For a time, everything seemed to settle into something like a rhythm.
Days bled into one another, steady, productive, and strangely peaceful.
Every other morning, I met Elder Harun in his study or in the training yard, where he'd set up rows of the newly discovered measuring stones and mana-flow markers.
His enthusiasm for the "Capacity Classification Project," as he now called it, hadn't dimmed since our discovery.
He'd developed a series of tests, new glyph arrays that measured a member's core threshold by resistance and endurance.
"It's fascinating," he murmured one morning as we watched a young member tremble while infusing mana into the stone.
"The body rejects more loss of mana long before the core reaches true depletion. It's like a reflex, one meant to prevent extreme exhaustion."
I folded my arms, watching the faint shimmer of mana flicker from the members' hands into the stone.
"A built-in safeguard. But it limits growth unless trained."
