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POV Skye – A Hacker's Curiosity
Skye wasn't one to get fixated on people. Information? Sure. Secrets? Absolutely. But people? They were messy, unpredictable. Most weren't worth the effort.
Yet here she was, tapping a pen against her desk, unable to shake one particular mystery.
Ethan Draken Carter.
She leaned back in her chair, staring at the faint glow of her laptop screen, but her mind was elsewhere. He was an enigma wrapped in smooth words and sharper instincts. A guy who barely left a footprint, yet moved through the world like he had always belonged.
Her fingers drummed against the table.
She didn't know much about him—only what he'd chosen to share in their past meetings. And yet, her mind kept trying to fill in the blanks, painting a picture based on the little pieces he had given her.
A mysterious rich recluse. That was the image forming in her head.
The kind of guy who had wealth but didn't flash it, someone who preferred the shadows to the spotlight. Maybe he had some vast estate hidden away in the mountains, a library filled with old books no one else had read, and a whiskey collection older than most countries. The type of person who had contacts in all the right places but kept them at arm's length. Someone who spoke in half-truths and let people think what they wanted.
She could believe that about him.
Hell, she almost wanted to believe that about him.
Because the truth? She didn't have a clue who Ethan Carter really was.
A sip of lukewarm coffee did nothing to shake the thought. She pulled her laptop closer, fingers skimming over the keys. Not to dig into him—no, she'd built his identity from scratch. She already knew there was no past to uncover. But that only made her more curious.
Ethan wasn't just another name in a database. He wasn't just playing the game.
He was setting up the board.
And she wanted to know what kind of game he was playing.
Her phone buzzed, pulling her from her thoughts. A message from Ethan.
Ethan: Got a few things to discuss. Let's meet up soon.
Skye smirked, already typing back.
Skye: You gonna tell me what you're up to, or is this another one of your cryptic 'all will be revealed in time' speeches?
A few moments later, her screen lit up with a reply.
Ethan: What's life without a little mystery?
She rolled her eyes but couldn't help the grin tugging at her lips.
Ethan Carter, you are one interesting puzzle.
And Skye? She never could resist a good puzzle.
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🌿 Verdant Magic – A Language of Life
The deeper Ethan delved into the Tome, the more he realized this wasn't just about learning to manipulate energy—it was about understanding a language older than the stars. Verdant Magic wasn't taught through words or diagrams. It didn't come with incantations or scrolls. Instead, it unfolded like a memory rediscovered, a truth already buried deep within him.
This time, when the Tome responded, it didn't simply send knowledge into him—it surrounded him.
He sat in the heart of his underground sanctuary, the walls pulsing faintly with life. Then the space changed.
All at once, the air shimmered.
Glyphs—organic, shifting shapes—bloomed into view, suspended like bioluminescent holograms around him. They floated gently, pulsing with hues of green, gold, and rich earthy amber. They rotated in layered rings and spirals, forming matrices and lattices that constantly rewrote themselves, like living constellations of meaning.
Ethan's breath caught in his throat.
It reminded him of something he'd once seen—Tony Stark's holographic workspace, back when he was forging a new element in a 3D projection of atomic architecture. But this? This was far more alive. It wasn't mechanical. It breathed.
The glyphs weren't just symbols—they were sensations. Each one carried a feeling, like a sensory echo. When he reached out with his mind—or sometimes just felt—he could pick up on the emotional timbre they resonated with.
One glyph curled like mist, and when he hovered near it with his focus, it felt like a cold breeze slipping through tall grass. Wind.
Another vibrated gently with a warm pulse—like sunlight on bare skin. Fire, maybe. Or pure vitality.
One curled tightly into itself and radiated a sensation like stone underfoot. Earth.
They didn't speak in words. They spoke in truths. In memories that had never belonged to him, but somehow made sense as if they had always been waiting for his mind to catch up.
These weren't spells. These were building blocks. A framework. A programmable syntax of nature. Not coded in lines of text—but in loops of sensation, emotional inflection, biological rhythm, and geometric flow.
And the Tome—silent as always—watched.
Or perhaps… listened.
Ethan didn't command these glyphs. He didn't dominate them. He invited them. And when they responded, it felt like asking a question and being answered with the shape of a leaf curling open in morning light.
Every new symbol, every connected pair, birthed new possibilities.
"If I bind the warmth of sunlight to the curl of the wind…"
He visualized it.
Two glyphs—one golden and pulsing, the other whisper-soft and dancing—intertwined, forming a helix. The magic responded, forming a burst of air infused with radiant heat. Not fire—but heated wind.
His eyes widened.
"What if I invert the warmth? What if I tether it to the stillness of stone?"
The glyphs shifted. The golden light dimmed, the earth-symbol held firm—and the result felt like smoldering coals beneath the forest floor.
He was coding reality—but with emotion, memory, and natural instinct.
A childlike grin spread across his face.
He had seen druid magic in fantasy novels—spells that summoned vines, or whispered to wolves, or summoned storms from nothing. But this was different. This wasn't imitation.
This was creation.
The Verdant Tome hadn't given him spells. It had given him the language of life—and now it was up to him to write its poetry.
He could feel it now, in his bones and blood.
This was his domain.
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🍃 Playful Discovery and Creative Curiosity
Ethan didn't know how long he had been working. Down here, beneath the city's skin, time didn't matter. Only the pulse of life, the rhythm of thought, the curiosity that bloomed in his chest like spring waking from winter.
