A rectangular table occupied the centre, its surface unmarked save for a carafe of water already poured and untouched. Four chairs stood on one side, two on the other. A slate was mounted on the far wall, currently dark. The walls bore no ornamentation beyond a small Consortium mark etched near the doorframe.

  Orestis entered last.

  Alke was already there, standing beside the table rather than at its head. She inclined her head and gestured him toward an empty chair.

  Three mages occupied the opposite side. The senior systems mage sat closest to the slate—relaxed, authoritative, the kind of person accustomed to final decisions without requiring the performance of deference. Beside him sat a mid-level reviewer, fingers stained with ink, eyes alert. The junior mage stood briefly as Orestis entered, then sat again, already writing before anyone had spoken.

  No introductions were offered. No one asked about his credentials.

  That, more than anything, tells me how they’ve categorised me. Useful. Not understood. Worth watching.

  Alke waited until everyone was seated. “Two items today. Exploratory only. No demonstrations. No obligation to resolve either.”

  Orestis inclined his head.

  The senior mage activated the slate.

  Lines unfolded into a layered construct—bindings interlocked in a pattern that prioritised throughput over stability. Elegant in theory, overconfident in practice. He recognised it immediately: it was the same system that had been the subject of tavern frustration days earlier.

  Orestis studied it in silence, eyes tracing intersections, redundancies, and compensatory structures layered over a single misalignment. Seeing the whole thing gave him context that he didn’t have before.

  “This system supports three relays and one stabilization ward,” the senior mage said. “It’s functional, and the recent correction helped—but it remains resource-intensive.”

  “Yes,” Orestis said. “That was inevitable.”

  He gestured—not toward the obvious bottleneck, but the supporting structure beneath it. “You corrected symptoms, not the structure.”

  The mid-level mage frowned, then nodded. “You’re referring to the correction layer.”

  “Yes. It compensates after instability occurs,” Orestis replied. “A better alternative would be to remove the correction layer, but keep the inverted third binding. Let the system fail faster.”

  The senior mage frowned. “That sounds counterintuitive.”

  “It is,” Orestis said. “Which is why it works. Right now, the system is spending resources to hide its own mistakes. Stop doing that, and the remaining structure can do what it was designed for.”

  He pointed to the third binding. “This is doing two jobs. It shouldn’t be doing either. It’s meant to stabilize flow, but the orientation forces it to dampen feedback instead. You’re hiding the instability rather than preventing it.”

  Silence followed. Not resistance; processing.

  “And the failure modes?” the mid-level mage asked.

  “Shorter. More visible,” Orestis replied. “It’ll be easier to diagnose. You’ll lose tolerance in edge cases, but gain stability under sustained load.”

  “Oversight?” Alke asked.

  “Reduced. You stop spending resources to conceal errors,” Orestis said.

  The senior mage studied the slate, then nodded. “That aligns with our projections.”

  Alke tapped the slate, isolating the binding Orestis had indicated. “You’re confident.”

  “I’m familiar,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

  She smiled faintly and deactivated the display. “That will be all for the first item.”

  While the mages spoke quietly among themselves, Orestis leaned back and waited.

  The first system had never been the point. It was too familiar, too exposed. Anyone with sufficient theoretical grounding could have improved it.

  This had been a filter—not for brilliance, but for restraint. Whether he would reach for complexity when simplicity would do, or attempt to impress when clarity was sufficient.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  They weren’t testing what I know. They were testing how I behave.

  Which was fair enough. He would have done the same in their situation.

  In fact, I have done the same—usually to people who then tried to kill me, but the principle holds.

  He noted the junior mage’s pen moving faster. The mid-level reviewer no longer questioned premises, only implications. The senior mage said nothing. That was the actual evaluation.

  The second framework appeared without ceremony.

  The slate brightened again, resolving into a denser construct than the first—fewer redundancies, tighter spacing, and a complexity born from intent rather than scale.

  Orestis leaned forward.

  Well, well. Now this one is worth looking at.

  It was a supplemental warding framework, designed to integrate into existing city wards without interrupting function. It was clever. It was also unstable.

  “This subsystem is intended to attach to active wards,” the senior mage said. “In theory, it should integrate without downtime. In practice, it fails during attachment.”

  The mid-level mage tapped a section of the display. “Material bonding releases energy at the interface. If we suppress it, the bonding doesn’t complete. If we allow it, the structure destabilises.”

  “Violently,” the junior mage added, without looking up from his notes.

