The smell of hot bread drifted through the streets when Eddie stepped out of the inn. The rain had finally stopped, and sunlight caught on puddles that glittered like melted crystals.
Lyra was already waiting at the well, waving both arms."Mister Eddie! Everyone's asking for you again!"
He rubbed his neck. "I'm starting to miss my old company hotline—at least back home I could hang up."
The Marketplace
The village square was busy today. Stalls of glowing fruit, rune-etched pots, and trinkets lined the street. Eddie followed Lyra through the crowd until they reached an open-fronted shed that used to belong to a carpenter.
The sign above it was half-burned.
"Is this the place?" he asked.
Lyra grinned. "The mayor said you can use it! As long as you fix the town lamps for free sometimes."
"Free service. Great. Guess I'm officially government-contracted now."
He stepped inside. Dusty tools, warped planks, and a broken table greeted him. But there was space, light, and potential.
"Alright then," he murmured, setting his toolbox down. "Welcome to Wired Wonders."
A Village's Curiosity
Within an hour, curious faces began to peek through the door.
"Is it true you can fix mana cores?" "My water pump sputters every morning!" "Can you teach my boy? He's good with runes!"
Eddie smiled, holding up his hands. "One at a time, folks! Small jobs first."
He laid out a makeshift counter from two barrels and a plank. Lyra took charge of writing names on parchment. She couldn't spell well, so half the list read things like 'Lamp That Goes Boom' and 'Wand Broken Maybe.'
"This'll do," Eddie said. "Every good shop starts with chaos."
The First Repair
A farmer handed him a cracked mana pump. Its crystal core throbbed unevenly, spilling sparks of pale light.
Eddie rolled up his sleeves."Okay, same principle as a motor. Intake, output, regulator. Let's reroute the flow."
He scraped away soot, traced the rune lines, and bridged a gap with a sliver of copper. When he pressed the activation sigil, the pump whirred, steady and strong.
Water gushed out. The crowd cheered.
The farmer beamed. "It works better than before!"
Eddie shrugged. "Just needed proper grounding."
A nearby mage apprentice whispered, "He keeps saying that word… grounding. Is that some secret chant?"
Lyra whispered back, "It's Tito Eddie's magic word!"
A Visit from the Blacksmith
Later that afternoon, the village blacksmith, a burly woman named Marna, stomped in carrying a broken forge bellows.
"You're the tinkerer everyone's talking about?" she asked.
"Depends on whether they're complaining," Eddie said.
Marna snorted and dropped the equipment on his counter. "It stopped heating. Tried new cores, new runes—nothing."
Eddie examined it. The heating crystal was fine; the problem lay in the runes connecting it to the air intake. They were scorched and misaligned.
"You're losing flow here," he said, pointing. "Ever thought about using copper to channel the heat evenly?"
"Copper? That's blacksmithing metal, not mage craft."
He smiled. "Back home, it's both."
They spent the next hour experimenting, hammering copper plates into thin strips and embedding them along the forge's runes. When they activated it, the flame roared to life—hotter, cleaner.
Marna's jaw dropped. "By the gods… it's perfect!"
"Not gods," Eddie said, wiping sweat from his brow. "Just good engineering."
The Spark of Respect
By evening, Marna returned with food and drink for him and Lyra. "Payment," she said gruffly. "Also, if you ever need metal, you come to me first."
Eddie raised his cup. "Deal."
As the suns sank below the horizon, the new lamps he'd repaired lit one by one across the square—steady, warm, and humming with quiet life.
Lyra gazed at the glow, eyes shining. "It's beautiful."
"Yeah," Eddie murmured. "Light's always beautiful when you build it yourself."
He leaned back against the doorframe, the sound of laughter and running water filling the air. For the first time since arriving, this place felt like home.