Chapter 7: The Eye of the Needle
The countdown to the Storm Cliffs exam felt less like an academic deadline and more like a funeral procession.
At Table 9, the mood was apocalyptic.
Silas was drawing a detailed sketch of a tombstone on his slate. He turned it around. It read: [R.I.P. ELIAN. DIED OF EMBARRASSMENT.]
"It's not funny, Silas," Elian groaned, burying his face in his hands. "A Tier-3 Storm? Solo? The chant for the Tempest of the Northern Winds is twenty-two pages long. It has seventeen declensions of the word 'Whoosh'."
"You have three days," Kael said, looking uncharacteristically serious. He wasn't eating his lunch. "Elian, maybe you should fake an illness. Magical Pox? Mana Gout? I can cast a minor illusion to make your skin turn purple."
"Hyst would know," Elian said, his voice muffled by his palms. "He'd drag my purple corpse to the cliffs and tell me to cast anyway."
Elian looked up, his eyes tired. "I did the math. To memorize the chant in 72 hours, I would need to retain 0.3 pages per hour without sleep. My retention rate for 'useless poetry' is approximately 0.05."
"So you're going to fail," Kael stated.
"I'm going to crash," Elian corrected. "If I mess up the chant halfway through, the mana feedback will probably turn me into a lightning rod."
Silas erased the tombstone and wrote: [CAN YOU WEAVE IT?]
Elian froze. He looked around to make sure no Gold Cloaks were listening.
"Source Weaving a storm isn't like the water trick," Elian whispered. "Water is stable. It flows downhill. Wind is chaotic. It's a non-linear fluid dynamic system. If I miscalculate the pressure gradient by one millibar, I don't just fail the exam—I accidentally create a tornado that wipes out the observation deck."
"High risk, high reward," Kael shrugged. "Die a legend or live as a failure."
"I'd prefer to live as a failure, thanks."
***
That night, Elian didn't go to the Clocktower. He went to the Library's "Meteorology Section"—a dusty corner that hadn't been touched in decades because mages controlled the weather, they didn't study it.
He unrolled a massive map of the Storm Cliffs.
Variables, Elian thought, staring at the topography. I need variables.
He couldn't create a storm from raw mana. His mana pool was average (Rank C). He didn't have the brute force of a Royal.
But he had physics.
The Cliffs face the ocean, Elian noted, tracing the coastline. Thermal updrafts occur at 2:00 PM due to solar heating of the rock face. The humidity will be approximately 85%.
He pulled out his quill. He didn't write chants. He drew a diagram.
The Butterfly Effect.
I don't need to push the wind, he realized. I just need to trip it.
If he could find the exact pressure point—the "fulcrum" of the atmosphere—and hit it with a precise pulse of mana, the natural thermodynamics would do the rest. He wouldn't be summoning a storm; he would be convincing the sky that it wanted to storm.
It was a crazy theory. It required calculation speeds that no human brain should be capable of.
"You're studying the map?"
Elian jumped, knocking his inkwell over. He caught it with a reflex save before it stained the map.
Standing at the end of the aisle was Lara.
She looked hesitant, clutching her books to her chest. She wasn't surrounded by her Gold Cloak friends tonight. She looked... smaller.
"Elian," she said softly. "I saw the list. You're in the first group?"
Elian stood up, his face resetting to the "Silent Severance" blank mask.
"Yes," he said. One word. Efficient.
"That's... really unfair of Hyst," Lara said, taking a step closer. "Everyone knows you struggle with long chants. It's like he wants you to fail."
"Professor Hyst is testing resilience," Elian recited robotically. "It is part of the curriculum."
Lara bit her lip. "Elian, stop doing that. Stop talking like a golem."
"I am studying," Elian said, turning back to his map. "Did you need help with an assignment? I charge a tutoring fee now."
The words hung in the air, cold and sharp.
Lara flinched. "No. I... I wanted to give you this."
She pulled a small scroll from her bag.
"It's a mnemonic device," she said, placing it on the table. "For the Tempest chant. My study group made it. It rhymes, so it's easier to remember. I thought... maybe it would help."
Elian looked at the scroll. It was a gesture of kindness. A peace offering.
A year ago, he would have been overjoyed.
But Elian looked at the data.
Fact: She ignored him for months.
Fact: She was embarrassed to be seen with him in public.
