The fourth morning in Smallville arrived with a low, hanging mist that clung to the cornstalks like a soft woolen blanket. Inside the Hall estate, the air was still, save for the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway and the faint, domestic sounds of breakfast being prepared in the kitchen.
In the parlor, the atmosphere was thick with two very different kinds of energy.
Aunt Rose was sprawled across the velvet chaise lounge, her legs draped over the side with a theatrical flair. She was surrounded by a sea of glossy magazines—Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Elle—their pages filled with the sharp lines of Manhattan skyscrapers and the glittering storefronts of Fifth Avenue.
"I can't breathe, Sage," Rose groaned, tossing a magazine onto the pile. "I literally feel my pores clogging with the sheer lack of culture. Do you know what the big trend is in the local flyer? Denim overalls. Unironic denim. I miss the grit. I miss the steam rising from the subways. I miss being able to walk two blocks and find a jeweler who knows the difference between a baguette cut and a bread roll."
I wasn't really listening. I was sitting cross-legged on the rug, my focus entirely internal. Between my palms, a swirl of blue Mana was dancing. I wasn't just making it glow anymore; I was working on the first pillar: Manipulation.
I breathed slowly, keeping my heart rate down. I visualized the blue light as a liquid, then a gas, then a solid. I made it into a spinning top. Then a tiny, translucent bird that flapped its wings before dissolving back into mist. I was trying to make it denser, heavier. I wanted to see how much I could pack into a single inch of space.
"Rose, if I hear one more word about the tragedy of your social life, I am going to transmute your tongue into a marshmallow," Aunt Region said, stepping into the parlor from the kitchen. She was carrying a tray of toast, her eyes sharp and amused. "We are here for a reason. Peace. Quiet. Not to hear you audition for a soap opera."
"It's not a soap opera, Region! It's a crisis!" Rose snapped back, though she didn't move an inch. "We are women of means and light! We belong where things shine!"
I tuned them out, narrowing my eyes at the blue light between my hands. I began to push. I didn't push outward like I did in the backyard with Grandma; I pushed inward. I imagined the blue Mana being crushed by the weight of the entire ocean. I wanted it to be small. Smaller.
The air between my palms began to hum. It wasn't a loud sound, but it was high-pitched, like a dog whistle. The light changed. The wispy, ethereal blue started to darken, turning into a deep, concentrated ocean blue. It felt heavy. It felt solid.
Snap.
The sound was like a toothpick breaking. I gasped, my hands jerking apart. But the light didn't vanish.
Sitting in the center of my palm was a three-inch crystal. It was perfectly hexagonal, with facets that caught the morning light and refracted it into a thousand dancing sapphires across the parlor walls. It wasn't just Mana anymore; it was physical. It was cold to the touch and felt as heavy as a real gemstone.
A lightbulb didn't just go off in my head; it flared like a supernova.
"Mama! Mama, look!"
I scrambled to my feet, nearly tripping over Rose's magazines, and sprinted toward the kitchen.
"Mama, look what I did!" I skidded into the kitchen, where Rashandra was pouring coffee.
"Sage, slow down before you break—" She stopped mid-sentence as I thrust my hand toward her.
She set the carafe down, her eyes widening as she looked at the object in my palm. She reached out, her fingers glowing with a faint red warmth as she picked up the crystal. She held it up to the window, the sunlight turning the ocean-blue depths into a swirling vortex of color.
"I made it by accident," I panted. "I was just trying to compress the Mana, and it just stayed like that."
Mama turned the crystal over, her thumb tracing the sharp edges. "It's beautiful, baby. It's dense, too. Pure, solidified Mana. I haven't seen one this stable since your Grandmother's wedding anniversary." She handed it back with a soft smile. "Make sure you don't lose it now, okay? This is a lot of your energy sitting in one place."
"But Mama, listen," I said, my voice rising with excitement. "I have an idea. You know how Grandma said we can't put the gold in the banks here because it looks suspicious? And Aunt Rose is complaining because there's no jewelry shops?"
