One Snowflake Is Enough
The formal Verification Ground was the same place it had been a year ago.
Black marble floors. Northern knights lined along the walls. The blizzard raging beyond the thick glass windows. And in the center of the Verification Ground, a single small glass bottle.
A year ago, there had been a candlestick. Because she failed to light even one candle, Evelyn Arckenheim had been branded with the label of failure. Magic Circuit Failure. Uneducable. Additional verification deemed hazardous.
Those same sentences had returned to this place today.
Only this time, it was not a candle.
It was a single snowflake.
The Magic Tower inspection team had installed Containment Formulas at all four corners of the Verification Ground. Thin silver magic circles spread across the floor, and the recorders’ pens were already poised over their paper. The northern knights’ hands hovered near their sword hilts.
Serpin Astra stepped forward into the center, holding her record board.
“I will reconfirm the conditions for this formal inspection. Lord Reinfeld’s intervention with the Correction Formula is strictly prohibited. Upon any sign of rampage, the Containment Formula will activate immediately. In the event of failure, we will review prohibition of independent operation and consider preliminary registration as a Potential Disaster.”
I asked quietly, “You’ve prepared three full sentences for the possibility of failure. Where is the sentence for success?”
Serpin smiled. “That can be written after we see the results. It won’t be too late.”
“Stamping the future with failure in advance while leaving success for later—how very fair.”
The corner of Karen Wald’s mouth twitched upward. Ludwig watched only the center of the Verification Ground from his high seat in perfect silence, his fingers frozen on the armrest.
Evelyn stood before the glass bottle.
Her small shoulders were just a little stiff. But she did not clutch my sleeve. She did not reach out as she had last night. Instead, she slowly lifted both hands and gazed down at the empty glass bottle.
Serpin said, “Then let us begin, Grand Duchess Evelyn Arckenheim.”
As that name echoed through the Verification Ground, Evelyn’s pupils trembled violently.
I knew exactly where the tremor came from.
The candle. The label of failure. Bermann’s sigh. The Magic Tower’s judgment document. And the eyes of all the people who had looked at her.
Her mana remained quiet, yet the air inside the Verification Ground had already frozen solid.
Serpin’s eyebrow rose slightly. “There is a reaction even before we begin.”
“The North is cold by nature.”
“To blame the trembling of mana on the cold—your joke is rather too light, Lord Reinfeld.”
“It is still thicker than the inspector’s courtesy.”
Serpin laughed, but her gaze never left Evelyn.
A blue light began to gather at the tips of Evelyn’s fingers.
In that instant, the Containment Formulas around the Verification Ground shuddered. The inspection mages stiffened. Karen’s hand tightened coldly around his sword hilt.
I did not move.
Intervention with the Correction Formula is prohibited. Direct contact is also forbidden.
Then there was only one thing left that I could do.
“Do not suppress it.”
Serpin spoke at once. “Lord Reinfeld. Intervention with the Correction Formula is prohibited.”
“Is speaking prohibited as well?”
“If it is judged as mana guidance ignition, I will record it.”
“Record it, then. Telling my disciple to breathe can hardly count as a crime.”
Evelyn glanced at me, just for a fraction of a second.
Her eyes asked a silent question: Even if I succeed, is it really all right?
Instead of nodding, I simply recited in a low voice the words I had given her last night.
“Grand Duchess.”
Evelyn’s fingertips trembled.
“Follow your heart exactly as it is.”
At those words, her breathing changed.
At first she had tried to deny it. She had suppressed the surging mana, sealed every gap, and struggled to trap it in a tiny space. The backlash always shattered her balance and ended in collision.
But this time was different.
Evelyn did not block it.
She let the mana flow. Instead of pouring it out all at once, she drew a single delicate thread from the wild river, splitting the power at her fingertips into something impossibly fine.
A white speck appeared inside the glass bottle.
At first it was no more than a speck of dust, but it soon split quietly into six branches. The bottle kept its warmth. No frost touched its base. Even the formidable Containment Formula remained silent.
And then one snowflake bloomed quietly inside the bottle.
Serpin began to count.
“One.”
All breathing inside the Verification Ground vanished.
“Two.”
Evelyn no longer looked at me. Her eyes stayed fixed on her fingertips and the snowflake inside the glass.
“Three.”
The Magic Tower recorders’ pens stopped moving.
“Four.”
Ludwig’s fingers slowly curled on the armrest.
“Five.”
Karen’s hand slipped from his sword hilt.
“Six.”
The snowflake did not waver.
“Seven.”
Evelyn’s lips trembled faintly.
“Eight.”
Only then did I let out a breath.
“Nine.”
Serpin’s smile disappeared.
“Ten.”
The snowflake remained exactly as it was inside the glass bottle.
A very brief silence settled over the Verification Ground. It was not the silence of failure. It was the time everyone needed to process what they had just witnessed.
Evelyn slowly turned to look at me.
This time she asked nothing. She did not say, “Did I do well?”
