The next few weeks of the Trial Year followed a similar routine as the first.
Jacob spent his days tinkering with his enchantments to see which of his ideas actually held up under use.
By this time, he had finished five distinct patterns. He kept the sword and healing runes clear in his mind, but he also built several variations meant for the fields.
These versions strained the limits of what the original symbols were supposed to do.
He did not work alone every afternoon. Sera often came by the field after visiting her grandmother.
She usually carried a small basket while pretending she just happened to be passing by. She would sit on a fence post to watch him work, humming bits of tunes that made the long hours feel shorter.
Sometimes she helped him measure the rows. Other times she held the stakes steady while he drove them into the dirt.
She asked why one bed needed a specific pattern while another required something different. Occasionally, she simply sat in the grass and watched. She seemed to sense the difference between the enchantments, much like she heard the notes in a song.
One evening, Jacob sat in his room after a long session of staking and enchanting his field. He began to question the limits of the patterns.
Just how far can I bend these? he wondered.
He reached under the bed and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. Inside lay a knife he had prepared for this experiment.
Its iron blade was polished, and the wooden handle felt smooth in his grip. It was a sturdy farm knife meant for cutting twine or cleaning game.
Jacob set it on the table and rested his fingertips against the flat of the metal while he steadied his breathing.
The stakes in the field had shown him that altering a rune could change how magic behaved over a long period. In the field, he had plenty of space and the luxury of making mistakes.
Here, he wanted to see if he could compress a single enchantment onto an object he would carry every day. He wanted to use only the logic he fully understood.
He pictured the standard cutting enchantment Arthur used for the farm tools. That pattern was as familiar to him as the healing rune. It focused on keeping the edge keen.
The sharpness was a tight series of points that reinforced the metal and resisted dullness.
Then he thought about his work on the healing rune in the field. He had stripped away the excess and nudged the remainder toward growth.
With this knife, he wanted something that focused on reliability. He wanted a blade that would cut exactly when he asked and endure heavy strain without chipping.
He picked up the etching tool and let the tip hover above the steel. In his mind, he began shaping a design that combined sharpness with a durable core.
He rested the knife across his lap and let the runes line up in his thoughts. The first was the basic sharpness pattern that tracked the edge from heel to tip.
Next was the reinforcement lattice Arthur used on shovel blades to prevent bending. Then he added his modified healing rune and a grounding element to keep the magic flowing.
He laid them out in his mind like pieces of a puzzle. Each had a clear purpose and had already worked in smaller tasks.
The problem started when he imagined stacking them directly. The lines became crowded. The whole thing felt like a tangled mess that would fail as soon as he applied power.
Jacob set the knife back on the table and pressed his palm against the wood until his pulse slowed.
Instead of stacking the runes, he tried a different approach. He traced the sharpness pattern first. Then he looked for places where the reinforcement lattice already did the same job by supporting the parts of the blade that carried the most force.
Whenever he found an overlap, he pulled the extra lines away. He smoothed the two instructions together until they became a single command.
He did the same with the healing element, weaving self-mending into the spots where the other runes already dealt with the stress of the metal.
Gradually, the separate patterns became a single network. He had fewer lines, yet they were doing more work.
When he finally saw the finished design in his mind, he frowned. The image no longer fit on a flat surface.
Some lines seemed to fold behind others without actually crossing. The angles refused to behave like normal corners. They bent inward and outward at the same time.
It should have been impossible to follow, yet he could trace every part of it without getting lost. His eyes wanted to reject the shape, but his magic did not care about a flat perspective.
His magic understood layers and complex shapes that turned in directions his fingers could not point toward.
His heart beat a little faster as he realized the truth.
This two-dimensional system that I have been using is not the only way! Euclid lived on a flat page, but the real world has depth. Straight lines are just a matter of perspective when an angle can bend around a curve!
He picked up the etching tool again. That strange, merged rune settled into place behind his eyes.
Slowly, he guided the tool along the surface of the knife. He was not cutting into the metal. Instead, he was pressing the entire complex pattern into the mana field of the blade one invisible strand at a time.