I felt it before I read it from my status screen.

Have you ever stood outside before a storm and felt a slight tingle run across your skin before lightning strikes? This was exactly what I felt when the notification was still forming in the corner of my vision, and my staff was already different in my hands.

The staff did not grow heavier or lighter, but it had changed in some more fundamental way, the ashwood conducting something it had not been conducting before.

Ashwood, it turned out, was one of the few mystical woods that could conduct elemental powers better than most, and as Acolytes, we were encouraged to experiment with a lot of minor spells first before pushing them to the level of Acolyte because passing such powerful spells through the staff would change its properties.

A staff was not just a way for a mage to conduct and channel their powers; they were like a third limb, and as the mage grew stronger, so did their staff.

Of course, it was possible to find legendary staff when a mage grew stronger, and it was even encouraged for a mage to change or upgrade their staff as they got stronger, but nothing would ever replace your first staff.

I did not know what that truly meant until I felt a low humming that was not quite sound, the kind of vibration you feel in your fingertips when you hold a stringed instrument that someone else has just played.

For a moment, I felt connected to my staff in a way that I did not think was possible, and I saw that my staff, in a weird way... was alive.

Not alive like you or me, but like a tree. Even though this staff had been cut from an Elemental Fuschia Tree, it was not dead, and every time I poured my soul through it to cast a spell, I maintained and grew its power and adaptability to my magic.

Now that a new and evolved power was flowing from my channels into the staff, new channels were also being created, and I could see that the head of the staff that held a twisted wooden claw gripping a blue crystal tightened, and the crystal shrank a bit, sending blue veins of light running through the staff.

[Attunement Skills Unlocked]

[Staff Resonance(Rare) 0 — 9]

I shuddered as the next cast left the staff without me consciously calling it.

The Spark that had been living in my palms for one hundred and ninety deliberate discharges had evolved in the moment of the threshold crossing, and the first expression of what it had become was leaving me before I had understood that I was casting it.

A pale blue-white arc leaped from the tip of the staff and did not behave as Spark had ever behaved; it did not discharge and dissipate in the brief flash of an Initiate cast. Instead, it traveled.

The arc of lightning found the air ahead of it and moved through it along a curving path that I had not consciously directed, as though the arc had chosen the trajectory itself based on something in the space I could not see.

I felt my staff humming, and I knew that this was happening because of my new Attunement skill.

The arc struck the ground ten meters away, and the point of impact blackened, and a thin line of char traveled three feet outward from the strike before the energy bled away.

I stood with my staff raised and my mouth slightly open and did not move for a long moment.

[Spell Evolution: Spark → Arc Lightning]

[Arc Lightning — Acolyte tier]

[The electrical discharge now exists as a directable arc with extended duration. Due to Attunement Skill, conductive paths are sought preferentially. Range and branching capability increase with rank.]

I read the notification three times. Each time the word Arc Lightning landed with a different weight.

Arc Lightning and no longer Spark. I no longer wielded the candle-flicker that serious Acolytes filed away and forgot as they decided their discipline.

This was something that had a real name in the Discipline texts, something that Adepts of the Lightning branch trained for years to produce, and I was holding it in my hands at sixteen years old in the grey morning at the base of a pyramid that was about to crack the ground open.

Even if I wanted to follow the lightning discipline, following the Academy Schedule that always imposed on us the idea of slow and steady growth, then I would spend the next three years going through all the minor disciplines like Spark, Mist, Heat, and all the rest until I found the discipline that suited me the most, and only then would I begin pushing them to the Acolyte level.

Three years from now, my Anima Depth was expected to be in the fifties, making it easier to push the discipline of your choice to a higher level and not fear the consequences of burning out your channels, but I had not followed this route.

Moving ahead like a man who did not fear death or crippling himself, I had broken academy tradition and become one of the youngest Acolytes to not only evolve their main discipline, but also gain an Attunement Skill.

This spell should have taken more out of my soul, but my Staff Resonance had decreased the amount of power I needed, smoothing out the connection, reducing conduction loss, and improving cast quality.

An Attunement Skill was one of the most coveted skills for Acolyte, and if I followed the academy curriculum, I should be gaining this skill in my sixth year, and this was not assured, not all Acolyte could truly connect with their spells and their staff, and only when reaching the Acolyte level and becoming mages do they have the chance to truly push for Attunement Skills due to the two hundred years lifespan you gain as an Adept.

Not wasting any time to deliberate on this achievement, I cast again.