The night had been quiet in the way Sael preferred: him, the books he kept in his personal inventory, and the steady accumulation of knowledge. He'd worked through three volumes on advanced transmutation theory, cross-referenced them with his own notes, and spent an hour simply staring at a diagram of molecular bonds until the pattern clicked into place in his mind.

  Orion had been asleep in the other room. The boy had stayed late into the evening, practicing basic mana circulation exercises until his concentration flagged, and when Sael had glanced over to suggest he head home, he'd found the apprentice nodding off in his chair.

  The question of whether to send him away had presented itself with uncomfortable clarity. On one hand, the boy had a home and an uncle who presumably expected him back. On the other hand, waking him up to tell him to leave felt like... what? Rejection? Sael had turned the thought over in his mind for longer than was probably necessary before deciding that waking someone from sleep just to make them walk home in the dark was inefficient at best and needlessly cruel at worst.

  When he'd asked, earlier in the evening before the boy had dozed off, whether his uncle would be concerned, Orion had waved the question away. "Uncle Stan goes to bed before I usually get home anyway. He won't mind if I tell him I was with my master." The boy had said it casually, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and Sael had found himself with no reasonable objection to offer.

  So instead of waking him, Sael had simply levitated the boy and guided him through the air to the small bedroom. Orion didn't even stir. Sael lowered him onto the bed with careful precision, and the apprentice immediately curled onto his side, still deeply asleep.

  A heavy sleeper, then.

  Sael pulled the sheets up and tucked them around the boy with the same methodical attention he'd give to organizing his notes. He stepped back, observed his work for a moment—Orion's face was slack with sleep, peaceful in a way that made him look even younger—and then returned to his books, occasionally glancing toward the bedroom to make sure the boy was still breathing and hadn't somehow rolled off the bed.

  Now, with dawn breaking and the birds starting their morning chorus, Sael walked to the bedroom and found Orion still curled under the sheets, sleeping soundly.

  He reached out and tapped the boy's shoulder.

  Orion jerked awake, blinking rapidly and looking around in confusion—at the bed beneath him, the sheets, the unfamiliar ceiling—before his eyes focused on Sael. "I—wait, when did I..." He trailed off, clearly trying to piece together how he'd gotten from the chair to the bed.

  Sael allowed himself a small smile. "You fell asleep during your exercises. I moved you."

  The boy's face flushed slightly, somewhere between embarrassed and mortified. "I'm sorry, Master, I didn't mean to—"

  He stopped, seeming to realize he was apologizing for sleeping.

  "Go wash your face," Sael said once the silence confirmed Orion was done. "You'll eat later. We're starting your training."

  Orion scrambled out of bed, still looking flustered but nodding quickly. He hurried off to splash water on his face at the river near the house, and by the time he returned, he was more alert, though his hair was sticking up at odd angles.

  Sael led him outside, where the pre-dawn light was just starting to paint the sky in shades of grey and pale blue.

  "Orion, I would like you to run around the house."

  "Run?" He looked quite confused, looking at Sael, and then, "Oh, uh.. I see... h-how many times?"

  "One hundred."

  They stared at each other.

  The silence stretched just long enough to become pointed.

  "Is there a problem?" Sael asked.

  "No," Orion said quickly. "Not at all."

  "Good." Sael gestured broadly at the space around his home. "To be a good mage—to have a body capable of channeling mana properly—one must have a sound mind in a sound body."

  Orion straightened slightly, looking pleased.

  "You have the former in spades," Sael continued.

  The boy's expression brightened further.

  "The latter..." Sael tilted his head slightly. "Not so much. My apologies."

  Orion's face fell, but he didn't argue. He just nodded, expression turning thoughtful. "I suppose I should've been working on my physical stats more," he said, almost to himself, then rolled his shoulders like he was preparing for battle and took off at a jog around the perimeter of the house.

  Sael watched him go for a moment, then heard a thud from above. He looked up at the roof and found Oz perched atop a freshly killed deer, the carcass easily three times his size.

  "Good morning, Oz," Sael said.

  The dragon was tearing into the meat like an eagle, talons gripping the hide as his beak pulled away strips of flesh. He paused long enough to acknowledge Sael with a tilt of his head before returning to his meal.

  "Where did you get this?"

  Oz swallowed. "In the forest nearby."

