Ares Valecrest woke up because the world decided to hum.
Not the polite hum of bees or the threatening hum of a wasp. It was the kind of hum that lives under moss and in the belly of old trees — the sound of things remembering themselves. Ares, ten years and three months old, opened one eye, then the other, and grinned like a boy who had just discovered a new hiding place.
He was half-buried in pine needles, a crooked stick across his lap, and a small, sticky jar of something that smelled faintly of honey and lightning was rolled against his knee. He blinked once and the hum tightened to a note he could almost taste.
"Aha," he mumbled into his sleeve. "Magic is being rude again."
He had learned to be casual about forest rudeness. The Valecrest estate—what little of it the maps remembered—had a way of teaching a child that the world would never be neat. Their name had been the sort of thing old wizards muttered with an odd mixture of reverence and pity; they brewed potions that made scholars itch with jealousy, and then someone had decided those potions were too strange to explain, so the Valecrests slid into a footnote and then into a rumor. Ares didn't care about footnotes. He cared about jars that could hum.
He scooped the jar up. Inside, something tiny whirred like a trapped bell. A moth, maybe, but its wings were dusted with a pale, silver granulation that made the inside of the jar glow like a captured moon. When he touched the lid, a thread of warmth tickled his palm.
Then, like a clockwork box opening, a line of text appeared in his head as simple and dry as a label on a spice jar:
[SYSTEM: ARCANE FORAGER ACTIVATED]
[Occupational Interface: Passive]
[Essence Detected: Lunar Dust x1]
[Log: Newessence Catalogued — VALECREST_01]
Ares snorted. He slapped the dirt from his trousers and stared at his palm as if it might answer back.
"This is new," he said aloud. "Is it rude to have a system? Do systems need tea?"
There was no reply. The system did not look like the sort of thing that required manners. It was not a voice in his head with opinions; it was a label-maker — neat, segmented, and useful. Useful, Ares decided, was an excellent kind of friend.
He remembered, in pieces at first. Flashes like spilled ink: a laboratory lit by gas, the scent of crushed basil and heated iron, a woman's hand steady as a metronome as it tipped vials. Then a boy's face he had not expected — his previous life's face — not old, not childlike, just utterly himself. Names floated briefly: techniques he could almost taste and then the lake swallowed them. He clapped his hands over his ears. The forest's hum swelled like a held breath.
"Right," he said, settling down against the roots of a tree that smelled like cinnamon and rain. "So I remember things. That's inconveniently convenient."
The system ticked another line into place.
[Memory Recovery: 14%]
[Heritage Matched: VALECREST — Potioneer Line]
[Suggestion: Observe & Collect]
Ares laughed — a loose, sunshiny sound. He liked suggestions. He liked less the idea of anyone expecting him to do anything about them.
He studied the jar again. The moth inside beat its luminous wings and cast little crescents of light across his hands. He put his finger to the glass. The moth did a small, dignified bow.
[Action: Attempt Extraction? Y/N] flashed like a soft, polite prompt.
Ares considered three very important things in quick succession: naps, snacks, and whether pressing the lid would make the moth sing.
"Yes," he said, much to his own surprise.
The lid came off like a question. The moth unfurled and a sliver of dust, like powdered starlight, drifted into the air and dissolved across the hollow in his palm. The world seemed to blink. The hum stepped down a note and then settled, like a kettle content after boiling.
[Essence Extracted: Moonmoth Dust]
[Properties: Liminal, Echoing]
[Synthesis Possibility: Dream-Tea Base]
[Occupation Registered: Arcane Forager Lv.1]
"Arcane Forager," Ares repeated thoughtfully. The title felt ridiculous and honest both. He tipped his head, considering the idea of making a living out of wandering around and pocketing the world's stray magic.
He imagined calling himself that in a market and some disdainful shopkeeper saying, "Arcane Forager, is it? What a quaint affectation." Ares grinned. "Quaint" sounded like a good aesthetic.
He pushed his feet deeper into the moss and lay back. The sunlight fell through the leaves in warm, lazy strips. Already the system pulled at the edges of his thoughts, cataloguing. It wasn't bossy. It just took notes like a very patient librarian.
Memory fragments came in little waves. He saw stucco walls lined with jars labeled in a looping hand. He saw diagrams of plants that laughed when the ink dried, because Valecrest potions were never content to be tame. He saw a single line he could not place: a recipe that spoke of catching the sound of sleep.
