Rhaegalur's cabin appeared through the lingering morning mist like an old giant of stone and wood resting in the heart of Exilia. The silence surrounding it, however, was unusual. There was no whistle from Elara's kettle, nor the rhythmic thud of Rhaegalur's axe against the oak logs.
Crossing the threshold, Hayjin and Zhilian found the kitchen bathed in a cool twilight. On the rough wooden table, right next to a basket of wild apples, stood a sheet of yellowed parchment, weighted down by a smooth stone.
Hayjin stepped closer and read it aloud:
"Dear children, Rhaegalur stopped by to pick me up shortly after you left. He convinced me to accompany him to Opes for a larger grocery run than usual, since we have distinguished guests and young mouths to feed. Knowing Zhilian is with you, Hayjin, we are at peace. We will be back by dinner time. Be good and don't set the forest on fire. — Elara"
Hayjin dropped the note back on the table, rubbing his temples with one hand. "Are they serious? They leave me here with a princess who attracts wolves like honey attracts bees, knowing the Cult could pop out of any bush? I don't believe this..."
Zhilian chimed in with a mischievous smile. "It makes me laugh, their total lack of concern for you. It seems that to them, your life is the equivalent of a trip to the countryside."
Hayjin looked at her, visibly annoyed. "You can't understand, you meddling brat."
Zhilian, who had meanwhile removed her mud-stained cloak, burst into a light laugh.
"Oh, come on Hayjin! Rhaegalur knows exactly what he's doing. If he left us alone, it means he has laid down a protective perimeter that even a high-ranking demon couldn't cross without him noticing. And besides, you have me. I believe I've proven I can handle a couple of overgrown pups."
She turned toward him, her brown hair reflecting the light of the embers still glowing in the fireplace. "We still have a few hours before they return. What do you want to do? Do we want to try training again? Maybe without wolves underfoot, we can find that spark from before. Or... would you prefer to rest and be alone for a bit? You look exhausted."
Hayjin looked out the window, toward the clearing where he had felt like a failure moments ago. The sensation of uselessness still burned in his throat like acid.
"I just want to sleep, Zhilian," he replied curtly. "I'm not a legendary hero and I'm not an academy prodigy. I'm just a tired guy who would like to wake up in his apartment. Go ahead and blow up more trees if you feel like it. I'm going in there."
Zhilian lowered her gaze, a veil of disappointment shadowing her face. "Oh... I see. I'm sorry, Hayjin. I thought... well, it doesn't matter. I'll go practice by myself in the field behind the house then. If you need anything, you know where to find me."
Hayjin lay down on the bedding, staring at the ceiling beams. The silence of the room was broken only by the muffled sounds of Zhilian's light blasts coming from outside short electric cracks followed by the rustle of the wind. The silence inside the cabin was heavy, almost solid. Hayjin was stretched out on the straw and wool pallet, but his body was as rigid as if he were still in the middle of the battle against the wolves. He stared at the grain of the wood on the ceiling, following the knots of the oak with his eyes, but his mind was elsewhere.
The same story again, he thought, and the thought was like a blade sinking into an open wound.
He began to think. His mind, free from external stimuli, brought him back to his world.
He saw his apartment again, the calculated mess of his quantum physics notes, the reflection of rain on the windows of the bus he took every morning. He remembered the sleepless nights spent studying so as not to disappoint his professors' expectations, to not be "just another ordinary student."
He saw himself at twenty, hunched over books while his peers laughed outside the pubs. He remembered the constant pressure, that invisible weight on his sternum that never left him. In the human world, Hayjin had never been "enough." Despite the high marks, despite his superior intelligence, there was always someone with more funding, someone with more contacts, someone who arrived a second before him at a discovery. He had always lived in a state of perennial nervousness, his hands shaking slightly while calibrating machinery, terrified by the idea that a single error could invalidate years of sacrifice.
"It's the same thing here," he told himself, gritting his teeth. "I've arrived in a world of gods and dragons and I'm still at the back of the line. I'm disappointing Elara, who expects me to become strong. I'm disappointing Rhaegalur, who saved my life. I'm even disappointing that girl, who thinks I can be her study partner."
"In the end, it always ends like this… I always disappoint the people who care about me. I can never accomplish anything. Nothing has changed… whether I'm part of this world or another, I'll always be… useless."
"And now? What has changed?" he asked himself bitterly.
Death had caught him just as he was trying to push another limit, yet that traumatic passage between worlds had not reset his soul. He felt like faulty software installed on new hardware.
"I'm in a child's body, in a world where people summon dragons with a thought, yet I'm still that nervous, frightened boy watching others triumph from the back of the room. I studied physics like a madman, yet here... here a girl can pulverize a wolf with a gesture, while I can barely wet its nose."