Rashandra leaned against the counter, crossing her arms. "I'm listening."
"Why don't we open our own jewelry store? Not here in Smallville, but in the nearest big city—maybe Metropolis or even Central City? We don't have to sell the gold as bars. We can make crystals like this! Or use the gold to set them. We'd be the only ones with gems this color. No one has ocean blue like us."
Mama froze. She looked at the crystal in my hand, then back at me. I could see the gears turning behind her eyes, the way her own Anodite intellect began to weave the possibilities together.
"That is a remarkable thought, Little Spark."
The voice didn't come from Mama. We both turned to see Grandmother Pandora standing at the foot of the back stairs. As she stepped into the kitchen, the shadows on the wall seemed to deepen and pull toward her, and the steam from the coffee pot curled in her direction as if drawn by a silent command. She wasn't yelling, but the sheer gravity of her presence made the floorboards settle into a respectful silence.
"I heard your conversation from the landing," Pandora said, walking toward the center island. "I have spent a century hiding wealth in the dark, beneath the earth and behind false names. I never considered that the light itself could be our currency."
Aunt Region and Aunt Rose drifted in from the parlor, drawn by the sudden shift in the house's energy.
"A jewelry store?" Rose asked, her pouting expression instantly vanishing. She looked at the crystal in my hand, her eyes lighting up with a predatory fashion-sense. "Wait, we could design the pieces. If Sage can make those, I can use my yellow Mana to etch the gold. Region can use the green to create organic shapes—leaves, vines, things humans have never seen."
"And we wouldn't have to buy the stones," Region added, her mind already on the logistics. "We'd be entirely original. Unique. A boutique that sells Light of the Stars or something equally mysterious. The humans would pay a fortune for it, and they'd never guess the gems are actually us."
Pandora looked at the family gathered in the kitchen. She looked at the small, ocean-blue stone in my hand. For the first time, she didn't look like a stern teacher; she looked like a proud queen.
"It is an elegant solution," Pandora murmured. As she spoke, the air in the kitchen grew cool and still, the sound of the outside wind dulling until it was just a faint memory. "It allows us to circulate our wealth without raising the eyes of the tax-men or the sensors. It turns our nature into our trade." She looked at me, her gaze soft but heavy with meaning. "You have done more than just master a shape today, Sage. You have found a way for this family to shine in the light, rather than hide in the shadows."
Mama laughed, picking me up and swinging me around. "My little genius! We're going to be the most famous jewelers in the state!"
I laughed, clutching my ocean-blue crystal tight. Smallville was quiet, and our life was a secret, but sitting there in the sun-drenched kitchen with my family, I realized that we weren't just hiding. We were building something new. Something that sparkled.
The steam from the blueberry pancakes swirled in the air, but the usual morning chatter had died away, replaced by a focused, heavy silence. The kitchen, usually a place of casual breakfast chaos, had transformed into a war room of sorts. In the center of the scarred oak table sat the ocean blue crystal, its deep facets catching the light and throwing sharp, sapphire-colored reflections across our half-empty plates.
"If we're doing this," Aunt Rose said, her fingers dancing with restless yellow sparks that hissed like tiny firecrackers, "we aren't just making trinkets. We're making art. I want gold that looks like it was woven by spiders. I want settings that defy gravity—pieces that make the women in Metropolis weep with envy."
"And the stones," Aunt Region added, leaning over her coffee with a sharp, calculating glint in her eyes. "If Sage can make a sapphire by accident, imagine what we could do with actual intent. Emeralds as deep as a forest, rubies that pulse like a heartbeat. We could redefine the entire market."
Throughout the chatter, Grandmother Pandora had remained as still as a statue, her hands wrapped around a steaming ceramic mug. As she finally looked up, the morning light pouring through the window seemed to dim. The shadows along the baseboards stretched toward her, and the hum of the refrigerator slowed until it was a dull, rhythmic throb that felt like a heartbeat.
