The snow crunched under my boots, but I no longer suffered from the cold. Kneeling in front of the six trunks with my palm resting on the first, I had become a measuring instrument. Every contact with the wood fed me information about its density, the moisture still trapped inside it, and the weak points where the fibers were beginning to break down under the effects of frost.
But it was the Ether that held my attention. The peaceful flow of the first few days was gone. Around the trunks, the filaments coiled like overheated copper wires and quivered instead of flowing. Something was putting them under pressure from the east, where clouds were piling up behind the mountains.
The storm was coming. I knew it the way you know, while climbing a staircase in the dark, that there is one more step. There was no proof, just a physical certainty. It was no longer some distant date on a calendar. I could already feel it growing in the changing tension of the air, hour by hour.
I took out my quartz stylus, my pencil for redrawing reality. I could not afford a mistake. One careless move could weaken the wood instead of reshaping it the way I wanted, or open a fault where Ether would rush in and accelerate the rot.
I set the tip of the crystal against the first trunk, where the natural curve of the ash suggested the best line of separation. I kept my eyes open this time. Structural Intuition showed me the forces at work, but I still needed to see the fibers. Ether strands clung to the wood, thick where the material was dense and almost invisible where moisture had already begun its work. I traced a darker vein with one finger, following a path of least resistance. That was where I needed to cut.
I gave it a light impulse, the way you blow on an ember without putting it out. The fibers separated in one clean line, without sawdust or grinding, with a dull crack. The trunk rolled onto its side and revealed a smooth, almost polished cut where wisps of Ether still swirled in search of a new equilibrium.
I moved on to the next one.
Three hours later, my fingers were slightly numb from the cold, and the six trunks had become twelve beams lined up in front of the cabin. Their ends glowed faintly while the Ether quietly recomposed itself around the few microfractures created by my manipulation.
As I straightened, I noticed something else. The snow around the cabin had melted for several meters, uncovering black, damp earth without turning it to mud. Horned hare tracks were more numerous there than elsewhere, as though the animals had sensed a gentler ecosystem. The wind was behaving strangely too. I could see it reach the clearing, rise, and curl over the roof instead of driving straight through.
It looked like a pressure gradient. By altering the structure of all that wood, I had also changed the way Ether interacted with the surrounding air. Nothing powerful enough to form an impenetrable shield, but the freezing currents seemed to prefer going elsewhere.
“Crazy, but perfect timing,” I murmured, wiping the icy sweat from my forehead.
I chuckled with relief for a moment. The sound vanished into the twilight, muffled by the low clouds. To the east, the golden filaments were all streaming in the same direction. I had little time left to turn those beams into a roof capable of withstanding gusts strong enough to rip a man off his feet.
The next day, the wind whistled between the trees, stronger than it had been the day before. The clouds pressed down on the forest, and the Ether stirred like a pack of dogs before a storm.
“No time to waste,” I muttered as I lifted the first beam.
It was meant for the east wall, where the joint between two logs had begun to sag under the weight of the recent rains. I braced it against my shoulder. The weight was not the problem. The problem was everything I could see inside it. Fibers stretched like violin strings, growth rings twisted by winter winds, places where the Ether clung in disorderly clumps. My Material Affinity only worked on stone, so with wood I paid full price.
I lowered it back to the ground, pressed the stylus against one end, and closed my eyes to listen. Each bond vibrated at its own frequency. Some rang clear where the fibers were straight and the Ether flowed smoothly. Others grated where moisture had done its work.
“Where are you going to break first?”
My left hand slid along the beam, centimeter by centimeter. I was looking for heat where the atoms were packed too tightly, or cold where the bonds had stretched apart, like a doctor feeling for a fracture beneath the skin.
There.
A knot, not in the wood but in the Ether. A hot spot where tension had accumulated, probably after some old impact, a broken branch or a fall that had twisted the fibers without snapping them. If I installed the beam like this, it would fail there under the first serious assault.
“I need to fix this.”
I pressed harder with the quartz, and the resistance increased. A warning flashed in the corner of my vision.
Fatigue: 68%. Warning: Critical failures possible.
I had no choice. Either I reorganized the material now, or I spent the day shaping a new beam. Given the state of my reserves, the second option would probably end with me passing out. I pushed on with will rather than muscle. The Ether growled, more sensation than sound, then gave way.
The bonds around the knot loosened and redistributed without breaking. The fibers realigned and the stresses spread more evenly. I sighed, opened my eyes, then lifted the beam again and fitted it into place by following the structural lines of force the cabin now showed me. Something clicked through my bones. It was not a sound so much as the feeling of two magnets finding each other.
“There.”
+18 XP. Structure stabilized (durability +400%).
The next beams went faster because I knew what to look for now. Only the largest remained, reserved for the ridge beam. It was a tight-grained oak twice my height and heavy as a dead donkey.
“Fucking gravity,” I growled as I staggered toward the cabin with the beam on my shoulder.
The wind was probing the cliff now, like a fighter testing an opponent, and the clouds hung so low that I could barely make out the treetops in the distance. Getting the beam up to the ridge took me an hour, two vine ropes, an inclined plane made from wooden rails, and a string of curses I was not proud of. Once it was in place, I still had to secure it. That was the critical part. If I botched this joint, the entire roof could come down at the worst possible time.
Structural Intuition showed me the roof in relief, along with its load zones and the places the gusts would strike first. I placed my hands on the wood and guided the Ether filaments toward those points, letting the fibers of the ridge beam and the rafters reorganize toward one another. When I opened my eyes, the beam was no longer simply resting on the frame. It had become part of it.
+25 XP. Structure stabilized.
I dropped heavily to the ground, my legs trembling.
The smaller beams became planks. I split them along the grain, then laid them in tight rows across the rafters. To join them, I made the Ether flow from one to the next, as I had done with the cave floor. It filled the gaps and microfractures as I worked. After the ridge beam, it was almost relaxing.
+150 XP. Optimized construction.
I backed up to the edge of the clearing and looked at the result. The new roof looked damn good, no doubt about it. I had the feeling it would hold far beyond anything reasonable.
“Not bad for a guy who arrived here seeing double.”