotated, swinging wide to draw Severa’s team apart, and Cuman drove center with a tight gust under his feet, the silkball gliding low and fast. All three of them zipped pasta at the same time, and nobody could stop their movement.

The ball bypassed Halma, threaded through a misrea...

Chapter 42

The whistle blared. Play resumed.

Verryn surged forward first this time, chest low and arms out, cradling the silkball between two finely balanced gusts. He had good footwork, better than most, and an uncanny ability to dribble the ball like it was tethered to his stride. For a moment, it looked like Cuman’s team would finally break through Severa’s midfield control.

But as Verr...

Chapter 41

The teams had a minute to discuss the strategy. They formed a circle, and the first thing Severa said was, “We’re playing Power Rotation.”

Halma, a big burly guy, raised a brow, “Power? With him?” His tone was baffled. Power Rotation would mean no keeper, which would mean no backline. 

Larna, a girl with curly blue hair that fizzled like static, eyeing Fabrisse, who s...

Chapter 40

Lorvan left. For a moment, the corridor held its breath.

Fabrisse realized how lucky he’d been. Lorvan knew approximately where he’d be and when he’d be home. Had he not reported his training to Lorvan, his mentor might not even have shown up.

Then came the faint rustle of wards warping, a second flare—if he could call it that, and the distant cracking sound of a shatter-bou...

Chapter 39

Thursday came. Fabrisse was confident he had something to show for to Liene. His mastery progress had gone up to 34%, but there was something else.

SYN (Synaptic Clarity): 4

His Synaptic Control had risen to 4 after Veliane’s guidance. He didn’t know when it happened; he must’ve missed the notification. And it wasn’t like he felt he was doing anything much d...

Chapter 38

The codex dimmed as its final thread faded into stable anchoring. Lorvan stepped away without a word, which, for him, was the closest thing to ‘Good job’ they were likely to get.

Veliane rolled her wrist once, stretching the tension out of her fingers. Fabrisse finished recording the final harmonic note and closed the annotation slate with a quiet tap.

[Observation Compl...