Chapter 46
Our Power
Eilor blinked, unsure if he had heard correctly.
"Blood of what?" he asked, his tone that of someone struggling to believe what they'd heard.
The alchemist raised an eyebrow slowly, as if it pained him to repeat it.
The stillness of his gesture stretched a few seconds longer than necessary.
Then he exhaled slowly, looked at the pen, and turned his gaze back to Eilor.
"Of an alchemist's heart," he repeated, articulating each word as if dictating a formula. "You know…" he interrupted the sentence with a dry cough, two restrained rasps in his throat.
With a brief movement of his thumb, he pointed to his own chest, right over the right pectoral.
"Blood from a heart," he said more quietly, as if unsure he wanted to complete the thought.
The last word hung in the air, suspended in an atmosphere that had grown dense for no reason.
Several looked at him, first with curiosity, then with increasingly visible disbelief.
Eli frowned without saying anything.
One of the young men in the back leaned over the table, as if wanting to confirm he'd heard the same thing.
Another let out a nervous laugh that died as soon as he noticed no one else joined in.
Eilor opened his mouth, closed it, and looked back at the pen.
The bronze's gleam was still there, pulsing faintly with the ambient light, a weak radiance that seemed to breathe with each silence from the group.
The alchemist kept his eyes fixed on the instrument, his posture upright, his shoulders relaxed, but there was something in his expression—a brief shadow behind the gesture—that suggested the phrase hadn't been just a technical comment.
Eli kept watching the alchemist with a furrowed brow, leaning slightly forward.
"Blood taken from a heart?" she asked with a mix of disbelief and revulsion.
The alchemist nodded once, briefly, without bothering to open his eyes.
"Exactly," he replied, his arms crossed, with a calm that sounded almost offensive.
The air around them tightened a little.
Some exchanged quick glances, seeking if anyone else would laugh to confirm this was a joke.
But no one did.
Eilor watched him for a moment, trying to understand if the comment was literal or a metaphor.
His lips were slightly parted, the sheet still in one hand, the other resting on the table.
"And what does that mean?" he finally said, his tone measured but tension visible in his jaw. "It doesn't mean someone died for this… right?"
The alchemist took a second before reacting.
He let out a sigh, opened his arms, and raised both palms in front of him, waving them gently.
"No, no, no…" he said, dragging the words with a certain laziness. "Most of the time, no."
The room's murmur broke into a low echo.
One of the comrades, leaning against a pillar, raised his voice from the back:
"Most of the time?" he repeated, incredulous, with a nervous smile that didn't quite disguise the tone of alarm.
The alchemist turned his head slightly toward the voice but didn't respond immediately.
He just shrugged, like someone accepting that the following explanation wouldn't reassure anyone.
Eli blinked once, not taking her eyes off him.
Eilor, meanwhile, leaned a little forward, his fingers drumming on the table, expectant for a clarification that wasn't coming.
Silence returned, tense but expectant, held by the unmoving gleam of the pen in the hands of the young man still holding it.
"Well…" the alchemist began, his tone calm, "we can't waste intact hearts from the deceased, can we?"
The comment landed with an almost insulting lightness.
There was a brief silence.
Then he added, twisting a wrist slightly as if explaining an obvious fact:
"Besides, since our power comes from our heart, most dead alchemists tend to have that organ shredded to pieces."
The reaction was immediate.
Eli, who until then had listened with pressed lips, instinctively raised her hand.
"Wait," she interrupted him, frowning. "There are things here we don't know. What's this about… the heart being shredded?"
The alchemist looked at her for a moment, surprised that the question wasn't accompanied by fear, but by genuine curiosity.
His expression softened slightly.
"Ahh…" he said, scratching the side of his neck, letting out a small smile. "Well, that's a somewhat reserved matter."
He leaned back a little in his chair, crossing one leg over the other.
"You'd know it if you became first-grade," he added.
Some raised their eyebrows. The group looked at each other, trying to calculate how far they were from that category.
Eli kept her gaze fixed on him, assessing him.
The alchemist turned his head slightly, taking in the whole group with his gaze.
"It's not exactly treated as a secret either," he continued. "But, well, let's say… it's information not everyone knows how to handle."
