The next day, the classroom had been transformed.

  Long wooden tables were spread with protective mats, crystal jars of stabilized plant samples, caged animals, and dozens of parchment diagrams. Above it all, a faint green glow from the enchanted ceiling illuminated the room like filtered sunlight through leaves.

  Professor Emeric, stood at the front with his hands clasped behind his back. He wore a forest-green robe embroidered with vines and silver thread—symbols of Virgo authority.

  “Today,” he began, his voice calm but firm, “you will attempt your first minor application of living alchemy. You’ve studied the manuscripts, seen the code, and now… it’s time to try.”

  He walked slowly down the aisle. “This is not a game. We do not force nature to obey—we guide it. You will not create monsters. You will study. You will coax. You will learn.”

  He tapped the board, instructions appeared:

  Objective: Enhance or modify one trait in a living subject.

  Rules: Only surface-level traits. No altering core instincts. No merging multiple species. No forced behavioral changes.

  Healers on standby. Professor has full override authority.

  Ethan sat with Callan and Orion at their usual table. In front of them: a potted vine and a plump squirrel-like creature with wide eyes and twitching ears.

  “I call dibs on the squirrel,” Orion said immediately, leaning forward. “We bond through chaos.”

  Callan snorted. “Let’s hope it doesn’t sprout wings and eat your face.”

  They laughed.

  Ethan, already activating his Lion’s Sight, peered into the small vine’s structure—watching how the microscopic codes twisted upward, moving toward sunlight.

  He reached gently with his aura, recalling what he had learned yesterday in the library. Tiny notations from the anatomy scrolls overlapped with the code patterns now visible to him.

  “Increase photosensitivity… reinforce stem flexibility… mimic climbing ivy…”

  His aura flowed like a golden thread, careful and slow. The vine shimmered faintly, its leaves darkening slightly, adjusting—tuning themselves toward the warm crystal ceiling.

  “Interesting,” Professor Emeric murmured behind him. “Subtle control. You’ll make a fine field manipulator.”

  Ethan blinked. “Thank you, Professor.”

  Meanwhile, Orion was… well, trying.

  He ran his aura through the squirrel and squinted hard. “Alright little guy, you’re gonna run like a windfox.”

  The squirrel gave him a deadpan stare.

  Orion focused again, this time trying to isolate the creature’s paw tendon composition, adjusting it with flexible elastic attributes from a frog-like species he’d seen in the codex. The aura transfer flickered—and the squirrel took off with a sudden springy leap, launching into the air and bouncing off the table, landing in Ethan’s lap.

  “Hey! Progress!” Orion grinned.

  “Progress toward chaos,” Callan muttered.

  Callan, by contrast, had chosen to alter the vine’s structure to create a more rigid outer stem—attempting to make it capable of defending itself from predators. His changes were careful but visible. The vine twisted upward, the tip hardening slightly and splitting like a defensive spine.

  Other students around the room had varying results:

  ? A Virgo girl named Maelis managed to thicken the fur of her test creature to repel cold—a small success.

  ? A boy named Harlon accidentally made his plant’s leaves too sensitive, and it folded in on itself at the slightest movement.

  ? One student fused two plant samples without control—until the Professor intervened with a flick of his hand, neutralizing the merging aura.

  “Fools rush in,” Professor Emeric said calmly. “Respect the soul of living things. Or you’ll lose control.”

  Back at Ethan’s table, his vine had begun coiling toward his arm—not aggressively, but curious. He had unintentionally given it light-sensing mobility.

  “Seems like it likes you,” Lysandra remarked, having passed by to check on the progress.

  Ethan chuckled, gently moving the vine back into the pot.

  “I think it’s learning from me.”

  She smirked. “Then you’d better not teach it how to brood.”

  Callan and Orion both cracked up.

  As class wrapped up, Professor Emeric addressed them once more:

  “You’ve touched the threshold of something ancient. Living alchemy is not invention—it is conversation. Listen well to the creatures and plants you shape. They will always answer… even if not with words.”

  As they packed up, Ethan looked once more at the small vine, now curving lightly in his direction, its leaves glinting with the faintest green-gold sheen.

  “Classes ended early today,” Orion said, stretching as the four of them stepped out of the Academy’s main hall. “Feels wrong to just head back and nap.”

  Callan raised a brow. “Since when have you ever turned down a nap?”

  “I’m evolving,” Orion said solemnly, placing a hand over his chest.

  Ethan chuckled, walking alongside Lysandra. The sun was high, warm light spilling over the rooftops of the Academy, casting soft shadows across the courtyard. The tension from the marshland mission had long since faded, and after days of lectures and study, there was a rare sense of calm between them.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Callan was the one who voiced what they were all already thinking.

  “We should head to the outer fields. The forest stretches far enough to give us space, and with what we learned in class…” He glanced toward Ethan. “Might be time to experiment with living alchemy.”

  Lysandra gave a slow nod. “Controlled experiments, of course.”

  “Of course,” Orion echoed with a grin.

