Leon waited until evening.
The camp had settled into a rhythm - soldiers rotating shifts at the defensive line, mages working on permanent fortifications, healers tending the wounded. Everyone had a role, a purpose, something to occupy their hands and minds in the aftermath.
Leon's role, apparently, was to rest and recover. Lord Casimir had insisted on it, and for once Leon didn't argue. He needed time alone. Time to think. Time to try to understand what had happened on that rampart.
His tent was exactly as he'd left it - chalk diagrams covering every surface, notes scrawled in margins, the organized chaos of someone trying to learn an entire magical system from scratch. Leon stared at the formations he'd spent weeks designing, seeing them with new eyes.
He'd created all of this without being able to use magic himself. Every circle, every calculation, every optimization had been pure theory translated from engineering principles. It had worked because magic apparently followed mathematical rules he could understand.
But now something had changed.
Leon sat on his cot and held out his right hand - the one that had touched the overloading formation. It looked normal. Felt normal. No glow, no tingle of power, no indication that it had absorbed enough magical energy to level a building.
Where had that energy gone?
He closed his eyes, trying to feel something. Anything that would indicate the magic was still inside him. In meditation scenes from anime, characters always talked about sensing their inner power, their ki or chakra or whatever.
Leon felt nothing. Just the usual sensations - tired muscles, empty stomach, the dull ache behind his eyes from too little sleep.
Maybe it was gone. Maybe the absorption was just... a one-time thing. A fluke. A desperate instinctive reaction that wouldn't happen again.
Or maybe he was looking at it the wrong way.
Leon opened his eyes and studied his hand again. Then, feeling slightly ridiculous, he tried to push. To will the energy out, to activate whatever had activated before.
Nothing happened.
He tried different mental approaches. Imagining fire. Commanding power. Visualizing energy flowing through his body. All the techniques he'd read about in fantasy novels where protagonists discovered their hidden powers.
Still nothing.
"This is stupid," Leon muttered to himself.
But he kept trying anyway, because what else could he do? Ignore it? Pretend it hadn't happened? Everyone had seen the absorption. It was real. Something inside him had changed, even if he couldn't sense or control it.
Leon stood and moved to the center of his tent, where he'd drawn a simple practice circle - one of the first formations Aldric had shown him, designed to produce a small flame. He'd never been able to activate it himself before. Always needed another mage to power it while he adjusted the geometry.
He placed his hand over the circle's focal point and concentrated.
Come on. Do something.
The circle remained dark. Inert. Just chalk on canvas, no different than a child's drawing.
Leon tried for five minutes. Ten. Pushing, willing, commanding the formation to activate. His hand began to sweat from the pressure he was applying to the canvas.
Nothing.
"Damn it," Leon said, pulling his hand back. "What's the point of absorbing magic if I can't use it?"
Maybe that was his answer. Maybe he was just a void, a black hole that could swallow magical energy but not produce or channel it. A defensive ability, useful for the single scenario of preventing magical explosions.
Not exactly the game-changing power everyone thought it was.
Leon paced the tent, frustration building. He'd almost died. He'd discovered something impossible about himself. And now he couldn't even understand or replicate it.
A noise outside made him stop.
Footsteps. Someone approaching his tent.
Leon quickly sat back on his cot, arranging himself to look like he'd been resting rather than conducting desperate magical experiments.
"High Archmage?" A voice called from outside. Young, male, tentative. "May I enter?"
"Come in," Leon said, recognizing the voice - one of the junior mages, a kid maybe twenty years old whose name Leon thought was Emeric.
The flap opened and so called Emeric stepped in, carrying a tray. "I brought dinner, sir. The cooks said you hadn't eaten today."
Had he eaten? Leon couldn't remember. Time had become fluid in the aftermath.
"Thank you," Leon said, gesturing for him to set it down.
Emeric placed the tray on the small table - bread, cheese, some kind of stew that smelled better than it looked. He hesitated, clearly wanting to say something but not sure if he should.
"Was there something else?" Leon asked.
"I just... I wanted to thank you, High Archmage." Emeric's words came out in a rush. "I was on the rampart when the cannon overloaded. If you hadn't... " He swallowed hard. "You saved my life. All our lives."
