Kai looked at the pieces of the Elder Tree laid out across the table and silently went over everything he had learned about wand-crafting. His master had always pushed him to make a wand, so he knew the theory well enough, but knowing the theory and actually creating a great wand were two very different things. The design alone was difficult. A wand wasn't just wood with enchantments; it needed a core, a stable internal circuit, and a constant mana supply. Kai also wanted to add enchantments that would let him store spells inside the wand—spells he could release instantly when needed.

  None of that could be given to Balen to work on. A wand had to be bound to the Mage who crafted it, and throughout history the strongest wands were always the ones made by the Mages themselves. That only increased the pressure.

  He had spent hours sketching designs. Pages filled the table, each one showing different internal circuits, different cores, different builds. For a long time he hadn’t known which one to choose until he finally accepted that a simpler design was the best option. Especially when working with Elder Tree wood.

  Before starting, he had tested all five stumps the Watchers delivered. Just as he expected, their mana conductivity was unmatched—better than any material he had ever worked with. With something like this, even a simple design could become powerful, maybe even legendary.

  Kai had decided to use an unaspected core with mana circuits running through the wand to pull power out of it. He could easily carve seals later on the wand to boost his spells and create different effects.

  Putting all of those seals inside the wand would have been more secure, but doing so would take too much time, and Kai doubted any Mage in this era would understand the seals he planned to use anyway. For safety, he even intended to hide the true purpose of the important seals by covering them with harmless, fake ones.

  All of this would give him a powerful wand that would serve him for a long while, and one he could upgrade later if needed.

  Now the only thing left was to actually make it.

  Kai looked down at the table where the Elder Tree stumps and the aethum stones lay. He pushed aside everything he didn’t need, leaving one stump in front of him. It was longer than his arm, the perfect size for a wand.

  And in any case, if he failed, he had others to try again with.

  He ran his hand over the stump, feeling the faint hum of mana in the grain, before picking up a large aethum stone. Making it into a core would be difficult, but Kai almost fully understood how to do it.

  The real challenge was ensuring he didn’t overload it with too many enchantments.

  Without wasting any time, he started working. A thin line of mana extended from his fingertip, carving through the stone as he cut away the uneven edges. He couldn’t leave the core too large, or it would never fit properly inside the wand.

  Once he shaped the aethum stone to the size he needed, he began engraving the first seals onto it, small enough to fit the others, but precise enough to function perfectly.

  Aethum stones contained mana, but once that mana was drained, they were no different from regular stones. They couldn’t absorb mana from the environment or from others like Syphon stones could. The first step in turning one into a wand core was to change that property. Thankfully, while aethum stones were limited in many ways, their ability to store any type of mana made them ideal for a core.

  Kai worked carefully, carving absorption seals along the surface—tiny, precise marks that would allow the stone to pull mana from the surrounding atmosphere. Alongside them, he added another set of seals meant for transferring his mana directly into the stone. That was how he would brand it with his mana signature. Once bound to him, the core would refuse to accept mana from anyone else. Anyone trying to force their energy into it would be rejected, and blasted back with a harsh recoil.

  At least, that was the plan.

  Unfortunately, fate didn’t seem eager to let him succeed on the first attempt. As Kai etched a seal meant to reinforce the stone—making it less brittle and less likely to fracture—the tip of his mana line slipped.

  The new seal brushed against an earlier one, and the inscriptions reacted violently. The aethum stone heated in his palm, vibrating with unstable mana. In any moment now—

  Kai snapped his hand up instantly, wrapping the stone in a tight barrier of wind. A heartbeat later, it exploded inside the wind cocoon, shards bouncing harmlessly within.

  When the air settled, he dropped the fragments to the floor and exhaled sharply. He muttered to himself, annoyed. A simple mistake, but dangerous enough to ruin all the materials he had gathered.

  He swept the shards to the corner with a gust of wind, and reached for another aethum stone. This one was slightly smaller and already shaped well enough that he wouldn’t need to cut it down too much. He took a steadying breath, placed it on the table, and began the next set of enchantments—slower this time, far more deliberate than before.

  There was no point in rushing, so this time he took it seal by seal.

  After carving each line of them, he turned the aethum stone over in his palm and tested it, making sure the seal worked exactly as intended. The previous explosion hadn’t only been because the seals overlapped—it was also because he had drawn one or two lines incorrectly, twisting their purpose. He refused to repeat the mistake.

  He began with the absorption seals, then imprinted his mana signature onto the stone, binding it to himself. Only after confirming it held steady did he continue with the strengthening seals. This stone was more rectangular, which made it easier—four clean sides, one seal per face. That alone saved him a great deal of trouble.

  Before long, the basic enchantments were complete.