  They left the Academy grounds through the side gate, where cobblestone faded into well-worn paths, eventually spilling into tall grasses and mossy tree lines. The further they walked, the quieter the world became—just the sound of leaves in the wind and the gentle crunch of twigs beneath their boots.

  They found a clearing by a bubbling stream. Trees bowed overhead, casting a gentle green glow across the field. It was the kind of place that seemed untouched by the chaos of kingdoms or politics. A place where the world simply… was.

  “This’ll do,” Ethan said softly.

  They unpacked small satchels—nothing heavy. Orion had brought a few traps, Callan a compact bow, and Lysandra, of course, a set of metal-carved tools she had no intention of using. “This is a hunt, not a dissecting table,” Orion teased. She responded with a cool smirk and didn’t dignify him with a reply.

  The conversation lulled into silence as they scattered slightly, each exploring their own patch of land. The goal wasn’t to kill for sport—it was to understand. To observe. To see if the theories they learned in the Virgo lecture hall held up in the wild.

  Ethan knelt near a patch of moss, brushing his fingers against a crawling beetle no bigger than his fingernail. With his Lion’s Sight, he traced the flow of life inside it—the pulsing of energy through its tiny body, the patterns of movement encoded in instinct.

  He sent a whisper of his aura into the beetle.

  Not to change it—at first. Just to listen.

  And slowly, the beetle stilled.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Ethan murmured.

  Then, using the principles from class, he modified a single segment of the beetle’s wing, making the muscle denser and more sensitive to wind vibration. The beetle shivered, then took off—its flight straighter, more precise.

  Ethan watched it vanish through the trees, a whisper of thought chasing it. A second later, it returned. Not exactly to him—but to a nearby thicket.

  A rustle.

  And then a flash of red fur.

  A blood-rabbit, small but fast—its ears alert, teeth sharp. The kind of predator most overlooked.

  Ethan held his breath.

  Callan, watching from a tree branch nearby, notched an arrow to his enchanted bow. His threads shimmered with translucent light as they curled around the arrow’s shaft.

  He fired.

  The arrow arced, then curved mid-flight, bending sharply as Callan guided it with a twitch of his fingers. The tip embedded softly into the earth—just beside the rabbit. Enough to startle, not kill.

  The rabbit bolted.

  Straight toward Orion.

  From the tall grass, Orion lunged—his golden pendant now shaped into a thin blade, its chain near invisible. With a flick, he guided the chain around the rabbit’s path. The moment it passed through, the blade spun midair and—snap!—it caught the rabbit’s leg, tangling it just enough to halt its sprint.

  The rabbit didn’t squeal. It froze. Fear wide in its eyes.

  Orion knelt, untangling it with care. “We’re not killing it,” he said softly. “Just learning.”

  Lysandra appeared behind him, brows slightly lifted. “You surprise me sometimes.”

  “Only sometimes?” he said with mock offense.

  She ignored him, turning her attention to the rabbit. With a gentle touch of her aura, she ran an enhancement through its hind leg—reinforcing the bone, tightening the muscle structure. A slow modification, one meant to repair.

  The rabbit trembled. Then stilled.

  After a few seconds, it leapt—and sprinted faster than it had before. Vanishing.

  They stood in silence.

  Then Ethan said, “We could… try more. A coordinated effort.”

  Callan nodded. “Use insects as scouts. Modify nearby vines into trip wires. Encourage the trees to funnel movement toward us.”

  It became a game.

  A quiet, natural collaboration.

  Orion used a swarm of modified moths, their wings now lightly glowing, to hover through the upper canopy—eyes in the sky.

  Callan tuned his bow, feeding aura through the threads, able to curve the arrows even sharper now, embedding them silently around the perimeter.

  Lysandra bent thin reeds of grass, turning them into living sensory tripwires. When something passed through, the tips flared green.

  And Ethan—he sat in the center, feeling the living code pulse through the land. Every plant had structure. Every insect, a system. He whispered changes, not as commands—but as suggestions. Encouragements.

  A flock of birds took off suddenly in the distance.

  And a trio of boars broke through the brush.

  Heavy. Wild. Thick tusks. But slowed by age.

  Callan fired. Arrows rained.

  The boars turned—and were corralled by vines that rose like snakes, twisted by Orion.

  Lysandra cast shimmering light across the field, reflecting sunbeams through her modified quartz stones, blinding the boars long enough for Ethan to react.

  He didn’t strike.

  He redirected—altering the terrain just slightly to guide them away, like water rolling down a new hill.

  The hunt ended without blood.

  Only understanding.

  They sat around a fire after, the sun now low in the sky, its golden light painting the trees in amber.

  “That,” Orion said, flopping onto his back, “was fun.”

  “It was effective,” Lysandra admitted. “Almost… elegant.”

  Ethan didn’t speak. He was watching a beetle on a nearby leaf, its wings pulsing gently.

  He had seen something in the forest today.

  Not power.

  Not danger.

  But potential.

  Alchemy wasn’t just transformation.

  It was harmony.

