Chapter 135: Seeping Through
The ledger lay open to the page Beorn had used during the agricultural zone session. He had not bothered turning to a fresh page, as nothing from the Arcane department warranted a new one yet.
Aestrith stood at the near corner of the desk with her arms crossed. That posture usually meant she had information ready and no urgency about delivering it.
She waited until Beorn focused on her before speaking. "Mod has adapted well to the foundry. She still has to concentrate at that point, but only barely."
Her eyes unfocused slightly as she sorted through the rest. "Hild’s drainage work has improved too. I heard she compensated for soil moisture on her own instead of waiting for your instruction. And Mab has stopped over-powering the furnace every time, she has enough practice now to start slow."
"How’s Beadu?
"Complaining every single day about the seeds, but she is doing her work diligently."
"I imagine there’s no problems with Tam."
"She’s already used to the... department routine."
Beorn marked the margin with the quill.
The trend matched what he had expected. The girls assigned to practical labor were improving faster than the ones working under theoretical conditions. That made sense, real work forced adaptation in ways exercises could not.
Hild at the drainage site. Mab and Mob at the furnace. Beadu with the seeds.
Different conditions. Uneven progress, but uneven in a way that still followed reason.
"There is a problem," Aestrith said.
Beorn glanced up.
She stared at him, flatly, "The Nepe root in the agricultural zone has become an impossible color and the drainage site’s progress is too fast for just some workers crews."
Her expression did not change, though the meaning underneath the words was obvious enough.
"Anyone paying close attention will eventually connect the abnormalities to the girls."
Beorn looked back down at the ledger.
"I know. I have a plan in mind."
Aestrith waited.
He offered nothing else.
The pause between them was familiar ground by now. When Beorn chose not to share a conclusion yet, conversations often stalled there for a few breaths before moving forward again. Aestrith recognized the line and let the matter drop.
"About Leof," she continued hesitantly.
The name shifted the tone of the department report immediately. Aestrith only did that when something refused to fit beside everything else.
"She’s different from the rest."
Her voice slowed slightly, more care than hesitation now. "I’ve been watching her during exercises sessions, and I can’t sort what I’m sensing the way I can with the others."
Beorn set the quill down.
She spoke carefully now, building the thought one piece at a time. "For the others, when they use their abilities near my field, I can feel where the effect begins. Mod’s vacuum starts inside the boundary. Hild’s manipulation begins beneath where she’s standing and pushes outward. Mab’s heat originates from the object she’s reaching toward."
She paused briefly, refining the thought before continuing. "There’s something underneath all of them. I still can’t identify exactly what it is, but it’s there. I can feel it even when they aren’t actively using their abilities."
"And Leof is different?"
Aestrith nodded once.
"I can’t tell exactly where her ability is coming from."
Her gaze drifted toward the desk instead of him. She looked like she was rebuilding the sensation in memory as she spoke.
"It isn’t from her body, near her or anything else nearby."
Beorn said nothing.
"There’s nothing where the source should be."
Now she looked directly at him.
Her arms tightened slightly across her chest.
"It feels like something seeping through from somewhere I can’t follow."
Beorn’s gaze drifted past her to the far wall.
The description was precise. Aestrith had reduced the experience into the clearest report she could manage.
And the conclusion sitting underneath it was difficult to ignore.
Leof’s power might not originate from this world at all. Maybe none of them did.
Beorn had been somewhere else once.
The memory surfaced immediately.
A place without walls in any meaningful sense. Light arriving from a direction that did not correspond to up, down, left, or right. Objects, entities, shadows refusing to stay consistent from one moment to the next.
The entities there had not attacked him.
They had withdrawn from him instead.
At the time, he had concluded the reaction came from contamination between worlds.
Not his personal power. Something broader.
The simple fact that he belonged to this side.
The rules of this world had spread outward from him into that place the way heat spread into cold air. He had felt it happen while moving toward the fracture’s light. Then he had crossed back.
If Leof’s ability worked in reverse, the idea fit.
If she reached across the membrane instead of drawing power from within herself, then Aestrith’s field would sense exactly what she described. An intrusion through the boundary. A missing source because the true origin lay somewhere beyond it.
Beorn picked the quill back up without writing.
The idea was plausible. That did not make it proven.
He had never directly seen what Leof accessed. He had only experienced a place outside this world and watched it react to someone carrying this world’s rules inside them.
Still, the possibility settled heavily into his thoughts.
"The underlying source you sense beneath the others," he said. "Does Leof still have that?"
Aestrith took a moment before answering. The pause was as important, she was checking the memory carefully instead of replying on instinct.
"For the others, I can follow the source even if I don’t understand it. It’s inside them."
Another brief pause. "With Leof, I follow the power to the limit and it stops there. Whatever supports is somewhere I can’t reach with my awareness."
Beorn did not write that down.
Instead he lowered the quill again and looked at the ledger page without really seeing it. The outline of an answer was beginning to take form, but too many pieces were still missing to lock it into place.
A possibility this uncertain did not belong beside notes about foundry stability and drainage calibration. Not yet.
He would return to it once he had more evidence. And he wanted it soon.
Across from him, Aestrith had eased back into her posture. Her attention drifted toward the window.
The office went quiet again.
A comfortable, warm quiet. The kind that came after every worthwhile thing had already been said, with both people still remaining because neither had reason to leave each other.
Then someone knocked at the door.
