The alley did not breathe.
It should have — the city always did, groaning, shifting, heaving like a living organism — but here, the air hung suspended. Not still. Suspended.Held in place by something that understood it down to the last atom.
The man behind Leximus had not moved since speaking. He didn't need to. His presence pressed against the world with a precision that made motion irrelevant. Even the faintest drip from the broken pipe slowed, as though time itself hesitated to offend him.
Leximus's pulse thudded once.And the man knew.
"You're thinking too loudly," the Savant murmured, still behind him. "Initiates do that when they're afraid."
The shadows around Leximus rose on instinct, curling around his legs and wrists like defensive serpents — but even that wasn't enough to break the silence choking the alley.
Finally, Leximus turned.
The Savant looked ordinary at first glance — tall, thin, sharply dressed in a coat that belonged to someone who never brushed against walls or filth. The only thing truly wrong about him was the air. It didn't flow around him; it obeyed him. Pressed against him like a loyal hound.
His head tilted slightly, like a bird examining a dying creature.
"You're the stray Sirius picked up," the Savant said. "The one with the wrong element. The one who shouldn't exist."
His eyes dragged up and down Leximus with no emotion."Curious."
Leximus shifted his stance, weight centered. "Why kill the merchant?"
"He talked." The Savant's answer was immediate, mechanical. "Loose ends get removed."
"And I'm a loose end?"
"You listened."
That was it.
Not guilt.Not conspiracy.Not betrayal.
Simply cause and effect, delivered with the detachment of someone explaining the weather.
Leximus exhaled once. Slow.
The shadows responded.Tightening.Honing.Ready.
The Savant smiled faintly. A gesture without warmth.
"You cling to instincts. Natural, but useless here. You're trying to survive a type of opponent that surpasses you by six theoretical thresholds." His fingers twitched once — not as a threat, but as a lecturer preparing a lesson. "Still… I am curious. Shadow anomalies are rare."
He raised one hand.
Air bent around it like liquid glass.
Leximus moved first.
The shadows surged.
They wrapped around his legs, redirecting momentum, launching him backward just as the air in front of him compressed with a thunderclap —
BOOM.
The cobblestone where he had stood shattered, a crater forming with surgical neatness.
Leximus hit the ground and rolled, shadows cushioning the impact.
The Savant blinked once, mildly impressed.
"Good. You're not frozen by fear. Many are."
He stepped forward.
Not fast. Not slow.
Just inevitable.
Leximus threw a ribbon of shadow toward him, sharp as a blade, the darkness vibrating with strain.
The Savant didn't dodge.The air simply expelled the attack — dispersing it into harmless wisps.
"Shadows," the man said calmly, "are merely the absence of light. And light bends through air."
He raised two fingers.
Leximus didn't see what happened — he only felt the impact.
CRACK.
A wall of compressed air slammed into his ribs and threw him into the brick wall behind him. Pain screamed through his chest as the world tilted.
Not broken.But one inch away from it.
He coughed, shadows flaring involuntarily.
The Savant approached, hands still casually clasped behind his back.
"You misunderstand the nature of power," he said softly. "Initiates think in terms of instinct. Adepts think in terms of technique. But Savants… we think in terms of systems."
His gaze sharpened.
"And I have already solved you."
Leximus pushed up. Shadows wrapped around his torso, bracing his lungs against collapse. He staggered to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain.
The Savant observed him like a scholar examining an insect refusing to die.
"You're forcing yourself upright. Admirable."Pause."Pointless."
He flicked one hand.
This time Leximus saw it — a fraction of distorted space, a twist in the air — and shadows hurled him sideways on instinct. The blast skimmed him, carving a trench along the cobblestone.
Another flick.
Another blast.
The shadows launched him again, bruising him from the inside with each violent slam of redirected momentum.
It was working. Barely.
The Savant's eyes tracked him calmly, each movement analyzed and predicted before Leximus even made it.
"Your shadows react faster than you think," the Savant noted. "But they're not intelligent. They lack the structure of a developed Pathway."
He stepped closer.
"Let me show you what structure can do."
The air behind Leximus hardened.
He didn't see it — he felt it.
The shadows screamed silent warning.
He ducked.
A column of compressed atmosphere sliced past him, clean as a guillotine, carving a straight line across the building. Mortar and stone fell in slow, controlled pieces.
Leximus bolted.
Not toward the exit — the Savant expected that.
He ran toward the wall.
Shadows wrapped his legs, compressing and launching him upward. He hit the second-story windowsill, vaulted, and sprinted along the ledge.
The Savant did not chase.
