Of Roots and Sparks

  Time passed slowly in the Vale household, but Auren embraced the rhythm. Each sunrise brought a new chance to observe, each moonrise a moment to reflect.

  By his second nameday, his toddling had turned to walking. His babbles to words.And most importantly—his awareness of mana had sharpened into something more than sensation.

  Not control.

  Not yet.

  But understanding.

  It began with a beetle.A lazy spring afternoon found Auren crouched in the vegetable patch, fascinated by a small iridescent insect crawling along a tomato vine. Its shell shimmered with colors he hadn’t seen on Earth a fractal lattice of purple and green, glowing faintly with residual mana.He reached for it, and the beetle flared with light, releasing a brief pulse of heat before buzzing away.A burst of warm air tickled Auren’s skin.It wasn’t just bioluminescence. It was reaction. Mana-based.

  “Self-defense?” he whispered aloud, still unused to the tiny, boyish voice that now carried his thoughts.He narrowed his eyes, reaching inward.He pictured the moment: the bug's shell, the pulse of energy, the curve of heat.And then, for the briefest instant, his fingers tingled.A spark leapt between them.

  A real spark. Tiny. Fleeting. Harmless.

  But it was his.He stared, wide-eyed.No incantation. No wand. No circles or staves or runes.Just focus. Intention. Understanding.Magic in this world didn’t follow formulae not externally. It wasn’t shaped by spoken words or traced signs.It responded to perception.To will.To the shape of the mind.And his? His was forged in the crucible of biotech labs, layered with systems thinking, scientific rigor, and years of disciplined imagination.Auren sat back on his heels, breathless.He’d made fire.Just a spark but it was a beginning.

  Lira and Derrin were delighted with his curiosity.Most children his age were still chasing chickens and eating dirt. Auren?He was building contraptions.Not true machines—nothing with gears or tools, not yet—but systems made from twigs, leaves, stones, and threads of copper salvaged from a broken lantern.To an outsider, it looked like a toddler’s mess.To Auren, it was a testing chamber.He made crude loops of vine, tested how mana flowed through wet bark versus dry.He buried metal slivers in damp soil to see if the mana density changed over time.He whispered theories to himself, lying on his back under the plum tree.“Mana moves like charge. Organic matter stores it better. Living systems — like roots — might channel it.”He scratched designs into the dirt with a stick. A crude spiral. A branching tree. A helix.“Magitech... is going to be biological.”He could feel it in his bones.

  Some days, he overwhelmed even himself.He had so many questions.

  Why did some stones drink mana, while others reflected it?

  Why did his emotions alter the reaction?

  Why did some plants thrum with latent energy only when the moon was high?

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  He noticed that heat came easiest.His body remembered fire — the beetle, the spark.But when he tried to mimic wind, nothing moved.When he thought of water, he could feel the air thicken, but no moisture gathered.He kept notebooks — crude ones. Just stones scratched with patterns, lined-up twigs, simple symbols he used to track results.And slowly, patterns emerged.

  One evening, Auren sat with Derrin in the main room, watching him restring a lute.“Why do the strings matter?” Auren asked, voice soft.“They carry the vibration,”Derrin replied. “Without strings, it’s just a hollow box.”Something clicked.Mana flows need channels, Auren thought. Conductors.Later that night, he tested it again.He coiled a length of dried vine around a stick and focused pushing mana through the spiral in his mind.

  The stick quivered.

  The air around it shimmered.

  Then the tip blackened and smoked.

  He dropped it, startled.

  But his grin wouldn’t go away.

  He was onto something.

  That week, Lira took him to the village shrine.It was a modest structure polished stone and wind-chimes strung with pale crystal. Locals came to meditate, to “feel the flow,” as they called it.Auren watched as a boy about his age placed both palms on the central stone.A faint glow pulsed.“Water affinity,” murmured an old woman. “Good base for healing.”He understood then. The rumors were true.The mana core awakening ceremony happened at seven. But even now, families could sense the leanings of a child’s natural attunement.

  Which meant...

  He wasn’t invisible.

  Lira kept him close.

  She always did, when they were in public.He asked her about it, quietly.She sighed. “You’re... different. That’s good. But difference draws attention. And not all eyes are kind.”Auren nodded, digesting her words.He would have to hide in plain sight.

  Late one night, Auren crawled under the stone hearth in the corner of the kitchen. It was warm there, and dark — a good place to think.He’d stolen a candle stub and a bit of charcoal.His hands worked clumsily, but steadily, drawing symbols on the floor.Not magical runes — those didn’t do anything, not by themselves.

  But diagrams.

  Energy flowcharts.

  One was a tree, its roots labeled “raw mana,” its branches named after concepts: “heat,” “light,” “growth,” “force.”

  At the top he wrote a single word:

  “Synthesis.”

  He didn’t want to wield a single element. He wanted to combine them.To understand the whole system, not just the output.

  Not fire.

  But why fire burned. How it changed things at the molecular level.What made mana choose fire instead of wind?Could he nudge it? Reframe it? Change the underlying variables?“Magic,” he whispered, “is a set of responses.”“And responses can be trained.”

  That spring, the skies cracked open in a storm that shook the hills.Lightning danced across the horizon. Winds ripped through the trees. Animals fled from the forest as if something old had stirred.Auren stood at the window, wide-eyed.

  Not with fear.

  With awe.

  He felt it — not just the storm, but the will behind it. Not conscious, but present. Elemental mana responding to natural triggers.

  Or perhaps... guided by something deeper.

  He reached out instinctively, hand pressed to the glass.The storm’s power pushed back — not hostile, but vast. Uncaring.And just for a second, he matched its rhythm.

  His heart raced.

  His body hummed.

  Mana spiraled in his chest.

  Then it was gone.

  He collapsed onto the floor, gasping.

  From the next room, Lira’s footsteps echoed.

  She scooped him up, holding him tight.

  But he barely noticed.

  Because for a brief heartbeat.

  He’d touched the pattern beneath the chaos.

  And it had recognized him.