For a while, Fabrisse just lay there, staring up at the ceiling with the faintest trace of a smile.

He couldn't help it. The possibilities kept stacking in his mind, one neat column after another.

If he could store the quartz, then he could store the practice weights.

If he could store the weights, then maybe he could store the training dummies.

And if the space inside the Aetherfold ignored physical constraints, then theoretically, he could smuggle an entire workbench from the Foundry Archive back to his dorm without anyone noticing.

But another thought intruded, dry and immediate.

The System said ten objects, not ten kilograms, not ten cubic feet. Ten slots.

Which raised a crucial question. What counted as one slot?

A small Stupenstone was one slot. The mitts he wore when handling volatile quartz counted as two, probably because they had hinges, padding, and internal channels of thread-bound silver. And the Aetheric Practice Weights, those things were massive—each would probably demand at least four slots.

But then . . . what about something even larger?

Could he, for instance, store an entire brick oven? Would it take seven slots? Eight? Or would the fold simply refuse and implode in his pocket?

He rubbed his chin, feeling the excitement stirring through the usual fog of fatigue. There was only one way to know.

"Test before theorizing," he muttered to himself.

He swung his legs over the bed and scanned his room for a suitable candidate—something bigger than the pocket mouth, but not catastrophic if it went wrong. His gaze landed on Greg's old study globe sitting crookedly on the shelf, the kind with glowing runes etched into its surface. But it was Greg's, and he didn't just want to take it.

Then he saw a brass kettle in the corner gleamed back at him, faintly steaming from its own residual enchantment.

"No harm in trying," he murmured. But his aetherrealm inventory was full, so he had to remove some items first. He turned the thought over once more in his mind. If it could take something as easily as the quartz, then surely it could give it back just as easily—if he asked correctly.

Sitting up, Fabrisse extended his hand and focused. Five stones. Not four, not six. Five.

He thought it, and then they were there: five Stupenstones in his palm, solid and cold. They just . . . presented themselves there, as if they had never been gone. He stared at them for a moment, weighing their shape, their weight, the faint familiar grain on each surface. Everything matched. No displacement, no delay.

[Aetherrealm Slots: 5/10]

Good; good. Now for the real test.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

He reached for the kettle. It should not fit. The mouth was barely the width of his hand; the kettle was three times that.

He pressed it in anyway.

The metal didn't bend or scrape. It didn't resist. It just went in, clean and soundless, like the object had suddenly decided not to be solid. One second the kettle was there, the next it wasn't.

Fabrisse froze. Then he checked the pocket again.

Empty. Perfectly normal.

[Aetherrealm Slots: 7/10]

So the kettle took two slots. Did it have something to do with the weight?

He looked around. There was no scale in the room. There was never a scale in the room, because who in their right mind kept one at a dormitory? The only things he had were books, more books, a collection of geological samples, and Greg's socks, which might have qualified as hazardous materials but not measurable mass.

He checked the clock. It was nearly midnight.

Fine. He could wait until morning.

Except he couldn't. The thought gnawed at him, quiet but relentless, like a background hum in his head: what's the correlation between mass and slot occupation?

He rolled onto his side, then sat up again. "It would only take one decent comparison sample," he reasoned under his breath. "Something with standardized density. Like a training weight."

Of course, the only person who might have one of those this late was the one person who was never asleep when she was supposed to be.

Faint footsteps on the gravel outside the window got him to sit up. The dorm window overlooked the inner courtyard, mostly empty at this hour, the lampstones along the walkway dimmed to conserve energy. But someone was there. Two someones. Anabeth von Silberthal moved in the dim light with the same poise she used in the Wing of Stratal Studies, her silver hair pinned up, a long coat thrown over her nightdress like she'd just decided that 'midnight' was an acceptable hour for errands.

Behind her stood a tall and broad-shouldered person encased in full armor that drank and scattered the glyphlight in uneven fragments. Every plate bore shallow nicks and a matte finish meant to mute reflection, the sort of design that said function first, silence second, appearances never. Even from this distance, it looked too real to be decorative.

Who's that? What's that? Do we even have someone like this in the Synod? Is that even a person?

And if Anabeth was up to something she wasn't supposed to be doing, that meant she was probably carrying contraband thaumic gear. Which, incidentally, looked like whichever contraption that was on Anabeth's hand. Yes, she was holding something that looked suspiciously like a scale. Which, incidentally, was exactly what he needed.

Anabeth paused at the edge of the courtyard, scanning the shadows with a brisk, calculating motion. Then, apparently satisfied, she reached back and tugged the armored figure by the arm with the gleeful insistence of someone dragging a co-conspirator toward a bad idea.

The sight didn't fit any category in his mental library. Sure, Anabeth could be rather . . . something, but he did not imagine her to be the sort to, under any known circumstance, lead an armored stranger across campus in the middle of the night.

Whatever they were doing, it was happening now, and he had about twenty seconds before they disappeared past the hedge wall and out of view.

He swung his legs off the bed again.

Right. Observation before conjecture.

[SIDEQUEST RECEIVED: Unidentified Variable (1)]

Objective: Learn the name of the armored stranger

Reward: +125 EXP

He accepted the quest the moment the option showed up and headed for the door.

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