He brought a hand to his neck, as if adjusting an invisible collar, and changed his tone to a more relaxed one.
"Still," he added with a lopsided smile, "I think those of us here are fairly relevant; after all, we've survived at least one day. Don't you think?"
The comment loosened the atmosphere.
A brief laugh came from a corner.
Several in the group exchanged smiles or discreet nods; others snorted with relief, glad the topic was moving away from the macabre tone.
Eli rolled her eyes with a contained smile.
Eilor, leaning against the back of his chair, let out a small laugh through his nose, not stopping his observation of the alchemist with a mix of respect and suspicion.
The atmosphere, for the first time since the conversation started, became almost light.
Seeing how the mood had softened, the alchemist decided to take advantage.
He inhaled slowly and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
His voice lowered just enough to force the others to quiet down without having to ask.
"You see," he began, his tone calm, "one thing about every power is that… they're more than just invisible energies or visible when we use them."
Some exchanged brief glances, others straightened up silently.
Side conversations dissolved one by one, until the only sounds left were the scraping of chairs and the occasional creak of wood.
Curious gazes converged on him, drawn by that confident calm.
Several sat where they could: on chairs, on the edges of the table, or on stacked crates never meant to hold anyone.
The air now held the clumsy concentration of an impromptu class.
The alchemist waited for everyone to settle.
He slowly raised his right arm, and with his left hand began tracing a path from his wrist to his shoulder.
"You've probably noticed it more than once," he said, looking at his own arm. "During your time at the academy… and outside it."
His tone remained neutral.
Some understood the nuance; others simply kept watching, absorbed.
The alchemist continued, his fingers still tracing a slow path along his forearm.
"I'm talking about how you feel your body change," he said, turning his wrist slightly to show the veins. "The heat rising inside, the different weight in the muscles."
As he spoke, some of those present nodded automatically, while others, thoughtful, tried to recall similar things.
The group had become a single focus of attention, captivated by the alchemist's measured tone.
"In the case of alchemists…" he continued, turning his head slightly as if searching for the exact words, "as we grow, from the moment we learn to manipulate our power… and from when our eyes changed color"—he paused briefly, letting the detail weigh on its own—"you felt something new start to grow inside you."
He touched the right side of his torso, just below the ribs, tracing a faint line with his fingers.
"Here," he said. "Behind the lung, next to your heart."
The phrase fell like a stone in water.
Those present—especially the alchemists—looked at each other, seeking confirmation in each other's faces.
The young man still holding the pen was the first to nod, without thinking.
Then another, and another.
Gradually, the gestures repeated in a chain: glances, slight head movements, murmurs of agreement.
Eli watched them with a furrowed brow, intrigued but restrained.
Eilor, on the other hand, leaned forward, his eyes very attentive.
"Are you saying that… something literally grows inside there?" he asked, more as a statement than a doubt.
The alchemist nodded calmly, crossing his arms.
"Exactly."
He paused, letting the words settle.
"That is our new heart. The source of our power. Of our 'Branch.'"
He leaned back slightly against the chair back, exhaling.
"Though it starts small," he added, raising his index finger to mark the detail.
As he spoke, some of the blue-eyed young men brought a hand to their chests, almost reflexively.
One of them murmured quietly:
"So… the pain in my heart when I exhausted myself in the early years at the academy…"
"…was your heart. Although at the academy you weren't at risk of exhaustion, it seems they knew decades ago what the limit was to prevent us from having heart attacks at that stage," the alchemist completed, looking at him with a half-smile.
The silence that followed wasn't one of fear, but of a dense, almost reverential curiosity.
It was as if they had just discovered a part of themselves that had always been there, hidden between heartbeats.
The alchemist lowered his voice a little more.
"Over time, that second heart stops being just an organ," he added. "It starts to have its own pulse, its own language. It learns to respond not to your body… but to your intention."
Someone in the back raised a hand, his voice somewhat hesitant:
"How do you know it starts small…? Wait…" he frowned, "so it grows just like a normal heart?"
The alchemist looked at him with approval, as if enjoying someone asking the right question.
"That's right," he replied in an almost didactic tone. "Though the process is slow."
He leaned forward, resting his hands on the table.
