Life stirred awake from pitch-black, like a seed cracking cold soil.

Curled like a sleeping fawn, she eased her limbs open in the womb-warm liquid.

Her fingertip found glass cold as winter ice, slick against her skin.

She was born with silver-white eyes, and snow-white hair streamed in the fluid like pale algae, drifting to veil her fair skin.

Curiosity bloomed first, a small flame under her ribs, then she looked.

Before her, a horizon of unknown things glittered like distant constellations.

All around, girls who wore her face floated in the liquid like lilies held by glass.

They weren’t like her; her eyes were open, her mind tugged her limbs like strings on a puppet.

Her gaze cast a net and caught the room, while they just hung like sleeping statues, their signs of life written by instruments beside them.

They were alive in flesh yet empty in spirit, candles without flame.

Beep—

The instrument beside her screamed in a high pitch, a needle on glass.

Footsteps gathered like rain, and a heavy metal door rose with a grinding groan.

“Which subject is it?”

The elderly woman at the front hurried forward, voice tight like a bowstring.

A researcher in a white coat checked the tablet, eyes flicking like a metronome, then pointed at her tank.

“No. 10491. An early model.”

Unhidden joy warmed the old woman’s face like dawn through frost.

She checked the numbers on the wall, found the girl’s tank, and pressed a trembling hand to the glass like a prayer.

“Early work or not… maybe this time, we’ll make it.”

Hope lit her gaze like a lantern in fog.

Other researchers bent over their tablets like monks at a scripture, because before any result, she had already scrapped too many creations with her own hands, blood and time poured into each.

Confusion pricked first, then the girl moved her weak fingers, water rippling like reeds.

A researcher stepped to the console and bled the liquid away, the gauges dropping like a falling tide.

Overhead, a Mechanical Arm rose smooth as a crane and lifted the glass cover clear.

Her frail body met the air like a moth leaving its cocoon.

Another female researcher rushed in with a white coat like a cloud and draped it over her shoulders.

Cough, cough—

Her chest spasmed like a bellows kicked askew, and she had to open her mouth and gulp the sharp taste of air.

Her limbs were soft as new clay.

She tried to stand like the people before her, then tried to walk, and failed like a foal on ice, pushing herself up with hands and knees.

That was normal; a newly awoken subject was no different from a newborn, a blank page in a storm of ink.

Before, they had to teach from scratch, grain by grain.

Now, they used a Magic Tool and edited common sense into pieces that could be planted straight into a mind, like grafting a branch on a tree.

So the girl did not go to a rest room; she went to a room set with a Magic Tool that gleamed like a small altar.

Three Magic Tools lay together, quiet as sleeping knives, inside a crystal case.

They had once been three separate Wands, but a master’s craft and modern science bound them into a Magic Tool that could alter consciousness, like a loom reweaving thought.

Such alteration had limits, fences in fog.

One: the subject would not resist, a door without a bar.

Two: the altered mind must have little lived experience, a shallow well.

Three: it needed Mana to drive it, a river to turn the wheel.

Those chains meant the target must be a child with few memories, or an amnesiac, soft clay that would not push back.

The old woman, with her experiments as flint, struck a new spark from this Magic Tool.

Cloned subjects had no will, no soul, no memory—empty vessels, bodies like shells on a beach.

This was a way to command a clone without harming it, a bridle that didn’t bruise the skin.

She paid heavily to buy the Magic Tool, recording herself into one Wand like rain caught in a jar, and, by scientific means, feeding ordinary human behaviors into the third Wand like grain into a mill.

They guided the girl’s hands to the sides of the three Wands, fingers settling like feathers on water.

The middle Wand breathed a weird violet glow, a foxfire in dusk, and make-believe memories surged into her skull like a tide.

In the span of a heartbeat, she learned what other children needed long seasons to learn, a field grown overnight.

Her eyes swept the room, still dew-bright, and settled on the old woman like swallows to a beam.

Joy burst in them like a struck match, and she opened her mouth and stammered her first words:

“Are you… my mother?”

The old woman blanked for a breath, a string cut and left humming.

She had seen so many subjects, yet never heard a name that made time roll back like that.

The girl before her was her work, and half her child besides, a figure carved from her own breath.

Memory of her own child rose like mist, and she stepped forward and gathered the girl close, arms a circle against the cold.

Then she led her to a room to rest, because this body, so newly born, needed time like soil needs rain.

This girl was unlike the others; her wit and will were sharper, a blade with a keen edge.

Stage one had succeeded: her brain endured partial memory alteration and infusion, her mental strength crossed the passing line, and no cracks showed in the glaze.

Stage two would come in a week, testing the grasp of her body, hands and feet like oars in steady water.

If she passed, she would reach the most important gate, a red door in a white wall.

Under careful cultivation, she grew fast like bamboo after rain.

With altered memories and a drip of nutrient solution, she learned to walk in a week, steps settling like stones in a stream.

