GLITCH.
A brand I have been with for as long as I can remember.
What does it mean exactly?
Imagine this: in a world where humans are born with specially allocated spell slots, a certain kid finds himself with a body that has zero slots but a high mana- sensing ability.
Basically, he can't cast or memorise spells.
And what happens when I try, hehehehe, the world punishes me for it.
Sometimes spells short-circuit; others misfire.
But what really got me good is that once my fulmen spell rebounded and clung to my arms.
That's why I decided to learn the basics and wait for miracles to happen.
I can still feel it crawling right now as I show my trophies to the little phoenix in front of me.
Her scars are just like mine, but the difference is that hers result from continuous rebounds- meaning she studied and practised a single spell multiple times, most of which caused rebounds.
Kaelin's hand, clutching tightly at mine, breaks my inner immersion.
"How is this possible?" Kaelin asks.
"Well, let' s say I'm one of those one in a million cases," Eylin answers.
Her eyes track his scars before
"Does it hurt?"
"Nope…totally fine," Eylin says while tucking his scars into the linen wraps before turning to Remy. "So what do you say?"
"Uhm, well, let' s see where this will get us," she replies, the corner of her lips lifting slightly.
Eylin smiles lightly before turning towards Kaelin, palm open. "It' s done, how about handing over what you promised?"
A sigh escapes her lips before throwing him a single drawer with glowing runes at the bottom of it.
He catches it mid- air, eyes shining brightly.
"Hello, lovely," he whispers before turning and waving towards the women. "Meet you guys later," before disappearing into the portal.
" That' s an interesting aspect you've got there," Remy says.
"Yeah, a handful indeed," she sighs before throwing a token towards Remy.
"Meet you at this location tomorrow," she adds before phasing out.
"Well, that went well," Remy whispers before going back to watching the skies.
Meanwhile, Eylin`s figure appears in the middle of his room, only to find the siblings there.
Jack, leaning on the wall beside the window, is clearly lost in thought.
Jessy flinches slightly at his gaze before leaning towards her brother.
He turns his head in their direction before shrugging his shoulders lightly.
" I guess you don't have a place to stay?" he asks as he moves towards his work desk.
Jack nods to his question before asking, "So it's you, huh?"
"Yep, and I don't have the time right now. Any questions should be directed to Kaelin."Eylin answers as he places the drawer and puts on the concentration glasses he had just bought.
The siblings get his message and head out so as to get rid of any chances of distracting Eylin.
He pulls his notebook out from the drawers under the workbench before skimming through the contents at the speed of light.
He pulls his glasses against his nose bridge, whispering to himself.
"Gotta thank her for the gifts," he says, hands running through the sets of engraving tools that Kaelin had gifted him before ditching him for some other business.
"Okay, now let's see," he begins his analysis.
Looking through the set-up of the runic spell circle, something becomes extremely clear to him.
"Wow, such artistry."
Yep, artistry is what best describes what his eyes are staring at.
A set of four clearly drawn rings stacked on top of each other to produce a single result, a float.
He opens his notebook to a blank page before he starts to copy what he`s seeing.
Outer ring first, sixteen sides, the lines meeting at angles he has to measure twice because they are too precise to be freehand.
"Whoever engraved this had tools," he whispers to no one in particular.
Sixteen sides, he writes.
Why sixteen?
Textbook runes have a minimum of eight and a maximum of twelve?
"Sixteen sure is harder to form, so why?"
Whoever built it sure wasn't in a hurry, as he takes thirty minutes to complete the first ring.
He moves on to the second ring inside it.
Smaller.
Roughly forty per cent of the outer boundary`s area.
He measures it with his thumb and the edge of his pen, approximately, but close enough.
Different geometry.
Rounder, almost.
Where the outer ring was angular and precise, this one had subtle curves between its vertices.
Like it's trying to be a circle but hasn't quite committed.
"Outer ring is sharp."
"Inner ring is soft."
"They`re not the same language," he notes this down and stares at it.
Not the same language.
Different authors?
Or same author, different intent?
He moves to the third ring.
Smaller still, nested inside the second.
He leans closer, "This one is delicate."
The lines are barely a millimetre wide.
He almost misses that it isn't symmetrical at all.
Every other ring has some form of rotational consistency, but this one is slightly heavier on the left side.
Weighted. Like a scale that has been deliberately set off-balance.
"Why would you build asymmetry into-"
He stops.
Set his pen down.
Picks up the drawer and tilts it left.
The resistance is stronger on the left side. He tilts it right, with less resistance.
The thing corrects back towards the level faster when he pushes from the right than from the left.
"You're correcting for something," he thinks. "The third ring isn't balanced because the effect isn't balanced. It's compensating for a lean. Stabilising."
He writes it down: ring 3 — stabilisation. Asymmetry encodes directional correction. Not decorative. Functional.
Then he looks at the fourth ring, and it's insultingly small.
Sitting at the geometric centre of everything else, barely larger than his thumbnail.
He assumes that it is decorative— a finishing mark, the way some craftsmen signed their work.
But it isn`t a signature.
It is too precise for that and has something the other three don`t: tiny, almost microscopic lines radiating outward from its centre, each one terminating exactly at the inner boundary of ring 3. Connecting to it.
He counts the lines.
Twelve.
Then checks ring 3`s vertices.
Twelve.
"You`re touching every vertex of every ring inward from here, aren't you?"
He checks.
Ring 3 has twelve connection points.
Ring 2 has eight.
Ring 1– the outermost– has sixteen; the lines from ring 4 don't reach that far directly.
They reach ring 3, and ring 3`s geometry shares boundary points with ring 2, and ring 2 with ring 1.