  "I see," Sael considered the deer, then his apprentice jogging in the distance. "Would you mind giving me a bit for Orion's breakfast later?"

  Oz went silent for a moment, continuing to eat. He pulled away another chunk of meat, chewed thoughtfully, then said, "I'll leave a leg."

  "Thank you."

  Sael turned to walk toward the hill, then stopped and looked back up at the roof. "By the way, please don't let hunters in the forest see you hunt. A chicken flying off with a deer would start rumours I'd rather not have to deal with."

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  Oz shifted on his perch, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Bwok," he said, and immediately froze, clearly mortified by the sound that had escaped him.

  Sael allowed himself a small smile and continued on his way.

  Behind him, he heard the steady rhythm of Orion's footsteps crunching through the grass as he climbed to the top of the hill, stopped, and took a breath.

  The air tasted different now. It was cleaner and sharper with that quality he remembered from Hel— the density, to be precise. He'd spent most of the night working between chapters, releasing mana into the ambient atmosphere and holding it there, coaxing it to stay in a loose bubble around his property instead of dissipating into the broader environment the way it naturally wanted to. The effect was subtle but present: the air felt thicker, almost liquid in his lungs, and breathing it in was like drinking something rich.

  Anyone with a mana core would feel it. The abundance made you sharper and awake, the same way fresh air cleared your head after being stuck indoors too long. Except this went deeper, settling into your bones, making your magic hum just beneath your skin even when you weren't actively casting.

  He exhaled slowly, watching his breath mist in the cool morning air despite the season not really calling for it. The mana did that too. It changed small things, bent physics slightly when it gathered in high enough concentrations.

  Behind him, faint but steady, he could hear Orion still running. The boy's breathing was already getting heavier.

  Sael rolled his shoulders and got to work.

  The first spell was simple. He raised one hand, fingers spread, and the earth in front of him responded.

  [Earth Shaping].

  It didn't explode upward or crack dramatically; it just... rose. A section of ground about ten feet across lifted smoothly, dirt compressing and solidifying as it climbed, forming itself into a flat platform roughly waist-height. He held it there for a moment, checking the stability, then guided it back down with a gentle push of intent.

  Good. The ground here was cooperative.

  He moved to the tree next; a scraggly thing that had been growing at an awkward angle, half its branches dead from some old storm damage. Sael walked over and placed his palm against the trunk.

  "Good morning," he said quietly. "May I help?"

  The tree obviously didn't answer with words, but when he closed his eyes and let his magic seep through the bark, he felt the response. A sense of heaviness, of strain. The way the sap struggled to flow past the damaged sections and the living branches had been compensating for years, stretching themselves thin to keep the whole organism alive. There was a tiredness to it.

  Sael stood there, eyes half-closed, feeling the wood's structure, the interruptions in the flow of nutrients, the parts that had been starving.

  "I understand," he murmured.

  He reached into his inventory and pulled out a small glass bottle. He uncorked it and poured it carefully over the damaged sections of bark, watching as it seeped into the wood, spreading through the tree's system like water through dry earth.

  [You have used: Verdant Renewal Elixir]

  The dead branches didn't suddenly spring back to life. That would've been wasteful and unnecessary. Instead, they simply... fell away. Detached cleanly from the trunk and dropped to the grass below without fanfare. The living parts of the tree straightened, thickened, the damaged sections sealing with fresh bark that grew over the wounds in smooth, healthy layers. New growth didn't burst forth all at once, but the buds that had been waiting dormant swelled visibly, ready to unfold when they were supposed to instead of struggling in the tree's compromised state.

  Through his palm, he felt something like relief. Gratitude, maybe, in the way a tree could express such things.

  Sael stepped back, turning the empty bottle over in his hand. That had been the last of it. He'd need to brew a new batch soon. Verdant Renewal Elixir, anti-baldness potions—though he hadn't needed one of those in over a century until a few days ago in Gatsby, but the possibility was still there—health potions, mana tonics. All the basics. And he'd need to teach Orion how to make them too, since the boy would be consuming them in quantity during his development.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught Oz's head turning, tracking Orion's progress. The boy was on his fifth lap now, pace already starting to flag.

  Sael stepped back from the tree, examined his work, and nodded. Better.

