——————————————————

  Sunday, October 9th, 2253 – 5:45 am

  Jeremiah’s Apartment

  ——————————————————

  The alarm hit 5:45 and shrieked, but Jeremiah was already awake. Sleep had come in fits; shallow, scattered dreams broken by bursts of restless thought. He lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling, the faint cracks in the plaster blurring against the dim pre-dawn light. His body felt heavy, but his mind hummed, replaying Ulrick’s words and the memory of threads twisting through the crystal cube.

  With a groan, he pushed himself upright. The sheets clung damp to his back, and the chill air of the apartment raised goosebumps along his arms. He sat at the edge of the mattress, palms pressed to his knees, and rubbed the grit from his eyes.

  “So much for learning magic,” he muttered, voice raw.

  His words hung in the silence, half amusement, half complaint. Ulrick had warned him, of course. Magic wouldn’t come in a single night. The baker had insisted on foundations first, and above all else. And foundations were exactly what Jeremiah had been given.

  Ulrick has spent hours lecturing Jeremiah on esoteric concepts and theories. Most of which went over his head, though he managed to grasp the core of it.

  Mages, Ulrick explained, used their affinities like tuning forks. By learning to listen to the notes their affinity played, they could draw in mana that sang to the same tune. With that, they could pluck at the threads of their greater resonance — the weave of their very souls. Loosening those individual threads, aspects as Ulrick called them, made a mage more sensitive to mana as a whole.

  Eventually, the more skilled would go further, manipulating and reshaping those aspects into new patterns that sang closer to their affinity. Jeremiah had seen the result in Ulrick’s lattice, a harmony of growth and decay woven so tightly it felt inevitable.

  It was a long, grueling process, yet this was the primary way mages ‘grew’.

  The whole exercise had felt rather similar to meditation — long stretches of sitting still, breathing slowly, and reaching for some intangible thread with nothing but stubborn will. Yet it drained him in a way no quiet reflection ever had. Trying to ‘sing’ with the mana pulled at him like a weight hooked behind his ribs, leaving his chest tight and his head light. After barely half an hour, he was already slick with sweat, lungs dragging for air.

  That was when Jeremiah realized how tightly he had clung to the naive hope that the System might hand him some shortcut into magic. It had already shaped his affinity into a skill, after all. Surely it would smooth the way further, ease the first steps. But even after two hours of practice, the most he had managed was a faint tingling at the edge of his perception — a ghost of something just out of reach — while his body ached as if he had been dragged through a marathon and left sore for the effort.

  He stood, joints stiff, and padded barefoot across the cool floor. His apartment was small, one room pulling the weight of three, but it was his, and that was enough. He filled the kettle and set it on the stovetop. The burner clicked three times before catching with a low whoosh of blue flame. As the water heated, Jeremiah moved through his morning routine — brushing his teeth, splashing his face until the chill shocked him fully awake, tugging on a shirt that didn’t smell too strongly of the shop.

  The mirror over the sink caught him off guard. His eyes looked sunken, but behind them… something else lingered. A brightness. Not confidence, not yet, but the faintest spark of direction. Had it truly been only two weeks since the System had reshaped his life? It felt like a lifetime.

  What would the Jeremiah of two weeks ago have said if he could see this version of himself now?

  He pulled away before the kettle began to scream. Pouring the water over cheap grounds, he breathed in the bitter steam and let it settle the last of the night’s haze. He sipped, wincing at the heat, then lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the floor. It wasn’t Sally’s brew — he left that exclusively for the shop — but it wasn’t the worst he’d had.

  Then, he tried once more to do what Ulrick had taught him.

  He set the mug aside and closed his eyes, palms open on his knees. His breath slowed, each inhale deliberate, each exhale a measured release. Ulrick’s words echoed in his mind:

  Find the thread of your own song, hum along with it, let it guide you into the greater weave.

  Simple enough on paper, but actually doing so was another matter entirely.

  At first, all he found was the thud of his heartbeat in his ears. The faint creak of pipes in the walls. The low, steady murmur of the street beyond his window. He pressed past those noises, stretching inward, reaching for something deeper — something that resonated with the quiet hum he imagined at his core.

  And then, faintly, he felt it. A thrumming. A small not-sound, a pressure brushing against the edge of his senses, as if muffled voices whispered from behind a wall too thick to make anything out. So quiet you begin to question whether you ever heard anything in the first place.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Seconds dragged into minutes. The sensation lingered, growing only by the smallest measure. Each time he reached for it with his will, it dissolved, slipping through his grasp like mist and vanishing back into the greater song.

  Five times Jeremiah forced himself through the cycle. Each attempt brought him to the thread a little quicker, but by the fifth, he was gasping, chest tight, cold sweat running down his spine. His arms shook, refusing to steady, and the fragile hum of mana slipped out of reach. Concentration scattered like sand through his fingers.

  With a groan, he stretched his sore muscles and pushed himself upright. “Just like Ulrick said — location matters,” he muttered under his breath. The baker had explained that the process grew easier, his senses sharper, when practiced in places steeped with mana that matched one’s affinity. Understanding the details of one’s affinity wasn’t just philosophy; it meant the difference between fumbling in the dark and real progress.

