The notification faded, but the sensation stayed.
Owen didn’t open his eyes right away. He moved his attention from the window to the floor, then to the walls, and finally to the space where Edith was standing. The mana was there every time. It was faint compared to the breeze or the cushion under him, but now that he knew what he was looking for, he could find it anywhere he checked.
Only once he was sure it wasn’t going to disappear did he open his eyes.
Edith was watching him more closely than before.
"What did you sense?" she asked.
Owen thought about how to put it. "It didn’t feel like one thing, or like a current coming from somewhere. It was already there, all over the room. I only had to separate it from everything else I was noticing."
"Had you ever sensed it before today?"
"No."
Edith didn’t say anything for a moment. Her expression barely changed, but the pause went on long enough that Owen realized he had done something she hadn’t expected. She looked him over the same way she had when he first walked in, only more carefully this time.
"Sensing mana only lets you notice what cultivation uses," she said eventually. "Now you need to learn what to do with it."
She tapped the center of her own chest. "Your Armament Core sits around here. Not in your heart or your lungs. It exists spiritually, around this region, and it’s connected to pathways that run through your whole body. We call them Armament Pathways. They aren’t veins or blood vessels, so don’t picture anything you’ve seen in an anatomy book."
Owen nodded, and she went on.
"Cultivation works like this. You draw ambient mana into your core. Then you release a controlled amount from the core into your pathways, let it travel through your whole body, and guide it back to the core. Core, pathways, body, and back to the core. That’s one circulation."
"What does each circulation actually do?" Owen asked.
"Every time the mana comes back, it’s more refined than when it left. Every stable cycle also strengthens your pathways, your body and your core a little at a time. Do it enough, and you can hold more power, control it better, and eventually push more of it through your armament."
She held up a finger before he could say anything else. "One more thing. Drawing mana isn’t a contest. You’re not trying to see how much you can drag into yourself at once. Control comes first, and volume comes later."
Owen understood why she felt the need to say it. After watching his core run dry in only a few exchanges with Gareth, the idea of bigger reserves was more than a little tempting. But hurting himself on his first morning of cultivation wouldn’t get him anywhere except a sickbed.
"Understood," he said.
"Then watch first," Edith said. "Use what you just learned."
She sat down on a cushion across from him, straightened her back and closed her eyes. From the outside, it looked like nothing more than someone sitting and breathing, which was all cultivation had ever looked like to Owen before.
This time, he could feel the difference.
The mana in the room shifted. It moved toward Edith in slow, steady currents, without rushing or swirling, and disappeared somewhere around her chest as naturally as water running downhill. Her breathing stayed calm and even the whole time, and the flow seemed to follow it.
Owen couldn’t tell anything beyond that. He had no idea what was happening inside her body or how strong her core was. All he could tell was that she was drawing mana in, and that she made it look easy.
Edith opened her eyes, and the currents faded.
"Your turn," she said. "Sense it first, then take up the breathing rhythm you just saw. Let your core attract a small amount. Don’t grab at it."
She adjusted the angle of his shoulders slightly, then stepped back.
Owen closed his eyes.
Finding the mana was much easier the second time. He separated it from his own energy almost immediately, then turned his attention to the core in his chest and began breathing the way Edith had.
For a few breaths, he wasn’t sure anything was happening. Then the movement became impossible to mistake. Several faint currents drifted toward him, slow and thin. He resisted the urge to hurry them along and kept his breathing exactly as it was.
The first of the mana reached his Armament Core.
It felt completely different from using his sword. When he had channeled fire, energy had always gone out of him. This was the reverse. Something from outside was coming in and settling into a core that still hadn’t fully recovered from yesterday’s spar.
"Good," Edith said quietly. "Now release a thin amount into your pathways. Only a little."
Owen followed the feeling out of his core.
The mana spread outward. Warmth moved through his chest first, then down his shoulders and arms, through his torso and into his legs, following routes he had never noticed before. He focused on keeping the stream together rather than making it bigger. That was harder than it sounded, because every time his attention wavered, the flow thinned out and he had to gather it again.
Eventually, the mana finished its path through his body and started back toward his core.
The moment the first circulation closed, Owen felt his core tighten, and he almost opened his eyes.