  And he was only just beginning to understand what that meant.

  The late evening air held a certain stillness, the kind only found when the academy settled down after a long day. After returning from the hunt, the group split, offering sleepy farewells before heading into their respective dormitories. They were tired—both from the effort and the mental weight of what they had learned through living alchemy.

  Ethan and Orion walked side by side down the dim corridor toward their shared room. Neither spoke much. Sometimes silence between close friends said everything.

  Inside their quarters, the familiar warmth of flickering mage-lamps and the soft creak of floorboards greeted them. Orion dropped onto his bed like a stone. “Good hunt,” he mumbled into his pillow. “But if I ever see another vine try to wrap around my leg, I’m burning it.”

  Ethan offered a quiet laugh as he walked past him. His eyes moved instinctively toward the windowsill.

  Empty.

  Solis is out again.

  He was used to it now—his strange, feline companion often disappeared on mysterious ventures. At first, Ethan would stay up late, wondering where Solis went or what he was doing. Now he understood—Solis moved with a purpose. One Ethan wasn’t yet ready to understand.

  And perhaps that was alright.

  Orion’s breathing slowed into the rhythm of sleep. Minutes passed.

  Ethan sat on his bed, pretending to drift off.

  But his mind was burning.

  There was an idea—an image—that had refused to leave him since they returned. Not from the hunt. Not even from class. But from the pages of a weathered biology manuscript he had studied in the library. A diagram of the nervous system—lines of thought flowing like tree roots, like rivers of intention buried beneath layers of flesh and bone.

  And he had seen something eerily similar beneath the soil.

  Roots of trees, tangled and glowing faintly when viewed with Lion’s Sight, pulsing with a quiet intelligence.

  What if… they weren’t so different?

  He waited until Orion was fully asleep, then stood.

  Pulling on his coat, he slipped through the dormitory hall with practiced silence and made his way into the open courtyard beyond the main towers of the Academy. The moon lit the marble walkways in pale silver. The air was crisp, but calm.

  He took the winding path that led him to his usual spot—a quiet slope nestled beneath one of the oldest trees in the Academy grounds. The tree was vast, its thick branches stretching toward the stars like silent prayers. It had stood for generations, unmoving.

  Tonight, Ethan sat at its roots.

  He looked around once more.

  No students. No instructors.

  Just him and the gentle hush of leaves.

  Ethan closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and tapped into his Lion’s Sight.

  The world shifted.

  The veil lifted.

  The wind became rivers of motion, the air a flowing field of particles woven with glowing threads of code. The trees, once still, now pulsed with slow, steady signals—ancient programs running across the matrix of nature.

  And beneath him—the great tree’s roots shimmered with the same kind of branching, coded complexity he’d seen in the rabbit’s neural diagram.

  He reached for a low branch and carefully broke off a small piece.

  Holding it in his palm, he examined its structure—not physically, but through the intricate code visible through his awakened eyes.

  It was old, slow, patient.

  Not like an animal.

  But not entirely unlike it either.

  He focused, his aura wrapping the branch in a golden glow. Carefully, Ethan recalled the code of the rabbit he’d seen earlier. Quick. Nervous. Dense with feedback loops and sensory relay lines.

  There were similarities, buried deep. Foundational code. Structural rhythm. A shared heartbeat of life.

  He began to rewrite.

  Line by line.

  He didn’t force it. He guided it.

  He changed the arrangement of pulses in the wood. Thickened certain channels. Reassigned pattern routes. Increased frequency in data relays. Mimicked muscle tension. Altered feedback duration. He shaped instinct into the wood by copying the rabbit’s code.

  Sweat trickled down his brow.

  His breathing grew shallow.

  And then—

  Nothing.

  He let the branch fall gently to the grass.

  It remained still.

  A piece of wood.

  Maybe I’m reaching too far.

  But before he could stand—

  It twitched.

  A faint green shimmer ran through its length.

  The branch warped, twisting into long strands of sinewy wood, threading together like strands of hair being woven into a braid.

  Then it stood.

  Four narrow legs.

  A curved body.

  Ears of spiraled bark.

  A wooden rabbit.

  Ethan didn’t breathe.

  It tilted its head, then leapt, springing forward like the real creature it mimicked. Its movements weren’t perfect—jagged in places—but they moved. They responded.

  It turned back to him.

  Then leapt again.

  Ethan crouched and extended his hand.

  The creature jumped once more—right into his palm.

  It was warm.

  Alive, in a way.

  A creation of code and aura. Of thought and study. Of instinct and effort.

  He smiled.

  The rabbit-branch sat still in his hand.

  And then, with a deep breath, Ethan let his aura flow back into it. Reversing the thread. The energy dimmed. The structure unraveled.

  And the wooden rabbit collapsed into its original form—just a broken branch.

  He sat back, stunned.

  There was a hum in his chest. Not just pride, but understanding.

  This was more than alchemy.

  This was awakening life from lifelessness.

  And for the first time, Ethan saw the distant threads of possibility stretching into something bigger than himself.

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