The Water Magician

Ryo awakens in another world with water magic and a body that ages slowly enough to turn urgency into patience. He wants a quiet workshop life but keeps being drafted by problems only restraint can solve: canals that will flood a harvest if widened wrong, mercenaries who mistake magic for artillery, nobles who think «control» means subjugation. Apprentices arrive for practical reasons clean wells, safe baths, irrigation that does not poison soil and stay because he explains how power should work where children live. Training arcs look like fieldwork: mapping watersheds, learning how temperature ruins a spell, discovering that a perfect ice wall becomes lethal in a thaw. Politics eventually catches up. A duke wants monopolies, a temple wants doctrine, and a neighbor wants a dam that will starve downstream villages. Ryo chooses witnesses over glory, writes everything down, and builds a school so his ethics outlast his hands.