Irsen's chamber was marginally larger than most, not by privilege but by function. The walls were etched with reinforcement lines layered over older ones, indicating repeated structural recalibration. Someone before him had pushed the space harder than intended.
The table at the center was occupied.
Three students sat around it, uniforms loosened just enough to signal familiarity. A fourth leaned against the far wall, arms folded, attention divided between the conversation and the faint glow of a sustained construct hovering near the ceiling—an inert diagram, rotating slowly.
Irsen closed the door behind him.
"They crossed the river at dawn," one of them was saying. "without any warning"
"Knights?" another asked.
"Knights," the first confirmed. "Middle Continent standard. Full deployment."
Irsen set his notes down and took the empty seat. "They don't deploy knights without preparation. What was lost?"
"A border city," came the reply. "Minimal resistance. Local casters withdrew before engagement."
That earned a brief pause.
Smart, Irsen thought. Or afraid.
Someone snorted. "I still don't understand how they hold territory with so few mages. Even a mid-tier academy could—"
"Could what?" Irsen interrupted, in a presice manner "Outcast them? Saturate the field? Overextend?"
The speaker frowned. "Overwhelm them."
"With what assumptions?" Irsen asked.
Silence followed. They were considering what was said.
"They don't cast," the student said finally. "Not visibly."
"Correct," Irsen replied. "They don't assemble external structures."
He reached into his coat and withdrew a small object: a simple iron clasp, unremarkable. He placed it on the table.
"This," he said, "is treated."
The others leaned in slightly.
"No active emission," one noted.
"Because the grammar isn't external," Irsen said. "It's persistent"
"Lunal," someone murmured.
"Yes."
He tapped the clasp once. The metal rang softly. Clean. Resonant.
"Knights of the Middle Continent are not lesser practitioners," Irsen continued. "They are narrower ones. Their symbols are embedded, they're not assembled. Their spells don't exist in the air , They exist in the object."
One of the students frowned. "But that would limit flexibility."
"It trades it," Irsen corrected. "For certainty."
He leaned back.
"A Lunal construct doesn't ask permission each time it acts. Properties persist until overwritten. No reordering is neccesary , there isn't visualization lag. No mid-combat Ars , there's clear advantages"
The student near the wall spoke for the first time. "So they're walking libraries."
"Inaccurate," Irsen said. "Libraries can be accessed. Knights are closer to finalized implementations."
He paused, then added, "With costs."
"Such as?" someone asked.
"Permanence," Irsen replied. "You don't improvise your way out of a flawed property. You live with it. Or you dismantle the object entirely."
That shifted the tone. Subtle, but present.
"They don't escalate," another student said slowly. "They endure."
"Yes," Irsen said. "And they don't suffer Ars the way casters do. Their cognition is front-loaded. Training replaces execution."
A quiet moment followed as that settled.
"So they're outside the system," the first student said.
Irsen shook his head. "No. They are fully inside it. They've just chosen a single pathway and compressed it into matter."
He looked down at the clasp.
"That makes them predictable. And dangerous."
...i suspect that klaen is aligned with the knights of the middle continent, perhaps he is a spy , I remember back when he entered the academy, I peeked the archives room , his parents were from the middle continent but they were executed by their king .klaen arrived here as a kid looking for refuge...too suspectful...irsen though .
Someone exhaled. "Caladan would never allow that level of commitment."
"No," Irsen agreed. "We optimize breadth. They optimize reliability."
The rotating diagram above flickered once as its sustaining lines decayed. No one moved to correct it.
"What happens if they face Congeris users?" one of them asked.
Irsen considered the question.
"Then it becomes a question of duration," he said. "Not dominance."
The construct above finally collapsed, dissolving into faint motes that vanished into the stone.
Irsen gathered his notes.
"The knights are advancing," he said. "And the academy is watching."
"Will we be involved?" someone asked.
Irsen paused at the door.
"Caladan doesn't deploy students," he said. "It observes outcomes."
He opened the door.
"And it remembers which methodologies survive contact with reality."
The corridor beyond was quiet. Too quiet for the hour.
... I should carefully observe klaen, if he betray us, I will not doubt to eleminate him...
As he stepped out, Irsen wondered—not for the first time—how long it would be before observation was no longer sufficient.
And whether Caladan would permit adaptation when that moment arrived.