He pushed himself up. The dried blood on his forehead cracked, his bruises tightening and then… fading. His wounds healed in seconds, skin knitting itself together with a faint golden glow before cooling to a sickly green shimmer. Strength surged through him, richer than anything he had ever felt.

  What’s happening to me…?

  His eyes drifted down.

  Lief lay on the ground beside him, exhausted, barely conscious. Right. Lief had used magic—real magic. That should have shocked him. But Audree felt nothing but that clawing fury drowning everything else out. On the inside, his mind felt distant and terrified.

  On the outside… he felt only wrath.

  It was like he was a passenger inside his own body, watching something else take the wheel.

  A voice—rough and uncertain—broke through the haze.

  “It seems like that kid did something to him…” the chipped-tooth man muttered.

  “His wounds—they’re healed,” another whispered.

  Audree took a step forward.

  He heard a voice rise from his own throat, low and hungry:

  I need more power.

  That wasn’t him.

  Something was wrong.

  Terribly, impossibly wrong.

  And then it hit him.

  Greed.

  A hunger that gnawed at the edges of his mind—wanting, claiming, taking.

  His keyword suddenly made terrifying sense.

  Those men…

  They weren’t just hurting him.

  They were standing between him and everything he wanted—

  his path to being a mage,

  his knowledge,

  his power.

  No.

  Not just power.

  All of it.

  With that thought burning through him, Audree raised his hand.

  “Transmute.”

  A whirl of energy cracked through the air—bright, violent—

  —and then sputtered out.

  His body had tried to do something impossible, something massive, but the attempt collapsed on itself. A backlash slammed through him, hot and sharp. His unmarked hand shimmered—then hardened into solid gold, the weight of it yanking his arm down like an anchor.

  Pain shot up to his shoulder.

  But his body—whatever was driving it—didn’t care.

  It shifted, reaching for something else.

  Greed’s Aura.

  A hiss escaped his fingers as green smoke bled from his marked arm, gathering like living fog. It drifted toward the men—slow at first, then latching onto their bodies like hungry spirits.

  “The hell is that!?” one miner screamed, stumbling back.

  Another clawed at his face as the mist seeped into him, and his eyes went wide—glazed—then wild, as if something inside him had snapped. The weaker men broke first, thrashing, sobbing, laughing, panicking—each reaction different, all of them unhinged.

  The chipped-tooth man stared at Audree with sheer horror.

  “T-That’s not a witch’s trick,” he rasped. “That’s— that’s a demon. The boy’s a demon!”

  The older miner saw the chaos erupting around him, saw his men falling apart, and something in him shattered.

  “No. No—nope, I’m done—”

  He threw down his pipe and bolted over the hills, sprinting blindly.

  The green smoke curled after him, hungry.

  And Audree—whatever was controlling him—took another step.

  Lief staggered to his feet, still breathing hard, and saw Audree moving toward the miners like a creature wearing his friend’s skin. The green aura thickened—curling, reaching, hungry.

  “Audree! Stop!” Lief shouted, voice cracking.

  The aura turned toward him like a beast noticing prey.

  Lief froze as the green mist brushed across his arm—

  —but nothing happened.

  It felt warm. Familiar.

  Like touching Audree’s mana when he’d shared it.

  He felt anger there—deep, twisting fury—but it didn’t dig into him or distort him. The energy was Audree’s, born from his leaking mana, not something that could consume its source.

  Lief understood immediately.

  Audree wasn’t trying to hurt him.

  He was hurting.

  Lief stepped forward.

  Then closer.

  Then right into the green smoke.

  Before the aura could recoil, he wrapped both arms around Audree’s torso and squeezed, burying his face into Audree’s chest.

  “I’m sorry,” Lief whispered, voice trembling. “I’m probably the reason this is happening.”

  Audree’s body stayed rigid—breath sharp, shoulders locked, eyes burning with that unnatural green-gold mix.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I was just… really angry at you.”

  Lief pressed his forehead against Audree, voice cracking.

