Failure's Lesson

Welyvyne led Eric down the hall toward First Star Artificing. Her steps slowed, and she glanced at him before quickly looking away.

“You know, Eric,” she said quietly, “no one has ever said anything like that about me.”

Eric let out a breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah… I figured as much.” He met her eyes for a heartbeat, his tone steady. “Just understand this—I’ll always lift you up. In my eyes, you deserve it.”

Welyvyne’s voice caught, softer than before. “I don’t think you really know what that did to me. I mean… I don’t know. I’ve never known anyone who just says what they’re thinking.”

Eric snorted. “Yeah, I may be a bit much, but I truly mean well. I’m sorry again.”

She sighed. “Please stop apologizing. I’m just… not used to it.”

Eric’s grin spread wide. “By the time I’m done, you’ll be offended that no one else speaks about you like that.”

Welyvyne groaned, burying her face in her hands for a moment. “Oh, please don’t do that again… just—say it in private, okay?”

Eric laughed. “Alright, I’ll only compliment you in private then. Mostly only in front of Lyren and Kaelen.”

Welyvyne gave Eric a soft punch to the arm, her smile breaking through the fluster still clinging to her cheeks. She paused outside the Artificing hall, meeting his eyes.

“Thank you—I really needed that, even if it embarrassed me.”

Eric chuckled, stepping past her toward the door. “Anytime.”

Eric froze at the doorway, his eyes sweeping over the room. Workbenches lined every wall, each crowded with strange instruments he could only guess were used to carve or etch enchantments. On every bench sat neat stacks of thin, rectangular tablets—stone and wood alike, waiting blank and expectant. The benches themselves bore the weight of years: scarred with soot, nicked by blades, and split in places where the thick wood had finally given way.

The room smelled faintly of wax, oil, and ink—a sharp mix that clung to the back of the throat. A shelf near the professor’s desk sagged under the weight of books, their spines worn from eager hands ready to dive into them. At the desk sat Professor Valien, his robes as ever modified to drape neatly over the shoulder where his arm was missing. He looked up at their arrival, eyes keen despite the weariness etched into his features, and gave Eric a short nod of acknowledgment.

Professor Valien pushed himself up from his chair, the motion deliberate but steady. His gaze fixed on Eric first.

“Hello, Eric,” he said, voice carrying a calm authority. Then his attention shifted to Welyvyne. “And what is your name, miss?”

Welyvyne hesitated only a fraction before straightening her shoulders.

“Welyvyne Aerasyn,” she said clearly, inclining her head with a small smile. Then her gaze flicked between the two, one brow arched. “I see you already know Eric.”

Professor Valien inclined his head in return. “Indeed. A pleasure, Miss Aerasyn. Please, take whichever seat suits you.”

Eric smirked faintly at the formality. Same Welyvyne—but suddenly she sounded like she’d stepped out of a ballroom instead of her usual self.

Welyvyne led them to two workbenches along the far wall. Up close, Eric let his eyes wander across the setup. The first tool was obvious enough—a fixed device with a fine metal tip, runes on the side that reminded him of a button. A stabilizer for etching, he guessed. Beside it lay stacks of blank stone and wood slabs, with paper-thin metal sheets folded at the edges so they could slide snugly over them. Test beds, maybe—slipcovers to spare the base material from ruin.

Other instruments scattered across the bench reminded him less of a wizard’s kit and more of the electronics benches back home. A magnifier sat on an articulated arm, its rune-etched ring glowing faintly beneath the lens. He recognized the design instantly—it was the same pattern he’d been forced to drip mana into for hours. A built-in light. Simple. Effective.

Then his fingers brushed a short stick of chalk, its pale surface tinged faintly blue. Not ordinary chalk—it caught the light with a crystalline sheen. He rolled it in his palm, feeling its cool weight. That, he realized with a spark of excitement, was for practice. Sketch the rune, charge it with mana, watch it flicker to life without carving anything permanent. A way to test ideas before cutting deep. Smart. Very smart.

The door creaked open again, and more students trickled in. Professor Valien greeted each one in turn with the same formality, asking their names before directing them to an empty bench.

Eric counted as they came. By the time the room had settled, there were seven in total, including himself and Welyvyne. A small class. Too small, maybe—but that was exactly what Seltherin had warned him. Artificing wasn’t popular. Too much risk, too many hours, not enough immediate payoff.

