The underground hall held a kind of silence that didn't exist during the day, the air flattened of echoes, the building above reduced to something distant and asleep, leaving only the steady hum of fluorescent lights to define the space.
The targets at the far end were already marked from earlier hits, faint scorch rings layered over older ones, the pattern of use not neat but consistent, like repetition had worn its own map into them.
A notebook lay open on one bench, a pen tucked into its spine, and beside it a stack of reference sheets arranged in exact alignment, edges squared as if they had been adjusted more than once.
Adam shifted his grip on the staff and fired again.
The spell hit low, a clean strike but not where he'd aimed.
"Your wrist," Chloe said immediately. "You overcorrect at the end. You are thinking too late."
"I'm thinking the whole time," Adam said, adjusting his stance again.
"That's the problem," she replied, already firing again, her shot landing dead center without visible effort.
He exhaled and tried again.
The staff still felt wrong in his hands, not heavy, not unbalanced, just… off, like it belonged to a version of him that hadn't fully shown up yet.
"It still doesn't feel right," he said, more to the room than to her. "Like there's something between me and it."
Chloe stopped firing.
She turned her head toward him slowly, interest sharpening into something closer to satisfaction. "Yes," she said. "That makes sense."
He glanced at her. "Does it."
"You don't trust it," she said, stepping closer to inspect the target pattern. "And because you don't trust it, you can't commit to it. And because you can't commit, your casting is… compromised? is that how you Americans say it?" she asked as she tried to enunciate the word better so her Korean accent doesn't bleed into it.
"That's one way to say it."
"It is the correct way," she replied. "You are trying to use something you haven't accepted. And that's showing everywhere. Your timing, control, efficiency. It is all… second-hand."
He frowned slightly. "Second-hand?"
"Yes," she said, gesturing lightly toward the staff. "Like borrowing someone else's hand and expecting it to move like yours."
"That's not—"
"You are not suited for intermediary casting," she cut in, her tone matter-of-fact, not sharp but not softened either. "Some people are not. They rely on direct channeling. You—" she tilted her head, evaluating him like a problem she had mostly solved, "—you are not even doing that correctly yet."
Adam let out a breath through his nose. "Good to know."
"It's useful to know your limitations early," she said. "So you do not waste time pretending they are not there."
Aiva, leaning against the far wall, pushed herself upright with a small clap. "And on that uplifting note."
Chloe didn't look at her. "What? I am being accurate."
"You're always accurate," Aiva said lightly. "That's not the issue."
Chloe finally glanced over. "Then what is."
Aiva's gaze had already moved past her, settling on the open floor between them, the space empty in a way that suggested it wouldn't stay that way for long. "I'm bored."
Adam blinked. "We've been at this for—"
"Long enough to stop learning from it," she said. "Routine's great for muscle memory. Terrible for everything else."
Chloe's eyes narrowed slightly. "You want to change the drill."
"I want to change the situation," Aiva corrected, already stepping forward.
Adam's shoulders tensed before he could stop them. "Last time we did that," he said. "It didn't go so well."
"That's a generous summary," Chloe added.
Aiva smiled. "Exactly."
Adam looked between them. "You're serious."
"Very," she said. "You two are sparring."
He let out a short breath. "Aiva—"
"Yes, Chloe's been doing this for almost a year," she said, ticking it off easily. "Yes, you've had what, six days? a week?"
"Six," he said.
"Six," she echoed. "And no, I don't expect you to win."
"That's comforting."
"I expect you to show up," she said, her tone bright enough to almost sound like a joke and grounded enough that it wasn't.
He hesitated, the discomfort sitting plainly on his face this time. "She doesn't need this," he said. "And I'm still chanting half my spells. She doesn't even—"
"Correct," Aiva said. "Which is why this is interesting."
Chloe crossed her arms. "This is not a useful mismatch."
"It's a useful environment," Aiva replied, already lifting her hand.
The space responded.
Barriers rose from the floor in clean, geometric shapes, low walls and angled cover positions forming lanes and sightlines where there had been open ground seconds before.
Adam watched it happen, the layout settling into something structured, something intentional.
Aiva stepped back with a cheeky grin and gestured. "Positions everyone."
Chloe sighed and moved immediately.
Adam followed a second later.
The space between movement and start stretched just long enough for his mind to fill it.
Lumen: The stuff that powered magic as he knew it, wasn't light the way people thought of light.
It felt closer to pressure, like holding something that wanted to expand and being the thing that kept it contained.
The first time he'd felt it, it had been like gripping a current under the skin, something that didn't belong there and did anyway.
Lattice made it usable.
Channels, not fixed but learned, like pathways worn into something soft by repetition until they held shape on their own.
Aiva had had him imagine lattice as rivers in one's body where Lumen flows within and out. The more lattice someone has the better they'll be at channeling Lumen and thus wielding magic.
Attack and defence spells sat on top of that.
Ancient latin roots, fragments of older languages layered over older systems, things that had been named and refined and passed forward through people who had needed them for reasons that were no longer theoretical.
Ignis. Aegis.
Names that carried intent as much as function.
Reduction was what Chloe did.
