Jeremiah’s mouth opened, the words balanced on the edge of his tongue. He wanted to say that he already knew.

  The contract he had signed with Billy had been clear on the Oceanic affinity, even if he wasn’t quite sure how the System had granted it to him, or what it even meant. It’s not like he had felt some kind of change suddenly come over him or anything.

  But Mero’s warning about letting others know too much about the System still sat heavily on his mind.

  And David’s quiet admission about Billy’s origins had stuck just as deep. That some things were safer unspoken, especially where others might hear.

  Jeremiah swallowed the words before they escaped. He let his gaze drop instead, focusing on the cube between them. Its crystalline sides caught the bakery’s light, clear as water but edged in gold, the runes at each corner glowing faintly with a pulse like a slow heartbeat.

  He cleared his throat. “This thing… it can tell that? Someone’s affinity, I mean?” His finger hovered just above the crystal’s smooth surface, not quite brave enough to touch it. “It’s a lot different from the machine they used back in school.”

  Ulrick’s chuckle rolled out warm and deep. He drummed two thick fingers against the cube’s surface, the sound oddly dull against crystal that looked so delicate. “Aye, lad. More than that. The machines they trot out in the schools—” his mouth twisted, half amusement, half disdain, “—those are factory-line things. Not fit for much more than sorting wheat from chaff.”

  Jeremiah raised a brow. “They seemed pretty thorough at the time. Big glass chamber, all the wires and humming. I figured—”

  “Oh, they work,” Ulrick cut in with a shrug, “but only at the broadest measure. They flood the chamber with one type of mana, then another, looking for some sort of reaction or resonance. Push enough kids through, eventually a gem falls out. It’s quick, efficient, and about as delicate as using a hammer to knead dough.”

  Jeremiah frowned. “So that’s it? Just pumping kids full of magic until something sticks?”

  “Exactly that.” Ulrick’s teeth showed in a humorless grin. “It’s like pressin’ keys on a piano, and trying to figure out if it’s in tune or not, without a reference. Its enough to tell if a child might be Gifted, aye. But not near fine enough to know much beyond the yes or no.”

  His hand lingered atop the cube, palm broad against its surface. “This, though — this is built to read a person’s resonance proper. Not just if you’ve a spark, but how it sits in you, how the pieces line up. The makeup of it.”

  Jeremiah tilted his head, brows knitting. “Makeup? I thought a person either had an affinity or didn’t. What more is there to read?”

  Fire was fire, or water was water, wasn’t it?

  Ulrick scratched at his beard, the rasp loud in the quiet bakery. “Yes and no. That’s the way most folk think of it. On a technical level, though? Everyone has affinity. Everyone. The difference is whether any of it stands out enough to matter.”

  Jeremiah blinked. “Everyone?”

  “Aye.” Ulrick leaned forward, folding his arms across the wobbling table. “Affinity’s nothing more than resonance — how well the body, the mind, or the spirit hums in tune with a certain idea. Fire. Stone. Growth. Storms. The whole of creation is nothing but notions, lad, and some of us are born with ears sharper to certain songs.”

  He sat back again, hand falling away from the cube. “Plenty of things can shape a man’s resonance, one way or another.” He rolled one broad shoulder, continuing. “Bloodlines. The soil you grow up on. The food in your belly. Even the stories whispered around your bed as a child. Whole mage families have poured fortunes and lifetimes into breeding for certain traits, or nurturing certain habits, trying to squeeze out the right resonance. Some succeed, others, generations on smoke.” He snorted. “Waste of time, most of it.”

  “Because most folk,” Ulrick said, voice firm, “end up with their threads pulled in every which direction until the whole skein’s a muddle. All those little nudges — blood, place, habit — they tangle together until no one note rings louder than the others. Like trying to play a song when all the strings are knotted together. You can pluck at them, sure, but all you get is a weak noise, if any. That’s what folk call the unaligned. Not empty. Just… too tangled to hear their own song.”

