{LORE} - “Enchanting Tulips”

The Magister stepped into a dusty old shop tucked away in a crooked alley, its sign so faded it was barely legible. Inside, shelves buckled under the weight of forgotten trinkets and glass jars filled with unidentifiable powders and viscous liquids. The air smelled of mildew and faint enchantments—magic left to stagnate.

In the far corner, half-hidden behind a stack of moth-eaten tombs, they noticed a faint glow. Peeking around the books, he discovered delicately arranged in a cracked porcelain vase, a small bouquet of tulips. Their petals shimmered slightly, tinkling softly.

“Curious,” The Magister whispered, extending a finger toward one of the blossoms. The tulip leaned slightly toward their outstretched hand, as if listening. A warm pulse of magic surged through their fingertip—soft, melancholic, alive.

“They bloom on emotion, you know,” croaked the old gnomish shopkeeper, hobbling from the back room into the main area. “Whatever the heart carries, they reflect it back.”

The Magister’s brow furrowed slightly, automatically beginning to reach for the worn coin purse on their hip. These flowers were more than rare—they were intimate, dangerous in the wrong hands, priceless in the right.
“I’ll take them all.”

As the mage gingerly plucked each flower, the tulips’ colour shifted into a serene purple and gold. Somewhere within their petals, a long-kept secret waited patiently to be told.