The wind that morning was cold, but the cave felt warmer than it ever had.

Kael stood at the mouth of the cavern, the rising sun casting gold across the trees. Behind him, the faint humming of old runes and memory stones flickered to life. He had etched them himself, years ago, when he first discovered mana’s structure. Back then, it was curiosity. Now, it was necessity.

Selene approached from the woods, her cloak damp with dew. Luman padded behind her, limping slightly but alive. His blue fur had begun to regain its shimmer, but his eyes were still wary.

Kael didn’t look at them at first. His gaze remained fixed on the horizon.

“It’s starting,” he said.

Selene nodded. “The rifts?”

“Worse. The pattern. I checked the ley-lines again. They’re… fraying. And it’s accelerating.”

They entered the cave together. It was no longer just a shelter. Kael had begun carving shelves, workbenches, laying down plans. He had even mapped a training ground in the back cavern. Small, but defensible.

Selene traced a sigil carved into the wall. “So this is where the guild begins.”

“No,” Kael said. “This is where we survive. The guild comes after.”

---

The training was brutal.

Selene, though naturally gifted, struggled to control her glyphs under pressure. Kael pushed her harder. Mana storms, null zones, spell-delay chambers — he simulated them all with temporary constructs.

Most of the recruits were just children — barely eight to ten years old. They were frightened but eager, desperate to find strength in the chaos that now ruled the world.

During one such drill, a pulse trap overloaded.

A boy — no older than nine, face pale with panic — collapsed as his core flared violently, mana bleeding from his hands in uneven sparks. He screamed. Not from pain, but confusion.

“I—I can’t hold it!” he cried.

Kael, only six himself, rushed forward with surprising precision, channeling a containment glyph just in time. The flare died down. The boy dropped to his knees, shivering.

“This isn’t about flair,” Kael said, voice tight. “It’s about surviving the moment everything fails.”

But that wasn’t the only problem.

Some of the children — three of them — couldn’t produce mana at all. No glow. No resistance. Nothing. They stood in the field with wide eyes and empty hands while the others shaped fire and light.

Worse, the few who could generate mana lacked control. One girl accidentally set part of the training bench on fire. Another boy collapsed from overexertion after pushing his core too far.

Kael knew this wasn’t sustainable.

That night, he didn’t sleep.

He sat beside the back wall of the cave, where raw stones still held ancient resonance — the same cave stones where his earliest experiments had first lit. He placed his hand on one.

It hummed.

“We’ll use you again,” he whispered. “But not for power. For safety.”

He began building a device.

It was a **Mana Resonance Enhancer** — a bracelet-like core forged directly from the cave’s mana stones, laced with thin sigil-thread. When worn, it helped the user align with ambient mana, stabilizing internal flow. For those whose cores flared violently or refused to sync, it offered control. For those who couldn’t summon anything at all, it gave them a path.

He tested it on the same boy the next morning. The result: steadier breathing, balanced output. No sparks. He tried it on one of the children who couldn’t manifest mana — and while there was still no spell, a faint pulse emerged. A beginning.

Selene observed quietly. “It’ll help those who can’t feel mana like we do,” she said.

Kael nodded. “That’s the idea. It’s for use. Not just potential — but action.”

Still, something gnawed at him.

They needed to measure progress. Not just guess.

So Kael repurposed part of the cave wall.

He carved a central panel of stone and embedded a fixed crystal network into it, tuning the entire frame to mana resonance and flow output.

It became the **Mana Index Gauge**, or MIG — but unlike the enhancer, it wasn’t worn. It stood within the training cave like a sentinel. Recruits placed their hands upon it, and the stone would glow — faintly or brightly — reflecting their growth, control, and synchrony.

The children began lining up each evening.

Some cried when their glow barely sparked.

Others, like the boy Kael first helped, smiled when the panel responded with light stronger than the day before.

One day, even one of the mana-less children stepped forward. He pressed his hand to the MIG stone, hesitant. For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then — a flicker. Just a shimmer. But it was enough to make the boy’s face light up.

Selene watched from the side, her eyes soft. “You’re giving them more than magic,” she whispered.

Kael stood in silence, eyes on the faint glow.

“I’m giving them a reason to keep trying.”

It was a silent mentor — no judgment, no words — just truth.

Kael watched them from behind his workstation, tools in hand, and whispered to the glowing wall:

“Keep them honest. And keep them safe.”

---

At night, Kael worked alone. The new rift-anchor sketches were more refined now — two linked cores, each tuned to harmonize across spatial bends. He knew the theory. But the materials didn’t exist here.

Not yet.

He would have to invent them.

He made a logstone recording that night — his first.

“If I fail,” he whispered into the rune-etched slab, “someone has to know how far we got.”

---

A week passed.

And then the first traveler came.

She was cloaked, hood drawn, her left arm bandaged in blood. She didn’t knock. She simply walked into the clearing and collapsed.

Selene was first to reach her.

Kael knelt beside them, his eyes narrowing as he saw what followed her — a faint ripple in the air, a pulse that matched the same signature as the rift creature.

Another one was coming.

But this time, they weren’t unprepared.

And this time, they wouldn’t face it alone.