Through observation, pattern recognition, and the systematic gathering of data, James learned about tension the way other children learned about arithmetic.
The market in Blüthaven was his laboratory.
At seven years old, he was finally allowed to accompany his mother on shopping trips, provided he stayed close and didn't wander. Eliza had no idea that her son treated these excursions like field research, his sharp eyes noted every interaction, every subtle shift in body language, every unspoken rule that governed how people navigated the careful dance of coexistence in the Neutral Territories.
The market sprawled across three blocks in the heart of Blüthaven, a controlled chaos of stalls and shops where vendors hawked everything from fresh produce to enchanted trinkets to mechanically-precise timepieces. It should have been a place of unity, where the products of both disciplines mingled freely.
Instead, it was a battlefield disguised as commerce.
"Stay close, James." Eliza's hand tightened on his as they entered the main thoroughfare. She didn't need to explain why. He'd already noticed the way the crowd moved in invisible currents, mages clustering on the eastern side of the street, technomancers dominating the west, with only the truly neutral, or truly desperate, willing to cross that unmarked border.
James watched a woman approach a stall selling vegetables. She was a mage; he could tell from the silver threading in her clothing, the traditional pattern that marked Dominion citizens even in neutral territory. The vendor was a technomancer, his stall equipped with a refrigeration unit that hummed like the machine it was.
The transaction was quick, professional, and devoid of emotion. Money changed hands. Vegetables were bagged and not a single unnecessary word was spoken. The woman left, and the vendor's posture relaxed the moment she was out of sight.
"Why doesn't she like him?" James asked innocently.
Eliza glanced down, then followed his gaze. "Oh, sweetheart, it's not about liking or not liking. It's just... complicated."
"Complicated how?"
His mother sighed. "The Great Schism happened a long time ago, but people remember. On both sides. Mages think technomancers are soulless, that they've abandoned the natural order for machines. Technomancers think mages are primitive, clinging to superstition instead of embracing progress."
"But they're both wrong," James said, keeping his voice carefully childish. "Right? They're just different ways of doing things."
"Yes, they are. But try telling that to people whose greatgrandparents died in the Schism Wars." Eliza guided him toward a fabric merchant. "Fear has a long memory, James. Longer than reason."
James noted that in what he referred to as his memory palace. Fear. It was wlways fear. It had killed his first mother, and now it was dividing an entire world.
They continued shopping as James kept observing.
A technomancer child ran past, chasing a mechanical toy that skittered on six legs. The toy's path intersected with a mage woman, who jerked back as if it were venomous. Her hand went to a pendant at her throat that James recognized as a protective charm and she muttered something under her breath that made the air shift briefly.
The technomancer child's father appeared, apologizing profusely while scooping up both toy and son. The mage woman didn't acknowledge the apology. Just turned and walked away, her back rigid with offense.
"Mama, look!" A small mage girl tugged on her mother's sleeve, pointing at a shop window. The display showed a beautiful music box, clearly technomancer-made, with visible gears and precise mechanical movements. "Can we—"
"No." The mother's voice was sharp. "We don't buy from them."
"But it's so pretty—"
"I said no. Come along."
The little girl's face crumpled, but she followed obediently. James watched them go, something cold settling in his chest. That girl would grow up with her mother's prejudices and would pass them to her own children. The cycle perpetuating itself.
Eliza led him to a bookshop, a neutral territory within neutral territory, since knowledge was the one thing both sides grudgingly acknowledged as valuable. The proprietor was an old man whose affiliation was impossible to determine, which probably meant he'd deliberately obscured it to maintain his customer base.
"Mrs. Aldric! And young James!" The old man's face creased into a genuine smile. "Come for more books, I hope? The boy's reading at what level now? Surely past the primers?"
"Far past," Eliza said with a mixture of pride and exasperation. "Do you have anything on... oh, James, what was it you wanted to read about?"
"Fundamentals of magic," James said immediately. Then, seeing his mother's surprised expression, added, "And engineering principles. I want to understand how things work."
The old man's eyebrows rose. "Both? That's... unusual. Most children pick a side by now."
"James is unusual," Eliza said, and there was pride mixed with worry in her tone, the same combination James had learned to recognize whenever his intelligence was discussed.
The bookshop was cramped and dusty, shelves groaning under the weight of texts from both disciplines. James wandered the aisles while his mother and the proprietor discussed appropriate reading materials, his eyes scanning titles with systematic precision.
Fundamentals of Mana Channeling.
Introduction to Elemental Matrices.
Basic Technomancy: A Primer.
The Schism: Multiple Perspectives.
And there, on a shelf marked "Advanced Theory," something that made his heart rate spike: On the Nature of Convergence - A Forbidden Hypothesis.
James glanced toward the front of the shop. His mother was distracted, examining a book of poetry. The proprietor had his back turned, searching for something on a high shelf.
Quick as thought, James pulled the forbidden text down and tucked it inside his coat. He'd stolen food to survive in his previous life. Stealing knowledge was easier and infinitely more valuable.
He rejoined his mother with an armful of acceptable texts like children's books on basic magical theory and simple machines. She paid for them without checking his coat, and they left the shop with James's prize hidden against his ribs.