"You see, like the eye color change, it usually begins between eight and ten years old. And, well…" his voice lowered a bit, without drama, but with a hint of respect, "thanks to certain cases of fatalities at that age, we were able to understand what was happening."
The silence stretched; the laughter and bustle from before seemed far away.
The ambient sound reduced to distant footsteps and the faint rustle of paper under Eilor's fingers.
The alchemist continued serenely:
"We discovered that the alchemist's heart starts the size of a seed. Small, attached to the side of the original heart. From there, it grows with the body… adapting, branching out, as if entwining with the normal circulatory system. Until it becomes a separate heart."
As he spoke, he moved his hands with precision, describing the shape, the growth, the intertwining of veins.
Some watched with a mix of awe and nervousness.
One of the young men further back brought a hand to his chest, almost without realizing it, now seeing those two simultaneous beats with new eyes.
"And I suppose you understand what that means," the alchemist added, raising his gaze with a half-smile: "that as we grow, we naturally become stronger."
The silence that followed was thick, full of thoughts no one wanted to voice.
Glances crossed, seeking some certainty or humor to break the weight of what they had just heard.
The silence lasted a few seconds.
It was a different silence from before, denser, more human.
Until Eli broke it with a soft, almost pensive voice:
"And with the other powers…?" she asked, not looking directly at the alchemist. "Something new grows in us too, doesn't it?"
The alchemist turned his head toward her, arching an eyebrow slightly.
"I don't know," he replied calmly. "What do you feel as you grow?"
The question hung in the air.
For a moment, no one responded.
The entire group seemed to contract, as if everyone had realized at the same time that they had never thought about it.
The air thickened with a mix of doubt and bewilderment.
Glances drifted toward the floor, toward hands, toward any point that wasn't the center of the conversation.
Some touched their chests reflexively, others their necks, as if searching for a hint, a lost sensation in memory.
But nothing.
There was no clear answer, no defined feeling.
Because, after all, growing had always been… growing.
Natural. Invisible.
No one had stopped to think about it.
And suddenly, that void of an answer made them feel exposed, naive.
Eli lowered her eyes, crossing her arms on the table.
"I guess I never noticed," she said quietly.
Eilor nodded slightly, frowning.
"Me neither…" he admitted. "It's like it just… happens."
The alchemist watched them for a while in silence, letting the thought sink in.
He wasn't smiling this time.
There was something heavy, almost melancholic, in his gaze.
The silence lasted, but it wasn't the same.
It no longer weighed as before; now it had movement, a barely audible tremor.
The rustle of fabric, an elbow adjusting, the dry crack of a knuckle.
And among those small sounds, the faint murmur of hair being shaken by thoughtful hands.
Until a voice cut through it.
"My brainstem," someone said.
The phrase landed with the precision of a scalpel.
It wasn't a doubt, nor a speculation: it was an affirmation.
The alchemist turned his head toward the source of the voice.
The young man who had spoken was standing, his back straight, his violet eyes reflecting the light with an almost metallic gleam.
For a second, that gaze seemed to think faster than he himself did.
Eilor slowly raised his hand, instinctive, touching his neck with his fingers.
His fingertips traced the line of his throat, stopping just below the skull.
His voice was barely a murmur:
"The brainstem…" he repeated, as if testing the weight of those words.
Then, without taking his eyes off the alchemist, his eyes gradually widening, he added: "It's true, back here… that's the place."
The alchemist didn't respond immediately.
He just observed, his expression still, his eyes narrowed.
Around him, the movement changed.
The others with violet eyes—Eli among them—looked at each other.
It was a quick, almost electric exchange.
A mute confirmation.
One brought a hand to the nape of his neck, another to his chest, as if seeking a correspondence.
But the sensation was the same.
They all knew it.
They all felt it.
Eli, with a more serious expression than usual, nodded slowly.
"Yes…" she said, quietly. "It's there. It always was."
For an instant, the group of psychics stood separated from the rest without moving an inch.
Not by physical distance, but by the clarity with which they understood each other.
The shared certainty.
As if each one's body confirmed what the others had just said.
The alchemist watched them in silence, with one eyebrow raised and a faint shadow of professional curiosity.
He didn't interrupt.
He just let the idea grow on its own, like a reaction that needed to reach its own boiling point.