  Jeremiah sat back slowly, eyes flicking between the baker’s steady face and the faintly glowing cube. He wrapped both hands around his teacup, though the brew inside had gone cold.

  Jeremiah leaned forward, elbows on the wobbling table, the half-empty teacup forgotten between his hands. Ulrick’s voice filled the small bakery, steady and certain.

  “A large part of spellcraft,” Ulrick said, tapping his broad fingers against the tabletop, “is learnin’ to untangle those influences and pluck at the right ones proper. Anyone can fumble about with a mess of threads and pull a few loose, but the knack lies in finding the strands worth pullin’. That’s easier when a few are already free. That’s what folk mean when they talk about affinity.”

  Jeremiah nodded, the idea settling into place. He pictured a ball of yarn pulled loose compared to one knotted tight. Both could be undone, sure, but the effort wasn’t even close. The easier the threads are separated, the faster you can make something out of them. What’s more, pull the wrong thread, and you might make the ball tighter. He could see why it wasn’t something you could easily learn on your own.

  “That,” Ulrick continued, pointing at the crystal cube still glowing faintly between them, “is where we start. This device’ll tell you which strands are worth your time. Where best to put your hands first, rather than yankin’ blind.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Jeremiah swallowed, his eyes flicking down to the cube. “How does it work?”

  Ulrick’s lips split into a grin under his beard, not wide but sly, the kind of grin that came before a reveal. “Like this.”

  He reached forward and took the cube in both hands. His palms settled against the two golden corners, thick fingers bracing against the opposite set. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Jeremiah tilted his head, about to ask if something had gone wrong, when he caught the barest shimmer at the corners. Threads thinner than hairs began to push outward from the points Ulrick touched. At first, there were only a handful, but more followed, unspooling, dozens then hundreds, until they tangled together into cords.

  Jeremiah’s breath caught. Each string carried its own color and texture. Some glowed green, vibrant as fresh shoots straining toward sunlight. Others hung black and brittle, like strands of woven charcoal ready to snap. Still others bled pale, wispy grey, like smoke pulled thin through the air.

  The cords twisted and writhed within the cube, weaving themselves into something larger. Slowly, steadily, they stretched until they anchored against the bottom corners, and the entire structure pulled taut.

  Jeremiah inhaled sharply. The air suddenly smelled faintly of sap and turned earth and an open tomb all at once.

  Inside the cube, what had been a handful of threads was now a tapestry, woven in three dimensions, colors overlapping in impossible knots and spirals. Black, green, and grey made up the bulk, but flashes of red, blue, and purple wound through, sparks of gold and yellow flickering like embers.

  Jeremiah stared, throat tight. It wasn’t an image, not really. No face, no scene he could point to. But it felt deliberate. Every loop, every crossing carried intent, as though the thing were singing in its own silent way.

  And it wasn’t just sight. The cube radiated sensation. Growth, renewal — the push of roots through soil, the swelling of spring buds. But laced through that, just as strong, was the scent of rot and the hush of decay. Yet, neither side fought the other. They didn’t cancel or compete. Instead, they wound together like dancers, each turn strengthening the other, feeding the whole in endless rhythm. A never-ending song of Endings and Beginnings.

  And threaded through it all, subtle but undeniable, came something else.

  A quiet note, something low and steady, that tasted of finality. A taste not bitter but… still. Restful. Like walking through his own front door after being too long away. Like the closing snap of a book’s cover when the last page has been read. Not sorrow. Not fear. Just… home.

  Jeremiah’s chest tightened.

  The sensation tugged at him, pulling his focus. A shimmer of gold flickered in his mind’s eye. For half a heartbeat, he thought he saw a golden bridge stretching across nothing — vast, shining, steady. But before he could reach for it, the image slipped like mist between his fingers, vanishing into the dark.

  Jeremiah blinked, eyes stinging. He reached up to touch his cheeks, only to find they were moist with tears. He dragged his gaze from the cube to Ulrick, who still held the construct steady between his massive hands. The baker’s face was unreadable, eyes narrowed in the glow of the threads.