Still, Eric studied them with interest, trying to fix each face to a name.

1. Joran Veylan — broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and visibly uncomfortable in robes that looked a size too tight. He looked like he’d be more at home with a sword than a rune stylus.
2. Tessa Morin — a sharp-eyed girl who tucked her hair neatly behind her ears and already had ink smudges on her fingers. She muttered to herself as she unpacked a neat roll of quills, clearly a planner.
3. Rynel Thalor — a half-elf with lavender hair, thin as a reed, who immediately leaned over his bench to inspect the tools like he’d seen them before. Confidence, or arrogance—it was hard to tell.
4. Maris Denholt — round-faced, soft-spoken, and visibly nervous. Her wide eyes darted to the professor, then to the tools, then back again, as though she half-expected something to explode.
5. Corin Dathir — short, stocky, and grinning like this was all a game. He slouched into his seat and tapped the table in a rhythm, like patience wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Eric sat back, lips quirking faintly. Not a big crowd. Easy enough to keep track of. And if even half of them stick around after the first accident, I’ll be impressed.

Professor Valien walked to the center of the room, his missing sleeve pinned neatly to his side. He turned slowly, letting his gaze sweep across the gathered students until every restless shuffle and whispered murmur stilled. The benches creaked as the last stragglers straightened in their seats. “Hello, everyone. I am Professor Valien. Some of you already know me.” He inclined his head briefly toward Tessa, then toward Eric. “Today we begin with engraving.” He gestured toward the workbenches. “You’ll find stacks of stone and wooden slabs before you. These are your practice pieces. Treat them as such. If you carve carelessly, you lose only a slab. If you carve carelessly into something meant to hold mana—” His eyes lingered on each student in turn, his voice firm but measured. “You could lose much more than that.” A few students shifted uncomfortably. Valien allowed the silence to stretch for half a breath before continuing. “Artificing begins not with brilliance, but with repetition. Stability, accuracy, and control. These practice slabs are where you will fail—so that one day, when the material in your hands costs more than your tuition, you will not.”

“I am going to love this class,” Eric said, unable to keep the grin off his face.

A few students shot him odd looks—some amused, others skeptical. Maris shrank a little further into her seat, while Corin smirked as though daring Eric to keep talking.

Professor Valien arched a brow but didn’t rebuke him. Instead, a small tug at the corner of his mouth suggested he’d heard the same words before, though rarely with such unguarded excitement.

“Enthusiasm,” Valien said evenly, “is a good start. It will not, however, stop your slab from cracking in your hands.”

The room gave a soft ripple of nervous chuckles. Eric just leaned forward, eyes bright, already itching to grab the chalk.

“Go ahead and turn to page three in your Artificing books,” Professor Valien said, his voice steady, cutting easily through the shuffle of parchment and wood. “There you will find your first practice enchantment. It is a light. Nothing more—it glows. But it is the safest and simplest enchantment to practice.”

The class flipped through their books, murmurs filling the silence until all seven pairs of eyes fixed on the neat sketch of a circle with a rune etched within. A basic illumination glyph, simple lines and faint directional arrows.

Valien’s gaze lingered on Eric a moment longer than the others. His one arm folded behind his back as he added, “Remember to trickle mana. A slow stream, not a flood. Try not to blow up your workbench with something ‘safe.’”

Corin snorted and leaned back in his chair, but Eric sat up straighter, already itching to try. His grin tugged wider. Light? Simple glow? Oh, I’m going to love this.

Eric looked at Welyvyne. She was giving him that flat, annoyed look that said she was two seconds from smacking him.

“What?” he asked.

“Hard to turn to page three when our books are still in your storage space,” Welyvyne snorted.

Eric’s eyes widened. “Crap. I forgot again. Hold on.”

Eric produced the books with a shimmer of light, reality bending for just a heartbeat before snapping back. He handed one to Welyvyne, who muttered something about him being hopeless, then flipped his own open to page three.

Professor Valien raised a single brow, studying him like an equation that refused to balance.

Around the room, a few students leaned forward, eyes darting to Eric’s hands, his belt, his wrists—anywhere a storage item might’ve been hidden. They found nothing. Most shook their heads and turned back to their benches.

But not Tessa.

She wasn’t looking at his hands at all. She was staring at him, lips parted slightly, ink-stained fingers hovering over her own book. The light from the rune-lamps caught the edges of her eyes, making them shine.

