Kai woke before the bell.
Not because he was rested—because his mind wouldn't stop turning. The carving idea. The grooves. The way resin needed something to hold onto. He'd lain awake for hours, thinking about pressure and angle and the feel of the tool against different materials.
Today, they'd try stone.
He found Milo already in the workshop, hunched over a piece of scrap rock with a worn-down inscription needle. The rock's surface was rough, uneven—nothing like the smooth core blanks they'd eventually need to carve.
"How's it going?" Kai asked.
Milo held up his rock. A single line ran across its surface—crooked, shallow, but present. "It's harder than wood. Takes more pressure. My hand keeps slipping."
Kai picked up his own piece of stone. The same rough texture, the same unyielding surface. He positioned his needle and pressed.
The tool skidded. The line went nowhere.
He tried again, pressing harder. This time, the needle bit into the stone—just barely, just enough to leave a faint scratch. He followed through, fighting the resistance, and managed a line almost two inches long before his hand cramped.
"Progress," he muttered.
Milo snorted. "That's one word for it."
They practiced until their hands shook and the stones were covered in scratches. Some lines were deeper than others. Some were almost straight. None were good enough for a real core.
Kai set his tool down and flexed his fingers. "We need more practice. Different materials. Harder materials."
Milo groaned. "Wood wasn't enough?"
"Wood taught us control. Stone teaches us pressure." Kai picked up a small piece of scrap metal from the bin—leftover from some engineering project, thin and flat. "Next is metal."
Milo stared at the metal like it had personally offended him. "You want to carve metal? With these tiny needles?"
"We need to build strength. Metal's harder than stone. Core blanks are harder than metal." Kai positioned the needle against the metal. Pressed. Nothing happened. Pressed harder. The needle skidded across the surface, leaving no mark.
Milo watched. "So... that's a failure?"
Kai examined the needle. The tip was slightly blunted. "It's data. The needle's not strong enough for metal. We need better tools for harder materials."
"Then how do we practice for core hardness?"
Kai thought about it. "We don't. Not directly. We build strength on stone, then trust that core blanks are different—smoother, more uniform. The hardness matters, but so does the surface."
Milo frowned. "That sounds like guessing."
"It's informed guessing." Kai picked up his stone again. "Keep practicing."
They practiced for three more days.
Wood, then stone, then back to wood to compare. Kai's lines grew straighter, more consistent. He learned to feel the resistance, to adjust his pressure, to let the tool do the work instead of forcing it. Milo improved too—slower, but steady.
On the fourth day, Kai decided they were ready.
He pulled out a practice-grade core blank—cheap, meant for ruining—and set it on his station. Milo watched from his own station, a similar blank in front of him.
"This is it," Kai said. "We carve first. Then resin. No drawing on the surface."
Milo swallowed. "If we ruin these, we're out two credits each."
"I know."
Kai picked up a different tool—not the inscription needle, but something smaller, sharper. A carving needle. He'd found it in a drawer at his station, left by some previous student. The tip was fine, precise, meant for cutting rather than drawing.
He positioned it at the edge of the blank.
Pressed.
The core resisted. Harder than wood, harder than stone—smoother, denser, more uniform. But his weeks of practice had built something. His hand knew how to apply pressure without shaking. His eyes knew how to follow a straight line.
He carved.
The groove appeared—faint, shallow, but there. A line cut into the core's surface, exactly where he wanted it. He kept going, tracing the detection pattern he'd memorized from the library booklet. Circle. Line. Line. Line. Each stroke removing a tiny amount of material, leaving a channel behind.
When he finished, he set the carving needle down and picked up his inscription tool.
"Now the resin," he said quietly.
He dipped the needle in the vial, letting the liquid cling to the metal. Then, carefully, he traced the grooves he'd carved. The resin flowed into the channels, settling perfectly, following the path he'd cut.
Kai set the tool down. "Now we wait. Let it dry. Then we'll see whether our theory works."
Milo stared at the core. "How long?"
"An hour. Maybe two."
They waited.
Kai couldn't focus on anything else. He tried practicing on wood, but his mind kept drifting to the core sitting on his station. Would the resin hold? Would the grooves be deep enough? Would the pattern function?
Milo was worse. He paced, fidgeted, checked the core every five minutes. "Is it dry yet? What about now? Now?"
"It's been ten minutes, Milo."
"Feels like ten hours."
Finally, Kai couldn't wait any longer. He picked up the core and held it to the light. The resin had settled, clear and smooth, filling the grooves perfectly.