Stripping all of it away until the spell was just the outcome, no word, no gesture, no signal.
Because in a real situation, saying what you were about to do gave everyone else time to stop you.
He wasn't there yet.
He still needed the words.
He still needed the structure to hold the shape.
He reached his position.
Aiva lifted her hand.
Dropped it.
Chloe moved first.
There was no wind-up, no shift in stance that telegraphed anything, just the result arriving, a shot cutting across the space toward him with the kind of directness that made reaction the only option.
Adam dropped behind the nearest barrier and brought the staff up, breath catching the word before he could stop it.
"Aegis—"
The shield flared into place just as the impact hit, the force sliding across it and dispersing into the edges.
He moved immediately, leaning out just enough to return fire.
"Ignis—"
The shot went wide.
Chloe was already gone from where she had been.
He ducked back as another impact struck the barrier, closer this time.
She wasn't announcing anything.
The spells just existed.
He shifted positions, keeping low, the staff a half-step behind what his body wanted to do, every movement carrying that slight delay he couldn't eliminate.
Another shot came.
He blocked.
Returned fire.
Missed again.
He kept moving.
She should have ended this.
That was the calculation she had made at the start, the outcome already assigned before the first exchange.
Two moves.
Three at most.
He was still there.
Chloe adjusted.
Not fully, not yet, but enough that her movement sharpened, the spacing between her actions tightening.
Another shot.
His shield held.
Her eyes narrowed.
"jinjja—"(진짜—) she said exasperated in what Adam concluded was concluded was Korean.
The word slipped out under her breath, sharp and quick, gone as soon as it appeared.
He shifted again.
Still there.
She changed the angle.
The first attack came high, fast and clean, forcing his shield up, his attention following it.
The second never came.
The real strike cut low and across, not at him but at the staff.
It connected.
The impact snapped through his grip, the force precise and controlled, sending the staff spinning out of his hands and skidding across the floor out of reach.
Adam went after it.
He didn't think about the open space, about the line of sight he was stepping into.
He moved.
Chloe fired.
There was no time to think.
The shape formed anyway.
His hands came up, empty, the motion instinctive, and something answered it.
Not through the staff.
Through him.
The shield snapped into place, not as a full construct but as a tight, immediate barrier, closer to his skin than anything he had managed before, the impact hitting it and dispersing outward in a flash that stung his palms.
He felt it.
Not as strain.
As alignment.
Aiva, who had been watching the entire fight with glee, suddenly took note of this, her excitement evident as her brow arched in intrigue.
For a fraction of a second, the gap between intention and execution disappeared.
His hands moved again.
No word.
The shot left them before his mind caught up to the fact that it could.
It crossed the distance faster than he expected, catching Chloe just as she shifted to her next position, the timing wrong for her in a way that it shouldn't have been.
It hit.
She staggered half a step.
Her expression changed.
Not anger.
Not immediately.
Surprise.
Real, unfiltered, there and gone in less than a second.
Then it hardened.
She didn't give him another chance.
The next shot was clean, direct, and final.
It hit center mass and dropped him back against the barrier, the breath knocked out of him as the world tilted and then steadied again with him on the floor.
Silence settled for a beat.
Then footsteps.
Chloe stopped over him.
"You lasted longer," she said, her tone flat, controlled. "That is… improvement."
He pushed himself up on one elbow, still catching his breath.
"I mastered basic casting in three days," she continued. "You have had over a week. You are still chanting. You are still hesitating. You are still… behind."
He didn't respond.
"The hit," she said, and there it was, the thing she needed to address, "was because I did not expect you to have a second option after disarm. That is not skill. That is… circumstance."
He sat up slowly.
"You don't belong here," she said, the words landing without emphasis. "You are here because Aiva allows it. That is not the same as earning it."
A beat.
"I think should consider stopping," she added. "Before you invest more into something that is not for you."
She turned and started walking away, never once glancing back.
Aiva crouched beside him, offering a hand.
He took it.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said, pulling himself up.
She glanced toward where Chloe had disappeared, then back at him. "She's wrong about most things," she said lightly. "But not all of them."
He let out a breath. "That's encouraging."
"She doesn't get caught off guard," Aiva said. "That's kind of her whole thing. And you caught her."
"By accident."
"Maybe," Aiva said. "Or maybe your hands knew something your head hasn't caught up to yet."
He didn't answer.
"She's also not what she looks like," Aiva added, brushing dust off his shoulder. "Chloe, I mean. She's loud because quiet lets things in. And she doesn't like what usually gets in."
He glanced toward the empty space Chloe had left behind.
"She'll warm up," Aiva said. "Eventually."
He nodded, but the words didn't settle.
Because Chloe's voice was still there.
Clear.
Precise.
You do not belong here.
He replayed the moment.
The disarm.
The scramble.
The hand-cast.
The hit.
Luck.
The word fit too easily.
He sat back down on the edge of the barrier, the space around him returning to its quiet, the hum of the lights filling in where everything else had been.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe the hit hadn't meant anything.
Maybe this wasn't something he was built for.
The thought didn't spike.
It settled.
And he didn't know what to do with it.