Fact: She was giving him this now, in the dead of night, where no one could see her helping the Grey Cloak.
"I don't need rhymes," Elian said, not touching the scroll. "I need understanding."
"Why do you have to be so difficult?" Lara snapped, her guilt turning into frustration. "I'm trying to be nice! You're going to fail out there, Elian! You're going to humiliate yourself in front of the whole school, and I'm just trying to help you not look like an idiot!"
Elian looked up, his eyes dark.
"I would rather look like an idiot on my own terms," he said quietly, "than succeed on yours."
Lara stared at him, her mouth slightly open. She snatched the scroll back.
"Fine," she spat. "Good luck, Elian. Don't blow yourself up."
She stormed off.
Elian watched her go. He felt a phantom ache in his chest, but he suppressed it.
Focus, he ordered himself. The pressure gradient. Calculate the Coriolis force.
He looked back at the map. The math was safer than people.
***
The Day of the Exam.
The transport airships were massive, lumbering beasts of wood and canvas, levitated by Anti-Gravity crystals.
The entire Third Year class—two hundred students—stood on the decks as they flew toward the coast. The wind whipped at their cloaks.
Below them, the ocean crashed against jagged black rocks. The Storm Cliffs.
Elian stood at the railing, gripping it so hard his knuckles were white. He felt nauseous. The drop was three thousand feet.
"Nervous?"
Elian looked to his left. Seraphina was standing there.
She wasn't looking at him. She was looking at the horizon, her silver hair blowing wildly in the wind. She looked completely at peace, as if standing on a flying ship was as mundane as waiting for a bus.
"I prefer solid ground," Elian muttered.
"The air is cleaner up here," Seraphina noted. She turned her icy gaze toward him. "Did you memorize the chant?"
Elian hesitated. "No."
Seraphina didn't scold him. She didn't look pitying. A tiny, almost imperceptible spark of interest lit up her eyes.
"Good," she said.
Elian blinked. "Good? I'm about to fail."
"If you memorized it, you would just be another Reciter," she said, her voice barely audible over the roar of the engines. "I want to see what you do."
"You might see me get struck by lightning."
"Then I will calculate the voltage," she replied deadpan.
Elian stared at her. Was that... a joke? Did the Ice Queen just make a joke?
Before he could process it, the airship lurched.
"ARRIVAL AT STORM CLIFFS!" the captain bellowed. "DEPLOYMENT IN T-MINUS FIVE MINUTES!"
The ship descended onto a massive stone platform carved into the side of the cliff. The observation deck was already set up with protective barriers.
Professor Hyst stood in the center of the platform, his cape billowing dramatically.
"Group One!" Hyst shouted, reading from a scroll. "Seraphina von Aethelgard. Marcus the Pyromancer. And... Elian the Grey."
A ripple of laughter went through the crowd. Putting the top-ranked student and the bottom-ranked student in the same group? It was a massacre.
"Step forward to the Casting Edge!"
Seraphina walked forward with regal grace. Marcus, a burly boy with a wand the size of a club, strode out confidently.
Elian walked forward like a man marching to the gallows.
They stood at the edge of the precipice. The ocean roared below. The sky was blue and clear.
"Your goal is to summon a storm," Hyst yelled over the wind. "You have five minutes. Begin!"
Marcus immediately began shouting. "OH THUNDER OF THE ANCIENT SKIES! HEAR MY CRY!"
Seraphina closed her eyes, raising her ornate crystal staff. She began to chant in a whisper, her mana flaring up like a white aura, pure and terrifyingly strong. Clouds instantly began to gather above her head.
Elian stood there. He didn't have a staff. He didn't have a wand.
He looked at the sky. He looked at the ocean.
Temperature: 22 degrees. Wind speed: 15 knots North-North-West.
He closed his eyes.
He didn't need a chant.
He needed a conductor's baton.
Elian raised his empty hands.
The crowd went silent.
"What is he doing?" Kael whispered from the observation deck. "He forgot his wand!"
"He's surrendering," someone laughed.
Elian took a deep breath. He ignored Hyst. He ignored Seraphina. He ignored the laughter.
He reached out with his mind and found the Valve.
It wasn't inside him this time. It was in the sky. A massive, invisible pressure system waiting to break.
Measure one, Elian thought. Allegro con brio.
He snapped his fingers.
End of Chapter 7