By his third nameday, Auren Vale was no longer just a curious child. He was a secret researcher, armed with a toddler’s hands and a scientist’s mind.

  The storm had changed something.

  Not just in him—but in the world around him.

  Days after the storm, a fire tore through the southern edge of the village grove. Half a dozen old trees, struck by lightning, had been reduced to blackened husks. No homes were lost, but the villagers mourned the ancient trees like fallen elders.

  Auren asked to visit the site.

  Derrin hesitated but eventually agreed, leading him down the path where green gave way to soot.

  The ground was soft with ash. Charcoal clung to Auren’s fingers as he crouched beside the remains of a massive root system.

  Mana still lingers here, he thought. But it’s... changed.

  He could feel it — warped, but not dead. Not gone.

  He scooped up a handful of the gray powder and rubbed it between his palms.

  “Combustion doesn’t destroy,” he whispered. “It transforms.”

  That night, he mixed the ash with oil and smeared it on a flat stone, sketching new diagrams with his fingers.

  He added arrows, feedback loops, conversion cycles.

  Fire wasn’t an end. It was a process.

  Mana didn’t vanish—it changed form.

  And if he could learn the rules of that change...

  Maybe he could learn to direct it.

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  That same week, Auren experimented with heat shaping.

  He gathered dried leaves, coiled thin vines into rudimentary circuits, and practiced sending raw mana through them in short pulses. His mother thought he was just playing with compost.

  In truth, he was creating low-heat ignition chains.

  Tiny sparks.

  Measured burns.

  Controlled feedback.

  And then—one morning—it worked.

  A spiral of leaf and vine ignited into a slow, sustained ember, coiling in on itself like a living flame. It pulsed red, orange, and blue, refusing to go out.

  Auren watched, breath held.

  It was beautiful.

  Until it wasn’t.

  The flame jumped to his sleeve.

  He yelped, batting it down. The fire died quickly, but not before it singed his arm.

  Blistered skin. The pain was sharp, primal.

  Lira rushed in, horrified.

  “What were you doing?!” she cried, cradling his arm.

  “I... I wanted to see,” Auren gasped.

  “See what?!” she snapped. “How close you can get to burning our house down?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Because in truth... he’d seen more than fire.

  He’d seen potential.

  And potential was dangerous.

  Derrin applied a healing balm that smelled of mint and sulfur. It cooled the burn, and Auren winced only a little.

  Later, when Lira had calmed down, she sat beside him on the porch.

  Her voice was softer now.

  “I know you’re smart. Smarter than me. Smarter than your father. Maybe smarter than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  Auren looked at her, blinking.

  “But you’re still three, Auren. And you still live in this world. With other people. People who won’t understand. Who might be afraid.”

  She didn’t say it as a threat.

  She said it as a warning.

  And that made it worse.

  “So,” she continued, brushing his hair back, “you can do all the experiments you want. But not around the house. Not around others. Not unless you promise to be careful.”

  Auren nodded.

  “I promise.”

  And so, the first of his internal rules was born.

  Rule One: Power means risk. Always measure before release.

  The burn incident didn’t slow him.

  It sharpened him.

  In the weeks that followed, he returned to the fire-scarred grove and began studying the new plants sprouting from the ashes.

  He noticed something strange: the Ashroot—a hardy weed with silver veins—had grown where no other plant dared.

  Its leaves trembled when he touched them, reacting to even the faintest mana pulse.

  He harvested a few, ground them to paste, and placed the mixture between two slate plates.

  Then he pressed.

  A faint green glow emerged.

  Condensed. Stable.

  His eyes widened.

  A mana-responsive gel... he thought.

  A conductor.

  Not a spell. Not an incantation.

  A bridge between will and effect.

  “Biotech,” he whispered, awestruck. “Mana-tech.”

  The future—his future—would be built not from spells...

  But from systems.