Thirty days passed like water through cracked clay.
Not enough time to change the world. But enough to change a body.
Zaric no longer woke with bone-deep exhaustion clawing at his ribs. The strange weakness that had haunted him since the grave had faded into something manageable—an ache that came and went with hunger instead of a constant threat of collapse. His legs held him. His breath came easier. His mind, though still split between two lives, felt less like fog and more like a map he could actually read.
Food was still scarce.
Lyra still left before dawn and returned at second bell with dust in her hair and tiredness she pretended wasn't eating her alive. Rane still brought stew when he could and grain when his wife wasn't looking, grumbling about debts he refused to let them pay.
Their mother still slept behind the curtain, breathing in shallow, stubborn rhythms like a candle that refused to go out.
And Zaric… practiced.
Behind the hut, where the fence leaned and the earth was packed hard from years of footsteps, he carved out a small training patch. He used a broken plank and a stone to mark crude boundaries, then spent the days doing the same thing over and over until the ground remembered him.
Breath. Focus. Radiance.
Seismic Sight.
The skill didn't open like a crisp window or a friendly "ding" from a system. It was still more like sinking his awareness through layers of soil until he reached something deep and true. And each time he used it, his skull reminded him that power came with a price.
But the price was getting smaller.
He learned how to narrow his vision instead of letting it flood. How to glance at a single thread in his tapestry instead of staring at the entire woven cosmos of his core. How to stop before the headache became a spike.
And he learned something even more important.
Iron rank only permitted one pattern.
Rane had said it three different ways in three different conversations, as if repetition could turn poverty into safety.
"At Iron, you weave one pattern into your tapestry," the man had told him while fixing a cracked cart brace. "One. You want another? You climb your core first. Don't be greedy, boy. Greed kills faster than beasts."
Lyra had echoed it in her own blunt language.
"People who try to force two patterns early end up like Mom."
That was enough.
So Zaric spent the better part of a month wrestling with a single question:
What should his first pattern be?
The rumors didn't help. They only sharpened fear into an edge.
More spirit beast attacks near the outer ridges. Miners vanishing in small groups. Carts found overturned with no bodies. People whispering about things that moved under the earth.
Underground predators.
Earth-aligned beasts didn't always roar and charge. Sometimes they waited. Sometimes they listened.
Sometimes they tunneled up into your life with teeth already open.
Part of him wanted a spear.
A clean answer. A sharp line. Something that could end danger before it started.
Another part wanted a wall like Rane's.
Reliable. Defensive. Useful even outside battle.
But the deepest part of him—the man who had died under a mountain once, the boy who had crawled out of a mud grave twice—kept circling the same logic.
If history and old instincts were right, the best first tool was the one that let you live long enough to gain a second.
So protection it was.
A shield.
Not a small buckler. Not a narrow slab.
A large, round shield—wide enough to cover a child's full frame. Thick enough to take a hit without shattering into hope and dust.
He didn't know if that was how patterns worked.
He didn't know if his core would allow something so concrete.
But Seismic Sight gave him the gift no poor kid should have had at Iron: clarity.
In the quiet of late afternoon, when Lyra was at the mines and the lane was too busy to care what another boy did behind a mud hut, Zaric sat cross-legged in his training patch.
He closed his eyes.
Let his awareness fall inward.
The dark space opened.
His core floated before him—matte black, veined with gold like hidden ore. Around it, the spirit veins of his tapestry wove in slow motion. Not chaotic anymore. Not to him. He could read the direction of tension, the thickness of a thread, the way Radiance wanted to travel if he gave it a path.
Weave your veins into pattern and shape, he reminded himself. Then channel Radiance through it.
It was almost like the old RPG games he used to half-mock, half-love in his first life. The difference was that there was no "skill slot."
This was not choosing a button.
It was engraving a foundation into his soul.
He reached for a cluster of Earth-aligned threads. Tugged them gently into a circular arc. Then another arc. Then another, until the loops formed a broad ring.
He layered them.
Thickened them where an impact would land.
Bound the edges with tighter crossings—like reinforcing a tunnel brace exactly where stress would concentrate.
His forehead warmed.
His chest pulsed.
The Core of Aetherion seemed to watch him the way a mountain might watch a stubborn ant trying to build a fortress out of pebbles.
Then, slowly…
The pattern settled.
Locked.
A new knot of meaning formed in his tapestry.
Not words. Not a title. Just a shape that felt like weight and safety.
He opened his eyes.
The world had not changed.
But he had.
He raised a trembling hand.
"Let's see if you're real," he whispered.
Radiance flowed.
Golden warmth pushed from core into veins, from veins into the new pattern.
