Alchemist Axle of the Toadstools
Alchemist Axle was a wizard of seclusion and routine. In the damp wilds of the Toadstools, far from the roads and courts and councils, he lived among rot and bloom. His world was narrow by choice. His days were quiet. No messengers reached him, no apprentices lingered. He asked nothing of the world, and it returned the favor. That ended the moment the visions began.
They came unbidden, jolting, fevered spells of stillness that took hold of his body and mind. Each time, he returned to himself with a new fragment burned into his memory: strange ingredients, impossible pairings, a pattern forming without his consent. He gathered them. He prepared them. At first out of curiosity. Then necessity. Then something more.
A single word clawed its way through his thoughts, no matter how he tried to resist it: Mandrake.
No potion by that name appeared in any known alchemical text. The reagents made no logical sense. But the compulsion was real. The visions would not stop. He no longer believed the recipe was his to refuse. And deep within the visions, a figure began to appear—hooded in mist, silent, half-lit by sun or flame or memory. Axle never met this great wizard, but he knew him: Wizard #4454.
A Cloud Prophet of considerable renown and equal suspicion. Known for his erratic prophecies and his belief that some truths could be delivered directly from the sky. Years ago, he vanished without explanation. No body was found. No final words recorded. Most believed him consumed by the same madness he had always skirted. But now, Axle saw him clearly in every dream.
Uvlius had made the same potion. He had walked the same path. And he had failed. There was no doubt what stood in his way.
All across the Runiverse, people speak of it in hushed tones. A living fog that crawls across the southern lands, swallowing color, choking light. It does not rise like other evils, it seeps. It infects. It unweaves the world slowly and without sound. It is the source of all ruin that lacks a name. Every wizard, every scholar, every child knows to fear it.
And yet, Axle feels it in his bones now. Not as something at the edge of the world, but at the edge of himself. He has not traveled south, but the fog is in his thoughts. The dreams feel colder. Shadows linger longer than they should. His breath hangs in warm rooms. The Mandrake Potion, whatever it is, feels like a match held too close to dry wood.
He does not know what Uvlius meant to do with it. He only knows the visions will not stop until it is finished. The potion is nearly complete.
And the Shadow is watching.
Entered by: 0x1Fe3…28Fd and preserved on chain (see transaction)
