He decided that he would try to adapt.
Not because he believed it was right, nor because he had found anything in his parents’ accounts that he could claim as his own, but because, at this moment, it was the only solution that required no explanations, no resistance, no immediate decisions. With them, he would be calm, attentive, correct. He would listen, respond when expected, and refrain from asking questions no one was prepared to answer. He would accept the role everyone around him already knew, even if for him it was empty, stripped of content.
Outwardly, he would be who they expected him to be. Inwardly, however, something remained that could not be soothed or named–a quiet unease arising not from fear of the future, but from the simple fact of existing within a life that had been designed, from beginning to end, by someone else. He had the distinct sense that he had been placed where someone else had disappeared, that his presence served only to cover the gap left behind, to fill it with gestures, words, and reactions born not of experience, but of observation.
The world did not expect truth from him.
It expected continuity.
The longer he considered it, the clearer it became that the greatest effort would not be learning rules or recalling facts, but the constant mending of the void left by a consciousness that had been removed so thoroughly it left behind only perfectly fitted traces. Each day would be an exercise in sustaining the illusion, a small act of adaptation to a narrative that had existed before him and would continue as long as no one noticed what was missing.
He did not intend to fight. Not yet. Adaptation was neither agreement nor surrender, but a temporary suspension of resistance–a means of survival in a space that did not allow for emptiness. If he was to function in this world, he would have to learn to move through it carefully, to meet expectations without revealing his own hollowness, and to preserve whatever within him remained unnamed and unadapted.
With his parents, then, he would be careful and correct.
For the world–convincing enough.
And that quiet, elusive sense of estrangement–the knowledge that he was living someone else’s life, that his task was to maintain this construction–he would leave for later, aware that sooner or later it would find an outlet, no matter how carefully he tried to fit himself into place.
⸸ * ⸸
The return to the Academy carried nothing of a return home.
The road was the same, the walls unchanged, even the light in the courtyard fell into a familiar pattern–and yet Mael had the sense that everything had been shifted by a barely perceptible step, enough to strip the space of its former self-evidence. He passed through the gate without pausing, not looking around any longer than was necessary to orient himself, as though deliberate focus on function might shield him from an excess of impressions.
The dormitory was located in a side wing of the Academy, set apart from the main flow of halls and courtyards–quieter, less representative. The building was older, simpler in form, lacking the monumentality that dominated the rest of the complex. Mael remembered it in fragments: a sequence of corridors, staircases, and doors that fulfilled their purpose without demanding attention. He perceived it much the same way now. The corridor on his floor was quiet, nearly empty. A few doors stood ajar; from behind others came muted voices or the soft rustle of paper. The smell was different from the Academy’s halls–less cold, more human, as though this space allowed itself small departures from perfect neutrality.
He stopped in front of his door. The number was familiar. He registered the fact without emotion, as just another piece of information that carried no image with it. He opened the door and stepped inside.
At the sound of it opening, someone moved on the other side of the room.
The boy seated at the desk lifted his head from an open book only after a moment, as though he needed time to break free from the rhythm of his notes. He was younger than Mael, slighter, with light brown hair that refused to behave despite evident attempts to tame it that morning. His gaze was calm, attentive, free of the kind of curiosity that demands answers.
“I thought you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow,” he said quietly.
There was neither surprise nor concern in it–only a simple statement of a fact that had changed. Mael nodded.
“So did I.”
Erian closed the book, though he did not set it down right away. For a moment he studied Mael with the same attentiveness he had given the lines of text, as if trying to assess something he could not yet name. His gaze lingered on Mael’s shoulders, then on his hands, which he held too close to his body.
“How are you feeling?” he asked after a moment.
The question was simple, unweighted–and yet different from those Mael had heard before. It did not sound like a check, or part of a procedure.
“Fine,” Mael answered truthfully, though the word once again carried no clear meaning for him.
Erian accepted the response without comment, as though he had expected nothing more. He nodded and only then placed the book atop a stack of others arranged in an uneven row.
“Good,” he said. “If you need quiet, I can move to the reading room.”
