The trip home was mercifully quieter.
Mostly because Aria had been banned from using magic for the remainder of the day.
"It wasn't even unstable," she muttered while sitting across from my parents inside the carriage.
"The mana flow just accelerated more than I expected."
"That's called instability," my father replied immediately.
Aria slumped further into her seat with an exaggerated sigh before returning to scribbling inside her notebook again.
Even after nearly losing half the pages to her own spell, she was still writing.
Actually… she was rewriting.
Every few moments, she'd glance toward the window thoughtfully before furiously jotting something down again.
Mana pathway adjustments. Flow compression ratios.
I couldn't understand most of the words yet, but one thing was obvious.
Aria was obsessed.
The carriage eventually slowed as enormous iron gates appeared ahead of us.
Beyond them stood our home. The Veylor estate.
Even from a distance, it looked less like a noble residence and more like a fortress.
Towering stone walls surrounded the property while silver-veined mana lamps illuminated the pathways leading inward.
Several guards stood near the entrance dressed in dark armor engraved with faintly glowing runes.
The moment our carriage approached, the gates slowly opened.
A pulse of mana brushed against the carriage as we crossed the threshold.
A barrier.
Defensive formations were carved directly into the walls themselves.
I could faintly feel the mana circulating through them even from inside the carriage.
Aria immediately perked up.
"They strengthened the eastern formation," she said suddenly. My father blinked.
"…You can tell that already?"
"The mana rotation changed."
Silence. Again.
At this point, my parents looked concerned every time Aria spoke about magic.
The carriage rolled to a stop near the estate entrance.
The moment the door opened, Aria practically launched herself outside.
"I HAVE TO TEST SOMETHING!"
"You are absolutely not using mana again today!" my father shouted after her.
"I meant theoretically!"
"That doesn't make me feel better!"
Aria disappeared into the estate before anyone could stop her.
My mother simply sighed.
"She's definitely your father's daughter."
"I was never that bad."
My mother stared at him.
"…You blew up a training hall at thirteen."
"That was one time."
"It happened twice."
As they continued arguing quietly, I stared up at the massive estate ahead of us.
This world still didn't feel real sometimes.
Mana, Spellhearts, Runes, and Living formulas.
Back on Earth, people would've called all of this fantasy.
But here, it was simply life. And somehow…
I had been reborn directly into the middle of it.
A servant suddenly approached the carriage and bowed respectfully.
"Welcome home, Lord and Lady Veylor."
"You can relax, Marianne," my mother said gently while stepping out of the carriage. "How
have things been?"
The older woman hesitated briefly.
"…Young Lady Aria attempted to access the lower archive again."
My father closed his eyes slowly.
"She what?"
"She said she only wanted to 'borrow' one of the restricted formula texts."
"She's six."
"That is exactly what I told her, Lord Veylor."
"And?"
"She asked why age mattered if the formulas were inefficient anyway."
A painful silence followed.
Even my mother looked conflicted between concern and amusement.
"…Did she get inside?" my father finally asked.
Marianne coughed awkwardly.
"Only the first seal."
My father nearly choked.
"The FIRST seal?!"
"She dismantled part of the outer mana sequence before the barriers activated."
This time even I stared.
I still didn't fully understand how difficult that was…
But judging from my parents' expressions, it definitely wasn't normal.
"Where is she now?" my mother asked carefully.
Marianne pointed toward the eastern side of the estate.
"The library."
"Of course she is," my father muttered.
The moment we stepped inside the estate, I immediately noticed how different the interior felt compared to outside.
The mana density was higher here.
Not overwhelmingly so.
Just enough to notice.
Faint streams of mana flowed through engraved lines carved into the floors and walls like glowing veins beneath stone. Some carried mana toward nearby crystals while others connected to larger rune formations deeper within the estate.
Everything was connected.
The barriers.
The lights. The heating. The security formations.
Spellcraft wasn't just combat.
It was infrastructure.
Civilization itself seemed built on mana.
As my mother carried me through the halls, servants occasionally bowed while stepping aside respectfully. A few glanced toward me curiously before quickly lowering their heads
again.
"The heir's mana feels unusually stable," one servant whispered quietly.
"You can sense that already?" another whispered back.
"Only a little…"My mother pretended not to hear them.
But I noticed my father glance toward me thoughtfully.
That wasn't the first time someone had reacted strangely to me.
Even before today, people occasionally gave me odd looks whenever they held me.
At first, I assumed it was because I rarely cried.
Now I wasn't so sure.
A faint warmth suddenly pulsed beneath the blanket wrapped around my hand.
My rune. Tiny strands of mana instinctively curled around my fingers before fading again.
No one else seemed to notice.
But I did. And for some reason…
the mana inside me felt strangely familiar.