When Meka came back with Bunny, I looked at her and asked, “Can you give Bunny your mana and ask him to grow a field of grass all the way out to the edge of the sandpit? Keep it green at the edges so that it does not all catch on fire instantly and kill us when he inevitably releases his mana.”

  She barely hesitated. “I don’t know how to make it not grow green.”

  “Good,” I said. “We will talk about how to make it that later. Right now, green is exactly what I want.”

  She placed a hand against Bunny’s flank and began to channel her mana into him. I watched the process closely, this time through eyes that could see mana directly instead of inferring it from secondary effects. I activated my circuit and let it run quietly, following the flow as it moved from her into Bunny. Her output stayed consistent, and the transition between her intent and Bunny’s reception was smoother than I had expected.

  It was good work.

  There were inefficiencies in how she shaped the flow, places where instinct substituted for structure and habit for discipline. Those flaws would compound with repetition and become dangerous under pressure, but they were problems of refinement rather than failure. For now, the foundation held.

  The mana pooled inside Bunny and spread outward, responding to his nature rather than fighting against it. Grass erupted from the soil in a widening ring, thick and fast, blades forcing their way through sand and compacted dirt alike. The growth was aggressive but controlled, the color deep and healthy. At the edges, the green held dense and resilient, acting as a buffer instead of a fuse. The field stabilized as it expanded, the pace of growth slowing once it reached the boundary I had indicated.

  I kept circling Randall while she worked, careful not to let my attention settle in one place for too long. I watched his posture, the way his weight shifted from foot to foot, the subtle tightening in his shoulders. More importantly, I watched his mana, the way it pressed against his skin as if looking for an excuse to escape. This was going to be dangerous. Randall had power, far more than he had any right to wield casually, but power without control was a liability rather than an asset.

  He did not truly know how to regulate his mana yet, or at least that was my suspicion. He relied on force and reaction instead of understanding. If he lost control of himself here, there would be no graceful failure. The release would be sudden, violent, and indiscriminate, and the only thing standing between us and disaster was preparation and timing. I trusted preparation. Luck, considerably less so.

  Randall went still as he realized he was surrounded by the one thing his mana feared most. The grass pressed in from every direction, close enough that he could not ignore it or dismiss it as theoretical. The living green disrupted his internal balance, and I could see his mana recoil, tightening inward instead of flaring outward.

  “All right,” I said calmly. “Look at this. Look at all of this grass.” I continued to circle him, slow and deliberate, giving him no clear direction to fix on. “Can you see yourself in the middle of it? Can you feel it touching your skin?”

  I stopped in front of him. “Close your eyes and imagine it. You know what is around you. You do not need to guess.”

  His breathing shifted, shallow and uneven, each inhale a fraction shorter than the last.

  “Now imagine it is more,” I continued. “Imagine it is an endless plane of tall grass, dry and ready to burn. Imagine there are things moving in it, shapes you cannot see clearly, coming to get you.”

  I bent down, plucked a few blades from the ground, and ran them across his arm. The touch was gentle, almost absent, but it was enough. His shoulders tensed immediately, and his mana surged before snapping back in on itself, confused and restrained by the green surrounding him.

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  “Can you feel it?” I asked. “Can you see it?”

  “You are in the middle of it,” I continued, my voice steady. “Not near it. Not close to it. In it. You can feel it. You can touch it. It is right there.” I gestured around him as I spoke. “Who knows what could be hiding in it?”

  I circled again, slow enough that he could track me if he tried, but never giving him a single place to anchor his attention. “Close your eyes and keep the image. You do not need to pretend. You know what is surrounding you.”

  His jaw tightened, muscles standing out along his neck, but he did not open his eyes.

  “Can you see the spark?” I asked quietly. “Can you see the fire?”

  I let the grass fall from my hand. “You fear the grass,” I continued, “but you should fear the fire that will catch it. The fire that will race through it.”

  I stepped closer, close enough that he could feel my presence even with his eyes closed. “Can you feel it? That first lick of heat as it combusts. The burn rushing toward you, feeding on everything you let it touch.”

  I did not raise my voice. “A death you caused through your own lack of control. A death you caused through your own lack of understanding of what you are.”

  “Do you feel it, Randall?” I asked. “Do you feel it?”

  He gritted his teeth. I could see it in the tension of his jaw, in the rigid set of his shoulders, in the way his mana writhed without direction. He was imagining it. He was actually trying to hold the image instead of fleeing from it, and that mattered.

  I stepped away from him and crossed to Meka, lowering my voice so that only she could hear me. “Have Bunny draw the mana out of the grass in my hand.”

  She nodded without question and relayed the instruction.

  As soon as Bunny complied, the grass withered in my palm. The green drained away until it turned dry and brittle, lifeless in seconds. I walked back toward Randall and crushed it in my fist. The sound was unmistakable, the sharp, brittle crack of dead grass breaking apart.

  That did it.

  Randall’s breathing deepened, loud and heavy, slow enough that I could almost hear his heartbeat in it.

  “Now,” I said evenly, “when I say so, when Meka and I are ready, you are going to throw your mana out.”

  I met his eyes when he opened them. “Hold on to the thought you are imagining right now. Keep it in your mind. Do not let it slip.”

  I crushed the dry grass again as Meka and I moved far enough away that we would not be ignited if his mana was stronger than I suspected.

  It was a good thing that we did.

  As soon as I said, “Now,” the burst of mana Randall threw out tore through the space between us. It did not ignite the grass. It erased it. Everything that had been green a moment earlier flashed white and collapsed into ash, the field vanishing in an instant. The sandpit became a pit of gray residue, fine and drifting, still radiating heat as Randall’s mana burned through the last of the living matter.

  The air shimmered with residual heat, but the violence was already over.

  Randall’s breathing slowed as the realization set in. His mana was not reacting to his fear. It was the thing that had created it. The connection settled into place, heavy and undeniable, and I could see it in the way his posture shifted, tension draining out of him one measured breath at a time.

  Then a circuit I had not seen before engaged.

  A water enchantment flared to life overhead, subtle and precise, and the room filled with rain. It fell in a steady sheet from the ceiling, cooling the air, soaking the ash, tamping down what heat remained. The scent of wet cinders replaced smoke almost immediately.

  Randall looked up.

  He stood, straightening slowly, water running down his face and hair, and then he laughed. The sound was raw, unguarded, and edged with disbelief. As far as I could tell, he had not pulled his mana back in yet. He was simply standing there, letting it exist, basking in the understanding that the fear he had been shackled to was something he could finally name and confront.

  He looked at me and said, “You really were an ancient wizard, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was.”

  I glanced up at the still-falling rain, then back at him. “Now I suggest you draw your mana in. It is still very hot in this room, even with the water coming from the ceiling.”

  I hesitated, then frowned slightly as the implication caught up to me. “Wait,” I said. “Where did those even come from? Those enchantments were not here the last time.”

  Randall wiped water from his face and let out a breath that was half a laugh. “I added them,” he said. “After the incident with Oliver.”

  I studied him for a long moment, reassessing. “You did that yourself?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I decided it would be better not to let everyone die because of I taught a trainee more than he could control.”