A Stroll Down Perfect Roads

They exited the Arcanum and stepped into the main artery of the city. With every block the differences between his old world and this one sharpened: everything looked as if an invisible hand had gone by the night before and smoothed the world flat. Buildings sat with surgical symmetry; banners hung without a single crease. The pavement underfoot was a single, flawless plane—no joints, no hairline cracks, not even the tiny fissures that thermal expansion scabs onto ordinary streets.

Eric crouched and pressed his palm to the ground. At first he thought he may have been poured like cement, but no—the texture was too continuous. This wasn’t paving at all. It was a monolith, an avenue that looked as if it had been carved whole from a single colossal stone and laid down in one piece. Back home, that was impossible. Here, it was simply the street.

“How do you maintain a road like this?” he asked. “More importantly — how do you keep it from cracking over time?”

Seltherin’s expression was mild, as if Eric had asked a question of obvious mechanics. “Earth mages lay and fuse the stone,” he said. “Artificers weave structural enchantments into the foundation to regulate temperature and prevent erosive wear. As long as the enchantments hold, the road endures.”

Eric ran his thumb along the smooth textured road and tried to imagine the job back home: crews, expansion joints, seasonal maintenance schedules, whole bureaucracies devoted to patching what the weather tore at. “Back home, that would be layers and layers,” he said. “Asphalt plus sub-base and drainage and—” He laughed, half-amused, half-melancholy. “We’d have an industry built just to keep it from falling apart.”

Seltherin’s fine-boned face creased with something close to baffled pride. “Why build it to fail?” he asked.

Eric straightened, dusting his knees off without thinking. “Because we plan for failure. You design redundancies, accept that parts will wear, and schedule the replacement before collapse becomes urgent. It’s messy, but it keeps a job market alive.” He smiled a little. “Here, you build once and expect permanence. Different philosophies.”

Seltherin’s shoulders lifted in a faint shrug. “We respect order. We bind what we can so forces of decay have less purchase. It is both aesthetic and practical.”

They fell into a companionable silence as they walked. Eric’s eyes skated over more details: the lamp posts that shed light in broad, uncompromising sheets without a single visible fuel source; shallow gutters that evacuated rainwater with the same geometric perfection as the street; doors whose thresholds were trimmed in a metal he didn’t recognize, seamless where most cities show the scars of repair.

“And the lamps?” Eric asked after a moment. “Do those run on mana, or—?”

Seltherin glanced up at a lamppost as its inner core pulsed once in acknowledgment. “Minor enchantments,” he said. “Practical enchantments for steady light. Nothing wasted on ornamentation for its own sake.”

Eric nodded slowly. The city felt like a machine maintained by craftsmen with an obsessive eye—every spell and every stone placed to reduce just the right friction and, in the process, to express a philosophy: prevention over improvisation, polish over patchwork. It was elegant—too elegant in a way.

“You know,” he said, almost to himself, “this all looks like it’s trying to outrun entropy.”

Seltherin’s mouth curved, not unkindly. “We do not attempt to outrun it. We prefer to limit its options.”

Eric let that settle. In his head, the concrete sequences of maintenance work he knew were replaced by the idea of a single laying, a single enchantment that could last generations. It was a different kind of certainty—one built on ritual, mastery, and the confidence of a people who had long learned how to keep time from swallowing their craft.

They walked on, the avenue unfurling ahead of them. People, a lot of people going about their business this way and that. Not even looking at the astonishing craftsmanship laid before them. For Eric, every perfect surface was both a marvel and a question he couldn’t help but want to take apart.

Eric tilted his head at the lamppost again, watching the light spill in steady sheets without flicker, smoke, or fuel. “Okay, one more question,” he said, pointing. “How does it stay powered? I don’t see anything powering anything here.”

Seltherin halted mid-step, his robes shifting as he turned sharply. His expression wasn’t angry so much as weary, the look of a teacher confronted with a child who had skipped ten chapters ahead.

“You are irritatingly inquisitive,” he said, voice clipped. “These are questions an artificer would care about, and artificer is a profession that requires years of study—decades, for some. You cannot simply walk into the city and expect answers to every riddle of craft as if curiosity alone grants mastery.”

