A bit into the training Minus endured unto Serie

"You will rebuild it. Not from memory. From mana."

—Serie, The Witch of the South Sky

The days blurred beneath the Spire. Or maybe it was weeks. Time held no dominion down here—not under this much stone, this much silence. It was like living in a memory that hadn't decided to end yet.

Minus didn't ask how long she'd been training. Serie wouldn't have answered anyway.

The great witch of the South Sky spoke only when necessary. And when she did, her words were as heavy as spells—measured, merciless, impossible to ignore.

Each morning began in silence. Serie would awaken the pylons. One by one, broken fragments of Minus's former magic would appear like ghosts summoned from the deep.

Sometimes they were incomplete. Sometimes warped. Sometimes even dangerous to touch. But they were hers.

And she would fix them.

Not with scrolls. Not with theories. With instinct.

Mana.

The first spell she repaired was Scharlachbrand.

It had once been legendary—an infernal beam of crimson fire so dense it could pierce a demon's barrier like paper. She'd forged it by cannibalizing six other human spells and corrupting the stabilization matrix. No one ever figured out how she made it so hungry.

But now it sputtered like a dying candle. Every time she shaped her mana to recall the flame, the pylon shimmered with rejection.

"You're thinking too hard," Serie said, seated on a ledge nearby, eyes half-closed in meditation.

"It's my spell," Minus growled. "I made it."

"You brutalized it. There's a difference. You're trying to remember how you made it wrong. That's not creation. That's theft from your past self."

The words stung more than they should have.

So she tried again.

And again.

And again.

Until her mana trembled from overuse and her staff splintered from strain.

It took thirteen days to get it right. Thirteen long, humiliating, agonizing days.

But on the fourteenth, her hands moved without thinking. She shaped the flame, not from logic, but from feeling. From the way her body used to move before she died. Before she forgot who she was.

The air cracked.

Fire poured from her staff—not as a beam, but as a pulse, radiant and wild and alive.

It melted the pylon in midair.

Serie didn't look up. She just said, "Better."

Next came Eislanze.

She hated this one.

It was always sloppy. Always unstable. Built on something stolen—an enchantment meant to preserve a corpse, repurposed to impale and freeze instead. It was disrespectful. Efficient. Cruel.

She almost didn't want to fix it.

But when Serie activated the pylon, and the half-broken projection hovered before her like a severed memory, she knew she had to.

Because it lingered. In Milirade's mana. Her essence. It wasn't a spell that should have survived rebirth.

Which meant it did for a reason.

So she knelt. No theatrics. No arrogance. Just the quiet honesty of someone who was learning again.

She reached into the spell. Tore out the corrupted pathways. Reconstructed the rune sequence by hand. Let the chill bite at her fingertips.

And when she cast it—

The lance formed clean.

Not beautiful. Not perfect.

But true.

Serie nodded again. Minus said nothing.

As the days passed, the training changed.

The pylons began showing spells she didn't recognize.

Not hers. Not Milirade's.

But stolen ones.

Spells she had absorbed during her war. During the slaughter. Mage techniques lifted from dead hands, forced into her arsenal with brute force.

Those were the worst.

Because they weren't fragments. They were scars.

Serie called them "hauntings." Magic that clung to her soul like ash.

"These are why you failed," she said once, activating a pylon with a corrupted light-burst technique. "You knew the shape of power. Not its weight."

It was a humbling thing, to relearn stolen magic. Not to claim it. But to understand it.

To earn it.

Sometimes, they fought.

Serie didn't pull her punches.

She didn't explain the rules of her barrier techniques. Didn't slow her ancient combat spells for Minus to follow.

She attacked. Swiftly. Elegantly.

Minus lost. Often.

But she adapted.

She remembered how Serie always favored patterns with gaps—expecting her opponents to try and copy her spell structure and fail. She remembered how Serie never countered the same way twice.

And she started to keep up.

Started to hit back.

Not with old tricks, but new ones. Refined ones.

One day, she reversed one of Serie's own spells mid-cast—a mana-sealing tether—and used it to trap her arm.

Serie broke free a second later.

But she smiled.

A real smile.

"Finally," she said. "You're beginning to look like her again."

Minus breathed hard. "You mean me."

Serie said nothing. But she didn't deny it.

Then, one night—if it could be called night in the endless stone—Serie summoned a new pylon.

This one showed a spell unlike the rest.

It was intricate. Immense. Ancient.

And it wasn't broken.

"It's not one of mine," Minus said immediately.

"No," Serie replied. "It's one of mine. Never shared. Never cast in front of anyone."

Minus blinked. "Why now?"

"Because you will need something he hasn't seen."

Lowe.

His name was never said, but it hung in the air like a blade.

Serie continued. "This is the culmination of three centuries of study. A fusion of elven rootcasting and human quantum glyphwork. I didn't give it to you before. You would've ruined it."

"Thanks," Minus muttered.

Serie ignored her. "Learn it. Make it yours. But do not alter the base structure. It will destroy you."

Minus stared at the spell.

Her fingers twitched.

It was too big. Too clean. Too perfect.

Not hers.

But that was the point, wasn't it?

The next days were silent. She practiced in isolation, surrounded by dead pylons and her own thoughts. She built the spell, line by line, syllable by syllable, shaping its glyphs with reverence she'd never shown before.

She failed. Hundreds of times.

But she never broke it.

And when it finally flared to life—radiant, devastating, silent—Serie stood behind her, and said:

"You're ready."

Minus turned. "To kill him?"

Serie's eyes were distant. "No. But to survive meeting him again."

Minus sighed.

"Then what now?"

Serie stepped back. From her robes, she drew a crystal shard. Clear. Faintly glowing. "There are places you must go. Libraries that no longer open to humans. Graves where spells still linger. A few mages left who remember the world before the era of heroes."

Minus took the shard.

"What do I do when I find them?"

"Become stronger than them," Serie said. "Or convince them you already are."

A pause.

Then, quieter: "Do not waste what was given to you. Not this time."

Minus stood at the edge of the training chamber, staring into the corridor she'd descended so long ago.

Her staff, reforged.

Her mana, awakened.

Her body, once again her own.

She was not who she had been.

She was not who she would become.

But she was something dangerous again.

And that would do.

She looked back at Serie one last time.

"Thank you."

Serie did not answer.

But her silence held meaning.

And that was enough.