The house leaned like it was tired.
Not enough to fall. Not enough to draw attention. Just a slow, permanent tilt to the left, as if the ground beneath it had softened over time and no one had bothered to correct it.
Adrian Vale used to think houses could feel embarrassment.
If they could, this one did.
It stood at the edge of the outskirts where the city gave up pretending to be whole. The pavement thinned into gravel. Streetlights flickered instead of shone. Fences leaned into each other like conspirators. Beyond the highway overpass, warehouses rotted quietly beside fields that had long stopped growing anything useful.
It was the kind of place people passed through, not toward.
Adrian stood barefoot in the kitchen doorway at six in the morning, watching his mother count change at the table.Quarters. Dimes. Pennies.
Stacked carefully in uneven towers.
The overhead light buzzed faintly. It always buzzed. He wondered if it had ever known silence.
His mother rubbed her forehead and exhaled slowly, then began recounting as if numbers might rearrange themselves out of pity.
"Elena's tuition payment is due next week," she murmured to herself.
From the hallway, a voice answered.
"I'm not going back next semester."
Elena stepped into the kitchen, tying her hair into a tight knot at the back of her head. At twenty-one, she carried herself like someone older. Not graceful. Not soft. Just steady. She wore one of their mother's old flannel shirts over a black tank top, sleeves rolled up as if she were always preparing to work.
Their mother didn't look up. "You're not making that decision again."
"It's not a decision. It's math."
"You're going back."
Elena grabbed a mug from the drying rack. "With what? The magical scholarship fairy?"
Adrian watched the exchange quietly, leaning against the frame. This argument had become ritual. It was never loud. Never explosive. Just two exhausted people pushing the same weight back and forth.
His mother finally looked up. "I don't need both of you sacrificing your future."
"You don't need to work sixteen hours a day," Elena shot back, but her tone wasn't cruel. It was tight. Afraid.
Silence stretched.
Adrian stepped forward and opened the fridge. Cold air spilled over his bare chest. There wasn't much inside. Milk. Eggs. Leftover rice in a cracked plastic container.
"You're both dramatic," he said lightly. "I'll just become rich. Solve everything."
Elena snorted. "With what talent?"
He shrugged. "I'm mysterious."
"You're unemployed."
"Temporarily."
Their mother smiled faintly, the expression thin but real. "You're eighteen today. That means you can legally be unemployed."
"Big milestone," Elena said dryly.
Eighteen.
The word sat differently in the room.
Their mother's eyes lingered on him a moment longer than usual.
He noticed.
He always noticed.
"Did you sleep?" she asked.
"Yeah."
It was a lie, but a harmless one. He slept enough.
She nodded slowly, like she didn't quite believe him.
Elena poured coffee into her mug and leaned against the counter. "You still have that thing on your back?"
Adrian stiffened slightly.
"Birthmark?" he said casually.
"It's not a birthmark. It looks like a crop circle."
"It's abstract."
"It's creepy."
Their mother's expression shifted barely. A flicker. Then gone.
"Leave him alone," she said quietly.
Elena raised her hands in surrender. "I'm just saying, if it starts glowing or summoning demons, I'm moving out."
Adrian forced a laugh.It sounded normal.
He hoped it sounded normal.
Because three nights ago, when he'd caught sight of the mark in the mirror after a shower, something had changed.
The ink-dark lines curved over the back of his left shoulder blade in a pattern too precise to be accidental. He'd seen it all his life. Learned to ignore it. Learned not to ask why his father had drawn it the night he was born.
But that night, the lines looked thinner.
Faded.
As if something was gently erasing them from beneath his skin.
He hadn't told his mother.
He hadn't told Elena.
And he hadn't mentioned the dream.
The one where the sky wasn't broken just waiting to be.
Outside, a truck roared down the highway, rattling the windows in their frames.
The house shifted slightly.
Still leaning.
Still standing.
Still waiting.
And Adrian, newly eighteen, had the uneasy feeling that something else was waiting too.
Something patient.
Something that had counted the years far more carefully than they had.