Chapter Fifteen – Of Runes, Relics, and Resonance

The search had become routine.

Old bookshops. Dusty charity stores. Neglected corners of public libraries. If there was a place where time had forgotten to dust the shelves, Jonathan and Harry were there, eyes bright with anticipation and pockets jingling with change. Operation Book Hunt was in full swing.

Most of their findings were a disappointment.

Books on gardening. War-time love stories. An illustrated guide to identifying bird feathers.

One promising title—The Secrets of the Tinctured World—turned out to be an old perfume catalog written in overly poetic verse. Another, wrapped in twine, seemed suspiciously magical until they realized it was just a child's handmade storybook about talking potatoes staging a coup in a kitchen.

Still, they pressed on.

And then, finally, they found something.

It was in a corner of a library that had clearly not been reorganized in decades. The spine was cracked, and the lettering was almost illegible, but the faint shimmer of the ink caught Jonathan's eye. The book was titled A Compendium of Potioneering Artifacts and Infusions, Vol. II.

Harry flipped it open and immediately frowned. "These diagrams look like alien tech."

Jonathan blinked at a page. "This one's either instructions for brewing a potion or summoning an elder god."

The recipes inside mentioned things like silverthorn root, powdered kraken bone, and something called distilled moon-wyrm tears. Ingredients they had no way of finding—or identifying.

Still, it was real. Magical.

That was enough to keep their spirits up.

They returned to practicing what they already knew—spells like Reparo and Scourgify, small rune exercises, and trying to apply what they'd learned from the runic book. More exciting, though, was the challenge they set for themselves: to embed a rune into an object.

Their first test subject was an old music box Jonathan's mum had boxed away for donation. It was simple, brass-plated with a porcelain ballerina that spun slowly when wound. They chose the rune Kenaz—illumination, energy, creativity.

Using the makeshift stone stylus they had half-successfully transfigured earlier, Jonathan scratched the symbol carefully beneath the base of the box. They both took a moment to concentrate, silently projecting their intent: "Play. Move. Continue."

When Harry turned the key, the ballerina began her usual dance to a delicate tinkling tune. But then it didn't stop. The key unwound completely, and still, the music played on.

"Uh," Harry muttered. "You didn't set it to infinite loop, did you?"

Jonathan looked sheepish. "I might've overdone the intent."

The doll kept spinning, slowly but stubbornly, as if caught in some unseen rhythm only she could hear. After ten minutes of trying to silence it, they gave in and carefully scratched through the rune.

The music stopped immediately. The ballerina froze mid-turn.

"Well," Harry said, "that worked."

"Too well," Jonathan muttered, inspecting the rune. "I think it fed off ambient energy to keep going. No reset condition."

"Like leaving a program running with no kill switch."

Jonathan grinned. "Exactly."

That incident made something else click. They'd tested magic on electronics before—the old TV in the attic had fizzed and died with a tiny crackle when he tried Lumos near it. A toaster had sparked oddly when Harry practiced levitation. Yet objects from before the electrical age—like the music box—reacted differently. They accepted enchantments. They held magic.

"Magic and electricity," Jonathan said one evening, scribbling in a notebook. "They don't like each other. Like competing signals."

"You think the runes mess with the current?" Harry asked.

"Maybe. Or the current interrupts the runes. Either way, pre-electric stuff is more compatible."

They made a list of suitable objects—candles, boxes, wooden toys, old tools—and experimented embedding different runes in them. Some glowed faintly. One wobbled in place. A wooden spoon floated for half a second before smacking into the ceiling. Progress was slow, unpredictable, and thrilling.

But Jonathan had a second goal, one he hadn't told Harry in full detail.

That night, after Harry went home, Jonathan sat cross-legged on his bed and closed his eyes.

He dove inward.

His mind palace had evolved over the years, from scattered fragments into a digital cathedral of memory and control. At the center now stood a server tower made of light, flowing lines of code scrolling endlessly along its transparent surface. Screens hovered around it, displaying stored memories and data. Firewalls shimmered like glass walls around its core.

But something was missing—magic.

Jonathan had long theorized that the mind was a place where magic could manifest as easily as thought. Now, armed with runes, he intended to prove it.

He stepped through the palace, navigating with ease. He arrived at the central chamber—his "command center"—and summoned a stone tablet.

Drawing with his mental stylus, he carved a series of runes along its surface. Algiz for protection. Eihwaz for resistance. Thurisaz for defense. He imbued each symbol with his intent:

Shield my thoughts. Repel intrusion. Anchor my will.

As the final rune settled into place, the tablet pulsed once and vanished—absorbed into the digital structure. Instantly, a soft hum filled the chamber. The walls gleamed brighter. The edges sharpened.

He smiled.

'If someone tries poking around in here,' he thought, 'they're in for a surprise.'

For now, it was only the beginning—elementary protections, a runic firewall. But it was a start. The foundation for something greater.

Outside, the moon peeked through the curtains. The house was quiet. The ballerina music box sat still in the corner, the rune under it faint but intact.

Jonathan lay back, arms folded behind his head, eyes still aglow with purpose.

Magic was real.

And he was just beginning to code it.