The next few weeks of the Trial Year were spent in much the same way as the first couple. He continued doing enchantments, experimenting, and trying to figure out what worked and what did not.
So far, he had managed to create five proper enchantments since beginning the trial year. He had his sword enchantment, the healing enchantment, but then three more that he had created specifically for farming, which pushed the limits of what the actual runes were supposed to be about.
He did not work alone every day. Some afternoons, Sera came by the field after checking on her grandmother, carrying a basket or a bundle of cloth, pretending she just happened to be walking that way. She would sit on a fence post or a rock and watch while he worked, her feet swinging and her voice humming little scraps of melody that made the air feel less dry.
Sometimes she helped measure rows or hold stakes steady while he etched, asking little questions about why this bed needed one pattern and that bed needed another. Other times, she simply watched and listened, as if she could hear the difference between the enchantments the same way she heard the difference between notes in a song.
It was this day, as he sat in his room after a hard session of staking and enchanting to help coax the seeds to grow in his field, that he thought about what he was actually doing with the enchantments.
'Just how far can I bend the original use of these runes?'
He reached under the bed and pulled out the small wrapped bundle he had hidden there earlier. Inside the cloth lay the knife he had prepared for this exact session, its simple iron blade polished until it caught the lamplight and its wooden handle sanded smooth. It was not a fine weapon by any noble standard, just a sturdy farm knife sized for cutting twine, cleaning game, or trimming branches.
Jacob set it on the table and rested his fingertips along the flat of the blade while he breathed slowly.
The stakes in the field showed him that bending runes could change how magic behaved over time. Out there, he had space and patience and the luxury of failure. Here, he wanted to see how far he could refine a single proper enchantment on something he might carry every day, using only what he truly understood rather than what he hoped might work.
He pictured the standard cutting enchantment Arthur had shown him on tools and blades, the one that seemed to adjust the edge to stay keen and bite cleanly. That pattern lived in his memory as clearly as the healing rune now. Sharpness lined up along the length, like soldiers in a phalanx, reinforcing the line of the edge and refusing dullness whenever it tried to creep in.
Then he thought about what he had done to the healing rune in the field. There, he had stripped out pieces, turned others sideways, and nudged the whole thing toward growth and endurance. With the knife, he wanted something similar, but focused on control and reliability rather than raw power.
A blade that would cut when he asked, that would endure strain without chipping, and that would not turn wild in his hand if his magic slipped.
He picked up the etching tool, let the metal tip hover just above the flat of the blade, and began shaping the idea of a new pattern in his mind that combined sharpness, steadiness, and self-mending into one clean design.
He rested the knife across his lap and let the familiar runes line up in his thoughts. The first was the basic sharpness pattern, a clear progression that tracked the edge from heel to tip and made metal remember what a perfect cut felt like.
The second was the reinforcement rune Arthur used on shovel blades and axe heads, a lattice that braced the metal so it would not bend or chip when abused. The third came from his recent experiments, a softened healing rune nudged toward self-mending metal, which helped small flaws close together instead of growing.
He laid them out side by side in his mind like three diagrams on a desk. Each made sense on its own, each had a clear purpose, and each had already proven itself in smaller work. The problem came when he imagined stacking them directly, because the lines crowded and tangled until the whole mess felt like a garbled mess.
Jacob set the knife on the table again and pressed the flat of his hand against the wood until his breathing slowed. Instead of stacking them, he tried something different. He traced the sharpness pattern first and let it stand for cutting. Then he walked around it in his thoughts and looked for places where the reinforcement rune already did the same job, supporting the exact segments that carried force.
Whenever he found overlap, he pulled the extra lines away and smoothed them together, turning two instructions into one stronger instruction. He did the same with the healing element, weaving self-mending into places where both other runes already talked about strain and failure. Gradually, three patterns became one network, with fewer lines that did more work.
When he finally saw it as a single design, he frowned. The thing in his head no longer fit neatly on the flat of a blade. Some lines seemed to fold behind others without crossing them. Angles refused to behave like normal corners, bending inward and outward at the same time in a way that made no sense for ink on a page.
It should have been impossible to follow, yet he could trace every part of it without getting lost. His eyes wanted to reject it, but his magic did not care about Euclid or flat parchment. His magic understood layers and depth and shapes that turned through directions his fingers could not point toward.
His pulse kicked a little faster as he realised what that meant.
'This 2d pattern system I have been using is not the only way! Euclid lived in a piece of paper, but this is the real world! Straight lines are subjective! Angles can bend around a curve!'
He picked up the etching tool, brought the metal tip to hover above the flat of the knife, and let that strange merged rune settle into place behind his eyes. Slowly, he guided the tool along the surface, not cutting metal, but pressing the entire impossible pattern into the blade one invisible strand at a time.