Two weeks passed before the design stopped changing every hour.
The study room in the Valon mansion no longer resembled a place meant for reading. Sheets of parchment covered the central table, layered with diagrams, mana flow calculations, spatial anchors drawn and redrawn until the ink nearly tore through the page. Runes overlapped one another in successive drafts, some crossed out violently, others circled and refined.
Noel stood at the edge of the main table, sleeves rolled back, staring at the newest configuration of the inner ring. Faint traces of mana still lingered from the last theoretical simulation he had run through it.
It had failed.
Again.
This was not an impulsive creation. Not something born from arrogance or sudden inspiration. Every line on those pages was the result of iteration. Adjustment. Correction. He had dismantled the design and rebuilt it more times than he cared to count.