  “Sometimes you make me feel like I’m nothing to you. Like I’m… lesser. And I shouldn’t have yelled. You’re weird, and you say things weird, and you don’t know how to show when you care—”

  The aura flickered.

  “—but these last few weeks? They’ve been the best of my life. And I’m glad I talked to you. I don’t regret any of it.”

  Audree felt something inside loosen.

  The pressure in his chest.

  The hunger twisting his thoughts.

  The voice whispering more, take, claim—

  —all of it weakened.

  The green smoke around the miners thinned.

  The madness in their eyes faded into exhaustion and confusion.

  Greed’s grip slipped.

  Audree’s knees trembled.

  Lief held him tighter, whispering, “It’s okay… It’s okay…”

  And for one fragile moment, it was.

  But then—

  Behind Lief, one of the miners—eyes wild, lip torn, pipe in hand—lurched to his feet.

  The same pipe their leader had dropped earlier.

  He swung.

  Directly toward the back of Lief’s skull.

  Something in Audree snapped.

  A spark of energy—small, desperate, but blazing—shot through his arm.

  He didn’t think.

  His body acted.

  His hand flew up, mana flaring with an explosive burst—

  And then—

  Everything stopped.

  The miner froze mid-swing, pipe inches from Lief’s head.

  Audree stood motionless, arm raised, eyes wide.

  Even the green aura seemed suspended in air, caught on an invisible hook.

  Lief blinked, then slowly pulled himself out of Audree’s arms and stepped back.

  “...Audree?”

  No response.

  He moved between them—but neither Audree nor the miner reacted.

  “What… is happening?” Lief whispered, staring at the frozen world.

  A familiar voice cut through the air.

  “Now, Audree…” Haldo’s tone was dry as sandpaper. “I know you have power now, but I cannot have my student killing people. It’s terribly bad form.”

  He stepped between Audree and the suspended miner as though strolling through a market, brushing a bit of dust from his robe.

  Lief spun around, eyes wide. “Wh–what did you do?”

  Haldo sniffed. “Saved you, it seems. And several others by the look of it.”

  Lief stared between the frozen man and Audree, mouth hanging open. “Did you—did you just stop time? That’s insane!”

  Haldo pressed two fingers to his temple and groaned.

  “Boy, what in the gods’ names are you babbling about? You have an even wilder imagination than your friend here.”

  Lief pointed frantically.

  “They’re literally not moving! How are you acting like this is normal!?”

  Haldo finally paused, eyes narrowing as he slowly turned in a circle, examining the scene with a calculating frown. The drifting particles of magic suspended like stars. Audree locked in a half-cast spell, mana boiling at his fingertips.

  Haldo rubbed his beard slowly, gathering every detail like clues in a puzzle.

  “...Hmm.”

  Behind them, some of the other miners began groaning and sitting up, startled to see Haldo standing there.

  Without looking at them, Haldo said lightly,

  “Boy—can you move those two idiots away from each other before Audree vaporizes that man?”

  Lief gulped, hurrying to the frozen figures. They weren’t light, and whatever Haldo had done made them stiff as stone, but they moved. Carefully, painfully, he dragged the miner with the pipe away from Audree’s raised hand.

  Audree’s arm was still glowing—brilliant green and gold, the magic trembling at the brink, desperate to fire. His face frozen in an expression Lief had never seen before: rage mixed with terror.

  Haldo flexed his fingers once, and the glow dimmed by a fraction—contained, but not dismissed.

  Then the old man straightened and turned to face the miners who were conscious, his voice sharp as a blade:

  “Now,” Haldo said, “can one of you explain why in the world you are beating up two teenagers in the middle of the night?”

  The silence from the miners was deafening.

  Haldo exhaled as though exhausted by the sheer incompetence of everyone present. With a flick of his wrist, a thin blue crack split open in the air beside him—silent, sharp, like reality itself had been peeled back.

  A hand—one of Haldo’s many shimmering mana-hands—reached into the rift and pulled out a wooden chair.

  He set it down, sat, crossed one leg over the other, and folded his hands.

