The knife simply refused to cooperate.
The first attempt felt almost promising while he guided the etching tool along the flat of the blade, carrying the strange merged rune in his thoughts like a carefully balanced tray. Magic flowed, the blade warmed faintly, and for a moment, he felt the pattern lock in place.
Then the warmth fluttered once and drained away completely, leaving the metal dull and ordinary, as if nothing had ever happened.
The second and third attempts went the same way, and the fourth did not even get that far because the enchantment fell apart midway through the tracing. The blade never shuddered, never cracked, never fought him the way the overcharged stone had by the chicken coop. The magic simply refused to stay put. It fizzled, slipped, and ran out into nothing like water poured onto dry dust.
After the seventh failure, his shoulders ached, and his head felt stuffed with wool, yet the knife on the table looked exactly like the cheap farm blade it had always been. No glow, no hum, no subtle weight. Just metal and wood and stubbornness.
Jacob set the etching tool down very carefully and pressed his thumbs into his temples while he thought through every step again. Whenever he worked with normal runes, the pattern lived flat in his mind and then flattened neatly onto the surface he traced. This time, the merged rune refused to flatten. It wanted to stay twisted and layered, folding through a space that did not match the knife in front of him. He kept trying to force it down onto a single side, and every time he did that, the magic slid apart.
The realization came slowly rather than all at once. The pattern was not meant to live as a drawing that pretended to be flat. It wanted the whole object, not one face. He had been trying to press a three-sided shape into a single piece of paper and expecting it to behave.
He picked up the knife again and turned it in his hands while a new idea took shape. Maybe the rune did not belong only on the spine, the flat, or the handle. Maybe it had to be anchored in stages, across different faces, with each pass of the etching tool holding one aspect until the whole strange shape finally closed and locked around the blade.
He shifted his grip so the blade lay across his fingers, point resting lightly against his thumb. If the rune refused to lie flat, then he would stop trying to force it to obey the previous pattern. Instead of forcing the entire pattern through one long pass, he would break the work into pieces and trust that the magic remembered the whole even when he drew only parts.
He touched the tip of the etching tool to the flat of the blade near the base and called up the merged rune again. Only the portion that belonged to this face answered him, the strands that dictated cutting cleanly and preventing dullness. He traced those lines with careful attention, letting the magic soak in until the blade hummed faintly under his skin.
Before the feeling could slip away, he turned the knife and set the tool against the spine. The pattern in his mind rolled with the motion, showing him the next section, the parts that braced the metal and helped it to hold shape under strain. He guided that fragment into the spine, feeling it hook into the first part like two knots tying together.
His breath came shallow now, caught in his chest as his nerves tensed.
He rolled the knife again and pressed the tool to the other flat, letting the self-mending portion of the rune flow into the metal. This part talked about tiny cracks and hidden flaws, about edges that tried to curl and then thought better of it. The magic sank in with a deeper pull, tugging on both previous layers as it settled.
On the final turn, he set the tool against the wooden handle and traced the last small segment that bound the whole pattern to his hand rather than to empty air. Everything lined up, and the impossible shape in his mind snapped shut around the knife like a finished puzzle.
His anxiety spiked, and his little heart started thrumming in his chest.
The urge to pull back fought with the need to know, and for a moment, he held the knife perfectly still, afraid that any movement might shake the pattern loose.
The magic did not flutter or drain away.
It sat there, settled around the blade and the handle and his hand, still and dense. It did not feel like the light hum of a broom charm or the gentle tug of a healing rune. It felt deeper, as if the metal had learned a new way to exist and was still deciding what to do with that knowledge.
Carefully, Jacob shifted his grip and set the point of the knife against the edge of the table. He applied the smallest amount of pressure and dragged it across the grain. The blade slipped through the wood with almost no resistance and left a clean, bright line that made the old surface look like it had been scraped by a much finer tool.
He pulled the knife back and brushed his thumb along the edge, testing with practiced care. It felt keen, but not brittle. The tiny drag that usually came after a rough cut was missing. When he pressed a little harder on the next test, using a stone this time, he felt the metal complain for a moment, then felt that complaint ease as the self-mending thread of the rune did its work.
For the first time since he had started swinging an etching tool, he felt an enchantment that did not wholly belong to anyone else. It carried pieces of Arthur's lessons and pieces of the field experiments, yet the way they fit together was his and only his.
Jacob stared at the knife, breathing hard and grinning despite the ache in his shoulders.
"This is how it works," he whispered, with the knife warm in his hand and the strange shape still clear in his mind. "This is how I do it."