Eric glanced up just in time to meet her gaze. She didn’t look away. If anything, her expression softened—dreamy, almost wistful.

Oh no, Eric thought, slamming his attention back to the book. He could practically hear Welyvyne smirking beside him.

When he glanced sideways, though, her face wasn’t amused at all. A faint scowl pinched her brow, her gaze fixed—not on him—but in Tessa’s direction.

Eric blinked. Huh. Guess she doesn’t like Tessa much. He shrugged and bent back over the page, deciding the lines of the rune were far safer ground.

Eric turned the etching tool over in his hands, thumb pressing the little button-shaped rune on its side. Nothing happened. He frowned, tapped it again, then started tilting it around, holding it up to his eye, squinting down the tip like it was a scope.

Welyvyne glanced over and snorted. “What, you can’t figure out how to work the etching tool?”

Eric deadpanned without missing a beat. “I figured it out already. I was just pretending it was an airplane flying around my head.” He swooped the tool through the air with a soft whoosh.

Her brow furrowed. “What is an… ar-plan?”

Eric snorted, shaking his head. “Never mind. Could you just tell me how to work the stupid thing?”

Welyvyne laughed outright, pointing to the rune he’d been fiddling with. “You push a little mana into that. Not too much. Just a trickle.”

Eric chuckled, lowering the tool back to the slab. “I knew that was connected to its function—I just couldn’t figure out what it wanted.”

Welyvyne rolled her eyes and bent back over her stone slab, sketching out the light rune with chalk in neat, practiced lines.

Eric, meanwhile, tapped mana into the tool and grinned as it buzzed faintly in his hand. “Ha. Knew it was supposed to do that,” he muttered to himself. Then, instead of stone, he reached for a wooden slab. If Welyvyne was working stone, he might as well test wood—see if it behaved any differently under his hand.

Professor Valien’s voice carried steadily through the room.

“You’ll notice that the fire rune used here is modified so that it emits light without the destructiveness of fire. Many runes you’ll encounter will carry modifiers—shaping, narrowing, trimming down the affinity into the specific aspect you wish to harness.”

Eric’s chalk hovered over the slab. So it’s like filtering a signal, he thought. You strip out the noise and keep only the useful frequency. Fire has heat, flame, smoke, destruction… but light’s just one slice of the spectrum. They’ve already isolated it here.

Around him, a few students just nodded vaguely, dutifully copying the rune sketch. But Eric’s eyes sharpened, tracing the modifier glyph that bent the rune into compliance. He could practically feel the implications spinning out—if you can modify one piece, you can recombine others.

Eric lifted his head from his slab, frowning thoughtfully. “Wait—so couldn’t you use modified rune combinations to get different effects? Like… say you’ve got air and fire runes. If you narrow air down to its movement aspect, and fire down to plasma or raw energy—you’d get lightning. I mean, I’m guessing that’s how my lightning affinity works, now that I’ve heard you say that.”

The room went still.

Several students froze with chalk half to stone. Maris’s jaw actually dropped. Even Corin stopped drumming his fingers, staring openly at Eric like he’d just announced he’d invented bread.

Professor Valien’s brow climbed slowly. His one hand tightened on the edge of the desk, though his expression remained calm. “That is… a very advanced line of thought, Eric.” His voice carried no anger, only measured weight. “One most students would not stumble across for several years of study.”

Eric blinked, genuinely puzzled. “…Really? It just seemed obvious when you explained modifiers like that.”

Tessa’s quill stilled mid-scratch. Her wide-eyed look toward Eric carried something between awe and infatuation. Welyvyne, on the other hand, had folded her arms tight across her chest, her lips pinched as though he’d somehow managed to annoy her and impress her in the same breath.

Valien exhaled slowly, then nodded once. “In theory, you are correct. Combinations of modified runes can produce compound effects. In practice, attempting to stabilize such runes is dangerous, and beyond what you are prepared for at this time.”

His gaze swept the class, finally settling on Eric again. “For now… let us begin with a glow.”

Eric leaned back slightly, eyes flicking between the diagram in the book and the rune Valien had drawn on the slab. Well, that settles it then, he thought. Modifiers aren’t just little tweaks—they’re building blocks. Which means I’ve got a lot more room to experiment than I thought. This whole system isn’t straightforward at all. It’s modular.

His grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Which means it’s mine to take apart.