Eric muttered under his breath, “I am an artificer though...”

Seltherin’s head snapped back toward him, eyes narrowing. “What did you say? Are you suggesting that you have been given the profession of artificer? Don’t play with me, boy.”

Eric stiffened. His usual crooked grin slipped away, replaced by something sharper, steadier. “If I tell you that the system—or heavens, or whatever you want to call it—allowed me to choose it, then I very well mean I chose it.”

The words hung between them, heavier than the stone beneath their feet.

Seltherin’s jaw tightened, his tone suddenly harder. “You dare to speak so plainly of the heavens’ will? If this is some attempt at humor, I warn you—”

“It isn’t a joke,” Eric interrupted, voice low but firm. “Where I come from, we don’t wait decades to be told if we’re allowed to learn something. We dive in, we break things, we build them better. And when I was offered the chance here, I didn’t hesitate. I chose artificer.”

Seltherin’s expression shifted—anger warred with something else, some faint flicker of uncertainty. He studied Eric as though trying to see if this was some kind of cruel joke. At last he exhaled through his nose.

“Then either the heavens have gone mad…” His eyes narrowed further, voice almost a growl. “…or they have set you on a path that will test us all.”

“Is there a way to share my status window?” Eric retorted.

“A what?” Seltherin said “Do you mean you wish to share your soul with me?”

“Excuse me,” Eric says, “I’m just asking how I can share my artificer profession with you.”

Seltherin’s shoulders twitched. For a breath his anger flared, then softened into something almost cautious. “That—that isn’t something anyone does lightly,” he said, the sharpness in his voice blurring into warning. “To lay open your soul is a trust reserved for blood and fate. You only need to will it. If you insist, we can do it here, the heavens will reserve it for anyone you intend to show.”

Eric shrugged, the grin stubborn. “You act like I’m baring myself naked to you.” He paused, then deadpanned, “Oh wait — yeah. Already did that.”

Eric willed his status to be seen by Seltherin and it flared in front of him facing Seltherin, except, it wasn’t a window he saw, it was a swirling mess of symbols and threads connecting each symbol.

Interesting, Eric thought, I guess the system shows me a window and them something different.

Seltherin’s eyes traced the shifting information, the way symbols bled into one another and snapped back like living geometry. His face drained of its usual cool disdain, replaced by something harder to name—concern, even fear.

“These threads…” he whispered. His fingers hovered close to the image, stopping just shy of touching it. “No novice should carry this weight.”

Eric tilted his head. “So… good stats, then?”

The line earned no smile. Seltherin drew back, his gaze sharpening into calculation. “If left unchecked, this power could harm you, perhaps more. It must be guided, quickly and with precision.”

Eric opened his mouth to deflect, to joke, but stopped. There was something different in Seltherin’s tone—not the clipped superiority of a mentor lecturing a pupil, but the edge of someone suddenly responsible for more than duty demanded. For the briefest instant, it felt less like being evaluated and more like being… claimed.

Seltherin straightened, jaw set, robes whispering as if sealing the thought into resolve. “Very well,” he said at last. “From this moment forward, you are my first responsibility. I will teach you—whether you learn willingly or fight me every step. Though, I will admit, artificing isn’t my strongest subject, I will have to bring in an artifice professor.”

Eric blinked, unsettled by the gravity in the declaration. He’d heard commands before, but this was different. This was the sound of someone who wasn’t just bound by obligation but—against his will, maybe—had accepted something closer to guardianship.

Eric and Seltherin walked on, the silence between them thick with unspoken weight. Then, almost without warning, the avenue spilled into chaos. The perfect geometry of the streets gave way to a riot of stalls and voices, a bazaar that reminded Eric of crowded markets in India. Merchants shouted over one another, the air thick with spice and smoke. Storefronts crowded in behind the stalls: booksellers with neat stacks under awnings, jewelers flashing gold and glass, parchment shops with rolls spilling from their doors.

It was overwhelming—alive in a way the flawless stone had not been.

Eric edged past a fruit stand where customers tossed odd glassy coins across the counter, their crystalline chime nearly lost in the din. A woman snatched her son by the wrist when Eric passed, muttering something sharp under her breath. Another man’s sneer lingered just long enough to sting before he turned away. The crowd bent around Eric without slowing, but he could feel it: the space he carved, the subtle recoil, like he was a blemish walking through polished marble. I guess I do look rather odd in this coat.

