After days of silent study and methodical contemplation, a singular conclusion settled within my mind with the weight of finality: I was capable of action. The realization did not arrive with fanfare, but rather like a cold, clarifying wave, washing away the residue of inertia. In its wake, I felt a faint, almost guilty flicker of relief—a quiet, private certainty that, for the first time since awakening in that foreign forest, I possessed a direction. The passive drifting that had defined both Claus and Jason could finally cease. I could act.
Two full months had bled away in Grentwallow. Sixty days of dust, brittle pages, meager wages, and unvarying routine. My position at Harrow & Quill had evolved from unpaid trial to a salaried post, earning five silver marks each week. It was not wealth, but it purchased daily bread and a narrow shelter from the elements. I now rented a single room above a seamstress's shop: a cramped, vertical space containing a narrow bed, a small table, and the profound luxury of a private wash-chamber. The air perpetually carried the scent of old linen and the town's coal smoke, but it was mine. This small, contained existence provided a strange, grounding stability.
On the day I resolved to begin the actual work of optimizing contract magic, I went to the market with a specific list. The required items were few and bore strangely poetic names: five sheets of minor rune paper, a dedicated rune pen, a small vial of blood-cat saliva, and a phial of shadow-snake blood. I possessed no knowledge of the creatures that supplied these components; the texts provided names and recipes without context or sentiment. The market trader accepted my trade without a flicker of curiosity, his eyes pausing only on the weight of my coin purse, never on my face.
I laid the rune paper upon the small table in my room. The single lamp flickered, casting long, dancing shadows from the stacks of books that were my only furniture. I arranged my tools with deliberate intent. The rune pen felt unfamiliar in my grip, like a borrowed oath. I smoothed open a fresh sheet of paper and, as the chip's knowledge began to flow into my consciousness like a cold, precise river, I began to draw.
The chip did not speak in words, but in patterns: glyph grammars, stabilizing sequences, instructions on which ink held potency and which line required reinforcement. It eliminated hesitation. It took the old, blunt, superstitious rituals and refined them into something surgical in its precision. I drew the first primary rune. The line was clean, a single stroke that deceptively suggested simplicity until the necessary secondary 'false line' revealed the intricate complexity hidden within. I corrected, adjusted, and traced again.
As the final stroke was completed, a low hum manifested in the room. It originated in the pen, traveled across the paper's surface, and settled deep beneath my ribs. It was not a sound, nor a feeling of warmth. It was a pure vibration, like the memory of a powerful musical chord. The lamp flame shuddered in response. For one suspended moment, the world itself seemed to tilt its axis toward that single page.
My studies had revealed that runic symbols exist in a strict hierarchy: twenty-six primary designs, one hundred and twenty-eight secondary modifiers, and an uncountable number of tertiary variants often hidden in margin notes and faded glossaries. The primaries defined the core intent; the secondaries modified its expression; the tertiaries were the unique, often secretive flourishes of an individual maker. The chip allowed me to assemble these elements into a coherent structure that felt less like arcane superstition and more like a rigorous programming language.
I drafted the first version of my contract. My hand, for all its paleness and apparent fragility, did not shake. Something deep within my chest, however, trembled.
I inscribed four core clauses—short, absolute, and brutally final:
I. Party A shall not betray Party B in any form or manner. Penalty for breach: instant cessation of life functions [death].
II. Party A shall maintain the absolute secrecy of Party B's identity and knowledge, without exception. Penalty for breach: cessation of life functions [death].
III. Party A and Party B shall each fulfill the obligations stipulated within this agreement. Penalty for breach: cessation of life functions [death].
IV. Party A and Party B must abide by the entirety of this contract's terms. Penalty for breach: cessation of life functions [death].
Beneath these, I left blank spaces for the variable content—the practical fields to be filled in later: names, specific obligations, contract duration, compensation terms, and anchor marks.
The words stood on the page like gravestones. They were harsh. They were final. I had made a private vow to avoid lethality in public-facing contracts and had begun designing safeguards for that very purpose. Yet, the historical texts I'd studied used extreme penalties as their default foundation. The chip provided the means for optimization, but I chose to leave these severe clauses in the draft as a foundational framework—a raw, dangerous starting point that would be easier to moderate later. I needed to comprehend the extreme before I could responsibly engineer the moderate.
Following the writing, I performed the ritual the texts prescribed for a first step into practical magic. It was called the Oak Meditation Technique—a breathing method involving slow, measured breaths and a visualization of roots extending from one's body into the earth, borrowed from the marginal notes of an anonymous monk-sage. I followed the steps as the chip directed: measured breathing, a fixed gaze upon a specific knot in the wooden desk, my limbs relaxed yet remain alert. The technique did not generate power; it tuned the practitioner's awareness to energy already present. By the hour's end, my focus felt sharpened, purified. The mental hum quieted into a steady, usable frequency. I felt physically lighter, and then became aware of a new sensation: a faint thrum of energy moving just beneath my skin, like a secondary, more subtle heartbeat.
According to the textual and chip-based metrics, I had crossed the threshold into Level One. The label itself was almost meaningless. Level One did not render me powerful or dangerous. It merely meant I could now perceive and control a minor current of energy, allowing me to anchor a rune to a life force without myself collapsing from the effort. The sensation was not one of joy or triumph. It was the simple, cold satisfaction of a tool being placed into my waiting hand.
This accomplishment immediately presented the next, more familiar problem: how to approach Vivian.
I could not go to her as 'Clauson,' a face with no standing, no history, and no connections. I could not approach directly; nobles do not grant audiences to strangers without proper ceremony. Even if I somehow slipped into her presence, I would likely be met not with curiosity, but with accusation—or worse, a legal threat materializing as swiftly as a summoned boulder. Exposure would be inevitable.
But Vivian, for all her wealth and title, publicly identified as a scientist. Scientists possess a hunger that can, at times, override their arrogance. They pursue the unknown. They will answer the door for a novel device, a strange manuscript, or a demonstration that promises genuine novelty. This curiosity could become my bridge.
I would not present her with a finished miracle. I would package mere curiosity: a plausible mechanical device, a small and tightly controlled demonstration, a novel observation scribbled on fragile paper. I would allow her own inquisitiveness to complete the work. If she asked to claim the discovery as her own, I would permit it. She could have the applause and the coin. I would take the invisibility and the binding contract.
The risk, of course, remained. Trust is a brittle commodity, especially when dealing with individuals who possess titles and capital. Contract magic could bind her honor or silence her tongue, but that was a clause for the future, one I would have to craft with surgical precision. For the present, my task was to steady myself with the smallest of steps: complete the rune set, test a benign contract on an inanimate object like a storage crate, observe the graduated response of the magic, and prepare a demonstration that promised novelty, not lethality.
I closed my personal ledger. The contract draft in the drawer emitted a faint scent of ink and lamp smoke. Outside my window, the gas lamps of Grentwallow held the night at bay like jars of captured pale fire. Inside, the residual hum of the rune had settled into my bones, a constant, low-grade vibration of potential. I was no longer drifting. I had a plan. I had drawn my first line. The rest, as it had always been, would be a matter of careful, meticulous work.