  If he had understood correctly, a place like the ocean’s shore would serve him best. Not only was it thick with oceanic mana, but it was a threshold, the line between land and sea — a liminal place where tides both begin and end. And in such places, Ulrick had promised, one’s song always rang louder.

  Jeremiah let out a breath, wiping the sweat from his brow as he shuffled back toward the counter. His coffee had gone lukewarm, but he took another sip anyway, grimacing at the bitter taste. Finding the right place to practice was easier said than done. The nearest stretch of ocean lay days away by bus, and tickets out of Prima City proper were expensive, for more than one reason.

  So Ulrick had saddled him with homework.

  A short laugh broke from his chest before he could stop it. “Homework,” he muttered. “Even with magic, I still end up with bloody homework.”

  The sound of his own voice broke the quiet of the apartment, and he shook his head, amused. Ulrick’s grin echoed in his memory as he’d set Jeremiah on the task.

  If you can’t reach the ocean, then think of other places your affinity might resonate with. Not just water, or ocean, but each of its aspects is an opportunity.

  He sighed, heavy and resigned, then crossed to the battered desk shoved into the far corner. The wood had been dented and gouged long before it had ever been his, but it was one of the few pieces that had followed him from the old place. From elementary school all the way through college, Jeremiah had spent countless hours sitting at this desk and studying.

  A half-broken chair squeaked as he sat. A notebook lay waiting, its pages already bent at the corners. He flipped it open, thumbing past the first few pages of rambling thoughts until he found the crude list he’d started.

  Ink blotches stained the margins where his pen had lingered too long. His own shorthand filled the lines: notes from Ulrick’s lectures, bits of overheard talk from the Crossroads, his own guesses about what might serve as a substitute for the ocean shore.

  His eyes lingered on the first bullet.

  A Lake.

  He tapped the pen against the word, chewing on his lip. A lake was obvious. It was large, full of water, steeped in the mana of its element. But… a lake was an endpoint. A place where rivers stopped and stilled. His chest tightened with unease as he thought back to the threads he had seen in the cube — the way they pressed forward, weaving through the chaos. Such stillness didn’t feel like the ocean. Not his ocean, at least.

  He flipped the page.

  Rivers?

  That word drew a quiet hum from his throat. Rivers moved. They connected towns, cities, and even whole nations. They carved through land, shifting and grinding and carrying life with them. Rivers didn’t have the deep saturation of mana a lake might, but the conceptual pull fit.

  Transition. Connection…

  Two ideas that had sung to him the moment the blue cords threaded through his mess of resonance.

  He scribbled a quick note in the margin:

  Check the river south of Market Street.

  But he didn’t stop there. His eyes traveled down the list. Bridges. Crossroads. Old wells. Each idea circled back to the same theme Ulrick had pressed into him: liminal spaces. Places where one thing shifted into another. A bridge wasn’t water, but it joined shores. A crossroads carried no tide, but it bound paths together. Wells were even more static than a lake, but they were places where people gathered and connected.

  He leaned back, rubbing at the grit in his eyes. “There’s no perfect answer,” he muttered. His pen rolled down the slant of the notebook, clattering to the desk. “Guess that’s the point.”

  The alarm shrieked again through the small apartment, and Jeremiah jerked hard enough that his mug nearly toppled off the desk. He slapped at the clock with a curse, heart thudding.

  6:35.

  His stomach dropped. He had meant to sit down for ten minutes, fifteen at most — not half an hour.

  “Damn it.” He shoved back from the chair, quickly closing the notebook as he lurched upright. The pen rolled to the floor and clattered under the desk. Jeremiah ignored it, already stumbling through the last of his morning routine with clumsy speed. Toothbrush, shirt, boots — all in a blur.

  He stopped short only when he reached Billy’s tank.

  “Alright, bud, up and—”

  He paused.

  Billy was already awake.

  The little kraken floated near the glass, limbs curled in a loose cluster. His eyes tracked Jeremiah with unusual stillness, pupils dilating and contracting as if adjusting to a light Jeremiah couldn’t see. The sensation through their link prickled — not the easy, playful ripple of hunger or impatience he expected in the morning, but a steady curiosity.

  Jeremiah froze with one arm half-raised. “What?” he asked, his voice softer than he meant. “What’s that look for?”

  Billy didn’t answer, of course, but the weight of the bond deepened. Curiosity, puzzlement, a kind of quiet awe, as if Jeremiah had walked in with his shirt on backwards and the little beast was trying to piece together what it meant.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, forcing a crooked smile. “Sorry. Guess I’m late. Got… distracted.” The words came out sheepishly. “Didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

  Billy tilted in the water, tentacles curling lazily, that same curious hum still trickling across the bond.

  Jeremiah shifted, then grinned faintly. “Tell you what — how about we call it even with breakfast? We’ll stop by Ulrick’s for an éclair. What do you say?”

  The change was instant. The heavy curiosity split into a sharp burst of excitement, bubbles streaming as Billy shot to the surface. Water sheared away, wrapping him in a glistening shell of his bubble armor.

  Jeremiah laughed as the little kraken burst free, droplets scattering across the floor. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  Billy bobbed in the air by the door, tentacles flicking, the bond bright with anticipation. Jeremiah grabbed his bag, still grinning as he followed after. Their day had begun.