I limped back to the tower after morning training, my arms aching from the repeated failed attempts at controlling the rope dart. Garrick hadn't been exaggerating—I'd hit myself more times than I could count.

  But I had an hour before the afternoon session with Torin, and I wasn't going to waste it.

  I pulled out the bundle of spider silk I'd made a couple of months back. The material was stronger than any thread I'd worked with before, and more importantly, it transformed aether into electricity.

  The iron rod I'd forged sat on the workbench, about as long as my forearm and thick as two fingers. Unimpressive on its own. But if I could turn it into an electromagnet...

  I started wrapping the spider silk around the rod. The thread was thin, delicate. Each loop had to be tight, even, parallel to the last. The process was slow and painstaking.

  My hands were still shaking from the morning's exertion. Twice I had to unwrap sections and start over when the spacing got uneven.

  "I hope this works like a wire would..." I muttered.

  The silk was light and could conduct the electricity it produced. It also didn't corrode. All these facts made this experiment essential to my design. It would determine if, without special equipment, I could make the small motors and electromagnets I needed.

  I worked in silence, wrapping layer after layer. The coil had to be dense enough to generate a strong field, but not so dense that it would overheat or create resistance issues.

  After an hour, my fingers were cramping and I'd only completed maybe a third of what I needed. The iron rod was starting to resemble a thin spool, at least.

  I set it down carefully and flexed my hands. The afternoon session with Torin was coming up soon. I'd have to finish this later.

  Torin was waiting when I arrived at Training Hall Seven. He took one look at me and raised an eyebrow.

  "You're walking worse than yesterday."

  "Garrick introduced me to rope weapons."

  "Ah. That explains it." He gestured to the center of the floor. "Let's begin. Both arms first, then legs."

  I settled into position and started the now-familiar process. Drawing aether inward, directing it between flesh and bone, creating that unnatural pressure that stretched the tendons and muscles.

  Three minutes on both arms. Then I moved to my legs.

  The right leg held for a minute and a half before I had to release. An improvement from yesterday.

  "Good," Torin said. "Now the left."

  I repeated the process. One minute, forty seconds.

  "You're adapting faster than most students," Torin observed. "Your body is responding well to the tempering."

  I didn't respond, too focused on maintaining the technique. When I finally released the pressure, my legs felt like they were made of jelly.

  "Again," Torin said. "Three more cycles."

  I groaned internally but complied.

  By the third cycle, I was managing nearly two minutes on each leg. The improvement was noticeable, even if it didn't feel like much.

  "That's enough for today," Torin finally said.

  I pushed myself to my feet, legs trembling. Every muscle in my body felt wrung out.

  "Same time tomorrow," Torin added. "And remember—stretch before bed. It'll help with the soreness."

  I nodded and headed back to the tower.

  Back at the tower that evening, I returned to the electromagnet project. My hands had steadied somewhat, though they still ached from the day's training.

  I picked up where I'd left off, continuing to wrap the spider silk around the iron core. Loop after loop, layer after layer. The motion became meditative after a while—rhythmic, repetitive.

  Magnar arrived halfway through, took one look at what I was doing, and sat down without a word. He just watched, occasionally asking questions I mostly ignored because I was too focused on maintaining consistent tension in the thread.

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  "What is that supposed to do?" he finally asked after twenty minutes of silence.

  "It's a coil."

  "I can see that. What does it do?"

  "Generates a magnetic field when aether flows through it."

  "Why do you need this now? You already got copper coils or loops or what you called them. Are those not good?"

  "It's because I'm making this for the weapon. It's like that motor I made, just I'm trying out a new way of making the magnets."

  "Why does the weapon need to have a motor?"

  "It won't just be a motor. It's used to reel in the rope. To give more versatility, easier storage, and no clinks to give it away."

  He stared at me. "You're going to reel the rope weapon?"

  "Something like that."

  "That's insane."

  "Probably."

  He shook his head but didn't argue further. Instead, he settled into meditation position on the floor.

  I kept working, wrapping thread until my fingers cramped and my eyes started to blur. By the time I had to stop for the night, the coil was done.

  That night, after Magnar had left and the tower had gone quiet, I sat in meditation.

  I sank my awareness inward, following the familiar path to my lower dan tian. The aether pool swirled there, the gentle current moving through it as always.

