A sudden ripple came from the back seat, a small shift that warmed the cold air.
Leon jolted and turned with wide-open eyes. A man who had not been there a second ago sat there in silence, his dark hoodie filling the seats.
When Mr. Lee saw the alarm on Leon's face, he gestured calmly. "This is my nephew, Feng." He turned slightly. "Feng, this is Leon."
Feng's white teeth brightened the car as his smile continued without breaking. "I know," his smile widened, narrowing his eyes as he leaned forward slightly.
In the car's small space, his presence felt dense. Powerful. Like the air before a thunderclap.
Goosebumps filled Leon's skin as he saw a strange light flickering deep in Feng's eyes, through the rearview mirror.
Those eyes scanned him – not like a lion judging prey, but like a locksmith studying a broken, complicated lock.
"The energy around you..." Feng murmured, his voice low. "It's not just unstable. It's mourning. Like a locked vault whose key was thrown into the ocean. Dangerous."
His eyes flickered once more.
"And the vessel..." he said. "Is frail."
The words landed hard on Leon's raw nerves. Frail. Vessel.
"We're here," Leon whispered as Mr. Lee slowed near the crumbling outskirts of Dusthollow.
"Here?" Mr. Lee and Feng said at once, both turning to take in the squalor outside.
"I... I didn't want to say I lived in Dusthollow," Leon admitted, his face burning.
Mr. Lee's expression shifted into something heavier than pity, something closer to grieving understanding. His voice dropped.
"This is where they throw away the broken."
Feng grunted. "Let's hope the boy has some fight left in him."
Leon got out, the weight of their stares dragging at him more than the basket he took from an older woman nearby.
"To my door, son," she hissed, her eyes like chips of flint.
Leon carried it for her, the smell of old herbs and damp cloth making his nose twitch.
"Thank you," she said, snatching the basket back at her threshold. As she untied her knot of keys, her voice cut into him. "Don't be too generous, son. People aren't what they seem. Remember."
The word looped in Leon's mind, that his own nails raked across his palms without noticing.
He turned once and saw her still there, watching with a grin. He turned twice. Her grin had widened. But on the third turn, he froze. The woman was gone.
Her basket was gone. Her house was gone, too.
Only a damp patch on the cobblestones remained, along with the smell of ozone and wet earth.
Then a sound slipped through the humid air—not sharp, not piercing, but a whisper that seemed to come from the walls themselves.
It did not fade as he walked.
It settled into his inner ear, a phantom resonance humming in tune with the strange energy Feng had named.
Remember.
A few meters from his own house, another sound tore through the air—his mother's wailing.
The cry shattered what little composure he had left. His legs moved on instinct, kicking dust into spirals as he ran.
He barely registered Lily curled on the doorstep, her body shaking with sobs.
Inside, his mother's grief poured out in a raw, endless keen.
Seeing them alone broke the last wall inside him.
For two days, the house was a tomb of silence.
Leon moved through it like a ghost, brewing tea his mother never touched, holding Lily until her tears ran dry.
Sleep never came. He lay there, staring at the ceiling where his father's laughter once seemed to live.
When he returned to school, whispers clung to him like smoke.
"Is that the painter's son?"
"...did you see what he's carrying?"
"Why would anyone bring a paintbrush to school?"
"...he should come paint my pigpen."
Soft laughter followed.
"Yeah, maybe he'd be good at it, too. Family talent."
Leon moved through the halls like a specter of grief. At every direction he trod, Zoe's steady glance found him, a silent anchor in the storm.
On the second evening, Mr. Lee returned without offering comfort.
He sat in their one good chair and handed Leon a thick black envelope sealed with wax the color of old blood.
For a good ten minutes, Mr. Lee sat there, nodding at the careful way the room had been arranged. He swallowed when his eyes landed on a cockroach moving beside the chair he was in.
"The results from your first exam are in..." he said quietly. "...You didn't qualify for the standard track."
Leon's heart plunged. All his hope seemed to drain out of him.
"But," Mr. Lee continued, his voice tightening, "...your written score was off the charts. It flagged you for this."
He tapped the envelope.
"A second exam. A different kind of test. This isn't about grades. It's about your awakening."
Leon clutched the envelope, his fingers trembling.
A second exam? My awakening?
A memory surfaced—his father's paint-stained hands resting on his shoulders.
Your strength will show itself when the time is right.
It had once sounded like a hopeful lie. But now it felt like prophecy sealed in black wax.
The next day, the world felt edged and hostile. Tiger's gang shadowed him, pelting him with jeers and stones before vanishing in storms of laughter, both on his way to school and on his way home.
Leon's fragile resolve hardened into something cold.
He would take this exam. And he would change this.
His route led him past an overflowing trash bin. A scuffle sounded from a side alley.
Instinctively, Leon shrank behind a collapsed wall.
A man in a suit worth five times more than Leon's entire home stood over a crumpled figure in Dusthollow rags.
Each strike was slow and deliberate.
"Please... no more..." the poor man begged, his voice wet and broken.
"You don't need it," the elite sneered. "A waste of a decent telekinetic flicker on garbage like you."
Ability-stealing.
The horror Mr. Lee had only warned about in theory was now ten feet away.
The elite slid a ring onto his finger. Its gemstone glowed a sickly green. Then he pressed it to the victim's forehead, pressing hard.
The man's scream ripped through the alley.
A visible wisp of light—a trapped will-o'-the-wisp—was torn from his body and pulled into the ring.
Just as the light in the poor man's eyes died, the elite straightened and brushed dust from his trousers. "You should be grateful I let you live."
He spat on the motionless man, then began to walk away.
Leon's fear twisted into something incandescent. 'So this is the world's truth?'
His father's words pounded through his skull. Your strength will show itself at the right time.
Without thinking, Leon's fists curled.
The air around them did not just crackle—it thinned, pulling taut around his knuckles.
The taste in his mouth sharpened from ozone into the searing metallic tang of a lightning strike.
The ground at his feet shuddered.
A single jagged crack shot through the concrete, racing away from the point beneath him.
In the grimy reflection of a puddle, he saw it.
His eyes. Blazing with a liquid, solar gold that swallowed the iris whole. Then the fury vanished.
It left behind a void—cold, empty, and hungry that needed to be filled again.
The taste faded back to dust.
Leon stared at his hands. Then, at the broken man in the alley.
What... was I?
Panic surged through him, hotter and stranger than before.
He turned and sprinted home. His heart was no longer just slamming in his chest. It was beating a new rhythm, harsh and jarring, less like fear and more like a war drum.
He scrambled to his door, his hands still faintly buzzing, as if asleep, stretched out before him.
The terror was not only about being seen. It was the deeper realization beneath it:
The power had felt good. Righteous, and it had wanted more.
He fumbled for the key, the black envelope heavy in his bag—a promise and a threat at once.