Audree decided not to go straight home.

Not because he wanted to delay returning--but because something inside him itched. A pull. A push to try something.

His knowledge of potion-making had grown steadily over the years. A few basic elixirs, mostly--lesser healing tinctures, stamina boosters, and some minor enhancement brews, most of which were first made out of necessity.

The family horse, bless her stubborn bones, had been the first to benefit from his efforts. When she began slowing down, wheezing harder after every walk, he'd begged his mother Ina to help.

She'd said no.

"You don't meddle with life and death," she warned, not unkindly. "Not with potions. Not with magic. Let her live as she should."

So it was up to Audree. And he had done it--bit by bit. Painstaking trial and error. Each potion a puzzle. And to his surprise, a quiet pride had bloomed in both his mothers when they saw what he'd taught himself. Even Ina, for all her sternness, had offered a rare, thoughtful nod when he showed her his growing notebook of formulas.

What surprised Audree was how naturally it all came. Measurements, conversions, chemical interactions--he remembered formulas after a single glance. Math danced in his mind like music. It felt right.

Today's experiment was a culmination.

His most recent breakthrough was a heat resistance potion--strong enough to shield someone from moderate flame for a few minutes. It wasn't perfect. Not stable. But it worked.

Now, he wanted to test it, but with something flashy.

So, with his satchel packed tight with vials and notes, he stepped off the main road and made his way toward the quarry ridge, a scorched little basin beyond the forge line. The old quarry was half-abandoned, with singed moss and blackened stone from past accidents--his past accidents.

This was his space. His testing ground.

Audree dropped to a knee and pulled out the potion. A deep amber liquid shimmered inside the vial, still faintly warm. He had labeled it himself with chalk: Fire Resistance (Mark I).

Out came the notes. A cloth bundle revealed three vials: one red, one blue, one orange. Each sparkled faintly with mana traces. He poured the red first, tracing a wide outer circle. Then the blue, spiraling tighter.

His hand moved with practiced rhythm. Calm. Deliberate.

Then came the powder--milled from the mushrooms that grew on the glowing red toad he'd found weeks ago, carefully dried and ground. He'd never mixed this powder before.

His pulse quickened.

He stirred it into a bowl of shimmering blue liquid, watching for any sign of fizz or instability. Nothing exploded. Good start.

"Okay," he muttered to himself. "Just like the book. Just like the book."

He pulled the brush from his kit--a humble one, bristles stiff with dried paint--and dipped it into his new mixture.

Onto the circle, he painted runes. One by one, etched from memory: heat, containment, ignition. They glowed faintly as the brush swept over the symbols.

The final step was power.

From his pocket, he drew a mana crystal--small, almost depleted. Barely a spark left. But it was all he had at the moment.

He set it gently in the center of the circle.

Then, with all the grace of a scientist on his first day, he poked it with a stick.

There was a flash--a burst of red light, a shimmer of ancient runes lifting into the air.

For a moment, the entire circle lit up.

Then silence.

In the center of the circle hovered a small flame. Perfectly round. Floating.

Real.

Audree stared, unmoving.

His breath caught in his chest--not in fear, but awe. He didn't jump. Didn't cheer.

But his eyes widened. His chest swelled.

"Finally," he whispered, heart pounding, flame reflecting in his green eyes. "Something real."

He let the moment linger.

Then, slowly, the awe faded, and the reality of the scorched clearing returned.

The ground around him was blackened in an uneven circle. One more reason he was lucky he'd choked down that heat-resistant potion—his clothes had been a second away from becoming embers.

He sighed, eyes falling on the faintly glowing rune circle he'd etched into the stone for stability.

"Should just be able to pick it up..." he murmured, stepping closer.

But when he reached down to pry it up, his fingers scraped against the stone's surface—and the runes didn't budge.

He blinked. Then frowned.

"Oh... right. Writing into the stone makes it part of the stone."

His voice fell flat with that familiar tone of self-directed exasperation.

He sighed again, fidgeting with the bracelet around his wrist as disappointment crept in.

Then he pulled out his notebook and scribbled in quick, cramped handwriting:

"Spells that I want to move should be on moveable things. :("

Lesson learned.

"Now to clean this up before I start a forest fire..."

He reached for his "science stick"—a long, thin rod of iron he used for poking volatile ingredients at a safe distance. He carefully tapped at the glowing mana crystal resting beneath the center of the rune, dislodging it from its base.

The reaction was immediate.

Instead of gently fizzling out, the rune's glow spasmed. The lines cracked and warped inward, twisting like veins in a closing wound.

Audree froze.

Then the circle folded in on itself with a sickening pulse, dragging the air toward its center. The stone beneath it split with a jagged CRACK, and the remaining ingredients—powders, bowl, stabilizing salts—whoomped into ash, reduced in a flash of unnatural heat and a surge of destabilized magic.

Audree staggered back, shielding his eyes.

When he looked up again, smoke was curling from a spiderweb of fractures in the ground.

He stood in stunned silence for a beat. Then he exhaled, shoulders dropping with tired acceptance.

"...Right. Note two. Never remove a mana source from an active rune without a break sigil."

He scribbled that down as well.

Then, quietly, he sat down on a nearby rock, staring at the ashes.

"Still counts as a win," he muttered, and this time the grin that came back was crooked and tired

The rest of the day drifted by in the quiet rhythm of foraging.

Audree wandered the nearby woods, his satchel slowly filling with new and old materials—twisted roots that shimmered faintly under light, thick-leafed herbs that left a tang on his fingers, and dried spores he'd learned not to breathe in too deeply. He double-checked each one against his notes and the scribbled references from the borrowed books, careful to press leaves into wax paper or tuck vials into padded slots.

He made sure never to stray too far.

When he was younger, it had been the stories—whispers of child-snatching trolls, shape-shifting beasts, and voices that mimicked your mother's to lure you deeper. He used to sleep with salt around his bed and a rune of safety under his pillow, just in case.

Now, at seventeen, those childish fears had dulled. But something else replaced them.

People had gone missing.

Three, maybe four over the past year. It hadn't made much noise—just murmurs behind market stalls, glances traded when the name of another missing miner came up in hushed conversation.

No proof. No bodies. No answers.

And while no one said it out loud, everyone felt it.

The woods weren't safe. Maybe they never were.

Still, Audree lingered at the edge as the sun began to dip behind the forge-smudged horizon. He had work to finish.