A round shield of compacted earth and mineral light flickered into existence in front of him—half-solid, half-glow. It was large enough to cover his torso, thick enough that when he tapped it with his knuckles, it rang with a dull, stone-deep note.
He laughed once, startled by his own joy.
Then nearly fell over from the spike of Radiance cost that followed.
"Worth it," he muttered, breathing hard.
He practiced summoning it again and again until his Radiance ran dangerously low. Each time the shield formed faster. Each time its edge looked cleaner, its surface less like hurried mud and more like hardened stone.
By the time the sun began to lean toward evening, he could summon it without shaking.
That was when the mountain roared.
A deep, distant boom rolled across the earth behind the village. Not the usual mine sounds. Not a collapse. This was sharper, explosive.
Unnatural.
Zaric froze.
A second boom followed—closer this time, or maybe just clearer.
Without thinking, he grabbed the shield pattern in his veins again, ready to call it at a moment's notice, and jogged toward the outer path that led away from the lane.
Past the last row of huts, the land rose into a rocky slope that curved around old ridges and scrub trees. The earth here felt older, less worked. It was the kind of ground that hadn't learned to fear the picks of the poor yet.
He climbed.
To his surprise, the earth seemed to help him.
His grip was strong and secure, fingers finding holds that felt like they had been placed for him. Loose shale didn't slide. The dirt didn't crumble. The slope guided him upward with quiet, stubborn cooperation.
The Core of Aetherion, he thought.
At the top, he flattened his body behind a jagged rock and peeked over.
Below, in a shallow bowl of torn earth and scattered stone, two kids stood among fresh craters.
A boy about his age—maybe thirteen—was at the center.
His spirit veins blazed red-orange beneath his skin.
Every time he punched the ground, a pillar of fire erupted upward in a violent bloom. Heat warped the air around him. Dust turned to drifting ash midflight.
"Come out!" the boy shouted, wild-eyed. "Where are you hiding?"
Near the edge of the bowl stood a girl.
Her veins glowed faintly blue.
A thin bubble of water shimmered around her—clear and fluid, catching the last sunlight like glass.
Waterweave and a fireweaver.
They didn't belong to a mine lane.
They looked too clean. Too fed. Too trained.
Zaric's curiosity flared despite caution. He slid Seismic Sight open, keeping it narrow.
Iron cores, his instincts whispered—both of them—though the girl's Radiance felt steadier, more refined. Like she had been trained to conserve instead of burn everything in a temper.
Then he felt it.
A ripple under the ground.
Fast.
Hungry.
A shape moving through earth like a knife through soft clay.
It was headed straight for the girl.
She didn't react.
Her water bubble remained calm and thin.
She hasn't noticed.
Zaric's pulse spiked.
He was supposed to be careful. Supposed to be smart. Supposed to remember that he was small again, that heroes died young in worlds like this.
But his body moved before his caution could catch it.
He sprinted down the slope.
"Hey!"
The girl turned a fraction too late.
The ground beneath her exploded as a beast launched upward—long and thick as a grown man's torso, covered in mud-plated scales. Its mouth opened into a ring of jagged teeth meant for quick kills.
A burrowing predator.
A Mudspike Serpent, his mind supplied from Zac's half-memories and village rumors.
It snapped for her throat.
Zaric threw his Radiance into his new pattern without even fully understanding the risk.
The shield manifested in front of the girl with a solid thoom of compressed earth.
The serpent slammed into it.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface.
The shield buckled.
Then the beast pushed through with brute force—shattering the last half of the construct like kicking through wet stone.
But that heartbeat of resistance was enough.
The girl stumbled back, eyes wide.
Her hands moved in precise, trained patterns.
Water surged from her bubble outward—not just a shield, but a binding weave.
Thin ribbons of water wrapped the serpent's body, tightening like ropes turned into liquid steel.
"Now!" she snapped.
The fire boy's head jerked up as if he'd just remembered there were other people in the world besides his anger.
"Finally!" he shouted.
Radiance flared so hard Zaric felt the heat even from several paces away.
The boy thrust both hands upward.
A giant fireball condensed above the crater—red-white at the core, orange at the edges, a miniature sun screaming for permission to fall.
"Falling Ember!" he roared.
The fireball dropped.
It struck the bound serpent in a thunderous bloom that turned the shallow bowl into a glowing crater rimmed with blackened stone.
When the light faded, the beast lay dead in the center—charred, steaming, and very, very still.
Zaric exhaled, realizing only now that his legs were shaking.
His Radiance felt like it had been scooped out with a spoon.
The fire boy spun toward him immediately, face hot with adrenaline and suspicion.
"What was that?" he snapped.
Zaric blinked. "What was what?"