Then he felt it—the prickle of eyes on his back. He turned sharply, scanning the throng. Nothing unusual: just a woman in a red scarf completing her purchase. But she moved differently. Where others shoved and jostled, she slipped through with a steadiness that was almost deliberate, coins changing hands with a quiet clink as she took her goods.

Plain at first glance—maybe even forgettable. Yet Eric found himself glancing again. And again. Something about the purposeful grace in her stride—calm in the chaos—his focus hooked on her without reason.

Then she turned. For an instant their eyes met. She gave him the kind of small, polite nod strangers exchange in passing—nothing more—and walked past. And yet, after all the sneers and sidelong looks, it landed on him like a gift. The moment stretched, seconds ballooning into minutes. When she was gone, Eric realized he’d been holding his breath.

“We are here,” Seltherin’s voice cut through, steady and practical. He gestured toward a shop front trimmed in fine cloth. “The tailor’s.”

Inside, the noise of the market muffled to a softer hum. Bolts of fabric lined the walls in neat vertical stacks, each cloth catching the light in a way that seemed almost deliberate—shimmering not with dye alone but with something subtler. Eric brushed his fingers along a sleeve draped on a mannequin and paused.

At first he thought the glint at the cuff was just decorative thread. Then he leaned closer and saw it: a line of runes stitched so fine they looked like part of the weave. At the collar, another set, different symbols curling like hidden script.

He blinked. “Are these… enchantments? In the seams?”

Seltherin gave a short nod, as if this were too obvious to remark upon. “A proper garment is more than cloth. Enchantments for warmth, for fit, for wear. Practical things.”

Eric let out a low whistle. Back home, custom tailoring meant price tags that could make a man wince. Here, even the everyday clothes were walking enchantments. “So… how much does one of these cost?” he asked, half-dreading the answer.

Seltherin’s mouth quirked faintly. “Less than you think. Such work is common. To dress without it would be… provincial.”

Eric frowned, running a thumb over the rune-stitched cuff again. In his world, fashion and function rarely mixed without bankrupting someone. Here, even shirts whispered with magic.

Eric sifted through the racks, running his hand along fabrics that shimmered faintly with ward-stitching. Deep blues, silvers, even a few crimson robes caught his eye—but none of them felt like him.

Then he spotted it: a long coat of charcoal-black with a high collar, the inside stitched with runes so subtle they looked like shadows in motion, the outside had silvery runes that glowed ever so slightly blue. The mannequin beside it wore matching trousers and a collarless shirt, black on black, clean lines broken only by the faint gleam of protective thread at the seams. He added a black belt and the look came together for him.

Eric tugged the sleeve, and the cuff seemed to settle naturally against his wrist as if it belonged there. The cloth was heavier than it looked, warm without stifling, strong without stiffness. He pulled it over his shoulders and turned toward the mirror. Man I look so awesome right now, he smiled as he thought, feeling like he was living the fantasy dream style. Should I get a cloak, no, that would be to much.

The man staring back wasn’t the office drone who used to trudge home at 6:14 PM. He wasn’t even the bald, confused boy who had belly-flopped into a summoning circle. He looked like someone meant to be here.

“Black,” Seltherin said, tone dry but thoughtful. “You choose to look like a shadow at noon. Not uncommon among war mages… or artificers.”

Eric smirked, smoothing the coat. “Where I come from, black goes with everything. And it feels… right.”

Seltherin studied him for a long beat, eyes narrowing as if he were trying to read more than cloth. Finally, he gave a curt nod. “Very well. Black it shall be. The heavens have strange tastes.”

“Now be sure to grab three of each,” Seltherin said, his tone clipped with efficiency. “The Arcane Anomaly Authority will only provide this stipend once. Afterward, you will be expected to manage on your own.”

Eric raised a brow. “So… starter pack rules. Got it.”

Seltherin frowned. “I do not know what that means. But yes—choose wisely. Waste is unbecoming.”