  I began the cultivation process, not focusing on forcing the aether together, but by twisting its flow further, making it squeeze against itself, growing and forming new crystalline shards within the pool.

  The channels themselves had changed. Not dramatically, but noticeably. Where before they'd been thinner, they were now thicker, expanded, pushing against my previous twists.

  I focused harder, using my developed shen to examine the phenomenon more closely.

  In the gathering stage, practitioners opened channels—creating pathways for aether to flow. The standard understanding was that they stored aether gathered from their surroundings within their bodies, thus becoming capable of using it.

  My understanding from analyzing the process with my shen was that in fact, during aether gathering one created channels for aether to flow through. The pool could be seen as the quantity of aether within the body at a certain moment. All the developed channels gathered in one place, either the chest or the basin, within or around the locations of either of the two dan tians. They all twisted together, before connecting upward and back to the extremities of the body.

  In core formation, the flows were being twisted more. The general method was to compress the pool, make the aether condense and crystallize like that. My observations however showed me that what actually happened was that the flows didn't need to be compressed, just tightened around each other while expanding them at the rate at which they started to overlap.

  Now I was facing a problem I hadn't encountered before. My pool grew outside of the lower dan tian's bounds. I had previously tried to expand the aetheric flow beyond that boundary, but it never worked. The size always returned to normal after I stopped paying attention.

  This was different. Perhaps a result of the tempering training. Yet this meant that my actual progress to the fourth stage would be halted. I'd have to tighten and rework my way through the process every few days in order to maintain a stable pool.

  It brought more capacity and better flow.

  It wasn't a breakthrough. It wasn't fourth stage. That would require creating a secondary layer beneath the primary pool—a foundation of denser, slower aether that would let me apply more pressure to accelerate the entire system.

  This was just an... enhancement. Adding to the weirdness of what I already had.

  I opened my eyes, considering the implications.

  If the pool kept expanding, even incrementally, that meant I could sustain longer fights. Use more techniques. Recover faster between matches.

  In a tournament setting, that could be the difference between winning and losing.

  I stood, stretched, and headed to bed. Tomorrow would bring more training, more soreness, more slow progress.

  But progress nonetheless.

  As one week flew by accompanied by tiresome and painful training, I had finished the sketches. I stared at the final sheets spread across my workbench. Seven days of refining, adjustments, working through problems I hadn't anticipated.

  The weapon design was complete.

  But now I had a different problem.

  The casing.

  If I made the weapon as one solid piece—iron core, coil, and housing all integrated—it would be too heavy. I was nine years old. I could reinforce myself with aether, but there were limits to how much weight I could effectively wield.

  More importantly, a solid metal casing would transmit the full force of any impact directly to my body. If I tried to parry a sword strike with the weapon's body, the shock would travel straight through to my arms. I'd break my own bones.

  I needed something modular. A casing that could house the mechanism but remain separate from the core components. Something that could absorb impact without transferring all the force.

  I picked up my pen and started sketching again.

  The casing would need to be cylindrical, fitted to the coil assembly but not permanently attached. Material... maybe wood? Reinforced with metal bands? Or perhaps beast parts? That would reduce weight while maintaining structural integrity.

  And if the casing was separate, I could design it with slots—places where the chain could exit and retract, where the blade could be stored when not in use.

  I drew quickly, the design taking shape. A wooden cylinder, bound with iron rings at intervals. Internal cushioning to prevent the coil from rattling. A release mechanism at one end for the chain.

  But finding the materials would be the challenge. The academy had wood, certainly. Metal I could forge myself. But the specific types of wood that would hold up to constant aether reinforcement and physical stress? That required knowledge I didn't have.

  I needed to talk to someone who understood materials. Someone who worked with wood and metal together.

  Fjorn would know, but he was back in Rovandel.

  Professor Hargrave might have suggestions. He'd helped with arrays before, and arrays required careful material selection. Vex too—he'd suggested the method of picking the best piece of beast material to use for a forged weapon. He might have some ideas.

  Or I could check the market stores, see what was available and work with what I could get. But it was winter, past harvesting. Only local hunters might bring their catch, meaning low quality material.

  I set down my pen and rubbed my eyes. The sketches were done. Now came the hard part—finding the materials and actually building the thing.

  Three and a half months until the tournament.

  Three and a half months left.

  Time to start searching for materials.