"You jumped in front of her with an earth construct!" the boy accused, pointing as if the gesture itself could summon proof. "In the middle of my fight!"
"I wasn't attacking her," Zaric said, too tired to soften his voice. "Something was coming from underground."
The boy scoffed. "She didn't need your help. That thing wouldn't have broken her bubble."
The girl stepped forward before Zaric could answer, water still shimmering faintly around her wrists.
"It would have hit me before I reacted," she said firmly. "My Aqua Veil was defensive, not a warning net. I didn't sense it in time."
The fire boy opened his mouth.
She cut him off.
"And his shield bought me the second I needed."
Her gaze fell on Zaric—sharp and assessing now, not frightened.
"You're from the village," she said.
It wasn't a question.
Zaric nodded cautiously.
"You're an Earthweaver at Iron," she continued.
His stomach tightened.
If she told the wrong people, if the foreman heard, if the lane learned he had awakened without a beast core—
"Barely," he said.
The fire boy crossed his arms, still scowling. "Name?"
Zaric hesitated.
"Zac," he said automatically.
A flicker of confusion crossed the girl's expression—like she had heard the name somewhere else.
"Zaric Terran," he corrected after half a beat, meeting her eyes. "People call me Zac."
She accepted that without pressing.
"I'm Nessa," she said. "And this hot-headed furnace is Kael."
"I heard that," Kael muttered.
"You were supposed to be watching the ground," Nessa replied smoothly.
Kael threw his hands up. "I was watching the ground! The beast kept dodging my strikes!"
"It was dodging your temper, not your fists."
Zaric almost smiled.
Almost.
Because her next words hit like a hammer.
"We're on an academy mission."
There it was—the clean clothes, the disciplined weave, the confidence.
"The Emberfall Academy," Kael said with pride, as if the name alone could burn poverty away. "We were tracking a Mudspike Serpent nest reported near the outer ridge."
Nessa nodded once. "The scouts think something bigger has been stirring the burrow-lines."
Bigger.
Zaric felt the earth beneath his feet and, for the first time in a month, it felt less like an ally and more like a breathing thing with secrets.
Kael glanced at the shattered remains of Zaric's shield.
"You've got guts," he admitted grudgingly. "For a lane kid."
"Nessa," she corrected lightly, ignoring him. "Where did you learn to weave a proper shield pattern? Your core should've been dormant without a beast core or a Radiance push."
Zaric's mind raced.
Lie wrong and he risked suspicion.
Tell truth and he risked everything.
He chose the simplest path.
"I had help," he said.
It wasn't even fully untrue.
The Core of Aetherion pulsed quietly beneath his ribs like a second heart agreeing to silence.
Nessa studied him for a long moment.
Then she reached into a small pouch at her belt and pulled out a thin metal token stamped with a crest—a stylized flame wrapped around a droplet.
"Take this," she said.
Zaric didn't move.
"It's not a bribe," she added. "It's a field mark. If you bring it to the mine lane watchpost, they'll know you assisted an academy mission. It might keep certain adults from asking stupid questions."
Kael rolled his eyes. "And if he's smart, he'll keep his head down until he's old enough to test for entry."
Zaric's fingers closed around the token before his caution could argue.
He felt its weight.
Opportunity had just stepped into his life with muddy boots and a polite smile.
Nessa looked past him toward the village ridge.
"We should report this," she said. "If there's a nest, there'll be more."
Kael cracked his knuckles eagerly. "Good. I wasn't done warming up."
Zaric watched them turn toward the crater, already shifting into the practiced rhythm of mission work.
Two kids with training.
Two kids with resources.
Two kids who had just seen a mine boy summon an earth shield without the "proper" awakening.
Nessa paused once more and glanced back.
"You did the right thing," she said.
Then, softer—so Kael wouldn't hear it—
"If you want to live past Iron, learn to lie better than that."
She turned and walked away.
Zaric stood there in the cooling crater air, holding the token.
His Radiance was nearly empty.
His new pattern ached in his veins like a tool fresh-forged and not yet tempered.
And somewhere beneath the earth, far deeper than a Mudspike Serpent ever burrowed, he felt a slow, heavy movement—like a mountain shifting in its sleep.
He swallowed.
A month ago, his world had been a hut, a sleeping mother, and a sister holding themselves together with stubborn love and thin porridge.
Now an academy had stepped into his path.
A beast nest had been confirmed near his home.
And he had chosen a shield—just in time to prove why he needed one.
As the last heat faded from the crater, Zaric tucked the token into his shirt, pressed a hand briefly over the Core of Aetherion, and made a quiet vow the way miners did when the ceiling creaked.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
Just certain.
"Next time," he whispered, "my shield won't break."
And this time, the earth beneath his feet felt like it was listening.