"You speak of using yourselves," Pandora said. Her voice was a low vibration that settled into the marrow of my bones. She didn't raise her volume, but the water in our glasses began to ripple in perfect, concentric circles. "You speak of pouring your own life force into stones to be sold to the world of dust. That is the way of a servant, not a master."
She looked at me, then at my mother, her gaze piercing.
"We will not use our own energy for this," she stated. The finality in her tone made the air feel pressurized, like the moment before a massive thunderstorm breaks.
Mama blinked, momentarily taken aback. "But Mama, that's how Sage made the crystal. He compressed his own Mana. It's part of him."
"Because he is a child learning the boundaries of his own well," Pandora replied, her eyes glowing with a faint, ancient violet. "But a master does not dig their own well when they stand beside an ocean. Sage, look out the window."
I turned my head toward the backyard. The mist was still thick over the cornfields, clinging to the stalks like ghosts, and the Great Oak tree stood tall and silent against the gray Kansas sky.
"The world is not just a stage for us to walk upon," Pandora whispered. As she spoke, the green leaves of the potted ivy on the windowsill began to turn toward her, stretching their vines as if seeking a sun only she could provide. "The earth, the trees, the very air we breathe—it is all woven from the same thread. It is all Mana. The dirt is just Mana that has forgotten how to shine. The water is Mana that has learned to flow."
She reached out and picked up a simple metal spoon from the table. She didn't glow. She didn't strike it. She simply closed her eyes, and the air around her hand began to shimmer and warp like heat rising from asphalt.
"To make the inventory for this store," she continued, "we will not drain our spirits. We will use Mana Manipulation to rewrite the memory of the world around us. We will take the carbon from the earth and command it to become a diamond. We will take the clarity of the air and the minerals of the soil and weave them into sapphires."
She opened her hand. The silver spoon was gone. In its place sat a cluster of raw, clear crystals that caught the light of the kitchen chandelier, fracturing it into a thousand tiny rainbows.
"This," Pandora said, "is the true application of Manipulation and Absorption. You do not just move the energy; you draw it from the world, refine it, and give it a new shape. You take the nothing of a common stone and remind it that it was once born from the heart of a star."
Aunt Rose reached out, her hand trembling slightly as she touched the cold, sharp edges of the new crystals. "You made these from a spoon?"
"I reminded the metal of its potential," Pandora corrected. The gravity in the room softened, the shadows retreating to the corners as she relaxed. "Sage, your ocean blue crystal was a start. But for the shop, you will learn to reach into the ground, feel the raw Mana of the soil, and pull the beauty out of the dirt."
I stared at the crystals on the table, my mind racing. "So I don't have to get tired? I can just use the energy around me?"
"If you are disciplined," Pandora said, her gaze returning to me. "But to pull from the world without being consumed by it requires a steady hand. You must be the conductor, not the lightning rod."
Mama looked at the crystals, a slow, brilliant smile spreading across her face. "A jewelry store. We won't just be selling gems. We'll be selling the essence of the planet, refined by the hands of Anodyne."
"And the best part," Aunt Region laughed, "is that the materials are free. The world is literally made of our inventory."
Rose picked up her fashion magazine and tossed it into the recycling bin with a triumphant grin. "Forget Manhattan. We're going to make this town—and every city nearby—look like it's standing in the dark. If we're going to be normal humans, we might as well be the most glamorous shopkeepers to ever walk the earth."
I looked down at my hands. The blue tingle was there, but it felt different now. It didn't feel like a battery that was running low; it felt like a key that could unlock everything around me. The trees, the wind, the heavy oak table—it was all just Mana waiting for me to tell it what to be.
"I'm ready, Grandma," I said, my voice steady. "Teach me how to talk to the earth."
Pandora nodded, the violet light in her eyes flickering one last time before she took a calm, human sip of her tea. "Finish your breakfast, Little Spark. The earth is patient, but I am not. We go to the woods in twenty minutes."
