The infirmary was quiet.
The quiet did not feel peaceful.It felt… restrained.As if the room itself was holding its breath around Leximus.
The aftermath of his surge lingered like a bruise against the walls: the faint metallic tang of discharged Ether, the crystalline scent the water-healer left behind, and the subtle hum of power still vibrating under the floorboards. Every lantern around the room flickered in an inconsistent rhythm—as though unsure whether to stay lit in his presence.
Leximus lay on the cot, eyes closed, breaths shallow and uneven. His fingers twitched as if grasping for something he couldn't quite reach. The healer's water-element aura continued to run through him in soft spirals, soothing what his body refused to calm on its own. Water healed by reminding the body of its correct state—binding memories of stability, whispering balance back into the bloodstream.
Tonight, it was working overtime.
Calvin stood nearby with arms folded tight, a notebook resting against his elbow. His pen moved rapidly across the page—sketching diagrams of Ether flow, strings of resonance theory, and patterns that didn't match any known element.
"This doesn't match any Path," he whispered to himself, but his voice trembled slightly. "Not even corrupted deviations…"
He glanced toward Rylan, standing only a few steps away but refusing to look at Leximus directly. Rylan's jaw was locked tight; his shoulders drawn inward. He looked less afraid of Leximus than of his own memory of what had happened.
"Rylan," Calvin said quietly, "do you see it too?"
Rylan hesitated. His eyes flicked toward Leximus—barely—and then away again.
"No," he lied. "Not now."
But the truth clung to his tongue: he had seen the room itself distort, bending around Leximus as though reality had flinched. He refused to speak it aloud. He feared naming it would call it back.
Calvin returned his focus to the boy on the cot. If Leximus' unknown element could be approached through the mechanics of the known four—if he could learn control by learning the principles of others—maybe it would provide a foothold.
"We'll start simple," Calvin murmured to himself. "Stability training. Flow discipline. If he can mirror elemental behavior… maybe his own will follow."
Across the room, Liam lingered by the doorway. He hadn't stepped fully inside since the surge ended. His eyes kept darting to the corners and the shadows, as if expecting them to move again.
The healer's hands glowed with pale blue light as she pressed them gently to Leximus' temples. Water-element healing was delicate, working through resonance and memory, binding the mind back to its rightful patterns.
"It's stabilizing," she said, voice calm but strained. "But something inside him resists being remembered. Like the body is forgetting itself faster than I can restore it."
Calvin's pen stopped in mid-stroke.
"That shouldn't be possible."
The healer didn't respond.
Leximus stirred, his breath catching in a sharp inhale. Memories burst behind his eyelids—chaotic fragments of his past, the night of his parents' murder. But this time, a new detail bled into the recollection: a faint silhouette standing behind the killer, a presence he had never noticed before. Watching. Silent. Wrong.
He jolted faintly, fingers digging into the thin blanket.
Calvin stepped forward. "Leximus?" His voice was gentle but tense. "Try to focus on the water. On the warmth. Let it ground you."
Leximus tried. He truly did. But his own Ether was a restless creature—like liquid fire underneath his skin, surging and receding without pattern. It refused to obey him. Instead, it pulsed outward, brushing against the edges of the room, probing the world that confined it.
Rylan stepped back instantly. "Don't force it," he warned. "We don't know how it reacts when provoked."
The healer increased the water flow, her aura deepening, cooling, pushing the foreign energy back into calmer rhythms. Her movements were steady, but sweat collected at her temple.
A tense stillness filled the room.An unnatural stillness.
Calvin leaned closer to Leximus, voice low. "We can guide you. By teaching you how the Four Paths function. You can imitate control before you truly have it." His brows furrowed. "But you must trust us. And you must try to trust yourself."
Leximus didn't answer. His body trembled faintly, though his consciousness drifted somewhere between waking and memory.
Close by, Rylan shifted nervously. He kept seeing flashes of what had happened earlier: the edges of the cot curving, shadows flattening unnaturally, the air folding inward. It was nothing like elemental influence. Nothing like the Four Paths. Nothing like anything taught in the academies.
It terrified him.
Hours passed.
Calvin documented everything—the way the lanterns dimmed when Leximus exhaled, how the healer's water responded differently depending on the heartbeat fluctuations, even the slight movements in the shadows near the far wall.
By the time midnight approached, the air had returned to relative stillness. The water healer slumped slightly, drained but satisfied that the boy's body would not rupture under the pressure of its own Ether.
The door opened softly.
Sirius stepped inside.
He said nothing at first. His eyes scanned the room, the healer, Calvin, the boys. Then they landed on a small stack of folders resting on the side desk. The top file had a photograph sticking out—two adults, worn at the edges, faces half-captured by the dim lantern light.
Leximus' parents.
Sirius' expression didn't change, but the pause in his movements said enough. His fingers brushed the corner of the photograph, lingering. His eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in calculation. In recognition.
Calvin swallowed. He knew better than to ask why Sirius still held those files so close.
Sirius finally spoke, voice calm but edged. "Report."
Calvin straightened. "His Ether signature is still unclassified. No resonance pattern matches any of the Four. Not even corrupted deviations."
Sirius nodded once. "And the room?"
Calvin hesitated.
Rylan's hand tightened against his side.
"It… responded to him," Calvin said carefully. "Subtly. But undeniably."
Sirius' gaze hardened, though the tension in his jaw was expertly concealed. "Continue monitoring. Don't provoke the element. And don't—" His eyes flicked toward Rylan—"speak carelessly. Not yet."
Rylan nodded, swallowing the truth he feared to say aloud.
Sirius left without another word.
The healer finished her final sweep of water-energy through Leximus' body, binding lingering instability. At last, she sighed and stepped away.
"He'll sleep," she said softly. "The rest depends on what he carries within."
Calvin nodded. "Thank you."
She left quietly, her footsteps fading down the hall.
The infirmary dimmed again, settling into uneasy stillness. Rylan and Liam retreated to the hallway, whispering between themselves, uncertain and shaken.
Calvin remained a little longer, watching Leximus' chest rise and fall.
"He'll need training," he whispered to the empty room. "Structure. Flow discipline. If we teach him the principles of the Four, he might… he might find an anchor."
But even he didn't fully believe it.
Eventually, Calvin turned off one lantern, then another, leaving only a single dim flame glowing in the far corner.
Leximus slept.
The room cooled. Shadows stretched across the floor in slow, deliberate shapes.
And then—
Something shifted.
A presence eased into the corner, silent as dust settling. Its outline was vague—barely more than a darker patch of darkness. No footsteps. No breath. No Ether signature.
Yet it watched.
Unblinking. Motionless.
Leximus remained asleep… but the air thickened around him, as if sensing the intruder. His fingers curled inward, reacting to something his conscious mind could not perceive.
The lantern flame sputtered once.
The presence did not move.
It only watched.
And the weight of being observed pressed into the room like a living thing—heavy, suffocating, patient.
Something had arrived.Something waiting.