He fed a tiny thread of Aether into it.
The pattern glowed—faintly, briefly—and then stabilized.
It worked.
Not perfectly. Not beautifully. The glow was uneven, the response sluggish. But it worked. The detection pattern was active. The core was no longer blank.
Kai stared at it.
Milo appeared at his shoulder. "Holy—" He stopped himself. "It worked?"
"It worked." Kai's voice was quiet. "It actually worked."
Milo grabbed his own core. "Then mine has to work too. Show me exactly what you did."
Kai walked him through it—the carving tool first, cutting the grooves, then the inscription needle tracing the path with resin. Milo tried. Failed. Tried again. Failed again. On his third attempt, he managed grooves that almost matched Kai's.
They filled them with resin together. Waited. Tested.
Milo's core glowed even weaker than Kai's—uneven, flickering—but it glowed.
"We did it," Milo whispered. "We actually did it."
Kai nodded slowly. "We did."
The next day, they took their cores to Ms. Venn.
She examined each one in silence, holding them up to the light, running her finger over the grooves. Her expression didn't change.
"Where did you learn to carve?" she asked.
Kai hesitated. "We figured it out. Practice."
Ms. Venn looked at him for a long moment. Then she set the cores down and slid six credits across the counter—three for each.
"Don't waste them," she said.
Kai nodded and took the credits.
As they turned to leave, Ms. Venn spoke again. "Entoma."
He paused.
"You're not the first to figure that out. You won't be the last." Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "There are things in this track that don't get written down. Techniques that get passed around quietly. Unwritten rules." She almost smiled. "You just learned the first one."
Kai stared at her. "Why don't they teach it?"
"Because some things are better learned than taught." She turned back to her ledger. "Now go. You have credits to spend."
Kai thought about her words all day.
Unwritten rules. Things better learned than taught.
He watched other Support students in the workshop, paying attention to how they worked. Some struggled like he had, drawing resin on smooth surfaces, watching it fail. But a few—the ones who'd been here longer—worked differently. They used two tools. They carved first. They traced after.
He'd assumed he was alone in his discovery. Now he realized he wasn't.
During the afternoon session, Holt lectured on core housing—the protective shells students built around their inscribed cores to prevent the patterns from rubbing off. Kai listened differently now, hearing the assumptions behind the words.
They teach us to build shells because they assume the pattern will be exposed. They assume the resin will sit on top. But if the pattern is carved... if the resin sits in grooves... the shell becomes optional.
He looked at the core on his station. The one he'd carved. The one that worked.
How many students figured this out? How many kept it to themselves?
At the end of the day, Kai walked through the workshop, looking at other students' finished cores. Most were smooth on the surface—pattern drawn, not carved. But a few... a few had faint lines visible under the resin. Faint grooves. Carved patterns.
He stopped at one station where a quiet girl—Term 2, Support Track—was packing up. Her core sat on the table, freshly inscribed. Kai looked at it. Looked at her.
She met his eyes. Held his gaze for a moment. Then she picked up her core and walked away without a word.
Kai understood.
She knows. She figured it out too. And she's not going to tell anyone either.
He walked back to his station, mind churning.
Unwritten rules. Secrets passed around quietly. Things better learned than taught.
He thought about Ms. Venn's words. You're not the first. You won't be the last.
But how many are there? How many unwritten rules? How many secrets do the seniors keep?
He looked at his carved core. The one that worked. The one that proved he'd figured something out.
I'm part of it now. Whether I want to be or not.
Milo found him later, bouncing with excitement. "Fifteen credits! We have fifteen credits! Do you know what we can buy with fifteen credits?"
Kai didn't answer. He was still thinking about the quiet girl. About Ms. Venn's words. About the weight of knowing something others didn't.
"Kai?" Milo frowned. "You okay?"
Kai looked at him. Should he tell Milo? Share what he'd realized? Or was this another unwritten rule—that some things stayed between those who figured them out?
He made a decision.
"We need to practice more," he said. "Wood, stone, maybe metal if we can find better tools. We need to get better at carving before we try more cores."
Milo nodded eagerly. "Yeah, yeah, of course. But fifteen credits, Kai! We can buy—"
"Later." Kai stood. "Let's practice."
Milo followed, still talking, still excited. Kai let the words wash over him, not really listening.
His mind was elsewhere.
Unwritten rules. Secrets. And now I'm part of them.
He didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
But he knew one thing for certain: he would never look at the Support Track the same way again.