The axe felt different in his hands.
Esteban stood in the middle of the forest and stared at it as though he were holding it for the first time. Nothing about it had actually changed. The handle was old and worn smooth by years of use, the blade was slightly chipped, and a thin crust of dirt still clung to the lower part of the shaft. His father had given him this axe when he was twelve, with the same quiet nod he used for everything that mattered. The wood had darkened under his palms since then, and the grip had shaped itself to his fingers. And yet he could feel that something was different. It was not in his eyes. It was in his hand. When he tightened his grip, a strange sensation spread across his palm and climbed slowly up his arm. It was not painful. It felt more like awareness, as if he could suddenly sense every fine detail of the wood beneath his fingers: the tight rings near the head, the soft give of the sapwood, the stubborn knot where the handle met the blade.
He raised the axe slowly and, without quite knowing why, imagined something else: a long, straight, heavy staff with a sharp point at each end. The moment the image became clear in his mind, the axe began to change. The handle stretched, the steel blade vanished, and the whole weapon twisted and reshaped itself until a long wooden staff rested in his hands, pointed at both ends.
Esteban froze and nearly dropped it.
"What...?"
It was no illusion. He could feel its weight and the rough grain of the wood against his fingers. When he swung it once, it cut through the air with a sharp whistle. He stopped at once, his heart beating faster, and looked from his hands to the weapon and back again. The staff was lighter than it should have been, and it seemed to hum faintly, as if it were waiting for his next thought.
He tried to turn it back into an axe, imagining the one he had carried for years: its shape, its weight, its blade, its handle. The staff shortened as the wood twisted, and the blade appeared once more. Within seconds the axe was back in his hands. He stared at it, swallowed, and tried again.
This time he imagined a dagger. The axe changed almost instantly, its handle shortening while the blade grew narrow and sharp. He turned the simple dagger over in his hand and ran his thumb carefully along the flat of the blade. It looked real, almost too real. Then he imagined a sword. The dagger stretched, its blade lengthening and its handle changing, until a sword lay in his grip and he held it with both hands.
He noticed at once that something was wrong. It was too heavy, and the balance was terrible. When he tried to swing it, the blade dragged his arm downward, and he nearly lost his grip. He quickly dropped it into the grass.
"So I can create weapons..."
He looked at the sword.
"But I don't know how to make them properly."
That realization mattered more than the ability itself. He picked the sword up again and examined it closely. The blade was straight, and the handle and guard were both there. From a distance it looked like a sword. But something was missing, and he did not know what. He had never studied weapons. He knew only how to swing an axe. He had used one almost every day for years, and he understood how much force it took to split wood, where to strike a tree, and how to adjust his grip depending on the angle. A sword was something he knew almost nothing about.
He tried a spear next, and the result was better: a long wooden shaft with a sharp metal point at the end. When he thrust it forward, the movement felt natural, or at least more natural than the sword. Then he tried a bow. The wood bent into a curve in his hands, and Esteban smiled despite himself. But when he reached for an arrow, nothing happened. When he tried to create one, the result was a crooked piece of wood with an uneven point. The second arrow was worse, bending in the middle. When he drew the bowstring and released it, the arrow flew only a few meters before falling into the dirt.
Esteban sighed.
"So imagining something isn't enough."
He spent the rest of the morning testing his ability. He made a shield that came out too thin and cracked when he struck it against a tree. He made a hammer that looked convincing but was poorly balanced. He made a crossbow that seemed perfect at first glance, but its mechanism did not work. He made a short sword that was better than the first but still awkward. Every failure taught him something. Eventually he understood that the power did not create what he wanted. It responded to what he understood. And Esteban understood very little about weapons.
By noon the forest floor around him was littered with failures: broken shields, crooked arrows, misshapen blades, and scraps of wood scattered everywhere. He sat against a tree and looked at the mess without feeling frustrated. Not exactly. For the first time in years, there was something in front of him that he did not understand, and strangely, he wanted to understand it. He thought of the nights he had spent at the kitchen table, teaching Lucía to tell oak from pine by smell, and how she had always insisted that the forest had its own opinions. Perhaps the wood had opinions too.
He looked at the [blue] mark beneath his skin, where the faint [blue] glow still pulsed.
"Is this what you wanted me to find?"
The stone gave no answer, and Esteban laughed quietly at himself.
"Of course it doesn't."
He stood and picked up a thick branch from the ground. This time he did not immediately imagine a weapon. He closed his eyes and tried to feel the branch: its weight, its length, its hardness, and how it would move if he swung it. He let his breathing slow and waited for the wood to tell him something. When he opened his eyes, nothing had happened. He frowned and tried again, imagining a spear. The branch changed, but the result was almost identical to his previous attempt, with a point that was too wide and a shaft too thick to be used with any ease.
He stared at it. Then he remembered that when he cut trees, he never swung his axe at random. He knew exactly where the blade needed to land, how deep it would go, and how the tree would react. He understood the material. Perhaps that was the difference.
He spent the next several days experimenting. Each morning he went deeper into the forest, and each afternoon he returned with another failed weapon, which he studied and compared. He changed small details: the length, the weight, the thickness, the shape. Sometimes the difference was barely noticeable. At other times it made the weapon completely unusable. He began keeping the failures in a pile beside the door, and by the fourth evening the pile had grown into a small, humbling museum of mistakes. Slowly he began to understand that the power did not care what he wanted, only what he knew. If he imagined a weapon he did not understand, the result was merely an imitation. But if he understood how something worked, the weapon came closer to reality.
One evening Esteban sat beside his stove with a piece of firewood in his hand, looking at it for a long time. Then something appeared before his eyes: [blue] letters, faint at first and almost transparent. He blinked, but they remained.
[WOOD RANK]
He stared at the words as a second line appeared beneath them, one he could not understand. The letters shifted and then disappeared, so he stood up.
"What does that mean?"
The [blue] writing vanished. He waited, but nothing happened. When he touched his chest, the stone pulsed once, and everything returned to normal. The stove ticked as it cooled, and the rain began to fall against the shutters, soft and steady.
Esteban looked at the piece of wood in his hand. He realized that wood was the only thing he truly understood. Not metal, not swords, not complicated weapons. Only wood. He had felled oaks in winter storms and split ash in the heat of August. He knew how a log would crack before it cracked. He smiled faintly.
"Then I'll start there."
The next morning he took his axe and went deeper into the forest. He no longer wanted to create weapons at random. He wanted to understand them. For the first time since the [blue] stone entered his body, Esteban began to realize that power alone would not make him stronger. Understanding would. And the path ahead had only just begun.