Theo looked at the table in front of him. Two empty mugs. He placed the vial that Elara showed him next to them.

  “So, what happened here,” he mumbled while trying to reflect, “was simple. I thought about the drink, and it somehow did it on its own. What if…”

  He mixed water with a crushed Adacus leaf and thought. Energy Drink, come!

  But his hands didn’t shimmer, the water did not stir itself. It sat inside the mug, clear as it had been, and Theo could watch pieces of the leaf sink to the bottom.

  He pushed the mug away and left, only to return later with a small pot full of summerberries. They were quickly processed into a paste and mixed with water. This time, he did not think about his drink, and the mixture stayed as it was. A tiny sip. And no reaction from his body.

  “Got that figured out at least… What did the voice say again?”

  Theo’s eyes widened as he connected the dots. The fire. He hadn’t struggled at all. Was this…? Next thing, he grabbed the chair that broke when the man visited. Leg and base were quickly connected. Let’s see what this is worth.

  He grabbed a large spoon, and after some searching, he even found a few nails when searching through some drawers in the common room. He placed the nail and hit it. Once more, it felt as if an invisible hand guided his fingers holding the nail as well as his hand holding the spoon. Two nails went right through the leg and base, connecting them tightly.

  Theo played around with the leg carefully before putting it to the test. It stood on the floor and carried his weight. He moved around a bit, but it stayed solid.

  So, the chair went under his table again, finding its way next to the others.

  This really works, hm? This feels like some sort of…and if it is one…

  He assembled different containers and went to work. Berries were crushed, water was mixed, and hands turned green. After a few bottles, Theo noticed that the color that came from his hands was less intense each time he repeated the process. The mug stirred itself more slowly, and when he continued with the next flask, his hands didn’t shimmer at all. The mug just stayed.

  So this is how it is, hm? The slow understanding of what was happening made Theo’s eyes glimmer, filled with curiosity.

  He had used the exact same recipe, only diluted differently. Three berries went into each container, and depending on their size, they were mixed with either more or less water. They were placed on the counter, ordered by size, and naturally, the ones with a higher portion of water had a less intense scent on them.

  Theo spent the rest of the day reading about different plants. A Marrowleaf was supposed to have a healing effect. Ashmint, which grew in his garden, could be used to help with burns if processed and applied to a bandage.

  There was so much more information; it became clear that whoever wrote the books expected their audience to know the basics of Alchemy. No instructions at all. The most precise measurement he could find was regarding the use of Blightcap. “Don’t use too much… fucking hell.” The devices that piled up weren’t mentioned at all, either.

  But it was a start. They joked at him for sucking and being weaker than Nenn. Which he probably was either way, if he had the right idea of what [Guard] meant. However, the knowledge from the previous inhabitant was left for him to absorb. Lots of ingredients were already there, and he had figured out the very basic process of creating a potion, as it was called in the book. And today, he had learned to respect his craft.

  Theo did not notice when evening arrived.

  The light inside the house did not change much. It never did. The windows were narrow and the glass uneven, bending the outside world into something softer. The air cooled. The wood shifted. Somewhere above him, a quiet creak travelled through the beams like a slow breath.

  He finished arranging the books and manuscripts neatly and leaned both hands on the table.

  “Alright,” he murmured. “That’s enough for today.”

  The sentence sounded reasonable. Responsible. It did not change the fact that he remained standing there for another minute, eyes moving from bottle to bottle as if one of them might suddenly reveal something he had missed.

  Nothing did. And the room settled.

  Theo pushed himself away from the table and crossed into the common room. The chair he had repaired stood where he had placed it earlier. He paused next to it without sitting. The nails held. The leg was straight. When he pressed down on the backrest, it answered with the quiet resistance of something that knew what it was supposed to be.

  He lowered himself slowly once again.

  The wood creaked under his weight. Not weak. Just acknowledging him.

  “That still feels weird,” Theo said disbelievingly.

  The words did not ask for an answer. He leaned back and let his head rest against the wall. For a moment, he focused on the small things his body reported back to him. The heaviness in his forearms. A dull warmth in his fingers. The faint pressure behind his eyes that felt less like pain and more like… space that had been used.

  He exhaled.

  Somewhere in the house, something shifted.

  Theo opened his eyes.

  It was not a loud sound. Not a knock. Not a step. Houses made noises. Wood moved. Old places settled into themselves constantly. He knew that. Anyone who had ever lived somewhere older than a new apartment knew that.

  Still, he listened.

  Silence returned quickly, but it was not empty silence. It had layers. The distant tick of cooling metal. Fabric brushing wood where a curtain moved slightly, although there was no wind. The faint clink of glass behind him.

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  Theo turned his head.

  The bottles on the table stood exactly where he had left them. Ordered by size. The smallest one was slightly tilted because the base was uneven. He remembered noticing that earlier. He should have fixed it right away.

  Now it stood straight.

  He pushed himself up and walked back into the room. His steps were slow, not cautious, just deliberate in the way people moved when they tried to confirm something without admitting that they were checking.

  The bottle did not wobble when he touched it.

  “Hm.”

  He looked around the table. Nothing else seemed different. Mortar where he left it. Leaves drying near the window. The spoon with the small dent from hitting the nail rested beside the bowl. Ordinary. Consistent. Normal enough that he almost felt embarrassed for noticing the bottle at all.

  Theo shook his head lightly.

  “You’re tired.”

  That explained most things lately.

  He gathered the books he had been reading and carried them to the shelf. The wood there was darker, polished by years of hands pulling volumes in and out. Some spaces were empty. Others held stacks that leaned into each other like they were sharing weight.

