Another presentation. Another week. Another subtle shift in posture from those who now regarded him not merely as a colleague, but as a senior analyst. Minjae adjusted his tie in the reflection of the conference room glass. Behind him, the lights dimmed slightly as Yuri began her setup.
"Ten minutes, then you're up," she said, not quite looking at him but fully aware of his presence. Her voice carried that steady, grounding calm she always had, but Minjae caught the small upward tilt in her tone—something between reassurance and approval.
"Thanks," he replied quietly. "You've tightened the layout since last week."
She glanced sideways, a small flash of surprise breaking through her usual composure. "You noticed."
"I always notice," he said, softer than intended. He turned his gaze back to the screen, flipping through his slides out of habit. "That's the job."
And it was. Observing patterns. Tracing movement in what others dismissed as static noise. He watched shifts in the office the same way he watched shifts in datasets—subtle changes, faint anomalies, quiet signals beneath the surface.
Maybe that's why people were starting to look at him differently.
The meeting passed smoothly. His segment on financial scenario modeling earned nods from even the more skeptical executives—those who usually found pleasure in dissecting projections until someone cracked. But today, they listened. A few even jotted notes.
No surprises.
Yet the undercurrent that passed through the room—that thin, nearly invisible ripple of respect and recognition—felt oddly foreign to him. A human thing. A social thing. Something that required more than competence; something he wasn't entirely comfortable receiving.
By lunchtime, he was back at his desk, reviewing the data logs from Yura's report. She had left a sticky note attached to the printed sheets:
"For the overthinker. Try not to unravel the universe with this one. —Y"
He let out a small breath that could almost be called a laugh. Yura's handwriting was sharp and quick, like the way she talked when she was excited about a finding. She teased him, but she also respected him enough to trust him with what the others missed.
He slid the note aside and began reviewing the data. The regional survey response spikes—on the surface—looked benign. An algorithmic quirk. Maybe a coincidence.
But when he overlaid the sequence with behavioral heatmaps… and cross-referenced them with minor fluctuations in product adoption curves… a thin thread surfaced.
Not correlation.
Not noise.
Movement.
He leaned back.
These weren't ordinary fluctuations.
They moved like… interference.
Or intention.
Something that changed with a rhythm.
He highlighted the sections in his internal archive, tagged them under the "Peripheral Anomalies" header, and encrypted the folder.
Just in case.
Because the pattern didn't belong in any existing model.
And because he recognized movement that shouldn't exist.
That evening, he returned to the lab.
The hidden building sat quietly under a veil of dust and silence, exactly as it should. A fake records firm on paper. A sealed room of arcane geometry and modern science in reality. Only he had access. Only he ever would.
He stepped inside and exhaled as he set his briefcase down. The air felt still—comfortably so. Predictable. Bare of distractions. Here, he was stripped of expectations. He didn't have to pretend.
Today, he wasn't here to chase a one-off burst of energy.
He was here to replicate.
He reviewed the logs from yesterday:
temperature, pressure, humidity, ink viscosity, curvature deviations, microfracture stress cycles, even biometric readings of his own pulse. Everything was captured, everything recorded, everything perfectly consistent.
And yet nothing explained the ignition.
Except the one variable the sensors couldn't quantify.
Will.
Presence.
Aethra.
Minjae stepped before the slab. Gloves on. Posture straight but relaxed. The room dimmed as the embedded floor lights activated—a soft glow that illuminated the surface of the runes without overwhelming them.
He placed a steady hand over the center glyph.
He didn't force it.
He didn't expect it.
He simply listened.
"Aethra," he whispered.
Silence.
"Aethra."
Still nothing.
He waited. Another minute. Then another.
But he didn't force a third attempt.
Instead, he stepped back and sat. And for a long time, he simply watched the slab, as though observation itself might reveal something the equations couldn't.
The silence was strangely comforting.
The next day at the office, Seori passed by his desk with a soft tap on the divider wall—a tiny sound, but one made with intention.
"Team dinner next week," she reminded. "Don't forget."
Minjae blinked. "I thought it was still tentative?"
She shook her head, her hair brushing lightly against her collar, then offered a small smile. "Not anymore. I booked the place. I'll send you the details."
He nodded slowly. Her presence had a steadying effect. Seori never pushed too hard, but she always lingered just long enough to make sure he wasn't slipping back into old habits of isolation.
"You seem tired lately," she said gently.
"I'm thinking a lot."
"Thinking is fine," she replied, her voice warm with a quiet concern she rarely showed openly. "But don't vanish again, okay?"
Her words held no accusation—only familiarity. Understanding. Something that felt dangerously close to care.
He met her gaze. "I won't."
She smiled, satisfied. The kind of smile that settled somewhere deeper than he expected.
Later that night, Minjae returned to the lab.
Not to perform.
Not to ignite.
Not to force anything.
Just to study.
He ran simulations on the slab's structural response to microbursts of energy—non-magical ones—generated by small engineered sensors mimicking human stress responses. Some pulses matched fear patterns. Others matched cognitive strain. Others replicated excitement or hope.
None produced ignition.
But they produced data.
He paused halfway through the third test set, staring at the soft reflection of the rune lines. Even without light, the pattern seemed alive in its own muted, dormant way.
What if he was too focused on the magic?
Too entrenched in memory?
Too trapped in the remnants of a world he no longer belonged to?
He grabbed his notebook and opened it to a blank page.
He wrote:
If life force exists as a latent human variable… could emotional states amplify it? Stress? Fear? Hope?
Then below it:
Unconscious triggers? Non-reproducible states of mind?
States only humans experienced because humans lived vulnerably, openly, messily in ways dragons never did.
He set the pen down.
It was maddening.
Infuriating.
But it was also progress.
The rune had ignited once.
Therefore, it could ignite again.
Somewhere between will and humanity…
between instinct and emotion…
between Minjae and Valmyros…
…lay the variable he needed to find.