After a couple of hours of etching and tracing, Eric sat back, brushing chalk dust off his fingers. He fed mana into the last plate, watching the lines flare. A few flickered and coughed out smoke almost immediately—failures. Two held steady, glowing softly, one brighter than the other.

Eric frowned, dragging the magnifier down on its articulated arm. He leaned close. The lines looked identical at first, but then he spotted it—a slight thinning in the channel feeding from the absorption rune. Barely a hair’s breadth.

Huh, Eric thought, lips quirking. That’s acting like a resistor. I just throttled the mana without meaning to.

The glow steadied, dim but clean. Encouraged, he pushed just a little more mana into it.

The whole etched line flared bright in response, then spat a crackling hiss. Fire raced outward along the rune channels, burning like a fuse until the slab went dark, smoke curling from its edges.

Eric jerked his hands back, coughing at the acrid smell. “Well… okay then. Guess resistors burn out here too.”

Across the room, Maris gasped and nearly dropped her chalk. Tessa covered her mouth, eyes wide. Corin just whooped a laugh.

Professor Valien’s head swiveled, his expression unreadable. “Mr. Eric,” he said flatly. “Would you care to explain to the class why your ‘safe’ rune slab is smoldering?”

Eric winced, waving the smoke away. “Uh… experimenting?”

Professor Valien shook his head. “I don’t believe I said experiment. I said practice.”

Eric snorted. “Yeah, that’s how it started. Until I noticed something.”

Valien arched a brow. “And what, exactly, did you notice?”

“I had two slabs working,” Eric said, leaning forward, “but one light was dimmer than the other.”

Valien nodded. “Yes. A variance is expected, and perfectly normal. So how did that cause your slab to burn?”

Eric gestured toward the blackened plate. “So when I took a closer look, I realized my line was a hair thinner near the modified fire rune. That’s what was making it dimmer—the line was restricting mana flow. Like… a resistor. So I pushed a little more mana through, and that’s when the whole thing lit up and burned out.”

The room went very quiet.

Several students blinked at him blankly, clearly lost at the word resistor. Tessa, though, looked like he’d just quoted poetry. Welyvyne pinched the bridge of her nose.

Professor Valien’s lips pressed together in something not quite disapproval—not quite approval either. “You described it as… restricting mana flow?”

Eric shrugged. “Yeah. Like bottlenecking power through a weak circuit.”

Valien’s gaze lingered on him, heavy and considering. “Interesting.”

“I’m not sure what a resistor or a circuit is,” Professor Valien said slowly, “but I can see what you’re talking about. The way you frame it—like something that can be used purposely—that isn’t standard practice. It could be dangerous to experiment with it.”

Eric leaned back, lips quirking despite the warning. “Yeah, most useful discoveries usually start that way.”

A few students glanced at him like he’d grown another head. Welyvyne elbowed him hard under the bench, muttering, “Could you not?”

Valien’s eyes narrowed faintly, though not in anger—more like appraisal. “You have an unusual perspective, Eric. But remember—here, control comes before creativity. Burn out too many slabs, and you’ll learn nothing but the smell of smoke.”

“Not to argue with you,” Eric said carefully, “but I find the best way to learn is through failure, Professor Valien.”

A couple of students snickered under their breath. Corin outright smirked, leaning back like he was waiting for Eric to get chewed out.

But Valien didn’t scold him. The professor’s gaze lingered, sharp and steady, weighing the words. Finally, he inclined his head a fraction.

“Failure is indeed a teacher,” Valien said, his voice quiet but firm. “But some lessons take more than a singed slab to deliver. Remember that, Mr. Eric.”

Welyvyne pressed her lips together, shooting him a look equal parts why must you and you’re impossible.

Eric only grinned, already itching to test another slab.

Welyvyne perked up, straightening in her seat. “Well, that’s the bell.”

Professor Valien gave a final nod. “Read to page fifteen in your texts. Next fourth, we’ll begin there.”

Eric blinked and glanced around the room. None of the others looked surprised. Some were already packing up, benches creaking, chalk clattering into boxes. He frowned at Welyvyne.

“What bell? Am I missing something?”

Welyvyne tilted her head, her expression flickering between amusement and pity. “Clearly sense,” she said dryly. She closed her book and pushed it toward him.

Eric took it automatically, and without thinking, the tome shimmered away into storage the instant it touched his hand.

Welyvyne raised a brow. “Hopeless,” she muttered.