  Theo slid one book back into place.

  For a second, his fingers lingered on the spine. The leather was warmer than the air. Not by much. Just enough that he noticed because he had been noticing small differences all day.

  His hand withdrew slowly.

  “…okay.”

  No conclusion followed. He moved on.

  The kitchen area smelled faintly of berries and crushed leaves. Not unpleasant. Just… alive. Theo rinsed the mortar, watching it swirl down the basin before disappearing. The water left thin streaks that looked almost like veins before they faded.

  His shoulders dropped a little.

  Work left traces. That made sense.

  When he turned, he almost bumped into a workbench.

  He stopped.

  Something about the arrangement felt… tighter. Not cleaner. Not moved in any obvious way. But the empty space between tools seemed smaller, as if objects had settled closer to where they were useful rather than where they had simply been dropped.

  Theo blinked at it.

  “That’s new.”

  He tried to remember how it had looked this morning, but his memory refused to be precise. He could picture individual items. The chipped flask. The knife with the worn handle. The small brush. But the distances between them were blurry, like a photograph that never focused on the background.

  Theo placed the mortar down.

  It fit.

  Not perfectly – nothing here was perfect – but it rested in a shallow indentation in the wood he did not remember being there. The surface held it without rolling. A tiny adjustment that made the space feel… cooperative.

  Theo stared at his hands, then looked around.

  “Am I doing that?”

  The question did not carry excitement. It carried the careful tone of someone trying not to jump to conclusions because conclusions had consequences.

  No answer came.

  The house creaked again, softer this time, almost like a response that stopped before becoming one.

  Theo let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.

  “Right,” he said quietly. “We’re not going down that road yet.”

  He wiped his hands on a cloth and stepped outside.

  The air was cooler. Evening had deepened without asking for permission. The ruins around the house held shadows that were heavier in a way. Straight lines broken by time. Stone remembering shapes that no longer existed.

  Theo walked along the edge of the garden.

  The plants he had touched earlier seemed unchanged at first glance. Ashmint leaves spread low and stubborn. Thin stems of something he had not identified yet leaned toward the last light. The soil was dry and probably needed to be watered.

  He crouched.

  One of the Ashmint patches was fuller than he remembered. Not grown – that would be ridiculous – but less sparse. Leaves filled a gap that had been bare earlier. Theo hovered his hand above it without touching and pushed the air into his nose. It smelled different as well, hard to identify. But where he had smelled herbs earlier, it now smelled like a moist resin.

  “Memory again,” he muttered.

  Still, he stayed there longer than necessary.

  The wind carried a faint scent that did not belong to the garden. Earth, yes. Moss. Something sharper underneath. Animal. Not close. Not recent.

  Theo straightened slowly and looked beyond the broken wall of the ruin next to his house.

  The tree line was darker now. Shapes layered over shapes. Nothing moved. He watched anyway. Not searching. The same way he had begun acknowledging limits inside the house.

  His gaze dropped to the ground near the edge of the garden.

  The soil there was softer. He stepped closer without thinking much about why. Small depressions marked the dirt. Not footprints exactly. Too light. Too irregular. As if something had paused rather than passed through.

  Theo crouched again.

  He placed his fingers near one of the marks without touching it. The shape could have been anything. A shifted stone. Water. An animal he did not know yet. The world was full of explanations that did not involve him.

  Still.

  “These weren’t here this morning,” he said.

  The statement felt different from the others. Less certain, but heavier. Not because the marks were threatening. They were not. If anything, they suggested hesitation. Curiosity.

  Theo sat back on his heels.

  “Fair enough.”

  He stood and looked once more toward the trees. The scent lingered at the edge of perception, impossible to follow without imagination doing most of the work. He decided not to chase it. After all, he had spent the last few days learning that forcing things rarely produced results worth trusting.

  Behind him, the house creaked, grabbing Theo’s attention back.

  From outside, it looked the same as always. A structure that should not be intact among ruins that had given up long ago. Windows dark. A door slightly uneven. Nothing that suggested permission, awareness, intention, or whatever his tired brain was trying to name.

  Still, the distance between the door and where he stood felt smaller than it had this morning.

  Inside, the air held warmth that had not been there before. Not heat. Just the lingering presence of activity, like a room remembering life. The bottles caught what little light remained and returned it in dull reflections that made the table look occupied even when it wasn’t.

  He touched one of the flasks he had prepared earlier.

  Cool glass. Faint residue along the rim. Work completed, but not finished in the way a closed task felt finished. More like something waiting for more without demanding it.

  Theo smiled slightly.

  “That’s new too.” Although he did not know if he meant the feeling or the observation.

  Night arrived quietly.

  The house did not feel empty. Not crowded either. Just inhabited by the consequences of what he had done that day.

  Theo paused at the doorway to the sleeping room. He closed the curtains and let darkness settle into his bedroom. Opening the door almost felt like part of the routine already.

  For a second, he listened again. To wood. To distant insects. To the small, almost imperceptible sound of glass shifting somewhere downstairs as temperatures changed and materials adjusted to time passing.

  Nothing asked for his attention.

  Theo nodded once to himself and closed his eyes, waiting for the next day.

  Inside, the house settled around Theo like a space that had begun, slowly and without announcement, to recognize the pattern of his hands.

  Outside, Theo could hear it coming back to the garden. Not real steps – just three light taps, almost too careful to notice. And somehow, the first thing Theo dreamed of tonight was something rotting away in dirt.