She simply stood there, clenching her trembling fingertips, wearing the face of someone who could not believe the miracle she herself had created.
I broke the silence. “You did well, Grand Duchess Evelyn.”
The corners of her eyes turned faintly red.
She did not cry. She was no longer the fragile child who had stood in this same Verification Ground a year ago.
Serpin’s pen moved.
“Independent manifestation of the minimum-unit freezing phenomenon without external intervention from the Correction Formula. However, said manifestation was confirmed only within a limited environment, and the influence of Emotional Dependency and special correction techniques cannot be ruled out…”
“I suggest you refine that wording.”
The pen stopped.
Serpin looked at me. “Which part displeases you?”
“All of it.”
The inspectors’ expressions chilled.
I pointed at the snowflake trapped inside the glass bottle.
“It is not temporary manifestation. It is independent operation. The limited environment was set by the inspection team itself, and you personally confirmed the prohibition of Correction Formula intervention just now.”
“There remains a strong possibility that knowledge acquired from Lord Reinfeld’s Correction Formula influenced this phenomenon.”
“If that is your standard, then every record of every mage trained by the Magic Tower must carry the note ‘The influence of the Magic Tower cannot be excluded.’”
The tip of Serpin’s pen halted.
“Any form of teaching leaves its own unique imprint. What matters is not the lingering echo but whether one can handle mana on their own. The Grand Duchess has just proven exactly that.”
Serpin stared at me in silence. Not a trace of a smile remained on her face.
“One year ago the Magic Tower judged the Grand Duchess as having Magic Circuit Failure because she could not maintain the ignition formula. Is that correct?”
Serpin turned a page on her record board.
“The records state as much.”
“With a failed circuit, even the minimum unit of independent magic should be impossible. The fact that she maintained a snowflake for ten seconds leads to one of two conclusions.”
I slowly swept my gaze across everyone present in the Verification Ground.
“Either the Grand Duchess miraculously repaired her broken circuit in a single year.”
Serpin’s eyes narrowed.
“Or the judgment from a year ago was wrong.”
The air inside the Verification Ground turned to stone.
“The Grand Duchess was never unable to use magic. The Magic Tower simply failed to find the right key for her.”
Ludwig’s fingers stopped completely.
A low ripple of emotion passed through the northern knights.
It was as if the outdated brand of “failure” had fallen to the floor and shattered into pieces.
Serpin looked down at her record board with deliberate slowness.
A moment of silence.
Then she spoke.
“The Magic Tower Inspection Bureau acknowledges that a re-examination of Evelyn Arckenheim the Grand Duchess’s existing Magic Circuit Failure judgment is necessary.”
At that moment, Evelyn stopped breathing.
Ludwig’s eyes softened by the smallest fraction.
Karen bit his lip hard. His expression was impossible to read—whether it was emotion surging up or joy being fiercely suppressed.
My gaze turned naturally to Evelyn.
“Did you hear that?”
Her head moved in the tiniest nod.
“I… I’m not a failure?”
“That’s right. You are not a failure, Grand Duchess.”
Those words settled over the Verification Ground.
This time it was not only my voice. The inspector’s record from the Magic Tower and the entire Verification Ground of the Northern Grand Duchy affirmed the conclusion with solemn weight.
But Serpin Astra did not stop there.
She drew out a fresh record sheet.
“However.”
Of course.
The Magic Tower’s sentences always hid poison behind the sweetness.
“Considering the subject’s abnormal growth rate, excessive mana response, Emotional Dependency, and an operational system differing from established Magic Tower methods…”
Ludwig’s gaze turned cold once more.
“Serpin Astra.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“The child has just broken the chains of control that stood in her way before my very eyes.”
“Indeed. Therefore she is not a failure.”
“And yet?”
Serpin bowed her head with perfect courtesy.
“That does not mean she is safe.”
The air in the Verification Ground sank into an icy chill. It was a cold completely different from Evelyn’s own mana.
“The Magic Tower Inspection Bureau intends to register Evelyn Arckenheim the Grand Duchess as a preliminary person of interest for disaster observation.”
Karen’s sword slid halfway from its sheath.
I raised a hand to stop him.
If he drew steel now, we would only be dancing to the Magic Tower’s tune.
Evelyn stood frozen, clutching the glass bottle tightly to her chest. There was no relief on her face. Only the devastated expression of someone who had just been branded with an even heavier stigma.
I looked at Serpin.
“Very well.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Just as the stigma of failure was washed away, the label of observation target will disappear before long as well.”
A smile returned to Serpin’s lips.
“The Magic Tower’s format is not so easily changed.”
“We changed one today.”
Evelyn looked up at me.
“Master.”
“Yes, Grand Duchess.”
“Will I… someday be able to remove the label of disaster that binds me?”
I looked at the snowflake inside the glass bottle.
One small white crystal that, despite so many watching eyes, had refused to melt.
“Of course. That will be our next lesson.”
— Re-examination of Magic Circuit Failure judgment required.
— Registered as Potential Disaster observation target.