Arcane Elixir

The old woman bent over her cauldron, her gnarled hands steady despite the tremor in her spine. Wisps of silver steam curled upward, filling the crooked rafters of her cottage with the scent of crushed herbs, singed oak, and something sweeter—like honey burned just to the edge of bitterness. She hummed softly, an old lullaby that wavered between soothing and unsettling, as she plucked vials and dried roots from shelves that sagged beneath their weight. Her patched shawl hung loose around narrow shoulders, and her eyes, cloudy with age, gleamed with an odd sharpness each time the firelight caught them.

“This elixir,” she rasped, stirring slowly with a spoon carved from bone, “is not for the faint of heart. It will mend what is broken, sharpen what is dulled, and grant you sight where once you stumbled blind.” The brew thickened, turning from green to violet to a deep, pulsing crimson. Her wrinkled lips curled into a smile too sly, too knowing. Behind the mask of kindly grandmotherhood, the hag’s true nature flickered, if only for a heartbeat—a predator disguised in shawls and spectacles. She lifted a ladle and poured the elixir into a glass vial, the liquid inside glowing faintly like a captured ember. She pressed it into your hand, her fingers cool and far too strong for someone so frail. “Drink,” she whispered, the fire in her hearth dimming as her grin widened. “And may it give you exactly what you asked for… and a little more besides.”