The waiting room smelled like old parchment, ink, and the faint tang of metal polish. Everything in it felt carefully scrubbed but exhausted from years of use. My mother sat with me in her lap; her hands loosely wrapped around my middle while her eyes stayed fixed on the door where officials occasionally came and went. The muffled sounds of quills scratching and the distant clatter of boots echoed faintly down the hall, a rhythm of bureaucracy.

  We had made it to the city earlier that afternoon, and now we waited for the registrar to confirm what my mother already knew: that I was a reincarnator. The facility handled these cases daily, simple declarations, simple proofs, a name entered into the great ledgers. Ordinary work for them. For me, it felt like waiting at the border between lives, between what I had been and what I might still become.

  I turned the mana bottle over in my hands, letting the glass catch the slanted light from the window. Thin blue lines shimmered against the wall. It was small enough to disappear in my palm and light enough that I could forget it was worth more than everything my mother owned. She had asked me once what it was for, her tone gentle but cautious.

  “I need it,” I had said, in the clumsy half-language I had managed to stitch together.

  She had studied me then, her eyes searching mine for something she could name. After a long pause, she had nodded. I think she’d already made peace with the fact that I was one of those strange children, reborn with too much purpose for the size of my body.

  Now, while we waited, I kept the bottle spinning slowly between my fingers. I thought of what it meant to hold three drops of mana potion. Three drops. That was all. Three chances to carve a future.

  I can’t do anything yet. Not without Reverend Iron.

  The mana potion alone won’t work. If I poured it on my skin, it would vanish in an instant, gone with a hiss, like water hitting a hot pan. It would never sink in, never take. Without Reverend Iron to bind it, to carry mana into flesh, it was just wasted potential.

  Still, I could plan.

  Three drops. Three marks. That was all I had to work with.

  The first two would go on my right hand, one on the thumb, one on the forefinger. Together they formed the Mana Grip. They would let me touch mana again, feel its weight, hold it in place long enough to shape it. Not as I once did, but close enough. If I had those circuits now, I could take a charged piece of Reverend Iron and mold it by hand. The metal followed mana’s flow, and when it was filled, it cut through the world as if the air itself made room for it. With the Mana Grip, I could shape that current again, make the impossible pliable.

  The final mark would rest beneath my left eye, the Merchant’s Eye. Simple. Practical. Unglamorous. It was the kind of enchantment that commoners saved for years to afford, the kind that made real traders out of hopeful fools. When marked with the Merchant’s Eye, I would see magic as wizards do once again, in octarine, not the blue light of mortals sadly. Octarine light moves through things; it doesn’t stop at the surface. It shows the inner shape of enchantments, the skeleton of the unseen. With that circuit, I could trace the living flow of mana through objects, see the circuitry beneath wood, stone, and metal alike. It was how I was going to be able to read enchantments, and how I would create new ones.

  I could have done it blind. I’d carved arrays by memory before, lines so intricate that one mistake would have destroyed a mountain. But these two circuits, the Mana Grip and the Merchant’s Eye, would give me more than instinct. They would give me fidelity. With them, I could layer mana like ink, weaving it directly onto future circuits instead of marking rough guides in charcoal. Every curve would align; every intersection hold true. It would turn guesswork into precision.

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  If I had these marks, I could build enchantments the size of a fingernail with the complexity of cities. I could write networks of power so small a god would have to kneel to find them. The modular regeneration circuit would become more than theory. With the Grip and the Eye, I could make it real. They were stepping stones, not toward glory, but survival. They would let me earn, build, and one day buy a full vial of mana potion instead of relying on the leftovers of another man’s drink.

  That was all I could do for now. Three drops. Three chances. Three circuits. The rest would have to wait.

  It’s strange, planning for a future built on a substance most people call blasphemy. Reverend Iron exists everywhere, but buried deep beneath centuries of superstition. The Blood War scattered it across the world, gray lumps mistaken for dead ore by miners who curse. They call it useless slag. They sell it for scrap. Only the trained eye knows its worth. But if someone were caught buying or selling it knowingly, the fines were steep, ruinous even for people as wealthy as I once was. In this life, I’m not even sure what the laws are now, but I doubt they’ve grown any kinder.

  Singing Glass, its opposite, is far easier to find. It gleams faintly in sunlight. Born from devils purified by angelic light, or so the stories go. People use it all the time for frivolous things as it doesn't have any harmful uses that I can think of. Reverend Iron, though, that’s the blood of angels forged in hellfire. That kind of story doesn’t sit easy in a priest’s mouth.

  Reverend Iron has always been taboo. Yet the ones who understand it least are the same who control it. They write the laws of ownership for something they fear and refuse to learn about... at least that was the case back in my day. It’s almost funny, in the bitter way old jokes are. Fear always finds a way to wear a crown.

  I’ll find it eventually. Somewhere, somehow. Someone will sell me a lump they think is junk. I’ll test it, touch it with a trace of mana potion and watch for the glow. True iron stays dull. Reverend Iron breathes light back at you, like blood remembering life.

  When I find it, I’ll forge my first blade. A tool, a carving knife to shape what comes next.

  I can already imagine the ritual: the Reverend Iron with the mana flowing inside it, the air trembling around it. The circuits drawn in charcoal across my fingers and under my eye. The cuts deep and deliberate. The mana will settle in like a second pulse, threading through veins and bone until my body becomes both instrument and conduit. The pain will be sharp and clean, the kind that proves you’re still alive.

  When the registrar finally entered the waiting room, clipboard in hand, his steps broke the silence. Four other families looked up at once. There were only a few children here, each pressed close to their parents. Reincarnators are rare but even rare things have a habit of meeting in clusters. Maybe the world likes symmetry.

  My mother rose when our name was spoken. I could feel her heartbeat steady and sure against my back. Whatever came next, she would face it with the calm of someone who had already decided that her child was extraordinary. I just hoped she was right.

  The registrar’s office smelled faintly of ink and old dust. My mother carried me inside as the door shut behind us with a careful click. The room wasn’t large, just a single desk, a wall of shelves, and the soft rustle of parchment as the registrar looked up from his work. He was middle-aged, with tired eyes that said he’d seen this process a thousand times before.

  “Name,” he said, voice calm but distant.

  My mother gave it, clear and polite. He nodded, marked something down, and then turned his attention toward me. For a moment, he only looked. They always did. People expect babies to cry or squirm. I just watched him back.

  “So, you believe he’s a reincarnator?”

  “Yes,” my mother said. Her fingers tightened slightly against my side, but her voice didn’t waver. “He shows understanding far beyond his age. He’s barely a year old.”

  The registrar leaned forward, studying me with mild curiosity rather than disbelief. “Can he speak?”

  “A little.”

  I decided to help. “Hello,” I said carefully, the syllables slow but steady.

  The man blinked, then allowed himself a small, almost hidden smile. “That’s good enough,” he said, making another mark on the parchment. “We’ll do a simple confirmation. It’s not invasive, don’t worry. We just need a bit of background for re-education purposes. You never know how much the rules and laws change between generations. But rest assured we do not judge people based on past lives; we just need to educate them on the rules of their current one. Kings, killers, farmers, it doesn’t matter who you were. New life, new chance. We start everyone the same.”