The plan ended up pretty simple. As a first step, Kiara showed her mother the completed first cube. She had to use the barrier as an external Mana source. When she had told her grandmother what she had found, she had called it cheating and grumbled something about the youth always looking for an easy way.

  “No wonder the crystal is always depleted, and if we are already addressing the topic, no more kicking of the barrier,” she had mumbled angrily. Kiara had nodded, but smiled mischievously at the same time. She was not sure what annoyed her grandmother more, that she had not realized what her granddaughter had done, or that she was leaching her Mana.

  Her request to drop the barrier completely had been denied rather swiftly, without leaving any room for further discussion. However, a plan was made to create a smaller, separate crystal that Kiara could use as a source for her practice. She would not need it later on, and Magdalena believed her increased exposure would lead to her forming a Mana source earlier than usual.

  Maya had a complicated look on her face when she saw her little daughter showcasing her surprising Magical skills. A well-placed “Mama” and a little bit of laughter were enough to wring a proud smile from her.

  Nevertheless, it resulted in a tense dinner, in which Magdalena was wrongly accused of influencing her child and providing the magical training tools against her wishes. Sarok jumped in and took the fall for that and simply explained that he thought some more toys would be good for little Kiara.

  The look Maya gave him and Magdalena had Kiara flinch. Her father would most likely sleep on the couch tonight. Afterwards, the mood was tense and no one brought the topic back up.

  A few days later, when the family had gathered for some afternoon snacks (Kiara, of course, did not get any of those). Kiara had dragged the cube over to her grandmother, proudly showing it to her as well. The only problem was that, without a magical artifact to source the magic from, her grandmother had to help her. Soon, the line was lit up completely, and the whole cube shone in a bright green light.

  Her grandmother pretended to be surprised and gave her mother a meaningful look.

  “It looks like Kiara might be interested in learning the art of weaving and is enjoying her play time with my toys. Can I spend some time with her to teach her the basics? Of course, only if she wants to and you allow it.” Magdalena asked timidly.

  Maya looked at the same time angry, kind of proud, and like an animal backed into a corner, about to lash out.

  In the moment of silence, Sarok cleared his throat and gently took his wife’s hand. “I think that would be alright with us, but only an hour a day at most, and only as long as Kiara wants to do so. Is that alright with you, dear?”

  Maya only gave a swift nod. Magdalena and Kiara shared a quick look at their victory. No one said more about the topic, and Petro soon began to ask question after question regarding his school start in a few days.

  On Petro’s first day of school, Kiara and Magdalena had their first lesson while her parents were accompanying her brother to school. Or at least that had been the plan. Instead, Kiara got to watch her grandmother in action for the first time.

  As soon as she had entered the room, she picked up Kiara from her crib and placed her in front of her. The toys were placed between them, and Magdalena's back was to the orb. A series of glyphs appeared beneath the orb and remained there, hovering in the air.

  “With that taken care of, we can now speak freely. What do you know about the rune language of weaves? How did your old world handle magic? What style of weave was the most common?” Magdalena began what felt like an interrogation.

  “In my old world, there was no magic at all. We had rather advanced technology, but there was nothing similar to the magic of this world.” Kiara admitted sheepishly.

  “WHAT?!?” Magdalena said, surprised. For a short moment, she was completely stunned.

  “You came from a dead world? How did you even ever fight the wild beasts and monsters of your world without magic or any skill enhancements?”

  “There were no beasts or monsters, or at least not anymore. Nearly everything that could pose a risk to a human had been eradicated to the point of near extinction a long time ago, and the whole world was mostly safe. Well, expect for other humans.” Admitted Kiara

  “Well, aren’t you just the lucky one?” Magdalena said, her voice edged with irritation. “Listen carefully. The moment you step beyond the safety of the city walls and their protective wards, you’ll find monsters roaming the countryside. The truth is, you might not even need to leave the city to encounter them. Most are manageable—if you know what you’re doing. A grown man can deal with some without needing a combat class or setting traps. But others... they’re something else. Some have evolved to the point where they can scale our walls and rip an ordinary man in half before he even knows what hit him. The town guard can handle most of them, but they are stretched thin as it is. We’ve lost more than a few towns to swarms, hordes, and fledgling titans during my lifetime. Don’t make the mistake of thinking we’re safe just because we’re behind walls.”

