Silas Vane had spent twenty years believing Elias Vale was a coward. He had written essays about it.
Hundreds of them.
Elias had read three.
That was enough.
Vane had first appeared in the archive community as a teenager. Intelligent. Articulate. Obsessive. At nineteen, he reproduced one of Elias's ritual chambers in an abandoned building outside Bristol. At twenty-one, he was arrested for grave desecration. At twenty-four, he published a twelve-thousand-word manifesto arguing that modern morality prevented serious occult research. At twenty-seven, he founded the Children of the First Circle.
His central belief was simple. Magic had always existed.
Elias had found it.
And Elias was lying.
Every failed experiment, according to Vane, was deliberate misdirection designed to hide the truth from lesser people. Elias considered the theory flattering in an exhausting way. Before integration, Vane was dangerous mainly to himself and the people stupid enough to follow him. After integration, his ideology acquired physics. Myrddin reconstructed his movements from fragments.
Birmingham.
Coventry.
Leicester.
Then nothing.
Videos appeared instead.
Silas standing before groups of frightened people, thin face illuminated by red light. Silas demonstrating strength no ordinary human possessed. Silas holding a rifle while bullets struck a barrier around him. Silas speaking beneath a banner bearing a broken circle.
"The old world denied us," he said in one recording. "The old world laughed. Doctor Vale showed us the doorway but lacked the courage to walk through it. He gave you children's rituals while hiding the true equations."
Elias paused the video.
"Equations?"
Priya sat beside him.
"That's what bothers you?"
"There are no equations in that model."
"He murdered people."
"That also bothers me."
"Less visibly."
Elias resumed the recording.
Vane continued.
"Power has a price. Everything meaningful does. Governments will tell you to wait. Corporations will tell you to buy. Aliens will tell you to serve. Vale will tell you to measure. I tell you to take."
The crowd cheered.
Elias switched it off.
"He's improved."
Priya stared.
"At murder?"
"At speaking. He used to ramble."
Harcourt entered the room carrying a folder.
"We have nineteen incidents possibly connected to them."
"Deaths?"
"Confirmed eighty-six. Likely higher."
Elias's face remained still.
"What are they doing?"
"Recruiting people with weak or no Path Impressions."
That got his attention.
Harcourt placed photographs on the table.
"The interface is creating a new social problem."
"One of many."
"People compare. Publicly."
Some humans received impressive impressions.
Pyromancer.
Vanguard.
Stormcaller.
Flesh Mender.
Others received things that sounded mundane.
Cook.
Caretaker.
Labourer.
Clerk.
Some received nothing at all. The labels were recommendations, Elias knew. Not destinies. The public did not care. In shelters, people with combat Paths got better treatment because they could defend the group. In several communities, healers were effectively being held against their will.
Corporations offered enormous salaries to rare specialists. Governments began drafting people with strategically valuable abilities. Schools had already reported children bullying one another over Path Impressions.
Seven days.
Humanity had required seven days to invent magical classism.
"Vane tells the powerless he can change them," Harcourt said.
Elias looked at the blood-transfer model.
"And he can."
"At a cost."
"Which his victims pay."
Priya leaned forward.
"Can we make a safer version?"
Elias did not answer immediately.
That was the problem.
The ritual transferred something. Vitality. Arcane potential. Biological coherence. They did not yet know. If they understood it, perhaps it could be reproduced consensually.
Donors.
Synthetic sources.
Monster tissue.
Stored mana.
But researching it legitimised the mechanism. Refusing to research it left Vane ahead. Elias hated moral problems that interfered with experimental design.
"Yes," he said.
Harcourt looked at him.
"You don't know that."
"No. But we try."
"Category Three."
"Joint review."
"I'm reviewing it."
"Then approve it."
"People will accuse us of developing blood magic."
"We are developing blood magic."
Priya put her head in her hands.
Harcourt stared at him.
"You can't call it that."
"Why?"
"Because I have to answer questions in Parliament."
"Call it haematurgic transfer research."
Priya looked up.
"That is somehow worse."
The argument lasted nine minutes. The research began at minute ten. They started with monster blood.
Then animal blood.
Then donated human samples.
No killing.
No conscious subjects.
No shortcuts.
Elias slept three hours in the next two days. On the third, they found something. The ritual did not transfer magic.
It transferred pattern.
Mana behaved differently in living organisms than in empty space. Repeated use carved pathways through the body, reinforcing certain responses. Vane's ritual ripped those pathways from one organism and forced them into another.
Brutal.
Inefficient.
But effective.
Priya stared at the model.
"So he isn't stealing power."
"He's stealing adaptation."
"Can we copy it instead?"
Elias smiled.
"Now you're asking the correct question."
They replaced the donor with a sensor record.
Failed.
Then a crystal exposed to repeated magical activation.
Failed.
Then an electrical coil pulsed according to a recorded mana pattern.
Something happened.
Barely.
A laboratory mouse exposed to the field developed measurable arcane conductivity without losing vitality. Priya stared at the results.
"We taught it."
"Perhaps."
"Without a donor."
"Perhaps."
"Elias."
"Repeat first."
They repeated.
And repeated.
On attempt sixteen, the effect held. Myrddin calculated the result.
"Statistically significant divergence from controls."
Elias sat back.
Vane killed to gain magical pathways. Elias had just demonstrated they might be trained artificially.
"Publish," Priya said.
Elias looked at her.
She smiled.
"Before you can."
He almost felt proud.
"Category Two. Full methodology."
Harcourt objected for twenty minutes.
Then approved it.
Within six hours, laboratories in twelve countries reproduced fragments of the technique. Within twelve, someone in South Korea improved it. Within eighteen, a Brazilian research group reduced the required energy by thirty percent. Within twenty-four, three hospitals began experimental rehabilitation programmes for people whose magical pathways had been damaged during awakening. Elias watched the shared results populate Myrddin's screens.
This was why he had opened the Archive. Not because everyone was good.
They weren't.
Because nobody was smart enough alone. Silas Vane responded with another video. He stood in a dark room, his eyes glowing faintly red.
"You continue giving away our inheritance," he said.
Elias watched.
Vane smiled into the camera.
"So I will take yours."
The feed ended.
Myrddin spoke.
"Threat assessment elevated."
Elias reached for his tea.
"Good."
Priya stared.
"Could you stop saying that about threats?"
"No."