He stood now in the middle of what was slowly becoming his domain—a circular chamber etched with veins of living moss, soft earth beneath his bare feet, and faint golden-green lights shimmering from the glyphs that orbited lazily in the air around him. The Tome, nestled in his mind and chest alike, acted more like a deep-seated intuition than a voice.
Each glyph wasn't just a spell—it was a feeling, a question, a sentence fragment waiting to be completed.
"What happens if I twist the earth-glyph and tether it to the scent of rain?" he mused aloud, fingers sketching invisible lines in the air.
The glyphs shifted in response. A soft rumble passed through the chamber floor. A stone bud emerged from the wall—like a flower carved from granite—and then unfolded, dripping with condensation as if kissed by stormclouds.
Ethan grinned.
He waved the construct away and reset. "Okay… what if I mirror the flow of sap in a tree and combine it with the fire-symbol but… set it to a heartbeat rhythm?"
That one was harder.
The glyphs resisted at first—unbalanced, not in harmony. He could feel it, like tension in an orchestra before the wrong note. He paused, exhaled slowly, and refocused.
Then it clicked.
The glyphs spiraled together—warm, sticky, rhythmic. A glowing thread of gold-orange pulsed from his palm, dripping like syrup and burning faintly at the edges. Not a weapon. Not fire. Something more refined. It felt… medicinal? No—energizing. Like liquid stamina.
"Oh," he murmured, holding the spellform aloft. "I think I just made Verdant caffeine."
He laughed aloud. A real, unrestrained sound that echoed through the chamber walls.
This is what magic should feel like.
Not rigid. Not distant. Not cold and codified like the mystic arts he'd seen in movies and lore.
This was play. This was instinct. This was him picking up the strings of the universe and learning to pluck a tune.
He tried again.
"What if I mimic the mycelium networks in a forest?"
A new shape emerged—webbed, glowing faintly beneath the floor. He could feel it. A spell that wouldn't act alone, but would connect nearby life. Communication. Sensory awareness. A network of roots that could carry messages, warnings, or energy itself.
Later. That one needed time.
He moved on, more careful now.
He didn't just throw symbols together anymore. He felt them. Tested their balance. Sometimes, a pattern worked beautifully. Other times, it unraveled like a dying flame. That, too, was important.
Failure taught him more than success.
Glyphs that stung, that resisted. They told him: wrong intent, wrong resonance. Sometimes he was too forceful. Other times too vague. But when he aligned intent, sensation, and emotional truth—the Verdant Language sang.
And so he kept going.
Drawing from memory. From novels. From games. From instinct. From wonder.
He remembered a book where druids shaped vines into armor, so he tried. The result was crude—thick bark plates wrapping his arms and chest—but it worked. Not elegant yet. But real.
He remembered a story where a mage grew a tree to create a hidden door. He did that too—only instead of a tree, he grew a moss-covered stone to seal one of the side tunnels. It would only open to his energy signature.
He experimented with floating lights. Mist. Breathable air. Cooling moss tiles.
He even tried sculpting a chair out of coiled roots. It worked—until it tried to hug him. "Okay, no self-aware furniture. Not yet."
Still—every try brought new understanding.
Every failure brought progress.
And through it all, the Tome pulsed—not with approval or judgment, but presence. Watching him like a parent letting a child wander through the woods for the first time.
Ethan wiped sweat from his brow, chest rising and falling as he knelt on the floor once more.
This was only the beginning.
But something was awakening.
And soon—it would grow into something the world had never seen before.
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(AN: I've already referred to his magic as Verdant Magic but Ethan hasn't officially named it yet so that what this part will be)
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🌱 Naming the Magic
Ethan stood in the center of his sanctuary, chest still rising and falling with quiet exertion, arms streaked with faint green energy and dust. The glyphs had dimmed around him now, drifting like lazy fireflies winding down after a long dance.
He stared at the softly glowing vine-work etched across the chamber walls—proof of the things he'd made tonight. Some crude, others beautiful. None of them perfect. But all of them alive.
He could feel it pulsing in the air. Not just power—but language. Meaning. A natural syntax that formed and reformed like water finding new paths downstream.
The Tome sat silently within him, its presence warm but quiet. It didn't speak. It never really had.
But it showed him enough to let him shape the rest.
He looked down at his fingers—smudged with dirt, pulsing faintly with lingering light. His gaze turned upward again, taking in the shape of the glyphs rotating slowly above him like constellations forming their own spell-constellation.
It wasn't magic in the traditional sense. Not mysticism. Not incantation.
This was a conversation.
Between life itself… and him.
A whisper surfaced in his thoughts—not from the Tome, not from memory. Just… truth.
Verdant.
It wasn't a title. It wasn't a branding. It was a recognition.
This magic wasn't about dominance. It wasn't about bending the world to his will. It was about growth.
It was the warmth of the sun after a storm. The roots pushing through stone. The forest that dies in winter and is born again in spring.
It was Verdant—lush, alive, ever-reaching, ever-adapting.
And what he practiced… what he was building…
That wasn't just magic.
That was an art form.
The weaving of emotion, memory, sensation, and intent.
Verdant Arts.
He whispered it aloud, testing the taste of it on his tongue. "Verdant Magic. Verdant Arts."
The chamber seemed to respond to the words. A low vibration passed through the floor. Not from power—but acknowledgment.
As if the world itself approved.
He stepped back from the floating glyphs, now slowly beginning to fade into ambient glow. The system—this language—was still raw. Still beta.
But it was his. The framework had been gifted. But the shaping of it? The beauty of it?
That was his to design.
Verdant Magic was not finished. Not even close.
But it had begun.
And Ethan Carter would be the one to craft it into something worthy of the name.
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