The transition from the warmth of the kitchen to the edge of the woods felt like crossing a physical border. As we stepped off the manicured grass of the backyard and into the shadow of the ancient treeline, the air grew cooler, smelling of damp moss, decaying leaves, and the sharp, metallic tang of an approaching shift in energy.
Grandmother Pandora walked with a predatory grace, her boots making no sound on the forest floor. Behind us, Aunt Region followed, her arms crossed and her emerald green light simmering just beneath her skin, making her eyes look like polished jade in the dim light of the canopy. She wasn't here to teach; she was here to witness.
Pandora stopped in a small clearing where the roots of a massive, gnarled oak broke through the soil like the ribs of a buried giant. She didn't look at me yet. She looked at the tree.
"The humans see a source of lumber," Pandora said, her voice dropping into that resonant, floor-shaking register. "They see cells and chlorophyll. But you, Sage, what do you see?"
I stepped forward, closing my eyes for a second to center the blue Mana in my chest. When I opened them, I tried to look past the bark. "I see lines. Like glowing veins running up the trunk. And the dirt—it's not just brown. It's humming."
"Good," Pandora whispered. The air in the clearing suddenly went still. The birds stopped mid-chirp, and the rustle of the wind in the high branches died away, leaving us in a pocket of absolute silence. "That hum is the song of the world. Absorption is not about stealing that song. It is about joining the choir."
Pandora knelt, pressing her palm flat against the damp earth. As she did, the shadows cast by the trees began to warp, swirling toward her hand like ink in water.
"The earth is the greatest reservoir of Mana in this quadrant," she explained. "It takes the light of the sun, the decay of the old, and the rain of the heavens, and it stores them. To make your stones, you must learn to draw from this well without drowning in it."
She didn't glow. Instead, the ground around her hand began to change color. The dark soil turned a pale, frosted silver, the nutrients and energy being pulled upward. In the center of her palm, a small, jagged stone began to form—not from her own light, but from the very dust beneath her.
"Now," she commanded, stepping back. "Place your hands on the roots. Do not push your blue light out. Open the doors of your spirit and let the green light of the wood in."
I knelt where she had been, my heart racing. I pressed my small hands against the rough, cold bark of the oak root. At first, I felt nothing but wood. Then, I remembered what she said. I didn't push; I pulled. I visualized my spirit as a dry sponge, reaching out for a drop of water.
The rush was violent.
A surge of raw, untamed energy flooded up my arms. It tasted like sunlight and tasted like ancient rain. It was green and brown and wild, and it crashed into my blue core like a tidal wave. I gasped, my back arching as my eyes flew open, glowing a brilliant, frantic sapphire.
"Steady, Little Spark," Pandora's voice boomed, though she hadn't moved. The pressure in the air increased, a physical weight pushing down on my shoulders to keep me grounded. "Do not let it overwhelm the huddle. You are the master. Filter the raw into the refined."
"It's too much!" I gritted my teeth, my fingers digging into the bark.
From the sidelines, Aunt Region stepped closer, her own green aura flaring in sympathy with the tree. "Listen to the rhythm, Sage," she encouraged, her voice calm and melodic. "The tree breathes slowly. Match your pulse to the sap. Don't take it all at once."
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the chaotic green energy to pass through the filter of my own blue Mana. I slowed my breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly, the violent rush turned into a steady, manageable stream. I felt the connection—a bridge between my soul and the heart of the forest. I reached into the soil with my mind, finding a pocket of carbon and mineral deep beneath the root. I pulled it up, wrapping it in the energy I was absorbing.
Between my palms, tucked against the root, a spark ignited.
It wasn't a quick process. I could feel the heat building, the raw materials of the earth being crushed and rearranged by the sheer pressure of the Mana I was channeling. I wasn't using my own battery; I was just the conduit, the pipe through which the world was recreating itself.
The air around my hands began to shimmer with a hazy, ocean blue mist. The smell of ozone filled the clearing, sharp and electric.