Seltherin stepped to the counter, drew a slim slip of parchment from his sleeve, and scrawled a few sharp lines across it with a stylus that gleamed faintly at the tip. The symbols burned once, sank into the paper, and cooled to ink. He handed it to the tailor with the brisk air of a man accustomed to being obeyed.

The tailor glanced at the slip, nodded, and immediately began pulling garments from the racks.

Seltherin turned back to Eric, producing a small pouch of translucent blue coins that shimmered faintly like bottled sky. He pressed it into Eric’s hand. “Your stipend,” he said simply. “Seventeen Skyls per quarter cycle, for living expenses, don’t expect this to last forever, The Arcane Anomaly Authority will eventually expect you to earn your own way.”

Eric weighed the pouch, the coins clinking with a crystalline chime. “So… what exactly am I supposed to do with this?”

Seltherin folded his hands behind his back. “You will pay me five Skyls a week for your part in food. Housing is handled through the Arcanum, so you need not worry over that. Save the rest. You will want coin when you begin your studies in earnest.”

Eric nodded slowly, cinching the pouch to his belt. “Right. Budgeting. Guess some things really are universal.”

A silence set in as they walked back toward the Arcanum campus. Seltherin strode ahead with his usual long, measured steps, robes whispering against the stone. Eric followed, absently checking the pouch of Skyls at his belt and adjusting the bundle of clothes under his arm.

Then Eric snapped his fingers. “Oh, I forgot—I can do this.”

Seltherin slowed. “Do what?”

“Hold on.” Eric shifted the bundle to one hand and focused. Store.

The clothes shimmered and blinked out of existence. He blinked, then grinned. “Okay, that worked. Now—” He tapped the pouch at his belt. Store. The weight vanished, and the faint crystalline chime of coins went with it.

Eric turned to Seltherin, smug as a cat that had just pulled off a trick. “See? Way better than pockets.”

Seltherin froze. His gaze shot straight to Eric’s hands, then his belt, then his other hand. His eyes narrowed to slits. “Where,” he said slowly, dangerously, “is your storage ring?”

“My what?”

“Your ring. Or pouch. Or any sanctioned vessel of containment.” His voice sharpened. “You weren’t issued one. Did you steal it, boy?”

Eric lifted his hands. “Whoa, calm down! No stealing. I just… thought about it, and it worked. Inventory. Standard RPG mechanics.”

“Standard… what?” Seltherin’s stare darkened, his voice dropping low. “You are telling me you carry a storage space with no vessel? No anchor?”

Eric shrugged and then raised his index finger, as if announcing a feature update. “Yep. And it’s upgradeable.”

Seltherin stopped in the middle of the road, pinching the bridge of his nose. “The heavens have gone mad,” he muttered. “Utterly mad.”

Eric smirked, falling back into step. “Hey, I’m not complaining. Beats lugging bags around.”

Seltherin groaned softly, robes flaring as he turned and started toward the Arcanum again. “This boy is going to be my death,” he muttered under his breath.

Eric grinned wider, enjoying every second. He hadn’t expected annoying an elf professor to be this much fun.

They made it another dozen paces before Eric froze mid-step, smacking his forehead.

“Great. Big oversight. I can shove stuff into my inventory, but… how do I actually see it?”

Seltherin’s robes rustled in pure exasperation. “What now?”

He thought open inventory, and a translucent window bloomed in front of him.

Rows of neat boxes hovered, each slot filled with tiny icons: his coat, folded with crisp edges; the spare trousers stacked like a store shelf; even his boots, sitting side by side as though a clerk had arranged them. At the bottom corner, a row of shimmering tokens caught his eye.

Currency:

1. Skyls (blue, transparent): 17
2. Solyrs (aqua, semi-opaque): 0
3. Verdyns (green, mostly opaque): 0
4. Auryls (golden-yellow, fully opaque): 0

Below that, greyed-out placeholders waited, little coin silhouettes he couldn’t even identify, their names replaced with simple ???.

Eric leaned closer, smirking. Of course. Built-in accounting. The system’s basically my banker, too.

He tapped the Auryl line and the image expanded, showing the rough exchange:

1. 1 Auryl = 100 Skyls
2. 1 Verdyn = 10 Skyls
3. 1 Solyr = 5 Skyls

Eric chuckled, shaking his head. Well, that explains why seventeen Skyls won’t buy me anything fancy. Guess I’m officially broke in two worlds.

