Vernon learned, slowly and with mounting frustration, that reading was not the same as understanding.
He sat against the inner wall of the cave, knees drawn up, Alice's notes resting open across his lap. The stone behind him was cool, grounding in a way that almost helped. Outside, beyond the cave's mouth, the muted rhythm of training echoed faintly - Bruce's footwork scraping against dirt, Derek's calm corrections carried by the breeze.
Vernon tried to tune it out.
The pages before him were familiar now. Too familiar.
He had read the beginner's section more times than he could count. The words no longer surprised him. Mana gathering. Stabilization. Circulation. Control. Each principle laid out cleanly, efficiently, without ornament.
And that was the problem.
There was no resistance in it anymore. No friction. His eyes moved across the page while his thoughts drifted elsewhere, skimming diagrams he already knew how to replicate in his sleep.
He frowned.
"This shouldn't feel easy," he murmured.
Alice had never been careless. She had never oversimplified. Yet this section felt... restrained. As if something vital had been intentionally left unsaid.
His fingers hovered at the edge of the page.
He hesitated.
Then, quietly, he turned it.
There was no warning.
No divider announcing the transition from beginner to intermediate. No bold script or dramatic change in tone. Just a subtle tightening of the text, denser diagrams, mana paths layered atop one another instead of laid flat and clean.
Vernon straightened unconsciously.
The air felt different - not magically, but mentally. Like stepping into deeper water without noticing the shoreline had disappeared.
"...So there are levels," he whispered.
Not ranks. Not stages.
Depth.
He read slowly now, forcing himself not to skim. The diagrams sprawled outward, overlapping circles connected by thinner, more complex flows. Feedback loops. Stabilizing anchors. Failsafes built into systems rather than individuals.
Mana was no longer something you held.
It was something you managed.
His chest tightened as realization set in.
Alice wrote plainly about the danger of skipping foundations. Not as a warning, but as an observation - a statement of fact. Practitioners who advanced too quickly mistook early progress for mastery, believing adaptability equalled readiness.
It did not.
The body adapted faster than the foundation could support.
Instability did not announce itself immediately. It waited.
Weak foundations do not collapse loudly,
they fail when the structure matters most.
Vernon closed the book slowly.
The sound echoed too loudly in the cave.
He leaned his head back against the stone and stared upward, eyes unfocused. His heartbeat felt unusually present, each pulse a reminder that he was already walking a path he barely understood.
"I skipped things," he admitted quietly.
Not out of arrogance. Not intentionally. But still.
The thought settled heavily in his chest.
"What happens if I don't go back?" he whispered.
The cave offered no answer.
Later that night, long after training ended and Derek's presence receded into the background of routine, Vernon returned to the notes.
This time, he read with discipline.
He slowed himself down, rereading passages even when he thought he understood them. He traced diagrams with his finger, following the flow of mana not as power, but as structure.
That was when he found it.
Mana polarity.
The words alone made his brow furrow.
Positive mana.
Negative mana.
Neutral mana.
The explanations unfolded gradually, methodically - Alice's voice clear even through ink and parchment.
Positive mana, she wrote, was created only once.
During the formation of a circle.
It was not cultivated. Not replenished. A fleeting byproduct of creation itself, unstable and difficult to measure. Some theorized it acted as a stabilizing force. Others believed it influenced long-term growth.
None could prove either.
Its purpose remained unknown.
Vernon swallowed.
Negative mana, by contrast, was familiar territory. Generated through cultivation. Converted from gathered energy. This was the mana that expressed attributes, fuelled innate abilities, dictated raw output.
The more negative mana one possessed, the stronger their expression.
That made sense. Too much sense.
Then Vernon reached neutral mana.
And stopped breathing.
Neutral mana, Alice wrote, was neither power nor expression.
It was permission.
It allowed mana to exist without tearing itself apart. It gave negative mana form, structure, and restraint. It enabled casting - not by forcing mana into shape, but by allowing it to flow into predefined forms left behind by previous generations.
Without neutral mana, mana behaved like water without a vessel.
Vernon reread the passage.
Again.
"So neutral mana decides how," he whispered, "and negative mana decides what."
His fingers tightened against the page.
Then came the line that made his stomach drop.
Innate abilities do not draw upon neutral mana first.
They consume negative mana directly.
The cost varies.
However there are exceptions.
Vernon's pulse spiked.
Alice listed examples without embellishment.
Instead some innate traits consumed stamina.
Others drew on life force.
A few eroded the senses.
Rare cases took memories.
Vernon's breath hitched.
His gaze drifted to his arm.
Faint scars crossed his skin - marks left by injuries that should have lingered far longer than they had. Cuts that closed too fast. Muscles that healed before the pain properly settled.
The exhaustion that always followed.
"...Could I regrow a limb?" he whispered.
The question felt wrong the moment it surfaced.
He stared at his hand, flexing his fingers slowly.
He had healed wounds. Deep ones. Painful ones. But he had never lost anything permanent.
If it came to that...
Would his body even hesitate?
And if it didn't-
What would it take in return?
The thought made his chest tighten painfully.
He flipped back a page, searching for clarification.
Instead, he found something worse.
Neutral mana governs restraint.
Without it, power expresses itself freely - and freely destroys.
Vernon shut the book.
Outside, Bruce's laughter echoed - sharp and breathless, followed by Derek's steady voice correcting his stance. The sounds felt distant now, like another world operating on rules Vernon was only beginning to glimpse.
Later, Melian drifted closer, her glow faint and carefully contained.
"I can hear the gears in your head turning all the way from over here," she said gently.
Vernon startled. "Sorry."
She tilted her head. "What have you learnt today?."
"To not rush."
"Why?"
He hesitated. "Because I thought understanding meant moving forward."
Melian moved closer, her light softening. "Understanding often means standing still long enough for the truth to catch up."
Vernon exhaled slowly. "It's... frustrating."
"Yes," she agreed, smiling faintly. "It usually is."
He looked down at the closed book. "Did my mother know all this?"
Melian's gaze dimmed slightly. "She probably did."
"That's not an answer."
"No," Melian said quietly. "But it's the honest one."
That night, Vernon dreamed of circles.
Not drawn ones - living ones.
Mana flowed through them like breath through lungs, stabilizing, correcting, resisting collapse. Some circles held. Others fractured silently, their failure invisible until the moment they mattered most.
When he woke, the book was still open beside him.
And Vernon understood one thing with absolute certainty:
He could not rush this.
Not anymore.