She tapped the edge of the salvage-history folio with one finger, the other hand adjusting her headband—always adjusting her headband—before sliding a small metal case across the table.
“Before we dive into pre-merger ironwork,” she said, “I want to measure your range properly.
Baseline first, then focal-mode if you can hold it.” The case clicked open, revealing twelve iron samples in labeled compartments—pure ingot slivers, industrial alloys, even a rust-speckled nail from the academy’s oldest dormitory.
Soren exhaled through his nose.
Fourteen entries in the foundry index, each painstakingly cross-referenced with Levy’s archival maps, and now this detour.
But the nail caught his attention—its oxidation pattern matched the foundation iron he’d noted last Friday.
He pocketed his hands.
“You brought the measuring tape too.”
“Taped every meter from here to the west wall.” Levy grinned, already flipping open her notebook to a fresh page titled *Range Progression Log* in her cramped script.
“Fifteen meters baseline, yes?
But I read about this focal technique in the Council’s perceptual archives—”
The west wall’s emergency exit gleamed at him through two layers of lead shielding, utterly silent to his quirk.
Beyond it, the samples sang—carbon uneven in the third ingot, sulfur traces in the fourth.
He closed his eyes.
Fourteen entries.
Four weeks.
And now this.
Levy proposed they spend the first hour on something else.
“Measurement instead,” she said, tapping the metal case.
“Two reasons.
First, the project scope needs it—can you read iron through walls, or just in open space?
Second,” she hesitated, fingers brushing the headband again, “I’m curious about the range itself.
Like, is it fixed?
Does it fluctuate?”
She pulled a measuring tape from her bag, its yellow plastic faded from years of maintenance closet storage.
“Standardized protocol.
Twelve reference bars”—she nudged the case—”placed at one-meter increments starting at five meters.
You register composition, I time it.
Same bar, same position, three trials per distance.
Then we try focal-mode.”
The third ingot’s carbon signature prickled at the edge of Soren’s awareness.
He flexed his thumb—the scar there, a thin white line from another world, another life.
Fourteen entries.
And now this.
Levy waited, her pen poised over the notebook.
The west wall’s emergency exit loomed, its lead-lined bulk a silent challenge.
Soren agreed to the measurement.
Levy placed the first reference bar at the far end of the reading hall.
Twenty meters away—Soren registered the iron’s presence immediately, a dull pressure against his awareness like distant traffic noise.
But when he tried to parse its composition, the details slipped through his fingers—carbon content indeterminate, trace elements blurred.
“Presence confirmed,” he said, thumb brushing his scar.
“No resolution.”
She nodded, already jotting notes in her log.
The measuring tape hissed as she reeled it in two meters, the bar’s new position marked by a chalk X on the floorboards.
Eighteen meters now.
Still too far—the iron’s signature remained stubbornly opaque, though its direction sharpened slightly when Soren angled his left shoulder toward it.
At fifteen meters, the change was immediate.
The bar’s molecular structure snapped into focus—98.7% pure iron, the remaining 1.3% manganese from whatever quarry the academy had sourced it from.
Oxidation patterns suggested three years of storage in a dry environment.
“Full resolution,” Soren said, just as Levy’s stopwatch beeped.
“Three seconds.” She wrote the result in her notebook.
They tried variations across the next twenty minutes.
Soren stood with his back rigid against the reading hall’s oak shelves, then slouched forward with elbows on the table.
No change in resolution.
He paced three steps left, pivoted on his right heel—still fifteen meters, still three seconds.
Levy suggested the breathing exercises next, her finger tracing a passage in one of the Council’s archived texts.
“Four-count inhale through the nose,” she recited, “seven-count hold, eight-count exhale.” Soren complied, counting the beats against the pulse in his scarred thumb.
The rust-speckled nail’s signature didn’t sharpen.
It was the narrowing that worked.
Not posture, not breath—but focus.
When Soren stopped scanning the room’s ambient iron and instead pinned his attention like a compass needle toward the eighteenth-meter bar, something shifted.
The manganese traces flickered into clarity.
Seventeen meters now.
Not eighteen—still too far—but seventeen.
Levy’s pen hovered.
“You’re holding it,” she murmured.
“Don’t blink.”
Soren didn’t. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
The bar’s oxidation patterns resolved—four years, not three, stored near a coastal warehouse if the salt traces were right.
Levy’s pen scratched across the notebook: *Focal-mode technique: directional narrow.
17m (+2m from baseline).*
One focal mode produced a small steady improvement.
Levy moved the bar out to seventeen meters.
The iron’s signature pulsed at the edge of Soren’s awareness—not quite formed, not quite dissolved—like ink dispersing in water.
He exhaled through his nose, let his shoulders drop half an inch, and pinned his focus as Levy had instructed.
The manganese traces resolved first, then the oxidation layers: five years this time, stored inland.
Four seconds.
A full second slower than fifteen meters, but resolved.
She nodded without looking up from her notebook, her pen skating across the page.
“Focal-mode holds at seventeen,” she murmured, more to the paper than to him.
The measuring tape unspooled again, its plastic casing clicking against the floorboards as she stepped back another meter.
Eighteen now.
Soren flexed his thumb.
The scar didn’t ache—it never did—but its presence was a reminder nonetheless.
He narrowed his focus again, sharper this time, as if the bar were a single star in an otherwise dark sky.
But the details wouldn’t coalesce.
The iron’s presence registered—direction, approximate mass—but its composition remained stubbornly opaque, its history silent.
The eighteen-meter attempt didn’t resolve.
Levy started a fresh page she labeled Range Progression.
Her pen hovered over the first entry—today’s date, baseline fifteen meters, focal-mode seventeen—before committing the numbers in neat columns.
“Weekly repeats,” she said without looking up, already sketching a graph framework in the margin.
“Same protocol, same time.
Thursdays after combat drills, when your focus is sharpest.”
Soren watched her underline the heading twice.
The rust-speckled nail’s signature lingered at the edge of his awareness, faint but persistent.
“You’re assuming I’ll improve.”
“Not assuming.” Levy capped her pen with a decisive click.
“Documenting.” She slid the metal case back into her bag, the reference bars settling with muted clinks.
“Two more entries before evening?”
They turned back to the foundry index for the rest of the session.
Of Iron and Magnolia is the first story available, and I’ll add more as I write them.