The corridor outside the Silver Room felt colder than when Leximus had entered it.
Not because the air had changed—but because he had.
The people gathered didn't know what to say. They watched him with a mixture of unease and reassessment. The "anomaly" had survived his first encounter with a higher authority.
But only barely.
Calvin stepped aside to let him exit the room, offering nothing more than a subtle nod that meant: Keep moving. Don't think. Not yet.
Eveline hovered nearby, clearly wanting to ask if he was okay, but one look at his face stopped her. She recognized the way trauma settled into bone.
Sirius's hands were clasped behind his back, knuckles white. His guilt hung off him like a second coat.
Rylan… Rylan didn't look at Leximus.
Instead, he positioned himself—almost naturally—at a distance. Near a protective charm carved onto the wall. Close enough to intervene if needed, far enough that no sudden flicker of shadow would brush his boots.
Subtle.Wordless.Instinct.
The mere presence of Leximus's shadow pulling longer from the lantern light made Rylan's breath catch for a half-second.
He hid it well.
The messenger dismissed the onlookers and asked the group to accompany him for official debriefing. Hespera, however, remained behind. Her stone-grained hands folded behind her mantle, she observed the young boy being led away.
If she felt anything at all, she did not show it.
She turned toward Calvin.
"Ensure he remains stable."
Not a request. A mandate.
Calvin bowed his head, respectful but not submissive, "Yes, my Lady."
Hespera's gaze lingered on Leximus one last time—assessing, calculating, as if engraving him into her memory.
Then she walked away, her steps slow and heavy, echoing like deliberate knocks on a great door.
As they moved through the upper corridors, the group reorganized their formation without even meaning to. Calvin walked slightly ahead, the natural lead. Eveline kept close beside Leximus, occasionally glancing at his hands as if expecting them to tremble.
Rylan stayed behind him, but not directly. Diagonally positioned. Still near charms. Still quiet. Still watching.
Leximus felt their tension like pressure on his skin.
But his mind was somewhere else entirely.
"What are you hiding from yourself?"
Hespera's question replayed again and again in his skull.He felt the tremor in his bones, the echo of fear when she'd spoken the word:
Executed.
His body had gone cold.His thoughts had splintered.And the Shadow responded to fear like breath to flame.
He swallowed hard.
His fingers curled. The faint distortion beneath his feet tightened then softened again.
Calvin caught the movement but didn't comment. He observed—noted—and stored it away in that vast, calculating mind of his.
"You will need rest tonight," Calvin said as they descended the next flight of stairs. "Your nervous system has been pushed beyond its threshold."
Leximus didn't respond. His voice felt sealed behind his ribs.
Rylan glanced toward Calvin.
"Master… when you train him on Psychological Alignment…"His voice was respectful, but there was an urgency underneath it."…be careful."
Calvin raised an eyebrow. "How careful?"
Rylan hesitated. He searched for the right phrasing—one that didn't sound like a warning from an elder, but a student's honest observation.
"He's not reacting to emotion the way others do," Rylan said quietly."It's like… he reflects something deeper. Something inside himself. Something most Avatars never touch."
Calvin's jaw tightened just a fraction.
Eveline slowed her steps, listening but pretending not to.
Leximus felt heat rise in his chest.
Something deeper.A reflection.A mirror of himself.
His thoughts spiraled again—but this time, they didn't unravel.
They aligned.
As the group approached the lower halls, the lantern glow dimmed to the soft bluish luminance characteristic of the facility's underground levels. Their footsteps echoed in the tunnels like soft heartbeats.
Leximus felt the weight of Hespera's questions all over again.
Why did every question feel like pain?
Because each one brushed against something he had buried.Because each one forced him toward truths he didn't want to remember.Because every memory of his parents, every fragment of that night, felt like a wound he kept stitching shut—and the Shadow kept tearing open.
Not to harm him.
To reveal him.
The real problem wasn't the Element.
It was him.
He had denied himself too long.Denied what he saw.Denied what he was forced to become.
And the Shadow—his Shadow—did not tolerate lies. Not even internal ones.
Elements speak.Hespera's words rang again.
What did Shadow say?
It hadn't spoken in words.It spoke in reactions.In flickers.In pulses of fear, anger, grief—But always his fear.His anger.His grief.
It wasn't a monster living inside him.
It was the part of him he kept locked away.
Back in his quaters
The door closed behind him with a soft thud.
Silence washed the room.No voices.No eyes watching.No restraints.
His shadow stretched slightly across the stone floor, as though testing the space.
Leximus sat on the edge of the small bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
His mind replayed the moment he heard the sentence:
"The boy is to be executed."
His chest tightened even now.
He remembered the shock—the instinctive terror—the way his heartbeat had crashed into his ears so loudly he couldn't hear anything else.
But he also remembered how his darkness reacted.
Not to protect him.Not to lash out.
It reflected him.
When he panicked—It twisted.
When he steadied—It calmed.
His thoughts slowed.For the first time all day, he allowed himself to breathe deeply.
Slow.In.Out.
The shadow pulsed softly with each breath, synchronized.
He closed his eyes and let the memory of his parents surface—not the chaos, not the death, but their presence before it all fell apart.
The ache in his chest deepened.
He had been running from that moment his entire life.But running didn't erase the truth.
He needed to face it.
He needed to know what happened.
He needed to know who he really was.
And—he needed to accept the part of himself he feared most.
His Element.
The shadow beneath him wrapped faintly around his feet—not tightly, not threateningly.Almost like a reassurance.
A presence, not a curse.
His breathing steadied.His heartbeat slowed.His shoulders finally, finally dropped.
For the first time, the darkness didn't feel like a storm.
It felt like a second skin.
Late that night
There was a soft knock at his door.
Leximus looked up as Calvin entered, hands clasped behind his back, expression unreadable.
He closed the door gently behind him.
"Tomorrow," Calvin said, "we begin Alignment training."
Leximus nodded.
Calvin studied him for a moment—long enough to gauge the subtle shift in his demeanor, the steadier posture, the calmer shadow.
"Understand this," Calvin said quietly, "Alignment is not about control. Not truly. It is about knowing yourself better than your power does."
He stepped closer.
"If your mind fractures—"
His eyes locked onto Leximus'.
"—your Element fractures with it."
The warning wasn't a threat.
It was a truth.
A fundamental law.
Leximus swallowed and nodded again, firmer this time.
Calvin left the room.
Leximus lay down slowly, letting the silence wrap around him.
His eyes drifted closed.
The shadow settled.
Tomorrow would begin a new chapter.
One not of survival.
But understanding.