  Jeremiah licked his lips, voice dry. “What… is all that?”

  Jeremiah’s breath hitched as Ulrick lifted his palms from the cube. The shimmering lattice of threads dissolved in an instant, the colors unraveling back into nothing. What remained was only the plain crystal, shimmering under the bakery’s warm light. The silence after the spectacle felt too sharp, too sudden, as though the world itself had swallowed its own song.

  Ulrick grinned, teeth flashing under his beard. “That, lad, was mine. My own resonance. Refined, polished, tempered through decades of sweat. Don’t expect yours to look half so pretty at the start.”

  Jeremiah blinked, staring at the now-empty cube like it might conjure itself back if he willed it hard enough. His tongue felt dry. “That—” he shook his head, voice rough. “That wasn’t like any affinity I’ve ever heard of. In the movies and novels, people talk about things like fire, water, and stone. Even the rare ones, like time or space, sound… simple compared to that. Not—” he gestured at the vanished tapestry, fingers trembling.

  The baker’s laugh rolled out, deep as distant thunder. “Aye, and that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Folks think affinities are little boxes with neat labels. But people are not monoliths, and neither is mana. Mana is information, lad. Concept. Ideas given weight. And ideas are endless. Anything can be an affinity if your marrow hums loud enough with it. It’s just that simple ideas catch more often. Fire burns. Water flows. Easy to hum along with. Easier still to bend into the shape you want it to be.”

  He leaned forward, eyes glinting. “But when you stumble into something more complex? Well, that’s when things get interesting. Just as often, though, it means the mage has to choose a narrower road, focus on only a few strands of what that resonance offers. Specialize, as the scholars call it.”

  Jeremiah frowned. His cup sat forgotten by his elbow. “Why would anyone do that? Why would you take something… less?”

  Ulrick’s grin returned, crooked and knowing. “That, lad, is the first question every fledgling mage asks. And the answer’s simpler than most expect.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, settling back into his chair. “It’s the nature of mana. The closer your affinity clings to a single idea, the easier it is to call. Like hummin’ a song you already know the words to. But the more tangled the notion, the more of its image is already set. A spell’s a painting — aye? With a tight affinity, half the canvas is already drawn for you. That makes it quicker, sharper, easier to understand. But it also means you can’t just paint anything. The picture’s already half chosen. Changing the core concept of tha image take more time and effort than most find worth it.”

  Ulrick’s thick finger tapped against the wobbling tabletop, each strike landing like a drumbeat. “Simpler notions don’t bite as deep, but they bend easier. Fire’s as plain as they come. Hot, bright, smokeless, wild, or calm — so long as it still burns, the mana will listen. Flexible as taffy. That’s why half the hedge-wizards in the world start off hurling sparks.”

  He leaned forward, voice lowering until it carried the weight of a secret shared. “But then you’ve got lads like one I met years back — Candle affinity. Not Fire, not Light. Candle. Sounds daft, aye? But the things he could do—”

  His beard split with a grin, eyes bright with memory.

  “He could keep a flame steady through storm and sea alike. He could burn a thing without heat or smoke. Once, I saw him snuff the courage right out of a man’s chest, as easy as blowing out a wick. Now tell me, lad, what fire mage ever managed that?”

  The grin lingered, sharp beneath the beard. “But a candle is still a candle. Its not a fireball, no bonfire, no lightning to call down. He might have tried to broaden it — split it into Flame, or Wax — but that would have stripped away the ‘weight’ Candle carried. That’s the trade. The simpler the notion, the wider the cloth you’ve got to cut from. The more complex, the richer the pattern, but the less room you’ve got to shape it. Once the threads are woven, they doesn’t shift easy.”

  The baker reached out and nudged the cube across the table. It slid on the wood with a faint scrape, coming to rest before Jeremiah’s hands. The runes at its corners pulsed once, as though aware of its new place. Ulrick’s grin widened, sharp under the warmth.

  “Well then, lad,” he rumbled, voice dropping into a challenge. “Are you ready to learn the colors of your soul?”