She slipped through the side door, the one that stuck in the cold but always gave way with a gentle pull if you knew how to coax it. The night air greeted her with a soft bite not harsh, but enough to make her pull her thin sleeves closer around her arms.

  Outside, the orphanage stood behind her like a shadow with windows tall, old, and still, its chimneys quiet, its stones silvered under moonlight.

  The courtyard stretched ahead, small and overgrown, edged by a low stone wall half-covered in moss. Weeds swayed gently in the wind, brushing against the hem of her skirt as she walked. Beyond the wall, the land sloped gently into open field patches of dry grass and distant trees, outlined in pale blue beneath the sky.

  The stars were out.

  The moon, round and high, followed her like it always did.

  She stood still for a moment, breathing in the air then she continued.

  She followed the narrow path with careful steps, keeping close to the outer wall, where the moonlight couldn’t quite find her. The air grew colder here not from wind, but from the way the buildings leaned, blocking warmth and sound alike.

  Then she reached it. The hiding place wasn’t much.

  Just a half-collapsed shed behind the storehouse wall roof slanted, floor uneven, the smell of old rope and damp stone clinging to everything. A forgotten corner no one used, where the wind didn’t quite reach and no footsteps ever passed.

  The shed was little more than a crooked skeleton of beams and sagging wood, its roof patched with old tarp and rusted nails. One wall leaned too far inward, supported only by a stack of stones she’d placed there herself. Gaps in the planks let in slivers of moonlight, tracing pale lines across the dirt floor like silent warnings.

  But it was clean.

  The dust had been swept to the corners. Broken tools stacked neatly against the back wall. A threadbare blanket folded beside a crate that served as a stool. Even the cracked window too high to see through, too small to matter had been wiped free of grime.

  At the center of the space, six objects lay in a neat line three river stones and three patched buckets, each carefully marked in uneven strokes:

  2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12

  Their weights weren’t perfect. But they were close.

  She had found the scale tucked in the back of the old supply closet, half-buried beneath broken tools and a cracked broomstick. It wasn’t mechanical but magical. A square of faded brass, etched with old sigils, and a faintly glowing rune on its base. When touched, it pulsed once, then displayed the weight in shifting green numbers across its surface.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  The first three were stones. Smooth, sun-dried river rocks, chosen for texture and shape. She weighed them again, just to be sure: 2, 4, and 6 kyns.

  The last three weren’t stones.

  They were metal buckets, dented and mismatched, their handles wrapped in cloth to silence the creak. Inside was cement, long since hardened, poured and shaped by her own hands. She weighed those too.

  8 kyns. 10 kyns. 12 kyns.

  After she weigh them again, she looked above her scraped into the cleaned stone wall, five short white lines stretched horizontally. Beside the top one higher than the rest was a crooked upward arrow and, beneath it, in misshapen, cramped letters:

  “Up to here.”

  She knelt before the line of weights.

  The air was still, thick with the scent of old rope and damp stone. Her breath came light and shallow. She was sore always sore from the day's activity. Her body ached from trying to keep pace. But here, there was no one to see her stumble.

  Just her, and the marks she’d carved into the stone wall behind the buckets: five white lines, each spaced five lems apart. A crooked upward arrow next to the topmost one

  At first she was doing what she already could do—two, four, and six kyns—lifting them slowly to the mark, then dropping them down calmly.

  She could already manage this, she knew it, but still a certain hurdle in her mind prevented her from continuing. Whether it was insecurity or her belief that complete mastery of the basics was more necessary, it made her repeat the routine again and again.

  For her, to continue to the weight which she wasn’t able to do must come later on. Focus on the task you can do only then you should start learning anything else.

  It continued for a while, lifting and dropping, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was getting it wrong. Every small wobble in the weight as she lifted it with magic felt like an insult, a result that betrayed her effort.

  When she finally forced herself to overlook such flaws, she turned to the eight kyns weight. It sat there like a judge waiting to pass verdict on whether she was worthy or not.

  She gathered what little confidence she had. She had lifted the six kyns repeatedly, and despite the wobbles, she had managed it. So she tried to push aside her insecurities and face the unknown. This weight, she told herself, she should have been able to lift a year ago—at least, that was how it had been for her peers. By now, they could lift the heaviest weight in her shed, the twelve kyns, with ease.

  She closed her eyes. The book told her to imagine a hand strong enough to lift the weight. Place the image beneath the weight and carefully raise it up.

  So she did just that. Yet for some reason, nothing appeared. Not even a twitch.

  She tried again, this time furrowing her brow as she squeezed her eyes shut.

  It was like the tale of someone trying to lift a boulder that kept slipping back down—but this time, the boulder had never even left the ground.

  She bit her lip. It had to work. I was already a year behind, and if nothing happened this time too, then probably it was ho—

  She slammed her thoughts shut, like a girl slamming her dresser after glimpsing a monster inside, hoping that by doing so the thing she feared inevitable would not come to pass.

  And so, with her teeth biting into her own lip, she tried again—desperately this time—pulling every thread of mana she could muster to lift the damn weight.

  Her muscles tensed, as if she were stretching her arms too far. Sweat dripped from her brow, as though straining her body could make up for her lack of magic. It could not.

  Yet she saw it—a twitch, the faintest movement in the weight. She should have been glad; despite everything, she had managed what she could not before. But no. This was not satisfactory to her at all.

  Still, frustration without action was pointless. So she made a quiet vow:

  I’ll come back.

  Again. And again.

  Until I am finally able to lift that weight.

  So a quick footnotes to give you a better picture about the world

  Faintborn's Blessing : Is the name of our protagonist's condition, like a birth defect, i choose to called it Blessing to give it a sense of irony

  Kyns and Lems are weight and length measurement :

  1 Lem are around 5 Cm

  Normally children around our protagonist age should be able to lift 12 kyns stone to around 5 lems