The humiliation suffered in the clearing burned more than the Mark on his neck. He remembered Zhilian's look it wasn't malicious, it was worse: it was a look of pity. The same pity he received from his tutors when his experiments failed.
"Nothing has changed," he growled to himself, feeling tears of frustration prick the corners of his eyes. "I died for what…? To escape that pressure? And now it's even here, maybe even worse than before..."
"Damn it… why… why does everything always go wrong for me…"
"If I disappoint Rhaegalur, I'll die again. If I disappoint Elara, I'll destroy the only kindness I've received. And if I disappoint myself... I'll be trapped in this life forever."
The anger toward himself suddenly exploded. He sat up and began striking his head with his knuckles, as if wanting to drive out the weakness.
"Wake up! Wake up, you useless fool!" he whispered through clenched teeth.
"What good is your brain if you don't know how to use it?"
"Wake up, idiot! You can't go back home if you're not even capable of lighting a match. Do you want to die here like a useless child?"
The physical pain served to break the vicious cycle of thoughts. He stopped, his breath ragged, his knuckles reddened. He looked at his small hands and, suddenly, a cold clarity pushed through the chaos.
"Wait. Why am I trying to be a mage according to their rules? I am not an inhabitant of Alius. I am an inhabitant of my world."
He remembered a fundamental postulate: energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is transformed. If mana was energy, then it had to respond to thermodynamic laws. He didn't need a grimoire or a magic formula in a dead language. He needed an equation.
He stood up abruptly. Determination injected a cold adrenaline into his veins. Determination replaced the nervousness. That pressure that previously crushed him suddenly became the fuel for his engine. He rose from the bedding, no longer as a frightened child, but as a researcher who has just found the missing variable.
He strode out of the cabin, reaching Zhilian who was creating small spheres of light that danced between her fingers.
"Hey!" Hayjin shouted.
"Zhilian!" he yelled, and the princess turned, surprised, noticing that the boy's gaze had changed: it was no longer dull, but burning with a cold, calculating light.
Zhilian stopped, surprised. "Hayjin? Are you alright? You have a red mark on your forehead... I thought you wanted to sleep."
"The mark doesn't matter. The fatigue doesn't matter," he said, approaching with long strides. "I want to go back to training. Now. But enough with this fairy-tale magic. I want to try a method this world has never seen. If I can't use the magic of Opes, I'll use the physics of my world to see if this mana can be manipulated even without spells."
Zhilian was enchanted by this transformation. She saw in him a strength that wasn't mana, but pure intellectual will. "A different method? What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm going to stop praying for nature to help me," Hayjin replied, getting into position.
Zhilian arched an eyebrow, intrigued and delighted by his return. "Really? And how would you like to do that?"
Hayjin positioned himself in front of her, his legs firmly planted on the ground. "Your magic is based on mana, intuition, and formulas written centuries ago. But I come from a world where everything is regulated by different physical laws. If mana is an energy, it must behave like one. I want to try a different method. I want to stop 'feeling' nature and start 'calculating' it."
"I will start ordering it to obey. Show me how you create that light, Zhilian. Don't tell me how you 'feel' it, tell me what happens to the matter."
"Remember my words, Princess Zhilian. Today, for the first time, I won't be a step behind anyone, least of all you. Today, the science of another world will begin to rewrite the magic of Alius, I assure you."
Zhilian smiled, crossing her arms. "A different method, eh? Fine, Hayjin. I'm all ears. Show me how someone like you bends mana to his will."
The afternoon in Exilia had become a stretch of suspended time, where the hum of magical insects and the scent of resin mixed with the acrid smell of ozone. Hayjin had not gone back to sleep. On the contrary, his mind was in a state of electric hyperactivity. He had crouched on the ground, using a charred twig as a pencil and a flat stone slab as a blackboard.
Zhilian watched him, initially curious, then progressively lost. Hayjin was tracing diagrams that looked like no known rune in Opes. There were no magic circles, no celestial symbols. There were straight lines, vector arrows, and cross-sections that looked like the blueprint of an invisible war machine.
"Look here, Zhilian. Listen carefully because I won't repeat it," Hayjin began, pointing to a drawing that showed a conduit narrowing in the center and then widening again. "The problem with your magic is waste. You try to move huge masses of energy using brute mana force. It's inefficient. It's like trying to break down a door by headbutting it instead of using a lever."
Zhilian leaned in, frowning. "Efficiency? Hayjin, magic is a gift from the heart, a connection with the essence of the world…"
"No, magic is an energy fluid," he interrupted her with scientific coldness. "And like every fluid, it responds to dynamics. What I want to do is apply what we call in my world: the Venturi Effect. See these two lines I drew? Imagine they are two 'walls' created with your mana. Solid, immobile walls, placed at a millimetric distance from each other. In the center, we leave only a small passage, a funnel."