"Shape it," Pandora whispered, her voice a vibration in the soil. "Give it the facets of your intent."
I pictured the jewelry store. I pictured a stone that looked like the depths of the sea caught in a forest glade. I pushed the energy into a teardrop shape, smoothing the edges with a mental flick.
With a final, crystalline ping that echoed through the silent woods, the energy dissipated.
I slumped back, my hands falling away from the root. The oak tree seemed to shiver for a moment, its leaves rustling as if letting out a long-held breath. Sitting in the hollow of the root was a gemstone.
It was the size of a pigeon's egg, colored a deep, haunting ocean blue, but with flecks of forest green swimming in its depths like captured moss. It was more beautiful than the one I had made by accident. It looked alive.
Aunt Region walked over, picking up the stone and holding it up to the dappled sunlight. "Look at the clarity," she breathed, her green eyes wide with genuine impressed wonder. "Sage, this isn't just a gem. It's a masterpiece. A jeweler in the city would kill for a single carat of this—and you just pulled it out of the dirt."
Pandora stood over me, her shadow long and imposing. The heavy atmospheric pressure she had been maintaining vanished, and the sounds of the woods rushed back in—the wind, the birds, the distant hum of a tractor.
"You have touched the source," Pandora said. She looked at the tree, then back at me. "You did not use your own spark. You used the world. This is the difference between a guttering candle and the sun. To run a business, to live among the humans, you must never be empty. And the world is always full."
I stood up, my legs a little shaky but my spirit feeling strangely energized. I didn't feel drained like I did yesterday. I felt connected.
"We have our first piece for the shop," I said, looking at the stone in Region's hand.
"We have more than that," Region laughed, tucking the stone into her pocket. "We have a way to make Rose stop complaining about the lack of Fifth Avenue. We're going to bring Fifth Avenue to Kansas, one forest-sapphire at a time."
Pandora turned toward the house, her cloak swirling around her ankles. "Let us return. Your mother has finished the sketches. It is time we stop dreaming and start building."
As we walked back, I looked at my hands. They were stained with dirt and bits of bark, but beneath the skin, I could still feel the faint, rhythmic hum of the oak tree. I wasn't just Sage Hall anymore. I was a part of the woods, a part of the earth, and the architect of a future that was starting to look very, very bright.
While the deep, resonant hum of the woods vibrated miles away under Grandmother Pandora's watchful eyes, the kitchen of the Hall estate had been transformed into a designer's atelier. The oak table, once covered in pancake syrup, was now buried under heavy vellum paper, charcoal pencils, and a set of professional drafting tools that Rashandra had kept tucked away in her luggage since New York.
Rashandra sat hunched over a large sheet, her movements fluid and precise. Every so often, her fingers would glow with a soft, warm red light, not to manifest power, but to act as a living tracing tool. She was sketching a necklace—a delicate, weeping willow design where the branches would be spun from the African gold they had brought from the cellar. She was imagining clean, bright diamonds for the leaves, not yet knowing that Sage was currently in the woods pulling stones with deep, mossy forest-green swirls from the earth.
"It needs to be organic," Rashandra whispered to herself, the charcoal scratching against the paper. "Something the humans can't replicate with a machine."
"Organic? Honey, it needs to be iconic," Aunt Rose interjected, pacing the length of the kitchen like a caged panther.
Rose wasn't sketching. She was manifesting a vision board in the air with her hands, her yellow Mana flickering in short, excited bursts that followed her frantic gestures. She hadn't stopped talking for thirty minutes, her voice rising in a crescendo of pure, unadulterated ambition.
"Think about it, Rashandra! This isn't just a local hobby. This is the birth of an empire! Once we open that flagship store in Metropolis, the world is going to tilt on its axis. We aren't just selling rocks; we're selling the Astral Aesthetic. I can see it now: The Hall Collection at the Met Gala. We'll have fashion shows where the models don't just walk—they glow! We'll have magazines calling us every hour, begging for an exclusive."