That night, after his parents were asleep, James pulled out the stolen book and began to read by candlelight.
The text was dense, written by someone named "Aldous from Tibet" who'd been executed fifty years ago for heresy. But the content was revolutionary:
Magic and technomancy are not opposites but complementary expressions of the same underlying principles. Magic manipulates reality through directed will and energy. Mana being the medium through which consciousness affects the physical world. Technomancy achieves similar effects through understanding and exploiting the fundamental laws that govern that reality. However it's impossible to hold an aptitude for technomancy and be filled with Mana. I wish to understand why the world was designed like this.
James read until his candle burned low, absorbing every word, every diagram, every forbidden concept that validated what he'd suspected since arriving in this world.
Anyone who started developing the ability to use mana suddenly had the part of their intelligence responsible for scientific reasoning downgraded if they had any to begin with.
The next day was market day again, but this time James paid attention to different details.
He noticed the technomancer who sold preservation boxes, mechanically cooled containers that kept food fresh. But the cooling mechanism used a principle similar to how ice mages extracted heat from their surroundings. Same effect, different methodology.
He noticed a street performer who was clearly mage-born, creating illusions of birds that flew around delighted children. The illusions were made of solidified light. Photons given coherent structure through mana manipulation. A technomancer could theoretically achieve the same effect with holograms and projectors, given sufficient advancement.
Two sides of the same coin, refusing to acknowledge each other.
James spent the week conducting experiments in his room when he should have been sleeping.
He could feel mana now. He had been able to for months, though he'd told no one. It was like a sixth sense, a tingling awareness of energy flowing through living things. His Affinity was manifesting early, years ahead of normal development.
But he also understood mechanical principles, understood force and leverage and energy transfer. Understood that magic might manipulate energy directly, but it still had to follow rules. Had to obey conservation principles, even if those principles operated on levels most mages didn't bother to understand.
His first experiment was simple: trying to move a marble using only his will.
He focused on the marble, feeling the mana in his own body, trying to extend it outward the way the books described. Nothing happened for hours and his head began to ache.
Then, finally—
The marble rolled just an inch. It was barely perceptible, but it moved.
James stared at it, heart pounding. He'd just performed magic. Actual, genuine magic. At age seven, five years before Affinity was supposed to manifest strongly enough to be useful.
He tried again and the marble rolled more easily this time, responding to his will like it was the most natural thing in the world.
But James wasn't satisfied. He wanted to understand how. Not just that he could do it, but the mechanism behind it.
He spent the next three days observing the marble's movement with scientific precision. Noting how much mana it cost him (measured by the exhaustion he felt afterward). Calculating the force required to move an object of that mass. Trying to determine the efficiency of mana-to-kinetic-energy conversion.
The books on magical theory said will shaped mana, that intent was everything. The stronger your focus, the better your control, the more powerful your magic.
But they never explained the underlying mechanism. Never questioned why will could affect energy. They just accepted it as a fundamental truth.
James couldn't accept that. If only he knew that he was being naive.
He believed that there had to be a reason. Something that made sense if you looked deep enough.
He pulled out his journal and began writing hypotheses, crossing them out, refining them. His hand moved rapidly, covering pages with notes and diagrams and questions that no seven-year-old should be asking.
Hypothesis 1: Mana is a previously undiscovered form of energy that responds to electromagnetic patterns generated by conscious thought.
Hypothesis 2: "Will" is consciousness itself acting as a force, mind affecting matter through quantum-level interactions.
Hypothesis 3: Mana is not separate from physical reality but woven into it at the most fundamental level. Magic users are unconsciously accessing quantum fields that technomancers haven't discovered yet.
A knock at his door made James slam the journal shut and shove it under his mattress in one smooth motion.
"James? You awake?" Grayson's voice.
"Yes, Father."
The door opened and Grayson stood there in his nightclothes, looking tired but concerned. "It's past midnight. I saw light under your door. Are you having trouble sleeping?"
"Just thinking," James said, which was true enough.
Grayson entered the room, settling on the edge of the bed with the awkward care of someone not entirely comfortable with physical affection but trying anyway. "About what?"
"Magic and technomancy. How they work. Why people say they're incompatible when they're both just ways of understanding the world."
His father was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. "That's a dangerous line of thinking, son. In the Neutral Territories, we can afford to be philosophical about it. But the Dominion and Imperium take the division very seriously."
"Because of the Schism."
"Yes. Because of the Schism." Grayson pulled out a small device from his pocket, a projection device that was standard technomancy. He activated it with a touch, and a three-dimensional map of Velatria appeared in the air between them.
James had seen it before, but he leaned forward with apparent childish interest.
The world was split by a massive chasm that ran north to south like a wound. On the eastern side: the Magic Dominion. On the western side: the Science Imperium. And between them, along the Schism Scar: the narrow strip of Neutral Territories, barely more than a border region.
"This is our world," Grayson said softly. "Three thousand years ago, it was unified. Magic and science coexisted. Then came the Great Schism."
"What started it?"
"I've never told you the story of the Great Schism have I?"
"No, not really."
Grayson adjusted himself beside James and got comfortable. "Well buckle up and brace yourself for an epic tale, for this is the story of the Great Schism..."