chapter 13. A lesson in silence

The silence in the kitchen after Elina's words was different. It was neither heavy nor hostile. She was businesslike, filled with unspoken plans and anxious determination. The fragile truce was sealed not by trust, but by necessity, but this was already a step forward.

Hugh broke the silence first. He ran a hand over his face, brushing away fatigue, and his gaze became focused, as he had only been in front of his drawings.

"You're right," he said quietly to his wife. "There's no use hiding. They already know about him. So we need to... prepare."

He looked at Gray. "Son, what you did back there on the street... did you feel the spell before it was cast?"

Gray nodded, feeling for those sensations in his memory.

“The hands of that guard… they became ‘hot’ and ‘prickly’. As if a swarm of wasps buzzed in them. And from them came a… loud, but quiet sound. You wouldn’t hear it. But I felt it.

Hugh raised an eyebrow in interest. A spark of the scientist’s former curiosity flared in his eyes.

“Interesting.” You're not sensing the magic itself, but the tension, the preparation for its release. That's... that's even more valuable. It means you can anticipate an attack.

"He can," Elina said suddenly. She was standing at the counter, pouring tea for all three of them. Her movements were calm and precise. "The question is, what will he do with this knowledge? Will he run? Or..."

"Or extinguish it," Hugh finished for her. "But it takes practice. Concentration." He stood up. "Let's go to the workshop."

The workshop, which used to be his personal refuge, has now become a testing ground. Hugh took out a small, dimly shimmering crystal from the shelf, a learning trick for novice colorists.

"This stone stores a weak charge of sunlight," he explained. — I'll try to activate it. Very weak. Your task is to feel the moment before the flash and... extinguish it. Not the light, but the activation itself.

Gray swallowed. He looked nervously at his mother. She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, watching them with the unflinching, watchful expression of a sentry. She was there not as a wife or a mother, but as an overseer and guarantor of their new pact.

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The first time didn't work. A bright, though small, flash momentarily blinded Gray, not with light but with its very rough, obtrusive texture. He winced.

"It's too late," said Hugh. "You reacted to the light itself." It needs to be earlier. Listen... no, feel the world around you. Look for distortion.

The second time. The third. The fifth. Gray focused until he had a headache, peering into the crystal with his inner eye, trying to catch the slightest change. Elina watched in silence, and her silence was more eloquent than any reproach.

And on the tenth time, he felt it. A subtle tension in the air around the crystal, a tiny "ripple," as if someone had thrown an invisible stone into the water.

"Now!" Gray exhaled, and instinctively, like closing an eye to a speck of dust, he tensed something within himself.

The crystal trembled in his father's hand. The flickering on its surface stumbled, choked, and... went out, never fully igniting. Instead of a flash, there was only a quiet, triumphant emptiness.

Hugh let out a strangled exclamation—not of fear, but of amazement.

“It worked,” he whispered, looking at the extinguished crystal and then at his son with a new, respectful interest. “You didn’t extinguish the effect, you extinguished the cause. You stopped the process itself.”

At that moment, a familiar, chilling sound came from outside—the metallic grating of a nail being driven into wood. Another plank. Closer.

All three of them jumped and froze, listening. The guard's footsteps receded.

"They're marking the area," Elina said quietly, her eyes fixed on the window. "Like a cattle yard before a slaughter."

She turned to them. There was no fear in her eyes. There was only cold, pure rage.

“Practice,” she said to Gray. “Learn to feel them before they decide to strike.” Then she looked at her husband. “And you… you find that girl. Lyra. If she warned us once, she can do it again. She’s our ears where our ears can’t hear.”

Hugh nodded. For the first time in a long time, he had a clear, distinct purpose beyond his own shame and fear.

Gray stared at the dead crystal. A new, unfamiliar feeling stirred beneath his anxiety. Not confidence—that was still a long way off. But understanding. His gift was not a stigma. It was a shield. Quiet, invisible, but real.

And that shield had to be hardened before the enemy decided to strike again. The lesson was just beginning.