  “You are never truly safe in this world. The stronger you are, the more likely you will be to keep yourself and those surrounding you safe, but if you ever draw the anger of a god or one of those really ancient beasts, well, tough luck. Better go hide and pray to emerge alive after the world around you has been burned down to a crisp. Do you understand that?” Her stern look made it apparent how serious she was about this.

  Kiara was silent for a long moment. It was too much to take in. Yes, of course, in many of the fantasy novels she had read, there were many of the same tropes, but she never took the time to consider what it meant for the people living in such a world.

  “So, what you are saying is I will have to become strong, learn how to fight and defend myself, because the time will come where I will need those skills?” she inquired, just to make sure she really understood her grandmother’s message.

  Her grandmother’s finger shot out and flicked her forehead. “What are you… five? You said you lived a life before this one, act accordingly! Only a half-brained stone piercer would think personal strength is the only form of power. Yes, there are people like the guard, who have honed a specialized skill set to deal with monsters and, from time to time, trouble makers inside the city, who rely mostly on one’s strength. However, those skills are rigid. They are good for their one application, and that is it!

  An intolerable weakness! And not the way of our family. We are weavers! We are flexible and adapt to what’s needed. We use our brains to solve problems, not our big muscles! We prepare, we plan, make contingency plans, and destroy our enemies from a distance.

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  We ward city walls and secure emergency shelters. I have killed more monsters with a single weave than most guards see in their whole life.” The energy slowly vanished out of Magdalena’s voice. She sounded tired.

  “At least that’s what our family used to do. Yes, you will need a certain amount of personal power and strength, but that doesn’t mean you have to go out there swinging a sword around.

  If you give me some time to prepare, I can probably take on the whole guard by myself. Weavers are not weak. Our strength flows into the weapons we forge, the walls we build, and the armor we wear.”

  She pointed to her belt. “In those pouches, I keep small disks prepared with different weaves, which make me an opponent better not to be underestimated. Even if you would catch me without those, which I highly doubt, we can always use our Mana itself to strike or defend.”

  A number of runes appeared in the air, woven into an intricate circle. A barely visible spear shot out half a meter before disappearing into nothingness.

  “We have other people collecting the resources we need for more complicated weaves. In fact, that’s the whole reason for this town’s existence. To collect mana-rich ingredients for further refinement and crafting. It once belonged to our family.” She showed Kiara a kind smile filled with pride at their family's past.

  Kiara did not feel that her head flick, which was still painfully throbbing, had been at all deserved. It was not her fault that Magdalena did have some kind of issue with martial weapons, but instead of voicing out her dissatisfaction and risking a repeat, she changed the topic.

  “What do you mean it belonged to our family? Are we nobility?”

  “Not anymore. We live at the very edge of the kingdom Formier. Beneath the King, there are six great Houses, there used to be seven. Our family resided in a great villa at a lake close to the capital. It’s where I grew up and spent my childhood. Most of us were killed in a tragedy, and the rest disbanded. Your family is all that’s left of the once great family of the Thornwings.” Magdalena spoke somberly.

  After a moment, Magdalena opened up one of her belt pouches and showed her a small bracelet. A dim, milky, and cloudy crystal shard was prominently embedded in it.

  “This is your training bracelet. It doesn’t contain a lot of mana, nor is it very pure, but for your early training, it will suffice. After a while, you will develop your own dormant Mana source. It will allow you to perform feats of Magic without an external source and is increased by regular training. Just like you would train a muscle, you need to train your Mana regularly. Stop if you feel dizzy or sick. Mana exhaustion can become quite severe and even knock you out for several days.” She warned. Kiara nodded eagerly.

  “In addition to the total capacity, both purity and activation amount are also important. And of course, your control, both in how detailed you can work, as well as in how many different tasks you can perform in parallel. And of course, the speed of your performance. It must become instinctual, like walking and breathing. In the upcoming years, you will lay the foundation for your whole life. So work diligently. The challenge cubes are a proven tool to train those foundational skills.”

  She said, smiling and adding. “I will reload your bracelet once a day and also tell your mother about it, so if you can find a way to ask her, she might also reload it for you, but I would tread carefully. You don’t want to overstretch her goodwill.”