Rashandra sighed, her pencil pausing on a particularly intricate curve of gold wire. "Rose, honey..."
"No, listen!" Rose spun around, her eyes wide with the fire of a thousand red carpets. "The big fashion houses? Chanel? Dior? They're going to be banging on our glass doors, trying to buy us out! But we'll say no, obviously. Why sell the sun when you can charge people to look at it? I want our jewelry on every A-list actress at the Oscars. I want movies where the entire plot is just people trying to steal a Hall Diamond. We'll have our own magazine—The Luminous—and people will pre-order issues six months in advance just to see what we pull out of the dirt next!"
Rose grabbed a chair, spun it around, and sat on it backward, leaning toward her sister with a conspiratorial grin. "And the best part? These humans will be wearing the very ground they walk on, and they won't even know it. We'll be taking the common dirt, the carbon, the silt—stuff they step on every day—and turning it into something they'd sell their souls for. They'll never know the Hall family is using the dirt of Kansas to build a throne in Metropolis."
"And the red carpets!" Rose continued, barely taking a breath. "Imagine the flashbulbs hitting those stones. They won't just reflect the light; they'll absorb it and give it back twice as bright. We'll be the talk of the planet! From Tokyo to Paris to Metropolis, everyone will be whispering, 'Where did those women come from? And how do they make the earth shine like that?'"
Rashandra finally laid her pencil down and looked up. She reached out, taking her sister's vibrating hands in hers. The red light of Rashandra's touch acted like a grounding wire, drawing some of the frantic yellow static out of Rose's energy.
"Rose," Rashandra said, her voice a calm, cooling balm against Rose's heat. "I love the fire. I really do. But can you please, please calm down for just a second? We haven't even opened a store yet! Your frequency is making the lightbulbs flicker, and I'm trying to focus on this clasp design."
Rose took a jagged breath, her shoulders dropping an inch. "I'm just excited, Shan. This is the first time since we left New York that I feel like we're actually doing something instead of just waiting for the world to end."
"I know," Rashandra said softly, smoothing over a smudge on the vellum. "But we haven't even signed a lease yet. We haven't even picked a city for sure. We are still in the don't-get-caught-by-the-neighbors phase. If you go into Metropolis with this much energy, you'll blow the power grid before we even get the Open sign in the window."
"I can't help it," Rose muttered, though she stayed still. "I can just see it. I can see us standing in a store on New Troy Avenue, looking out at the Daily Planet building, knowing we're the most powerful things in the city. I want us to be big, Rashandra. Not just rich—I want us to be the standard."
Rashandra looked back down at her sketch. The necklace she had drawn was beautiful—a masterpiece of Anodite elegance hidden in a human form, though her drawings were currently filled with clear, diamond-like stones that didn't quite match the moody, forest-toned gems Sage was currently mastering.
"We will be," Rashandra promised, her voice turning firm. "Grandmother is teaching Sage to pull the essence of the world into those stones. Region is learning how to mask the signatures so the scientists don't come knocking. And I am designing the cages that will hold that light. We'll get there, Rose. But for now, I need you to go into the parlor and find me a ruler. A physical, wooden ruler. No magic."
Rose rolled her eyes but stood up, her yellow light finally fading into a dull, content hum. "Fine. A wooden ruler. But just so you know, the wooden version of me is going to be the Creative Director of the biggest jewelry empire in history. Get used to it!"
As Rose sashayed out of the kitchen, Rashandra let out a long breath and looked out toward the woods. She could feel the distant, heavy thrum of Pandora's power—the Sentence being delivered to the earth. She looked at her sketches and then at the small, ocean-blue crystal Sage had made earlier.
"Metropolis," she whispered to herself. The word felt like a challenge.
She picked up her pencil and began to draw a ring—a band of gold that looked like a solar flare. She was imagining a clear white stone for the center, completely unaware that her son was about to walk through the door with a gem that held the very green-blue soul of the Kansas woods.