  “We’ve modelled this extensively,” the senior mage said. “Every material combination behaves differently. The failure isn’t consistent enough to isolate a single cause.”

  This reminds me of the time I tried to use alchemy to change my body’s composition. There were a few explosions back then, too. The only difference is that I was trying to mix foreign materials into my flesh.

  “When does the release occur?” Orestis asked.

  “At the bonding threshold,” the mid-level mage replied. “The moment the matrices align.”

  Orestis nodded, eyes still on the slate.

  Yes, that’s about what I expected.

  “You’re treating the energy release as a fault,” he said. “It isn’t. It’s the transition.”

  There was silence again as everyone recaliberated.

  The senior mage tilted his head. “You’re suggesting we stop trying to eliminate it.”

  “I’m suggesting you stop categorizing it as failure,” Orestis replied. “Right now, you’re expending effort to prevent the system from becoming what it’s trying to be.”

  The junior mage looked up, pen hovering.

  “You’ve designed each supplement as an exception,” Orestis continued. “That’s why your matrices don’t generalize. Every attachment requires its own corrective logic.”

  “The alternative?” Alke asked.

  “A bonding interface,” Orestis replied. “Self-regulating. Parameterized by material properties rather than the material itself. Designed to consume the transition energy as fuel rather than suppress it.”

  The mid-level mage frowned. “That would require the interface to adapt in real time.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s… ambitious.”

  “It’s inevitable,” Orestis replied. “You can keep solving this repeatedly, or you can solve it once.”

  The senior mage leaned back, eyes never leaving the slate. “And testing?”

  “Not in isolation. This would require iterative calibration within your infrastructure.”

  The silence that followed was longer than before.

  “If this works,” the junior mage said carefully, “we’d only need to solve attachment once.”

  “Across all future supplements,” the mid-level mage added.

  Alke deactivated the slate. “We’ll prototype internally. We may request clarification later.”

  Orestis inclined his head. That was sufficient.

  The session concluded without drama. No praise, no excitement—only small procedural adjustments. The junior mage deferred slightly more than before. Alke’s notes reflected a marginally expanded access designation.

  His schedule for the next five days was confirmed.

  Five days of review, commentary, and quiet correction of whatever they placed in front of me. I’ve had worse employment. I’ve also had better—but that usually involved things exploding, so perhaps this is an improvement.

  Orestis returned to the street and set off toward the inn. Orthessa looked the same as it always did—orderly, occupied, and unconcerned with him in any meaningful way.

  That was reassuring. Systems that noticed individuals too quickly made poor decisions. Systems that didn’t notice at all were usually worse. Orthessa, at least, appeared content to observe first and adjust later.

  He had been categorized—not elevated; but placed where further observation was convenient.

  Orestis found no fault in that. For now.

  ***

  When he entered his room, Orestis noticed the call-node emitting a faint, regular pulse—the sign that someone had tried to contact him.

  He picked it up and activated it, sending the return signal. The reply came almost at once.

  “Orestis?” his mother said, relief evident. “I was starting to think it hadn’t worked.”

  “It did,” he said, his voice softening without him meaning it to. “I was out.”

  “I thought you might be.” She paused. “They made an announcement today.”

  He waited.

  “They didn’t call it a draft,” she said. “Not officially. But that’s what it is. Mandatory service. Preparation. Training.”

  “I expected that,” Orestis said.

  She exhaled slowly. “You always do.”

  “It sounds familiar. That’s all.”

  More than familiar. I remember how this ends.

  “The Temple’s involved,” she said. “More than usual. Cassia wouldn’t say much—only that it wasn’t just the Crown.”

  “That makes sense.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “You’re not coming back, right?”

  “No,” he said gently. “Not now.”

  “And they won’t make you?”

  “They’ll try later. For the moment, I’m out of reach.”

  “I don’t like that answer,” she said.

  “I know. But I’m safe where I am.”

  Another pause. “And Eirene?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Orestis said. “If she’s called, it’ll be as a mage. They’re careful with people like her.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated, then added, “I wouldn’t be calm if I wasn’t.”

  That seemed to ease her worries, a little.

  “All right,” she said. “I just didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”

  “You did the right thing,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”

  “Take care,” she said quietly.

  The connection ended.

  Orestis set the device down and stayed where he was, listening to the quiet of his room.

  Things were moving. That much was clear. He noted the timelines, adjusted a few expectations, and set the rest aside.

  Nothing to be gained by speculating without any actual information.

  For the time being, observation would suffice.

  Patreon, along with extra lore and author notes.