By spring, Professor Elowen stopped giving first-years one magical task at a time.

"Real situations do not wait politely while you finish one thing," she said.

She placed three objects on each table.

A candle.

A wooden disk.

A strip of cloth.

"Keep the light burning. Hold the disk in the air. Move the cloth ten centimetres."

Harper stared.

"At the same time?"

"Yes."

"That is rude."

"Life often is."

The exercise was difficult for a reason Jasper had not expected.

Doing three effects did not mean using three times as much Essence.

It meant dividing attention without pouring too much into any one task.

Jasper lit the candle and raised the disk.

The moment he focused on the cloth, the tiny thread of Essence feeding the flame disappeared.

Darkness.

Ava kept the candle and disk perfect but moved the cloth nine centimetres.

She looked personally offended.

Harper sent too much Essence into the candle.

It flared bright enough to light half the room while the disk shot sideways.

Elowen caught it.

"Less."

Harper groaned.

They practised for weeks.

Jasper eventually discovered that he did better if he thought about where each effect needed to remain rather than constantly pushing it.

Light stays.

Disk stays.

Cloth ends there.

He corrected only when something drifted.

Elowen noticed.

"Good. Maintain without gripping."

The sentence caught Jasper's attention.

Without gripping.

Deepwater had been about somebody mistaking response for control.

Different lesson.

Same shape.

Elowen followed his glance toward the window.

"Sometimes," she said.

Harper solved the exercise differently.

She built a rhythm.

Light.

Disk.

Cloth.

Check.

Ava's breakthrough came when she stopped restarting after tiny errors.

"Eight point eight centimetres," she muttered after one attempt.

Harper looked over. "Nobody cares."

"I care."

"Care less."

"That is not how care works."

"Try."

By the end of the month, all three could complete the exercise more often than they failed.

The rest of spring grew warmer around them.

Courtyards reopened fully.

Handball continued until dinner bells.

Harper beat Mia three games in a row and became unbearable for twenty-four hours.

Mia beat her five times the next day.

Balance returned.

Bag Bed also became impossible.

It held a broken handball, two Order pamphlets, letters from home, library books, a dried Calyx leaf, an old brass washer, a paper boat and one sock that nobody had claimed for months.

Ava tried to create categories.

Harper rejected government interference.

Mae stood in the doorway.

"Within reason ended several months ago."

They were ordered to clean it.

They removed exactly three objects.

"Progress," Ava said.

Jasper received a spring parcel from home with clothes, sunscreen and a newspaper clipping about a whale seen north of Perth.

He studied the photograph longer than necessary.

The whale looked nothing like the shape from his dream.

That should not have needed checking.

He checked anyway.

The Water Titan remained quiet for most of spring.

Sometimes Jasper felt a brief brush of awareness.

He reported it.

Nothing followed.

He began learning that presence did not mean danger.

That lesson was harder than splitting Essence three ways.

One afternoon, Jasper completed the candle, disk and cloth exercise perfectly.

Harper looked at the three objects.

"We are basically professionals."

Ava said, "We can move a cloth while holding a disk."

"Professional cloth movers."

Jasper leaned back against the warm stone outside the classroom.

Across the courtyard, an older student flicked one hand. Six books rose from a bench, stacked themselves and followed at shoulder height.

Harper stared.

"I want that."

"Several years of practice," Ava said.

"I want several years now."

Jasper laughed.

For once, he wanted ordinary magic more than ancient answers.

That felt healthy.