  “Time to get back into your role. Your parents are returning and are probably one or two minutes out before they are home. Maya is walking as fast as possible. She is nearly running. Tsk, no trust. I am her mother, spending time with my granddaughter. She is hurrying home like a hungry blood hyena is in the house.”

  When Maya returned, she found her mother and daughter happily playing with some toy blocks on the carpet.

  *** Kiara ***

  With her brother now in school, her mornings were mostly spent studying, or at least her version of it. She trained and trained using the toys her father had provided, but progress was slow. Without the help of her grandmother, she was still only barely able to complete the first cube, and only if her Mana bracelet was completely full.

  Her grandmother had repeatedly insulted her Mana control as wasteful and inefficient, in their lessons. Claimed she was leaking Mana all over the place, and insultingly called her bracelet her little crutch and mocked her reliance on it.

  Surprisingly, it did not bother her as much as she would have thought. It felt like a new way to apply herself, to experiment and learn something completely new. She was determined to show her grandmother what she was capable of.

  Slowly, as the days turned into months, she could feel herself grow. It became easier to draw Mana from her bracelet, and she could feel something form deep in her chest, stimulated every time she trained. The first cube was now easily completed. The second was quite similar to the first, except that the line was longer and had some gentle turns and curves in it. Progress was being made, but it was still difficult for her to get her Mana to do what she wanted, and pressing it into the cube only got her so far. She needed to control it to mend it into the form it needed to have, to lead it down the path it was supposed to take without losing her grip on it.

  At first, Mana had been a real struggle to manage. The little bracelet did not contain a lot of it, and once it was expended, she had to stop until she could find somebody to refill it for her. Her grandmother checked in with her most evenings and filled her back up. She refused to teach her anything substantial. Insisting over and over, she first needed to build a stable foundation of Mana control and manage her Mana efficiently.

  The old hag’s Mana was the most powerful and easiest to work with, but she was also stingy with it. By morning, she normally had used up most of it in her nightly training. She was allowed to take one cube with her into her crib. A lot of crying was involved in achieving this victory.

  Surprisingly, her dad had started to play with her each morning, before he headed off to work. He liked to see how far she had come and always had some words of encouragement for her. He was the complete opposite of her grandmother, and to be honest, Kiara had started to look up to him. He loved his wife and family dearly and spent all the time he could spare with them. She still did not know what her dad did for work, but it had to be something physical, given how huge and bulky he was and how tired he sometimes looked when he returned home in the evening.

  His Mana was strange. Like it had a will on its own, it was sturdy and Kiara had to mentally push against it to get it to do what she wanted, but it did leak less than her grandmothers. If she had to describe it, she would say her grandmother’s Mana was like water offering little resistance, but if one did not pay close attention, it would easily run through one’s fingers and spill everywhere. Her dad’s mana was more like honey. It took time and effort to get it to move, but at the same time, less attention was needed to control it.

  She had never asked her mother for any Mana, not sure how to even approach the subject. Her mother had made an effort to spend more time with her. However, she was visibly uncomfortable with her magic training. She started to read her bedtime stories and tell her tales of her youth.

  Her mother once wanted to become a great adventurer, but something happened and nearly broke her ambition. She had spent years training herself and had become an accomplished huntress. For a while, she had even accompanied an adventuring party. A faded scar on her leg bore witness to those times. As she recovered, she met her husband and settled down. Hunting the local monsters was all the adventures she experienced nowadays. Her stories were filled with yearning and sadness, as her true dreams stayed forever denied.

  She was a passionate cook and often took her with her and let her watch while she was cooking. It was the first time Kiara saw someone apply magic to themselves. The way her mother cut vegetables could not be explained any other way. She had seen a lot of cooking shows in her past life and had been a decent cook herself, even teaching kids during summer as part of a vacation camp, but never had she seen a knife fly like this.

  Precise, in a steady rhythm, and so fast her eyes could barely track its movement, and all this while keeping at least one eye on her baby. One time, when she just started to smell something burning she wasn’t sure if she blinked at the wrong time or if her mother had teleported over to the stove, cursing or at least she presumed those were curse words as she had never heard those before and immediately and barehanded pulling the pot of the heat.

  She did not know how it worked, but it was a fascinating application completely without any visible weaves.