Leon felt the familiar weight of unearned gratitude settling on his shoulders. "I did what anyone would have done."
"No one else could have done it, sir." Emeric's eyes were wide with something approaching worship. "The way you just reached out and absorbed all that energy like it was nothing... I've never seen magic like that. I didn't know magic like that was even possible."
Neither did I, Leon thought.
"The other mages have been talking," Emeric continued. "Trying to explain the theory behind it. Some think it's a unique constitution, others say it must be a technique passed down from ancient archmages. Aldric thinks you've portrayed a completely new branch of magical study."
Of course they were theorizing. Of course they were trying to fit what he'd done into some framework they could understand. That's what intelligent people did when faced with the inexplicable - they built explanations. Leon wished he could join their research.
All of them wrong, because the truth was simpler and more terrifying: Leon had no idea what he'd done or how he'd done it.
"It's... complicated," Leon said, which was both honest and useless.
"Of course, sir. I'm sorry for bothering you with my curiosity." Emeric bowed. "Please eat. You've earned your rest."
He left before Leon could respond.
Leon stared at the food. His stomach was empty, but the idea of eating felt wrong somehow. Too normal. Too mundane for a day when he'd absorbed a magical explosion and discovered he might be something more than human .
He forced himself to eat anyway. His body needed fuel, regardless of how confused his mind was.
The stew was lukewarm but edible. The bread was fresh. The cheese was... cheese. Leon ate mechanically, barely tasting anything.
His mind kept circling back to the same questions:
Where did the energy go? Why can't I feel it? Can I do it again.
Leon finished eating and returned to the practice circle. He tried again - different mental approaches, different techniques, different levels of desperation.
The circle remained dark.
Hours passed. The camp outside grew quiet as soldiers settled in for sleep. Guard rotations changed with quiet efficiency. The gate sat silent in the distance, ominous but momentarily peaceful.
Leon tried until his head pounded and his vision blurred with exhaustion.
Nothing.
Finally, he gave up. He was too tired to keep trying, too frustrated to think clearly. Maybe rest would help. Maybe morning would bring clarity.
Leon lay on his cot, still fully dressed, and closed his eyes.
Sleep came reluctantly, bringing with it fragmented dreams of chalk circles that wouldn't activate and magical energy that slipped through his fingers like water.
He woke sometime before dawn to the sound of voices outside. Urgent but not panicked. Leon forced himself upright, rubbing his eyes.
"-just a small group-"
"-defensive line is holding-"
"-should we wake the High Archmage?"
Leon was already moving. He pushed through the tent flap into the pre-dawn darkness.
A junior officer stood nearby, looking relieved to see him. "High Archmage! Apologies for the disturbance. A small wave of creatures came through the gate about an hour ago. Twenty, maybe thirty. The defensive line handled it easily, but we thought you should know."
Leon's exhaustion evaporated, replaced by alertness. "Casualties?"
"None on our side, sir. The formations held. The grid detected them immediately and the soldiers eliminated them before they reached the main line."
The formations. His formations. Working exactly as designed, even without him actively commanding them.
"Good," Leon said. "Thank you for informing me."
The officer saluted and left. Leon stood in the cold pre-dawn air, looking toward where the gate sat hidden by darkness and distance.
This was the new reality. Random waves. Constant vigilance. A permanent state of low-level warfare that would continue for years, maybe decades, until... what? Until the gate closed? Aldric had said gates never closed.
This was forever.
And Leon was expected to be part of it. To design formations, to command mages, to protect the kingdom with powers he didn't understand and couldn't control.
The sky was beginning to lighten in the east. Dawn approaching. Another day beginning.
Leon returned to his tent but didn't try to sleep again. Instead, he sat at his makeshift desk and started sketching new formations. Improvements to the defensive grid. Better rotation schedules for the mages. Optimizations to reduce power consumption.
Work he could do. Problems he could solve.
The other questions - what am I, what happened to me, what can I do - those would have to wait.
Outside, the camp began to stir. Soldiers rising for morning duties. Mages preparing for their shifts. Life continuing in the shadow of the gate.
And Leon, hoped that somehow, eventually, the pretending would become real.