Ares, who liked to tinker more than study, fetched a stub of charcoal and began doodling in the dirt — not illustration but notation: one dot for warmth, two dots for cold, a looping squiggle that he thought might mean "singing." The system recorded them with unobtrusive calm.
[New Notation Registered: Valecrest Glyph Set — Proto]
He yawned, in the way of all children who have suddenly remembered that nothing in particular needs doing. The moth settled again on his knee as if to listen. He remembered someone humming over a pot once, a mood more than a tune, and the sound had felt like bread rising.
A thought curled into his head like a small cat: what if you could make a tea that taught you small things while you dozed? He imagined roly-poly pastries with philosophy inspired by dreams, teapots that wrote tiny poems on their own lids.
[Idea Detected: Dream-Tea] the system noted.
Ares grinned so broadly his cheeks hurt. He liked the word "dream." It presented endless possibilities for naps.
He brewed little experiments over the next hour — when he said hour, he meant an hour made of five-minute naps and tentative prods. He crushed moonmoth dust with a pebble until it sang — he liked it better when it hummed — added a scrap of wild mint, and boiled water in a dented kettle that had belonged to someone who liked a little chaos in the shape of pots.
The liquid turned a color that made him pause: not tea-brown, not clear, but the kind of silver that knows how to blush. It smelled like old stories and the time of day when the sun is indecisive.
He sipped.
Something small and warm slipped across the inside of his skull. Not a vision, exactly, but a suggestion — like a museum guide whispering the best secret on the second floor. He knew, for the span of three heartbeats, the way a leaf could whisper a spell if you stooped low enough. He knew how the forest arranged its light so the mushrooms could sing at dusk.
Then the sensation faded, leaving him light and bright and ridiculously pleased with himself.
"Okay," he announced to no one, to the moth, to the roots, to a squirrel who had paused its acrobatics to watch. "That was not nothing. We will, at some point, call it…something that reminds people to keep looking."
The system, forever helpful, logged the moment.
[Prototype Created: Dreambrew (Low Stability)]
[Effect: Brief Pattern-Perception]
[Note: Refinement Recommended — Possible Future: Elixir of Reverie]
Ares pulled his feet up and hugged his knees. The words "Elixir of Reverie" tasted faintly like a secret bookmark. He had all the focus of a cat and none of the ambition of a general — perfect conditions for accidental genius.
He imagined, briefly and vividly, a room full of people leaning over his potions, their faces flushed with ideas, and then a stern man in a drab robe making a noise of either suspicion or envy — he couldn't tell which — at the doorway. The thought had a comic timing he liked, so he made a face at it.
"Let them come," he said. "Bring cookies. Preferably with jam."
If the world had a sense of humor — and it often did — it filed that wish away.
As twilight began to stitch the forest together, Ares gathered his small spoils. Moonmoth dust — stored under a leaf. A little vial of sapous song in case songs ever needed bottling. A note of his own handwriting (in dirt) that said: TEST SLEEP — WRITE DOWN IF THE TEAPOT SINGS.
[Inventory Saved: VALECREST_01 — Moonmoth Dust x1]
[Occupational XP +2]
He slept under the roots of the old tree because the tree smelled like safety and because he couldn't be bothered to walk all the way home. The system noted his rest and the way the forest hummed warmer around him, like a blanket folded with care.
In the quiet dark, while the world whispered and the moon made a puddle of itself on the leaves, Ares dreamed lightly. The dreams were not prophetic so much as cooperative: they nudged ideas forward as a potter nudges clay. Somewhere in that gentle dreaming, a single bright possibility took seed — a tiny thought with the shape of a jar and a label that read, in a hand he loved, for those who wish to see how magic remembers.
He woke up grinning.
"Morning," he told the moth. "We're going to be inconveniently famous someday. Sounds like fun."
The moth flapped once in agreement. The system, efficient and unopinionated, logged the sunrise.
[Time: Dawn]
[Status: Arcane Forager — Active]
[Message: Continue Exploration]
Ares got up, stretched like a cat considering a jump, and put the lid back on the jar. He tucked it into his pocket next to an old coin and the stub of charcoal. He clapped dirt off both hands and waved a careless hand at the trees.
"Come on, then," he said. "Show me your secrets. But be quick about it—there's a very important nap schedule I need to keep."
He walked deeper into the woods with the sort of relaxed curiosity that had, for better or worse, always been the Valecrest specialty. Behind him, the forest hummed and took notes. Ahead, the world had no idea what Ares would brew next — and the system, perfectly dutiful, only waited to record it