"Stay still," Edith said.
He stayed still. The returning mana settled into his core, but instead of simply filling it back up, the core responded. Pressure built around it, followed by a brief squeezing sensation, as though it were being pressed smaller. Then it settled into something steadier than it had been before.
The mana around him stirred again, and Edith went completely silent.
Owen opened his eyes as the familiar chime sounded.
Ding!
[Cultivation advanced.]
[Kindled — Brand]
He looked at the words for a moment. The system didn’t need to explain what they meant. He had walked into this room at Kindled Trace, and after one circulation, he had reached the second substage of his first rank.
"Don’t move," Edith said.
She came closer and studied him, and Owen had the impression she was feeling for something he couldn’t perceive himself. "Do the circulation again. Exactly the same way."
Owen did. This time he knew what to expect, and the cycle went more smoothly, although no new pressure came with it. When he finished, Edith was still watching him.
"It’s stable," she said, mostly to herself.
Then her composure slipped a little. "How did it feel? Was there any pain, anything unstable, or any resistance while the mana was moving?"
"No pain," Owen said. "It tightened when the mana came back, and then it settled."
"Were you trying to force a breakthrough?"
"No. I did what you told me to and finished the cycle."
That was the truth, and it was also all he could honestly tell her. He didn’t know why it had happened so quickly. The system might have had something to do with how fast he was growing, but it hadn’t taught him anything or moved the mana for him. He had done every part of that circulation himself.
Before Edith could ask anything else, another notification appeared.
[STATUS FUNCTION UNLOCKED]
A new panel opened in front of him, one he had never seen before.
[STATUS]
[Name: Owen Ferrers]
[Age: 18]
[Armament: Empty Arsenal]
[Cultivation: Kindled — Brand]
[Strength: 15]
[Agility: 16]
[Endurance: 14]
[Perception: 13]
[Core Capacity: 10]
Owen looked over the numbers with interest. He had nothing to compare them to, so there wasn’t much point trying to work out whether fifteen strength was good or bad. What mattered was that the system could now measure what cultivation was doing to his body and his core. If those numbers changed, he would know about it.
Edith couldn’t see any of it. As far as she could tell, he had simply gone quiet for a few seconds after reaching Brand.
"That’s enough for today," she said finally. "Our time is nearly up, and I’m not going to pile another technique on top of this just because you moved quickly."
Owen had half expected that, and he didn’t argue.
"If you practice before tomorrow, repeat the same circulation you learned today," she continued. "Keep the flow controlled. Don’t increase the amount of mana just to chase another breakthrough, and if you feel any pain or instability in your core or your pathways, stop immediately."
"I will."
"I’ll check your circulation tomorrow morning before we move on to anything new."
Owen stood, bowed to her, and left her standing in the instruction room.
He was pleased, of course. But on the walk back, what occupied him most was something more practical. One proper circulation had moved him up a substage, and he wanted to know what repeated cycles would do.
He hadn’t forgotten Edith’s warning, either. Whatever he found out, he would find it out by doing exactly what she had taught him and nothing more.
Edith went straight to Edmund’s study.
Captain Mercer was there when she arrived, standing beside the desk with a folder under his arm. Edmund looked up, saw her, and asked, "Is this about Owen’s lesson?"
"It is."
Mercer excused himself without needing to be told, and the door closed behind him.
Edmund leaned back in his chair. He looked like a man expecting an ordinary report. "How did he do?"
"He sensed mana on his first proper attempt."
Edmund smiled. "So he has good aptitude."
"He does," Edith said. "But that isn’t why I came."
Edmund waited.
"After a single guided circulation, he broke through from Kindled Trace to Kindled Brand."
Edmund’s hand stopped above the report he had been reading.
"You’re certain?"
"I checked it myself and had him run the circulation again. There was no sign of forcing, no instability in his core, and it wasn’t a temporary surge. He understood the process, performed it correctly and advanced."
"How long did the lesson take?"
"One session. The time I scheduled for him this morning." Edith paused. "I had planned to spend considerably longer than that on Mana Sense alone."
She had watched a great many awakened fighters take their first steps over the years, and she had heard plenty of officers call their own recruits gifted. She did not use the next word casually.
"Your son is a cultivation genius."