It isn't connecting to them directly.
It is connecting to the system.
"You're not a spell," he thinks, looking at the small centra rune."You`re a — you`re maintenance. You`re making sure the others don`t forget what they`re doing."
His hands move through the page,s ink plastered all across them.
Three pages, diagrams on two of them, arrows connecting observations to questions to half-answers.
The float mechanism is ring 2– that much he is confident about now. The curved geometry produces lift without a sharp force vector, which explains why the drawer hovers instead of launching.
Ring 1 constrains the effect to the object itself, which is why the shelves around it aren't floating.
Ring 3 keeps it level.
Ring 4 keeps all three of them alive indefinitely without a caster holding focus.
Four problems.
Four solutions.
Nested so each one operates inside the boundary of the previous, their fields overlapping just enough that–
He stops again.
"Their fields overlap."
He looks at the rings.
The deliberate gap between each boundary is small, consistent, and not accidental.
The overlap is doing something.
Where two fields share space, something happens that neither produces alone.
And that is not found in any textbook.
He writes down: overlap zones between rings may be producing partial framer-layer interaction. Neither rune reaches layer 2 alone. Together at the boundary– maybe. Needs testing. Needs a sample I can afford to break.
He looks at the drawer.
Then, in the notebook.
"Note to self," he thinks, "find a second drawer before I start breaking things."
He stands from his desk, moving towards the cupboard beside his bed.
"Dismantling isn't gonna kill me,e right?" he says as he uses his dagger to dismantle the cupboard completely.
Finished with that, he moves towards the door, confirming that it's locked.
"No distractions allowed."
After his movements are done, he takes the notebook in hand and sets it beside the broken wood on the ground.
His body drops with a thud, setting his apparatus beside him.
"Okay, first replicate the anchor before moving on."
He grabs a piece of wood the size of a plate.
"This will do," he whispers.
His inscribing pen dips into deep blue ink before splattering on the wood.
The thumbsized rune`s image burns in his mind`s eye. He doesn't look at the notebook again.
Wrist against the wood, he begins his struggles.
The central body forms first. His hands move with the efficiency resulting from practice.
Four failures finally bleed to a near-perfect ring with the edges almost meeting.
Next comes the twelve lines extending outwards originating from a single point at the centre, each one at a specific angle and terminating at a specific length.
The variance between each radiating line is less than a millimetre across the whole structure.
He leans back slightly, beads of sweat flowing through his forehead to his neck.
Veins form beside his eyes due to the strain.
The corner of his lips rises slightly in triumph as he looks at his first success.
He awaits a reaction, only to be disappointed since layer 4 doesn't function on its own.
"Layer 4 done now, time to make it float."
The second layer follows next within the fourth layer.
"Not following the original schematic, lest I get arrested for copyright issues," he says to himself, laughing slightly.
His hand steadies, moving with clear, deliberate strokes.
The final stroke connects. The piece of wood doesn`t just float but jerks up to his eye level.
He stretches his arm reaching for his pen, but it rolls sideways.
A wood splinter floats right beside his eyelid, while the other pieces beside him start to rattle, waiting to take flight.
"It's leaking," he says.
But that's not all, the scars beneath his wraps begin pulsing as pain shoots up his arms.
He bites his tongue, drops of blood forming at the corner of his lips, the metallic tang grounding him from the pain.
"Ruthless as ever," he whimpers, reaching for his pen, trying so hard not to drown in it.
One hand hold the source of chaos down while the other attempts to lock in the chaos.
His hands move in chaotic sequence, his sight blurring.
Gritting his teeth through it all, a messy yet functional layer forms outside the anchor, locking everything in.
With that, the phenomenon comes to an abrupt stop.
Thud, thud, thud, the objects beside him hit the ground, but he notices none of this.
After a while, the pain finally subsides.
With a groan, he takes up his notebook.
Note: Make sure the scope rune comes first next time.
He looks at the source of his troubles, and there it is, floating but not steadily.
In front of him is a wooden piece floating in multiple directions at once.
He takes it in his grasp and draws the 3rd layer within the 2nd layer, giving the whole thing a stabilising effect.
A result of that is the floating piece of wood in front of him.
His lips stretch so wide, showcasing his wisdom teeth to the whole world.
"Hahaha, it works, now it's time to tinker with it." his eyes shine dollar signs, taking form as fantasies of the result of his tinkering run through him.
He grabs his trusted notebook, flipping through the pages rapidly.
"Where to start…"
He flips through once, twice, thrice, then halts.
On the page, a diagram of the 4th layer, 12 lines.
"What happens when I add a new line? Since the rest makes it adaptive, then a new one will do something different. I wonder what."
Not planning to stop on the theory, he takes up a new piece of wood and goes through the previous sequence of drawing the entire layer.
This time around, he focuses on the radiating lines, making space for one more.
This leads to a reduction in the variance, making the whole thing appear congested.
"Whoof, that sure is tiring," he says, wiping a drop of sweat from his eyebrows.
The first and second layers follow next,t but the result ends up like the last.
"Well, that's a bummer," he says while inspecting the rune.
He leans in closer, his breath hitching as he traces the crowded ink of the thirteenth line. His scars prickle. A stray spark of mana—a leak he didn't even authorise—slips from his fingertip and brushes the new vector.
The reaction is instantaneous.
There is no hum, only a sharp, violent crack of displaced air.
The wood vanishes from his grip, a blurred streak of brown that buries itself two inches deep into the stone wall.
The room goes dead silent.
What really brings shivers down his spine is the voice that follows after the brief silence.
"Seems like you're stuck on bringing my house down, little kitty."