  To test it, Kai drained the mana inside the stone and pushed his own mana in. It accepted everything smoothly. Then he wrapped himself in a shield and hurled the stone against the wall, following it with a light spell.

  The seals held without even a crack. Good. In any battle, the core was the most vulnerable piece of a wand—any competent Mage would target it first. With this, even if all other protections failed, the aethum stone would survive.

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  Satisfied, Kai set the finished core aside and pulled the Elder Tree stump toward him. He had made the heart of the wand; now he needed to carve the body that would house it. With a flick of mana, a [Wind Blade] formed at his fingertips, and he began cutting out the space where the core would sit.

  Kai was no craftsman, so he worked slowly, careful not to carve out more than necessary. The rest of the stump still needed enchantments, and the spell-amplification seals would wrap around the mana channels he planned to carve through the wood. But he quickly realised that shaping the Elder Tree stump required far more power than he expected.

  He should have guessed it—this was a piece of the Elder Tree. An ordinary [Wind Blade] barely shaved off paper-thin curls from its surface.

  Kai pushed more mana into the spell, then adjusted it, forcing the [Wind Blade] to operate at the peak of a third-circle spell. Only then did the blade finally bite into the wood. He carved slowly, stopping every few minutes to check his progress, unwilling to risk even the smallest mistake. Once the hollow for the core was shaped, he began working on the smaller channels—delicate pathways that would carry mana throughout the wand.

  He kept them thin; with how incredibly mana-conductive the Elder Tree wood was, he wasn’t worried about mana loss.

  Guiding thin strands of his mana into the wood, he pushed deeper with each pass, small slivers and curls spilling out as the pathways formed.

  Placing his palm gently on the stump, Kai used a first-circle spell—[Verdant Insight]—a simple spell designed for inspecting trees.

  The image of the inside of the wood formed clearly in his mind, showing him where the mana strands travelled and how the channels were shaping. It worked perfectly, letting him adjust each line with precision as the wand slowly took form beneath his hands.

  Kai followed the designs completely, doing everything he could not to stray from them, and before he realised it, the pathways inside the wand were finished.

  He pushed his mana through the channels to test the flow, and it moved exactly as he had hoped—smooth, stable, and without resistance.

  A smile crept to his lips.

  Satisfied, he picked up the aethum stone and moved to fit it into the carved space.

  It turned out he had carved out a little too much. The stone sat loose inside the opening, shifting whenever he moved the wand. Kai clicked his tongue but didn’t waste the mistake.

  He threaded small strands of mana around the stone, weaving them like bindings to hold the core in place. Once it was secured, he began connecting the stone to the pathways he had carved. That part was straightforward, taking him barely half an hour.

  After that came the hardest task—enchanting the wand’s outer surface with the effects he wanted.

  He could have chosen a single element like fire or ice and amplified it, but that wasn’t the path he planned to take. He had three aspects, and limiting the wand to one would be foolish. From the beginning, he had decided to create something that amplified all of his powers.

  So he started with durability seals, carving array after array of them to make the wand nearly indestructible against spells up to the fourth circle. It took much longer than he expected.

  By the time he was done connecting all the seals into one complete enchantment array, an entire side of the wand was covered in intricate markings. Still, the result was worth it—far sturdier and more refined than he had imagined.

  Once that was done, Kai ran his mana through the channels again, making sure they could supply enough mana to keep the enchantments active without strain.

  And they were working exactly as he had hoped. Kai let out a long breath of relief. He had already spent hours on the wand, and the last thing he wanted was for something to go wrong now.

  He spent the next hour making smaller inscriptions on the opposite side of the wood—simple spell structures that could store and fire off spells with a single tap. His master had kept the same function in his own wand, and it had saved his life more than once in a world with barely any mana. Kai was confident it would help him just as much in this era.

  With that done, only one task remained: inscribing the amplification seal. That was the seal that would boost every spell he cast through the wand by at least twenty to thirty percent. It would make his spell structures need a bit more mana, but that was a small price for that kind of gain.

  The real challenge was carving the seal itself. It was one of the most complex seals he knew—dozens of interlocking lines, shapes, and layers that had to sit perfectly together. Any mistake would ruin the function entirely.

  So Kai carved delicately, carefully, guiding his mana in thin razor-lines across the Elder wood. Every connection had to be precise. Every curve had to match the pattern in his mind.

  It was even harder because he was carving onto the hardened top of the stump, but he pushed through it bit by bit. Two full hours passed before he finally connected the last line and completed the seal.

  Kai stepped back and took in the finished wand.

  It was, without question, the best thing he had ever created.

  He stood there for a long moment, staring at it until he noticed darkness outside the window. Then he looked back at the wand, a small smile pulling at his lips, and murmured. “No better time to test it out.”

  ***

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