The penthouse was quiet by late morning, having settled into a comfortable, lived-in rhythm. Sunlight, crisp and golden in the autumn air of Madison, streamed through the vast, floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the floating dust motes into a swirling galaxy. Below, the city's hoverlanes murmured—a constant, soothing hum that was the heartbeat of a world in motion. On the gleaming stainless-steel face of the stove, a sticky note was affixed like a formal decree. Reika's elegant, precise script was unmistakable: "Lunch at 13:00. Do not snack. —R."
At the expansive dining table, Stella was queen in her self-proclaimed kingdom of creation. She had colonized the polished oak surface, transforming it into a vibrant workshop of scattered schematics, finely sharpened pencils, and stacks of technical printouts. At thirteen, she possessed a formidable, almost unnerving focus. She was swimming in one of my old UW-Madison hoodies, the dark grey fabric emblazoned with a faded crest, its sleeves rolled messily past her elbows. Her dark hair, a restless cascade of waves, was barely contained by two struggling clips. She was hunched over a diagram, her brow furrowed as she scribbled a line of tensor calculus in the margin with a practiced ease that still made me proud.
Luna sat nearby, curled gracefully into a plush armchair, watching Stella's diligent work with the quiet, absorbed intensity of a cat observing a fascinating sunbeam. I stood at the kitchen counter, my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long since gone lukewarm, the familiar ache of a father's worry settling deep behind my ribs.
On Stella's tablet, the admissions page for the Mythos City Institute hovered in its signature, hopeful pale blue. She swiped, and the seal of the Tower of Magic appeared, then the Alchemical Collective. They all made the same glossy, seductive promises of knowledge and discovery. And on every single page, tucked neatly into the digital forms and lists of prerequisites, was the same unyielding, impassable barrier: Mana Affinity certification required for all lab-based programs.
"Daddy?" Stella asked, her voice pulling me from my thoughts. She didn't look up from a particularly nasty integral she was solving. "Is it true the Institute gives first-years lab time now? Like, actual hands-on work?"
"It is," I confirmed, my voice sounding steadier than I felt. "They started that policy a couple of years ago. Smaller groups, more direct supervision from senior faculty. Better safety protocols."
"Could a student work in those labs without mana?" The question was delivered with practiced casualness, but the pencil in her hand had gone utterly still.
Luna and I shared a look across the room. Her expression was a complex tapestry of empathy and concern. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head, a silent signal that this was my conversation to navigate.
"They don't have a framework for that, Stell," I said as gently as I could. "The interlocks, the diagnostic tools... even the emergency suppression systems are all hard-wired to a user's mana channels."
"Hm," was all she said in response. She tapped the pencil twice, a sharp little rhythm of frustration, before returning to her equation.
The single sound was enough. The memory rose unbidden, not as a hazy recollection, but as a sharp, visceral plunge into the past. I wasn't in the sunlit penthouse anymore. I was standing on the cold, debris-strewn floor of a ruined sanctuary, the air thick with the smell of ozone, dust, and spilled blood. I remembered the chilling silence after the battle, the impossible stillness of a world I had just broken and remade. I saw Stella, so much smaller then, her small body trembling in Reika's protective embrace.
The memory of my own relief was a physical force, so profound it had buckled my knees. I had knelt to hug her, to reassure myself she was real and safe. And then the terrifying, sublime, and utterly uncontrollable surge of power. The Grey. It had moved through me not as a tool, but as a sentient, silver fire with its own alien intelligence, pouring from my being into her fragile form. I remembered my own silent, desperate scream of "No, stop!" trying to pull it back, to command it, but I was merely a conduit. I was a horrified passenger in my own body, watching as the dark, parasitic threads of the artificial Heavenly Demon power were ripped from her very essence, strand by shimmering, screaming strand. I remembered the words of the goddess Akasha echoing in the void that followed: "Your daughter needs her father, not a god drunk on cosmic power."
My hand tightened on the ceramic mug, my knuckles white. Luna was beside me in an instant, her warm hand covering mine, her touch a firm, grounding anchor in the turbulent storm of the memory. "She's here, Arthur. She's safe," she murmured, her voice a low, steady anchor against the pull of the past.
Across the room, Reika paused in her preparations, her gaze meeting mine. It was filled with a shared, painful understanding. She had been there. She had seen the raw, untamed power, and the terror on my face when I realized I couldn't control it.
"When I saved you," I started, my voice rougher than I intended, "the power I had to use... its nature was to unmake things that were artificial, wrong. It had to destroy the demonic essence they had woven into you." I took a shaky breath. "That poison would have twisted you into something else, or killed you. But the Grey wasn't a scalpel. It was a flood. It washed away the poison, but it took your mana with it. I couldn't control that part of it. It was the cost of saving your life."
Stella finally looked up from her work, her dark eyes clear, deep, and unnervingly perceptive. She carefully placed her pencil on the table, giving the conversation the full weight of her attention. "I know," she said, her voice soft but sure. "I found your personal logs about it last year. The entry from that night."
I nodded, my throat tight. Reika's idea—unfiltered truth, when she was ready.
