We returned to the Northern Continent six months later.
The journey was calmer than the one that had torn me away from it, but it was not effortless. Calm did not mean safe, and silence did not mean rest. The sea still demanded respect, just in a different way—long stretches of open water where nothing moved, followed by sudden violence without warning. The Aurora endured it all, her hull cutting through waves with practiced ease, her magi-tech systems humming steadily beneath my feet.
And beneath everything else—beneath the rhythm of travel, beneath the routine of days—I felt it.
The pull.
The Central Continent had not released me.
The link remained.
Constant. Subtle. Draining.
It was not pain. Not even discomfort, most of the time. It was more like a pressure difference—an invisible slope my magic flowed down whether I wished it or not. No matter how carefully I circulated mana, no matter how long I rested or how precisely I controlled my breathing, part of me was always elsewhere.
Holding something together.
My magic had stabilized.
But my usable strength had not increased.
When I measured it—by instinct, by response, by resistance—the conclusion was inescapable. My effective output remained capped at roughly eighty percent. The remaining power was not inaccessible; it was simply not mine. It flowed outward continuously, feeding damaged leylines, reinforcing fractures left behind by a spell that should never have been attempted.
Stabilizing land that should not still exist.
It was a price.
One I continued to pay.
And one I accepted without hesitation.
Because I knew what the alternative would look like.
During those six months, I focused on learning the Old Tongue.
Properly.
Not as a caster repeating inherited structures, but as a linguist tracing lineage. As a scholar peeling back layers of compromise, simplification, and fear. The Old Tongue revealed itself not as a lesser language, but as a filtered one—a deliberate narrowing of expression meant to keep mortals from burning themselves alive.
As a derivative of Sanskrit, it came easily to me.
Too easily, at times.
Not because it was simple, but because I could see what it had been built from. Where others memorized grammatical rules, I recognized amputations. Where they accepted exceptions, I saw places where meaning had been softened, shaved down, restrained so power would not spiral out of control.
The Old Tongue was elegant.
Measured.
Restrained.
It carried intention safely, predictably. It was designed to forgive mistakes—to absorb inefficiency without punishing the caster too harshly. That design choice had saved countless lives.
It had also crippled magic.
Once I understood its full structure, I turned to the Emperor's spellwork.
I approached it cautiously.
Not with reverence. Not with disdain.
With curiosity.
His spells were excellent. That much was undeniable. Efficient. Refined. Balanced in ways modern academies no longer taught. He had truly pushed the Old Tongue to its limits, stretching it without breaking it, coaxing precision from a language designed to blunt extremes.
Almost.
That word followed me as I studied his work.
Almost perfect.
There were flaws.
Not errors.
Not weaknesses.
Nuances.
Tiny inefficiencies buried so deeply that no ordinary wizard—no matter how talented—would ever notice them. A syllable carrying excess strain. A cadence forcing mana to curve around a conceptual corner that no longer existed. Places where intent compensated for what structure should have accomplished on its own.
They were invisible to anyone who had never spoken Sanskrit.
Invisible to anyone who had never felt what magic sounded like before it was translated.
Only someone who understood what had been lost could see them.
I didn't rewrite his spells.
That would have been crude.
Instead, I adjusted them.
A pause shifted, allowing mana to settle rather than surge.An inflection softened, reducing unnecessary resistance.A single stress realigned, straightening a flow that had always bent slightly to the left.
The changes were microscopic.
But the effects were unmistakable.
Spells stabilized further. Mana consumption dropped—not dramatically, but reliably. Casting strain eased. Failure rates declined. The magic behaved more like a tool and less like a gamble.
Nothing flashy.
Nothing alarming.
Just… better.
And even with my strength limited—capped, siphoned, restrained—the difference was clear. Efficiency mattered more than raw output. It always had. Power that wasted itself was just noise. Power that conserved itself endured.
By the time the Northern coastline came into view, I had reached another conclusion.
I would not teach Sanskrit.
Not now.
Not openly.
The risk was too great. Power without context bred fear. Fear bred control. Control bred annihilation. Even the Northern Continent, with all its talk of coexistence, would not tolerate a language that let magic listen instead of obey.
The Old Tongue, however, was different.
It would be reserved.
For personal disciples only.
Not students. Not applicants. Disciples.
Those who studied directly under me. Those who proved patience, discipline, and the ability to understand why words mattered, not just how to pronounce them. To them, I would teach the Old Tongue in full—refined, corrected, stripped of inefficiencies the Emperor himself had never noticed.
That knowledge would never be written publicly.
No textbooks. No distributed grimoires.
It would be passed person to person, the way dangerous truths always were.
For everyone else, there would be something safer.
I would rework spells in the common tongue.
Not to make them stronger.
But to make them better.
More stable. Less wasteful. Less dependent on reckless intent and emotional strain. Spells ordinary students could cast without tearing their mana pathways apart, without relying on probability masquerading as mastery.
They would never know what had been removed.
They would never know what had been corrected.
They would only know that spells failed less often.
That casting felt easier.
That magic behaved the way it was supposed to.
And that would be enough.
Sanskrit would remain hidden.The Old Tongue would be inherited.The common tongue would be repaired.
Three layers.
Three audiences.
One direction.
Quiet change was safer than revolution.
As the Aurora entered familiar waters and the ports of the Northern Continent appeared on the horizon, I closed the last book and rested my hands on the railing. The wind carried the smell of land—metal, stone, industry, life.
I was returning with limits still upon me.
With strength held back by a continent that depended on my existence.
But also with understanding no one else possessed.
This time, I wasn't coming back as a survivor.
I was coming back as a scholar.
And this time, I was returning not to teach magic—
But to restructure it.