  Lief’s jaw dropped.

  “What—what was that?”

  Haldo ignored him completely.

  “Well?” Haldo asked the conscious miners. “I’m waiting. Why are you attacking children? Spit it out. Preferably before my tea gets cold.”

  The men stared, wide-eyed, trembling. None dared speak.

  Haldo sighed deeply. “Useless. All of you.”

  He tapped his foot once.

  Just a small, rhythmic tap.

  But something shifted—not in sound, not in sight, but in sequence.

  Time itself did not move forward or backward—it simply chose a different order to proceed in.

  Reality clicked.

  The frozen tableau unlocked.

  The miner with the pipe—previously suspended mid-swing—lurched forward as though the world had skipped a beat. His feet slipped.

  He fell face-first into the dirt.

  At the same instant, the magic coiled around Audree’s arm ignited—his spell, finally released, roared upward, blasting a column of sickly green-gold energy into the sky.

  Lief yelped and ducked.

  The other miners stumbled back in raw fear.

  And Haldo, still sitting, didn’t flinch.

  “There we are,” he said calmly. “Much better. Events in the proper place.”

  He looked over his shoulder at Audree, who was blinking, dazed and barely aware of what had just happened.

  “Now that the dramatic nonsense is over,” Haldo continued, “shall we have an actual discussion?”

  Audree’s breath came shallow and unsteady.

  One moment he had been a storm—rage, power, hunger—and the next… nothing.

  Everything inside him had gone silent.

  The magic was gone.

  The anger was gone.

  Even he felt gone.

  His emotions sat in his chest like cold stones—present, but dull, disconnected, as if he were watching someone else’s life from behind glass.

  He lowered himself to the ground, legs folding under him without resistance. For a long second he just stared at the dirt. His arm—unwrapped and exposed—throbbed faintly. The runes glowed a sickly dim gold under the grime.

  His face tightened.

  Idiot.

  Stupid, reckless idiot.

  He wrapped the bandage back around his arm with shaky fingers, each loop tighter than the last, like he could strangle the mistake out of himself.

  When he finally looked up, he saw the chaos he had missed: disheveled, soaked miners being scolded by Haldo—who somehow sat in a chair that absolutely hadn't existed moments ago. Haldo wagged a finger at them like an irritated professor lecturing children.

  What in the…?

  Before he could process it, movement pulled his attention.

  Bubbles—his tiny, ridiculous slime—was aggressively wobbling after the miner who had nearly caved Lief’s skull in with a pipe. The man limped in circles trying to escape the wet, angry gelatin that kept splashing at his ankles.

  Despite everything, a tiny smile tugged at Audree’s lips.

  But it vanished the moment he lifted his left arm.

  Gold.

  His whole forearm, up to the elbow, was solid gold—heavy, unmovable.

  It didn't budge when he tried.

  Didn’t bend.

  Didn’t respond.

  “What did I do to myself…” he muttered.

  His hand rose, covering half his face, pressing into his brow like that could stop the flood building behind his skull. Shame, fear, exhaustion—they all hit him at once, like someone had opened the dam.

  And then—warmth.

  Lief’s arms wrapped around him, squeezing gently but firmly.

  Audree swallowed hard.

  That simple kindness—the quiet, grounding pressure of someone caring—sent him over the edge.

  Images flashed:

  The explosion.

  The terror on Velra’s face.

  Ina’s and Norra’s tears after the explosion.

  The disappointment.

  Every person he’d scared, annoyed, or pushed away.

  All the ways he made life harder for the people stuck loving him.

  His hand twitched reflexively toward his missing bracelet.

  Fuck, he whispered.

  “It’s okay, Audree,” Lief said softly, voice trembling with leftover fear and sincerity.

  Audree tried—gods, he tried—not to cry.

  But his body betrayed him again.

  Tears hit his knees.

  “I’m such a—fucking loser…” he thought, shoulders shaking as Lief held him tighter.

  And for once, Audree didn’t push anyone away. He just cried.