Back at the Arcanum campus, Seltherin didn’t lead Eric to his room. Instead, he turned sharply down a side corridor that opened into a wide, circular chamber lined with chalk-white stone. The walls hummed faintly, as though tuned to some low resonance.

Eric looked around, eyebrows raised. “So this is… what, the wizard gym?”

Seltherin ignored the quip. He strode to the center of the room, gesturing sharply. “Sit. Cross-legged. Hands on your knees.”

Eric hesitated, then plopped down with all the grace of a folding chair. “Alright, teach. What now?”

Seltherin exhaled slowly through his nose. “Now, I keep this city from exploding because of your ‘fortunate peculiarities.’”

Eric grinned faintly. “You say that like it’s my fault the heavens think I’m special.”

Seltherin closed his eyes briefly, as though pleading with invisible powers for patience. Then he crouched, meeting Eric’s gaze directly. “You have mana. Everyone does. But raw mana left unshaped is like water behind a dam. It builds pressure. Cycling is how we strengthen the dam—pull it through channels, circulate, return it to stillness. This is where you learn to manipulate that mana. Where you learn to release the mana to be formed into a spell.”

Eric tilted his head. “So… breathing exercises, but for magic?”

A muscle twitched in Seltherin’s jaw. “In the crudest terms… yes.”

He placed his palm against his own sternum. “Inhale through the nose. As you do, draw. Imagine the breath pulling light from the air into you. Feel it settle behind the heart.” He exhaled slowly, steady and long. “Then release. Let it flow out again. The cycle continues, endlessly. Draw, hold, release. In time, the body learns.”

Eric closed his eyes and copied him. He breathed in, trying to picture light sinking into his chest. For a moment, nothing. Then, like a trick of pressure, a faint warmth coiled behind his ribs. His eyes snapped open.

“Oh.”

Seltherin’s tone sharpened. “Do not lose it. Continue.”

Eric shut his eyes again, focusing. Inhale—warmth trickled in, brighter this time. Hold—it pressed against him, stretching, tingling, until he thought his chest might burst. Exhale—like steam, the warmth bled away, leaving a strange clarity in its wake.

When he opened his eyes again, his pulse was racing. “That… that was real. I felt it.”

Seltherin gave a single curt nod. “You did not rupture anything. Acceptable.”

“High praise,” Eric muttered.

But he couldn’t help the grin tugging at his lips. For the first time since arriving, the power in his veins didn’t feel like a vague impression. It felt like his.

Hours passed in steady rhythm, the chamber filling only with the sound of breath. Eric inhaled, exhaled, pulled mana in and released it again. At first the warmth had been a trickle, but now it flowed smoother, steadier, like a current he could dip his hands into. Sweat prickled at his brow, though the chamber was cool; his body was working in ways it had never been asked to before.

Seltherin circled him in silence, the click of his steps punctuating Eric’s breaths. At last, the elf stopped, arms folding into his sleeves. “Good. You no longer look as though you will rupture like an overripe melon.”

Eric cracked one eye open. “What?! You mean I’ve been walking around like a bomb this whole time?” “Yes,” Seltherin said flatly. “That’s exactly what you looked like. I didn’t mention it because I figured it was better not to have you worrying… until you exploded.” Eric sat up, incredulous. “So what—your plan was to let me explode and then say, ‘Oh yes, I thought that might happen’?”

Seltherin let out a long breath through his nose. His arms folded, then unfolded again, restless. He tapped two fingers against his own forearm as if keeping time with a rhythm only he heard. The calm mask was there, but the cracks showed—his voice carried a sharper edge when he finally spoke.

“Now it is time to look inward. To see your core.” Eric blinked. “Like… open-chest surgery kind of core, or just another way you could watch me explode?”

“The core of your being,” Seltherin snapped. “The seat of your mana, where your affinities anchor themselves. Seeing it will tell you how firm your foundation is, how stable your affinities are, and how far you may safely push yourself.”

Eric swallowed, sitting up straighter. “Alright. So how do I… check my magical oil gauge?”