  The wood he'd collected earlier—at night, before Orion had slept—lay in neat sections near the base of the hill. The logs floated up [Telekinesis], drifting through the air to settle in front of him.

  Chairs first.

  He ran his magic through the grain of the wood [Structural Transmutation], and the logs reshaped themselves. Fibers slid past each other until what had been rough timber was now something with a seat, a back, four legs. Functional. Solid.

  He made three more, each one faster than the last.

  The table came next. He flattened the surface, smoothed it, coaxed legs down from the corners. When he rapped his knuckles against it, there was no wobble.

  Sael stepped back and looked at the furniture. It looked... domestic. He tried to remember the last time he'd made something like this and came up empty.

  Orion's footsteps were slower now. The boy was struggling but hadn't stopped.

  The swing was simpler. Two lengths of rope from his storage, a plank of wood. He bored holes through the ends with [Precision Force], threaded the rope, tied it to the branch of the tree he'd just healed. He gave it a test push. It swung smoothly.

  He hoped little Margaret would like this, she used to love the swing whenever she'd come visit as a child.

  Now it was time for the garden.

  He scattered seeds across cleared earth, vegetables, fruits, the kind of thing any farmer would recognize. They tumbled through the air and landed where the soil would suit them best.

  He knelt, pressed both palms to the ground, and poured magic into the earth [Accelerated Growth].

  Roots drove downward. Stems pushed up, breaking the surface, unfurling leaves. A tomato plant climbed past his knee, then his waist. Green fruits swelled on its vines and ripened to red. Carrots erupted from the soil, their tops bushy. A melon vine sprawled across the ground, already bearing fruit.

  He created water from nothing [Elemental Creation] and let it rain down over the plants in a fine mist.

  The garden looked like it had been growing for months.

  Behind him, Orion's footsteps had stopped. Sael glanced over his shoulder and found the boy bent over, hands on his knees, gasping. Oz had shifted position on the roof, watching.

  "Everything okay there?!" Sael called down from the hill.

  Orion looked up, face red and sweating, and managed a shaky thumbs up. "I'm—I'm alrigh—"

  He puked. Ah.

  From the roof, even at this distance, Sael heard Oz's voice drift down. "Pathetic."

  The chicken turned and went back to his deer.

  "You can stop now, Orion," Sael said.

  The boy straightened slowly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "But... I only did sixteen."

  "That's fine. I didn't actually expect you to do a hundred." Sael walked down the hill toward him. "I just wanted to see your baseline. Now I know where we're starting from."

  Orion stared at him, still breathing hard. "So... all that was just a test?"

  "All that was just a test." Sael stopped a few feet away and gestured at the furniture and garden he'd made. "Come on. Catch your breath. Are you hungry?"

  "Famished," Orion admitted.

  A deer leg dropped between them with a solid thump.

  "Whoa!" Orion jumped back, startled.

  Sael looked up at the roof. Oz stood there, the rest of the deer carcass gripped in his talons.

  "Thanks," Sael said.

  "Bwak," Oz replied, and leapt off the roof with his prize, disappearing around the side of the cottage.

  Sael felt like that particular bwak had meant something along the lines of sure, no problem.

  He looked back at Orion, who was staring at the deer leg like it had fallen from the sky. "Come on. I'll show you how to prepare it properly."

  Suddenly, movement caught Sael's eye in the distance. A cart, approaching along the path that led to his cottage.

  He turned to look, and found the cart was still far off, but he could make out a figure at the window. A hand raised, waving.

  It was young Ilsa.

  He waved back, allowing himself a smile.

  Then another head appeared at the window—grey hair, weathered face—and Sael's smile widened. Little Margaret. She was waving too, enthusiastic even from this distance.

  The swing. She'd love it, wouldn't she? He glanced back at the tree on the hill, at the ropes swaying gently in the breeze. She used to love swings when she was a child. But then again... it had been centuries. She'd probably outgrown it by now, hadn't she?

  Sael hesitated, suddenly uncertain. Was the swing infantilizing? Should he take it down before they arrived? He didn't want Margaret to think he saw her as—

  A third head suddenly emerged through a window on the cart's roof: Headmaster Koleen Andor.

  Even from this distance, Sael could read his face. The set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders.

  "Hmm."

  Something was wrong, and Sael's smile faded.