Eylin slid the stack of Mercy's books onto the floor, careful not to jostle them. They were heavier than he expected—leather-bound, embossed with glyphic seals, pages thick with the scent of old ink and ozone.

  He sat cross-legged, spine tense, and opened the first volume. Diagrams of canonical glyphs stared back at him: neat spirals and rigid anchors, annotations in the margins he couldn't entirely decipher. This was not instruction. This was observation, codification, containment.

  A part of him shivered. The bone in his pocket felt heavier than usual, as though aware it had a companion in these pages.

  He read. Lines of mana theory, glyph efficiency, resonance protocols. Every illustration was perfect, precise—except one. A footnote, almost invisible, spoke of "unstable vectors" that could not be stabilized, anomalies that "must not propagate."

  Eylin froze.

  He didn't need to touch the bone. He already knew what it could do. But seeing it here, in official ink, in canonical rules, made it concrete: the glitch he had stumbled onto was not meant to exist.

  He flipped through more pages, cross-referencing diagrams with the spirals etched on the bone. Every glyph obeyed the laws, every variant accounted for—except the kind he had accidentally invoked. The books described failure. The bone described consistency.

  A candle flickered nearby, reacting to a tiny swirl of residual mana from his fingers. Eylin's eyes followed the motion, tracing it, mapping it, recording it in his mind. His pulse quickened.

  This was the turning point. The anomaly wasn't randomness. It was consistency—but not theirs. Not the mages. Not the Spires'. Not anyone who would try to replicate it. Only him.

  He paused, laying the book flat on the floor. A low hum seemed to rise from the wood beneath him. The shards in his pocket pulsed faintly. Warm, obedient.

  Eylin leaned back and exhaled slowly. The line had been crossed. And now, armed with Mercy's books, he had the knowledge to see how far beyond it he had gone.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  "Glyphs aren't supposed to be wielded," he lamented.

  Referencing the books he had just read made one thing clear: glyphs were not static, as he had thought.

  They were more than symbols. They were representations of characters that depicted—or even embodied—the very will of the world, making them a dynamic spell language.

  And that same world was shattered, making it difficult to be wielded by any Dick, Harry, or Tom. That was what set him apart from the mages.

  "But if they are what they claim to be, then…" He looked at the bone and sighed.

  His cheap runic lamp swayed due to the wind, catching his attention. Noting it, something clicked. He moved toward it, grabbed it, and examined it carefully.

  "Runes are more of a declaration of failure at the white robes' attempts at invoking glyphs," he muttered.

  His gaze shifted north, toward the mage metropolis, and a shiver ran through his spine.

  "If they find out about this, then I'm dead as fuck," he cursed.

  The mages had first attempted invoking glyphs through a medium of transmission but had failed, leading to the discovery of runes as a static utility language.

  "Books say it's not possible, but here I am…" He clenched the bone and injected a bit of his mana into it.

  The trail appeared—but faint. "Seems like time is a factor to consider, too," he noted, moving toward his work desk.

  He swiped his hand, clearing some room, before dropping a stack of papers filled with notes he had scribbled over the years.

  His brows crunched in concentration, his eyes darting from one sheet to another. Twirling his pen, circles of ideas began to flow. "I'm basically dealing with a time bomb, but let's leave the damage to future me… hahaha," he chuckled before scribbling furiously.

  The theoretical part of it bled from his brain naturally.

  Types of modifier rings to be used.

  Calculations of mana per cast.

  Type of anchor considered.

  And finally, the type of materials—apart from the rib bone on the table—needed.

  And so the grind begins fellas.