Time blurred. The chamber shrank to stone and pulse, to the practiced rhythm of cycling. Seltherin’s voice became a thin echo, leaving only the task: find the place inside where the current began. It wasn’t immediate. Each time he tried to force the image, it unraveled into noise.

Then—when he stopped forcing, when he simply let his mind settle—the focus snapped into place as if a lens had turned.

The core was a sun: bright, bruised yellow, burning without consuming. Energy roiled off its surface in ribbons, solar flares snapping and sighing in a language he half-understood as voltage and cadence. Around its edge, a sphere of jagged arcs shimmered, sharp with ozone. Beyond that shimmer, a bubble through which wind seemed to flow. He couldn’t see the wind, not exactly—he only felt its motion, a mirage of movement that made his mind stutter because the sensation and the sight didn’t align.

He blinked away the dizziness and found, adjacent to the bubble, a second sphere: molten, roiling fire, a contained furnace that spun with hungry intent. Beautiful. Terrifying. And at last, the pulse he had been practicing had a shape he could name.

“This is amazing,” Eric whispered. “It looks like… a sun.” “Very good.” Seltherin clapped once, eyes bright. “You can see it. You should also see a representation of your lightning affinity, yes.” “Uh… yes,” Eric said, focusing on the image. “But I think I also see… air and fire.” “Yes!” Seltherin exclaimed. “The affinities behind lightning are the prime affinities that form it. They shape your lightning affinity.”

For a long, slow minute he watched the core itself—sun, fire-orb, air-orb, and lightning orb—while the chamber’s cool air and Seltherin’s measured breathing held the rest of the world at bay.

Then, at the edges of his sight, other lights stirred: a distant, liquid blue; a low, steady green; a pale white geometry that seemed carved from perfect crystal; and a dark sphere that looked less like stone than stone in the act of crumbling. They were faint, like stars glimpsed through city haze, but undeniably there.

He blinked. “I can see other affinities,” he whispered. “Water… earth… and that white thing—what is that? It looks like crystal. And that black one… it looks like it’s falling apart.”

Seltherin lurched forward, composure shattering. “What?!” His voice rang against the chamber walls. “You should not see other affinities at this stage—certainly not those! You can see Order and Entropy?”

Eric let the words hang in the silence, then scratched his cheek. “…So that’s… good?”

Seltherin’s composure snapped back into place with chilling precision. He crouched again, voice low and steady. “No, Eric. It is not good. It means the world has marked you for burdens most mages will never even glimpse. Order and Entropy are not tools to wield lightly. They are foundations. And foundations can crush as easily as they can support.”

Seltherin rubbed his ear and spoke “When a mage casts a spell, they must weave in the affinities they have availible to them, as you become more experienced you slowly gain all affinities, order and entropy are both prime affinities and the hardest to actually understand.”

“So…” Eric said slowly, brow furrowed. “What you’re saying is… having these affinities is about personal understanding. Not just time or experience, right?”

Seltherin’s eyebrow rose. “Something like that. And for a novice, that was… exceptionally intuitive. Why would a boy so young grasp the meaning of Order and Entropy?”

Eric shrugged faintly. “Back where I’m from, I learned the theory of them young. Not magic, but… science. From my perspective, order is what happens when atoms align themselves into neat patterns as they lose energy—like when crystals form. And entropy? Everyone learns about that too: decay, the slow unraveling of things, until time itself means the heat death of the universe. Different words, same ideas.”

Seltherin’s brow furrowed. “What in all Seven Threads is an atom?”

Eric hesitated, then gave a crooked smile. “Smallest piece of matter. The building blocks of… well, everything. Back home, we split them apart and nearly ended ourselves with the energy they released.”

Seltherin studied him for a moment, then turned away, unreadable.

By the time they left the chamber, Eric felt hollowed out. His legs moved on instinct, his thoughts a tangle of static. Pale stone, glowing wards, the echo of footsteps — the Arcanum’s halls slid past in fragments.

He barely remembered the meal: a low table, a bowl, a spoon lifting something warm to his lips. The taste vanished before he could name it.

The next clear moment was the couch — long, deep, impossibly soft. He collapsed, cushions catching him like a net. Sleep claimed him before his head fully settled.