What This Page Is
Casting is not summoning. A mage does not call power out of the air and spend it. A mage applies tension to the Veil, and the plane on the other side of the tension pulls back, and the spell is what the two of them agree on. The Veil is the standing rule for every spell in the series — the four steps, the cost ladder, and the one number a reader is allowed to watch.
The eight planes and the eight schools are the map in The Eight Doors; the failure of the new world — the pull that comes back shaped — is the rule in Wild Magic. This page is the mechanics: what a spell costs, and what a spell is allowed to do.
The Four Steps
The sequence, in the order it is taught at the Scriptorium and in the field:
- Intent — the shape of the thing to be done, held exactly. Vague intent makes vague magic, and vague magic is the second most dangerous thing a mage can do. The first most dangerous is precise magic aimed at the wrong plane.
- Pull — the mage takes the thread of the Veil and draws. The plane answers with its own weight. Every pull is felt by the plane; every pull is remembered by the plane.
- Exchange — the mage gives the tension somewhere. Into a reagent, into a gesture, into a breath, into blood if the spell is larger than the mage. The exchange is never optional and never free; the spell costs exactly as much as the spell is.
- Release — the thread is let go in the shape the intent held. Release badly and the spell keeps the tension and the tension looks for a new shape. Unreleased tension is a wild spell, and wild spells do not have intentions.
Each step has its failure mode, and the failure modes are the story: a vague intent makes a vague spell; a bad pull makes the plane remember the mage; a skipped exchange makes a wild spell; a bad release makes the tension look for a new shape.
The Cost Ladder (the Exchange)
A spell's cost is its Exchange, and the Exchange has four rungs:
| rung | the exchange is | the circle it costs | who does it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gesture | a hand, a word, a held breath | Circle 1 (cantrip) | anyone who has been taught |
| Breath | a drawn breath, a held shape, a name spoken true | Circle 2–3 | the journeyman |
| Reagent | a named a named material — ash, silver, venom, bone | Circle 4 | the master |
| Blood | the mage's own, given and not returned | Circle 5 | the archmage — and it is a scene, not a tick |
The reagent rung is where crafting and spellcraft cross: a reagent is a material, and a material is what a maker owes the world. The blood rung is not a cost a reader watches — it is a cost a reader remembers, and the story knows the difference.
The Mana Meter (what the reader is allowed to watch)
The stat block carries a mana number, and the number is a meter — not the cost, the budget.
- The meter is the mage's tension budget: how much pulling the body and the Veil will sustain before the plane stops answering. It is a number, and the number goes down, and the number recovers with rest the way a wound recovers — slowly, and only if the body is allowed to.
- The meter is not the Exchange. A mage at zero mana can still cast — by moving the Exchange up a rung, into reagent or into blood — and that is a story moment, not a bookkeeping one. The meter runs out; the mage does not. The mage runs out of a different kind of thing, and the kind is not on the sheet.
- The meter scales with tier — the ladder in Scale Anchors — and there is no ceiling on it. Wreckreate could mana-burn a lesser dragon in a single shot, and the number on his sheet is the number that makes that sentence true.
Casting Time
A cantrip is a beat. A masterwork spell is a scene. In combat, a spell takes one round per step of the sequence that it actually uses — a cantrip is one round, a reagent spell is two, a blood spell is three, and the mage who is casting in a battle is the first target, because the battle knows the shape of the thing coming, and the shape has a name, and the name is on the sheet.
"In the old world, a spell was a question you asked and an answer you accepted. Here, the answer comes back in a language you have not learned, and the language is not wrong. It is just not yours. That is the whole of the new world's magic in one sentence, and the sentence is the one I do not want to finish." — Uaellaen