Morning came pale and quiet. The cloth barrier had pulled loose overnight, and a thin drift of snow lay just inside the entrance. Kira sat up slowly, her breath misting. The mage-light sat against the wall where she had left it, dark and still.
She looked at it for a long time before moving.
Outside, the snow had piled up past her knees. Kira found the broken shovel blade and started clearing a path. The work was hard and simple. Scoop, toss, scoop, toss. The sky hung gray overhead, the world muffled and still. By the time she had cut a track to the clearing, her fingers had gone numb and her stomach was growling.
She went back inside, ate dried meat and berries, and looked at the light again.
She was not going anywhere today. The snow was too deep, the walking too slow. So she sat cross-legged on her bedroll and reached for the crystal.
Nothing at first. She moved her hand closer. Still nothing. Closer.
At about six inches out, a faint glow flickered inside it. Kira held her hand there, watching the light grow steady. When she pulled back, it dimmed. When she reached forward, it brightened. The closer she got, the stronger it burned, until at the very edge of touch it blazed warm and gold.
She pulled her hand away and sat back. "Proximity. Not touch."
She did not know why, but she wanted to understand.
Kira closed her eyes and tried to do something she had never been able to do before. The elders talked about sensing mana, feeling it inside like a second heartbeat. With one point, there had been almost nothing to feel, but she was not a one-pointer anymore.
She breathed slowly, the way her father taught her when she was learning to shoot. In, out, in.
And then she felt it.
Warmth, deep in her chest. Not her heartbeat, something else. A presence, a weight. She could not see it, could not measure it, but she could feel how much larger it was than before. Before the mage-light, her mana had been a spark. This felt like an ember, still small but there in a way it had never been.
Ten times bigger. Maybe more.
Her hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs.
What happened last night changed something, she thought. I just don't know what.
Her mother had taught her a spell once. A tiny flame, the kind even children learned if they showed promise. Kira had been seven, maybe eight, watching her mother make fire dance across her palm on a cold night.
"Can you teach me?"
Her mother had smiled that sad smile. "I can teach you the words. But without mana, they are just sounds."
She taught her anyway. Words in the old language, a shape to hold in your mind, the feeling of wanting the flame to exist. Kira had practiced the words for years, whispering them to herself when no one was listening, even though nothing ever happened.
She closed her eyes and found them again, buried deep.
She shaped the thought. Reached for that warmth in her chest. Pulled.
Light.
Kira's eyes snapped open. Above her finger, no bigger than a thumbnail, a flame hovered. She could feel its heat, see it flicker orange and gold. Her heart slammed against her ribs, but she forced herself to stay still, to watch.
The flame held. Twenty seconds, thirty, forty. At fifty it flickered. At one minute it snuffed out.
Kira lowered her hand. Her arm ached. Her chest felt empty, tired. She reached inside and found the warmth smaller, much smaller.
She looked at the mage-light and reached for it again.
Nothing.
She moved closer. Still nothing. Not until her fingers touched the crystal did it light, and even then it was weak, barely glowing.
Before the spell, it lit from six inches. Now, I have to touch it and it is dim.
She pulled her hand back. The light died.
I used mana and something changed.
She waited.
The sun moved behind clouds. The light outside shifted. She sat wrapped in blankets, watching the crystal, checking inside herself every so often for that warmth.
When enough time passed, an hour, maybe more, she reached inside again. The warmth had grown. Not back to where it was, but larger than right after the flame died. She reached for the light. At six inches, it glowed. Dimmer than before the spell, but lit before she touched it.
She pulled back. It faded. She reached again. It returned.
"It is coming back," she whispered. "Whatever I spent, it is coming back."
She had heard people talk about mana absorption many times. For most, it was slow. Considering how mana-thin the environment was around the village, it took a day to recover fully, and that was with the small amount of mana the villagers could hold. With an hour, she had recovered a noticeable amount.
"What is this?"
The snow would melt. Not today, maybe not tomorrow. She could not stay here forever wondering.
Kira started packing.
Blankets rolled tight, dried food in oilcloth, cooking pot, flint and steel, spare clothes. Coins and the silver hairpin in her inner pocket. Dagger on her belt. The mage-light wrapped in cloth, tucked into her pack where it would not break.
She worked the way her father taught her, quiet and methodical. When she finished, the cave did not look like home anymore. Just a hole in a rock where someone used to sleep.
Kira stood at the entrance, looking out at the snow.
Therin had given her directions. Answers, he had said. People who can tell you about what happened to villages like yours, about where to go next.
She had not understood why she would need them then. She understood now.
She stepped out. The wind hit her face, cold and sharp. Behind her, the cave sat empty. Ahead, nothing but snow and trees and the long walk south.
She turned her face toward the direction he had given and started walking.