"I'm not mad," she said, cutting off the torrent of apologies and explanations she saw forming on my face. "I'm alive. I like being alive." She wrinkled her nose. "And frankly, having a parasitic demonic engine fused to my soul sounds really, really gross."
The immense tension in my shoulders eased, a weight I hadn't realized I was carrying. Luna's thumb stroked the back of my hand in a slow, soothing rhythm.
"But," Stella added, a strategist's glint in her eye that was pure Luna, "I want access to the labs. I want to build things. I don't want to be told 'no' because a fundamental part of me is missing."
"You want the world to meet you where you are," Luna finished for her, a proud smile touching her lips.
"Yes," Stella said, her voice suddenly smaller. "Is that too much to ask?"
Reika's timer beeped, a cheerful sound that cut through the heavy atmosphere. She emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray with three steaming, fragrant bowls. Her movements were always a model of quiet efficiency, but her eyes were soft as she set a bowl in front of me, her fingers brushing my arm in a fleeting, supportive touch. "Food first," she said, her tone gentle but absolute. It wasn't a suggestion; it was an act of care.
We ate in silence for a few moments, the hearty, honest stew a comforting presence that grounded the room.
"What if you don't want mana?" Luna asked Stella thoughtfully. "Not for the labs, just... for you. Do you ever miss it?"
Stella tilted her head, genuinely considering it. "I don't know. I don't remember it, really. Sometimes I see other kids making light sparks and think it's pretty. But the idea of it... it feels a little boring compared to solving a problem, to building something real that works. I like making things."
"When the Grey took your mana," I said, my gaze drifting to the city skyline beyond the window, "it took more than just a power source. In this world, it's a key. A form of citizenship. A reason for people to listen. I know it stole that from you, too."
Stella reached across the table and laid her hand on my arm. Her fingers were long and deft, the hands of an engineer. "You didn't steal anything," she said, her voice firm. "A power you couldn't control saved me from a bomb in my soul. It's okay to be sad about the key, and still be glad the bomb is gone."
Her simple, profound wisdom was a physical blow. It was everything I needed to hear.
"Let me show you," she said, her mood shifting as she pulled her tablet closer. She swiped away the admissions page with a flick of her finger, revealing a beautifully complex schematic. It was a bracelet, but the centerpiece was a sophisticated coupler with two clearly marked ports: M (Mana) and K (Kinetic).
"Mana acts as both a power source and an instruction set," she explained, her voice gaining the excited energy she got when she was explaining a concept she loved. "It expects a specific call-and-response, a cryptographic handshake from any device it interfaces with. My interpreter fakes the handshake. It converts raw kinetic input—like from this hand-crank"—she pointed to a detailed note in the margin—"into a signal the device recognizes as a valid, mana-based instruction."
"What about signal latency?" I asked, engaging with her on her level. "A faked handshake must have a delay. High-end equipment would time out."
A brilliant, confident smile lit up her face. "The prototype does, by about twelve milliseconds. But I'm modeling a recursive algorithm to anticipate the device's query patterns based on its function. It learns to answer the question before it's asked. It just... needs a more stable substrate." She sighed. "Prototype three still melts, but it hums first."
"Progress," Reika noted from her seat, a rare, genuine smile gracing her lips.
"Can I use the lab here to print the next board?" Stella asked me. "The one with the stabilized substrate. I'll be careful."
"Yes," I said instantly, the word leaving me before I'd even fully processed it. "Of course. I'll monitor everything."
Later that afternoon, the scent of hot metal and flux filled a corner of the living room. We had the soldering kit out on its protective mat, working together under the focused glow of a magnifier lamp. There was a comfortable rhythm to it, a shared, silent focus that I cherished.
"Do you ever wish you could put it back?" she asked suddenly, her voice quiet, her eyes fixed on the delicate circuit board in front of her.
I paused, the tip of the soldering iron hovering over a tiny silver connection. I took a breath and gave her the most honest answer I had. "I wish you never had that poison in you to begin with," I said. "I wish, with all my heart, that I'd had the control to save you without that cost. To be a surgeon instead of a tidal wave." I met her eyes. "But I don't wish for your mana back, Stell. I wish for your happiness, your safety, and for you to have the tools to build whatever you can imagine. I will fight any rule, any academy, or any person that gets in the way of that."
I watched her absorb the words. Her shoulders, which had been tense, relaxed by a fraction. She gave a single, firm nod. "Okay."
Under the table, out of her sight, Luna's hand found mine. Reika, anticipating the moment, set a glass of cool water by my elbow without a word.
A few minutes later, the new board was finished. Stella connected the interpreter to her small hand-crank generator. She turned the crank, her expression a mixture of hope and intense concentration. A low, clear hum filled the sunny room—the steady, beautiful sound of a problem being solved.
Her face broke into a triumphant, incandescent smile.
"See?" she whispered, more to the device than to us. "It still works. We can still talk."
We all watched her, this incredible thirteen-year-old girl who, when faced with a locked door the world had built, simply decided to engineer her own key. And in that quiet, humming moment, I learned again how to let go of the past I couldn't control, and just stand still to watch her build the future.