He simply moved his hand.
The air above Leximus vanished.
Pressure changed.
His lungs seized.
He stumbled—just a fraction—but it was enough for the Savant to catch him with the next blast.
WHAM.
Leximus crashed back down to the street, hitting hard enough to drive the breath out of him. His shadow wrapped around his body like armor, cushioning the worst of it, but pain flared white-hot across his back.
The Savant stopped over him.
"You should not exist," he said again, faintly intrigued. "Your element is an insult to the structure of the world. A contradiction with no logic."
He crouched.
"You… are a violation."
Leximus spat blood and forced himself upright.
"I don't care."
The Savant's expression didn't change, but something sharpened in his gaze — not anger, not surprise. Simply attention.
"Oh? Then what do you care for?"
Leximus didn't answer with words.
He moved.
Shadows exploded upward from his feet, launching him into the Savant's chest with raw, desperate force.
The Savant didn't block.
He didn't need to.
Air beneath his coat hardened into an invisible barrier. Leximus slammed into it, shadows cracking against the pressure. Pain shot through his arms as the force rebounded, throwing him backward again.
The Savant caught him mid-air with a twist of his hand.
Not physically.
With air.
Leximus froze, suspended, lungs compressed.
"Resistance without structure is noise."
He squeezed.
Pain exploded through Leximus's chest as his ribs bowed inward. His vision blurred as darkness flooded the edges.
The shadows shrieked silently, convulsing, unable to break the grip of pressure holding him like an executioner's hand.
The Savant's voice was quiet, almost patient:
"Any last insight before I close this loop?"
The shadows flickered.Stuttered.Collapsed.
His lungs spasmed, desperate for air.
The world tilted.
…But the shadows changed.
They didn't flare in defense.
They aligned.
Thin, trembling strands of black coiled around his wrists, around his chest, around his throat like something learning, adapting, whispering—
Potential.
Not obedience.Not panic.Something else.
The Savant felt it too. His brows twitched — the first real reaction.
Leximus looked up through the pressure crushing him.
"Last insight?" he rasped."You underestimated…"
His body dissolved.
Not literally — not transformation — but the shadows jerked, snapping him sideways out of the air's grip with a violent, uncontrolled wrench.
He hit the ground and rolled, lungs screaming for breath, the pressure breaking just enough for him to drag in air.
"…me."
The Savant straightened.
"For an Initiate," he said, "you are exceedingly… problematic."
The air around him shimmered.
His next attack was final.Leximus could feel that.A Savant didn't drag out kills unless something genuinely defied logic.
Leximus stood.
Slowly.
Pain radiated through his ribs. His arm trembled. His vision wavered.
But he stood.
Shadows coiled around him, not wild this time.
Focused.
Waiting.
The Savant's composure tightened almost imperceptibly.
"I will remove you now," he said. "Cleanly."
He stepped forward.
Leximus braced.
The shadows rose.
And—
A metallic click echoed from the street entrance.
The Savant froze.
Footsteps approached. Controlled. Heavy. Familiar.
Leximus didn't dare turn.
Because the Savant did.
And for the first time, something close to irritation cracked his expression.
A tall figure entered the alley.
Imposing.Calm.Deadly.
Sirius.
His eyes swept the wreckage, the shattered stone, the blood on Leximus's lip — then fixed on the Savant.
"You," Sirius said quietly, "weren't on my list tonight."
The Savant's jaw tightened.
"Sirius. Always meddling."
"And you," Sirius replied, stepping forward, "always breaking rules."
The air thickened.Not with power — with threat.
The Savant's chin lifted a fraction.
"This anomaly must be erased. You know what he is."
Sirius didn't blink.
"And you know he's under my protection."
A beat.
The Savant turned away, coat shifting without disturbance.
"This isn't over."
Then—
He vanished.
No sound.Just air folding and releasing where he stood.
Leximus sagged, shadows catching him before he collapsed.
Sirius looked down at him — expression unreadable.
Then:
"You're alive."A beat."Good."
Not praise.Not comfort.
Assessment.
"Can you stand?"
Leximus nodded, barely.
"Then walk," Sirius said. "We leave. Now."
He turned and strode out of the alley, trusting Leximus to follow or crawl.
Leximus pushed upright. The shadows helped, steady, quiet.
He took one step.
Then another.
Behind him, the shards of broken air and collapsed stone whispered the truth:
He had survived a Savant.
Barely.
But survival, in this world, was the first mark of something dangerous.
Something becoming.
Tonight, he had been treated as expendable.
But he did not die.
And someone, somewhere, would regret that.