were left open, laundry still hung on the lines, and a pot was still boiling in one of the houses, but not a single villager was in sight. Pip, fluttering anxiously, landed on Vanda's shoulder. "This is Willowmere Village," she said, her voice tinged with worry. "It's usually bustling with activity. Something’s wrong." Vanda approached the central square, where a large, ornate fountain stood dry and cracked. Around the fountain's base were inscriptions that were too worn to read. He noticed that each house bore a similar rune, glowing faintly above the doorframes. "These runes," Pip explained, "connect each home to the village’s heart, the fountain. But with the fountain damaged and dry, the runes are fading, and it seems the villagers have vanished." Vanda felt a surge of responsibility; he couldn’t just leave the village like this. "Let's fix the fountain. Maybe it will bring the villagers back." Together, they examined the fountain more closely. Vanda found a series of mechanical gears hidden beneath a panel in the fountain’s base, but several pieces were missing, likely the reason for the fountain's disrepair. Searching the village, they gathered the missing gears from various locations, solving mini-puzzles that required aligning the runes to release the gears—some were hidden behind sliding puzzles on the walls of houses, others were locked inside chests that required solving riddles. With all the pieces collected, Vanda returned to the fountain. As he placed the last gear, the runes around the village brightened, and the fountain rumbled to life, water cascading down its tiers with a refreshing sound. The moment the fountain was fully
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