Mythshaper

I could taste the success at the tip of my tongue—or the more accurate expression would be, at the tip of my essence threads. Covered under the blanket, I fiddled with the Arcane Knot as flickers of green and blue light shimmered.

With Arcane Acuity, Arcane Affinity and my mental attributes working in tandem, I found it easier to manipulate the mess of essence threads within the cube. But of course, there was a difference between easy and easier. For the last couple of hours, I had been putting in incessant work, untangling the weave through the pattern I was only now beginning to see.

It was way past my bedtime. Mum would kill me if she saw me like this. But I was at the very precipice of success, too close to simply give up.

The Arcane Knot required me to manipulate all eight of my essence threads to make any headway in solving it. My Fractal Sight did help with observing the imperfections in the knotted weave, giving me a fair shot at solving them with merely eight essence threads.

However, the sheer amount of manipulation required to solve it was already barging towards my limit. I could weave a pair of threads without paying much attention. Four required a bit of conscious thought, while eight were at the very edge of my current capabilities. Thankfully, the process did not require me to manipulate all eight threads at all times.

For the most part, I had left six threads at an impasse while untangling the knots with two. Slowly, that one pair turned to two, and then three, until I finally found myself working with all eight of my essence threads as I moved closer to success.

I was uncertain if solving the puzzle would give me any other benefit besides fine-tuning my control. Even if it didn’t, the knots had become a challenge that I couldn’t turn back from. I would literally get no sleep if I left it as it was right now.

And if I did leave it, all the work I had put in for the last couple of hours would be for nought. The knot would reset. True, I would have an easier time untangling it the next time, but that didn’t mean it would be effortless. It wouldn’t be effortless unless I had a couple of dozen essence threads under my control.

One by one, seven threads of weave connected together in an incomplete form as I worked through to find the last string at an alarming pace.

I worked with a sure confidence that I could tell if I managed to find the perfect form. Fractal Sight not only enabled me to see the intricacies at play—no, with my understanding of all things arcane and weave growing, I found I could somehow differentiate between what worked and what didn’t. So much so that it felt as if I was becoming a little too obsessive about the perfect form, to the point of it being unhealthy.

As it turned out, I could tell if what I found was a perfect weave. The spell's voice confirmed it.