He took a breath, his eyes shining with an almost feverish light. "According to Bernoulli's principle, when a fluid passes through a constricted section, its velocity increases drastically while its pressure decreases. For now, I don't need to generate a storm, Zhilian. I only need to generate a very weak mana flow, almost nil. But if I force that little flow to pass through this magical 'funnel' I built with the mana walls…"
He tapped the twig on the stone. "The result is a jet of air as thin as a needle, but as fast as a bullet. It's not a gust of wind. It is compressed air capable of piercing steel because all the energy is concentrated in a single vector point. It's logic, Zhilian. It's pure, beautiful logic."
Zhilian stood with her mouth open, looking at the diagram. "Venturi... Effect? Vectors? Cross... section?" She shook her head, her black hair falling over her golden eyes. "Hayjin, I swear by the moons of Alius that I haven't understood a single word of what you said. Are you sure you weren't hit in the head too hard by something? You seem terribly confused. Mana walls require a stability that a beginner cannot have, and the idea of 'constricting' the wind... is madness."
Hayjin stood up, wiping his ash-stained hands on his tunic. "Madness is the basis of every great discovery. You don't understand words? Fine. Then watch the application. But don't distract me. This requires a mental calculation that is already making my brain explode."
The training began under the princess's skeptical gaze. Hayjin positioned himself in front of an "Ironwood" tree, a species known for its almost metallic resistance.
He closed his eyes. In his mind, the coordinate grid reappeared. He began to stretch out the two "walls" of mana. They were invisible, thin as cell membranes. He broke into a cold sweat. He felt the mana flowing, but instead of letting it explode, he constrained it, squeezed it, molded it into that funnel shape he had drawn on the stone.
First attempt: A weak hiss. The walls collapsed before the wind could pass.
Tenth attempt: A gust of warm air that only messed up his hair. Zhilian sighed, sitting on the grass.
The hours passed. The afternoon began to decline toward sunset, tinting Exilia a deep purple. Hayjin was exhausted. His facial muscles twitched from concentration, and his child's body seemed to scream with fatigue. But his adult mind, that scientist's temper that did not accept failure, pushed him forward.
Zhilian continued to watch, bored, thinking that Hayjin's method, despite the effort, wouldn't work anyway.
"Hayjin, give up. We'll train properly another time when I have the grimoires, I promise. You've been trying to cast the spell for hours."
Hayjin responded with surprising determination. "No… I'm almost there… I know it… until I succeed… I'm not moving from here."
One hundred and fortieth attempt.
Hayjin visualized the molecular acceleration. He imagined the air becoming dense, solid, channeled with brutal force into that millimeter of space between his hands.
"Now…" he whispered.
From his fingers came no light, nor water. There was a high-pitched sound, an ultrasonic whistle that made Zhilian jump. A trail of air distortion, almost invisible except for the way it refracted the sunset light, shot from his hand.
CRACK.
The compressed air bullet hit the Ironwood tree. There was no dull impact; there was a clean, deep hole that pierced the trunk from one side to the other. An instant later, the entire tree, destabilized by the internal pressure of the hit, crashed to the ground with a roar that shook the clearing.
Hayjin remained motionless, his hands still stretched forward. Magical smoke evaporated from his fingers. He looked at the fallen tree, then at his hands. The shock was such that for an instant he forgot to breathe.
"I did it. I don't believe it… I did it…"
Zhilian had snapped to her feet, motionless as a statue. She stared at the perfect hole in the fallen trunk, then looked at Hayjin as if she were seeing a newborn deity. After a moment of absolute silence, the princess exploded.
"AH! YOU DID IT! HAYJIN! YOU DESTROYED IT!"
She began to jump, cheering with irrepressible happiness, waving her arms toward the sky. "It was incredible! That whistle... and then that hit! I've never seen anything like it! You took down an Ironwood with a puff of compressed air!"
Hayjin felt the tension suddenly melt away. The exhaustion, the morning's humiliation, the fear of the Cult, the homesickness... everything converged into a single point. He dropped to his knees, and without meaning to, a single tear of pure relief rolled down his cheek.
Zhilian was immediately beside him, laughing. "Hey, what do I see? Is the great alchemist crying? The little cynical mage has a heart after all!" She teased him affectionately, giving him a playful shove on the shoulder.
"Shut up, princess," Hayjin replied, quickly wiping his face and trying to recover his gruff tone, though his smile betrayed him. "It's just... the glare of the mana in my eyes. And now I have to perfect it. It was still too unstable."
"Perfect it? Hayjin, you just found your affinity!" she cried, radiant. "You are officially a mage bound to the Wind, but in a way that even the Great students of the Academy couldn't dream of. You turned the weakest element into a lethal weapon!"
As the two laughed and discussed the discovery, the sound of heavy footsteps and the creaking of a cart announced the return of the cabin's inhabitants.