She learned to run, too, legs finding rhythm like drums, and her joy brightened her face like morning.

Thus she cleared stage two, a rare one-in-a-thousand reed that rose straight.

If she crossed the third gate, the experiment could move to its next season.

“Magic Stone resonance normal. Mana index normal. Magic Stone index stable.”

She stood before the apparatus like a sapling before wind, while the researcher read parameters off the screen, crisp as pebbles dropped in a bowl, and the computer took them in with a cold blink.

Every measure of her body met the experimental standard, lines neat like script on silk.

The old woman’s eyes lit up like lanterns; it had been so long since a girl came this far, a drought finally broken.

Hard to believe she was an early model, a seed from old stock.

“Begin Mana guidance.”

The Magic Stone began to resonate with the world, drawing Mana like a tide pulled by the moon.

She felt Mana surge inside her, a river breaking a dam, and pure-white lines spread from her chest like frost vines.

This trial simulated an awakening, coaxing the fragment of Magic Stone in her to sing like a struck bell.

If she succeeded, she could wield Mana freely, shaping wind with her hands.

If she failed, Mana would devour her from within, and the Magic Stone buried in her would pop with a soft, cruel pop.

Pain tore through her chest like talons, a giant hand clamping her shoulders and pulling, almost tearing her in two like wet paper.

“Hold on… please, hold on.”

The old woman pressed herself to the glass like a moth to a window, watching the girl on the other side.

A holy halo bloomed from the girl’s chest like dawn, and vast Mana gathered at her heart, sweeping the lingering Abyssal Aura from the room like wind clearing smoke.

She was more tense than in any past attempt, a bow drawn to the ear.

Maybe it was that single “mother” that hooked her heart like a fish in a net.

“Mana resonance successful. Increase Mana output. Current output level: [First Symphony].”

A smile flickered in the old woman’s eyes like sun on water.

If the girl could shape Mana, she had passed this gate; she had the right to inherit that Magic Stone’s song.

But the calm didn’t last, a surface skin broken by hidden swell.

“Value 107 is swelling… it’s at the limit!”

An alarm bit the air like a hawk, and the researcher at the station hammered the screen like a drum, trying to press 107 down by hand.

But the surge was too fast, a flood over a dike, and it wouldn’t be held.

“Shut it down, stop it, now!”

The old woman cut the air with her hand like a blade; she wouldn’t lose this rare subject on this step.

If the girl could befriend Mana, she could suit that task; she only needed time, a season to harden steel.

The number hit the instrument’s ceiling like a bird striking glass.

Inside, the apparatus failed to cage the surging Mana; sparks sprayed like fireflies, and then, as expected, it blew apart in a petaled bloom.

The girl’s body had drunk too much Mana; skin and bone cracked with fine lines like crazed porcelain.

Flames swept over her like a storm, and, with blasts rolling one after another like thunder, the fire swallowed her whole.

“Failed…”

The old woman’s legs went hollow, and she sank to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

They had never been so close to success; only one step remained, one turn of the key.

If the device had shut down in time, a miracle would have been born—a miracle hammered out of a thousand trials.

“Her life signs! She’s still got life signs!”

Someone shouted, a flare in the dark, and the old woman clawed herself up from the floor like a swimmer breaking water.

She and the others shoved through the lab door and rushed into the room scorched by the blast, blackened like a kiln.

The girl’s hair had burned away, scalp bare as ash; she was half naked, skin map-marked by burns, with sharp metal fragments stuck in her flesh like thorns.

Pure-white Mana gathered around her like snowlight, wrapping her, and because of that Mana a Magic Layer condensed, a thin shell that held in a small pocket of life.

“This is a miracle, absolute!”

The old woman slid her hands under the girl’s ruined back, and with the others lifted her onto a stretcher like lifting a bird from a snare.

She followed close, breath hooked like a kite string.

They pushed the girl into surgery, and the old woman stood outside the door like a pine in wind.

Deep into the night, they wheeled the girl out, faces wan under the lights like paper lanterns.

By luck and stubborn breath, her life was saved, but the wounds on her face were grave, skin and features shattered by metal and flame, a mask unmade.

Worse yet, her Mana conduction organs had been overstrained, a song cut into stutters, no longer fit to be a vessel.

The old woman heard it all and dropped into a chair like a stone into a well.

She could have been the miracle, a star at the lip of dawn, and yet the old woman would have to take the Magic Stone fragment from her chest with her own hands, a cruelty like salt in a wound.

“Mo…m?”

The word trembled first, then reached her like a fingertip through bandages.

The old woman’s heart gave a small shake, a bell rung softly.

She set her palm on the bandaged chest like a blessing and spoke low to the researcher beside her, voice iron under silk:

“Keep her… this time.”

“Tell the ones upstairs she’s been disposed of. And you know this—if it leaks, I won’t spare you.”