There was no offer of sacrifice in it, no excessive concern–only a natural adjustment to another person’s presence.
“That won’t be necessary,” Mael replied.
The room was small, clearly designed for two, with beds, desks, and wardrobes arranged symmetrically–though that symmetry had long since been disrupted by subtle differences in how the space was used. One side of the room was orderly, almost impersonal. The other bore the marks of someone’s presence: books stacked unevenly, a coat draped over a chair, vials and bandages set on a shelf without any particular order.
Mael knew at once which side of the room belonged to him. His bed was neatly made, the desk empty, the wardrobe closed. Nothing suggested that someone had been gone from here for several days. Everything looked as though he had simply stepped out and was about to return.
This place was different from the house. It told no story. It did not try to persuade him who he was or who he was meant to be. It was merely a shared space–temporary, imperfect–and precisely for that reason, easier to endure.
Adaptation began here.
⸸ * ⸸
The lavatorium was nearly empty at this hour–quiet, stripped of conversation and haste. It did not provoke unease; instead, it encouraged focus, as though the space had been designed not for exchange, but for repetitive, unremarkable gestures. The stone walls gave off an even chill, and the lamplight was soft and diffused, casting no sharp shadows, imposing itself on the eye in no way. The air carried the scent of water and soap–simple, neutral–free of the trace of magic that usually permeated other parts of the Academy. Steam rose lightly from the pool, forming a thin veil of moisture that settled on the skin almost at once.
Mael stopped by the low benches set along the wall, removed his clothes, and laid them out carefully, as though the order of these actions mattered in itself. He sat down, reached for a small wooden bowl, and filled it with warm water from the stone basin, then watched the surface for a moment before letting it spill over his shoulders. The water was pleasantly warm–unsurprising in temperature–settling on the skin and slipping away, leaving behind only a brief sense of weight.
He repeated the motion slowly, methodically, pouring water first over his shoulders, then his neck and back, until he finally leaned forward to rinse his face and hair, trying to think of nothing beyond the movement itself. His hands moved over his skin attentively, without haste, as though this were not washing so much as mapping–establishing the boundaries of the body, testing where it began and ended, how it responded to touch and temperature, which places remained sensitive and which entirely indifferent.
He made no attempt to summon memories or associations. He treated the act as a preparatory ritual, a necessary stage before entering the water, to be performed thoroughly and without shortcuts. Only when his skin felt clean and warmed did he return the bowl to its place and rise. He stood barefoot for a moment on the cool stone before stepping into the pool, allowing the contrast in temperature to register clearly in his body, as though he wanted to locate precisely the line between what he felt and what he merely recorded.
The water reached his chest–smooth, still, undisturbed by movement. Mael entered slowly, letting the warmth take hold of him in stages, from feet to shoulders, until he leaned back against the stone edge and sat there for a while, breathing evenly, allowing his muscles to loosen where they had held tension without any clear cause. Then he lifted his hands above the surface and examined them closely, as though seeing them for the first time outside the context of a mirror. The skin was smooth, unmarked by scars; the lines of his palms were clear and symmetrical; his fingers long and slender, capable of precise movements they had evidently performed for years without hesitation. He ran his thumb across the inside of his palm, testing texture and temperature, subtle differences in pressure, as if he wanted to remember this body not as a whole, but as a set of details that could be ordered and made familiar.
His gaze moved lower–to his shoulders and chest, to the line of ribs rising and falling with the calm rhythm of breath, to his abdomen, flat and taut in a way that spoke of regular exertion. He touched the skin at his side, then at his collarbone, not seeking pain or reaction, only confirmation that everything was where it should be. The body responded obediently, reacting to touch in a predictable manner, without surprise–like a familiar tool whose instructions had remained intact.
He did not try to pretend he was that other boy. He did not compare. He did not judge. He treated it instead as reconnaissance: a quiet passage through a space he would have to inhabit, learning its boundaries, capacities, and limits before making any decisions.
He sank deeper, until the water reached his neck and the sounds of the lavatorium dulled, losing their sharpness. He submerged his head for a brief moment, allowing the noise of the outer world to fade almost completely. The silence was nearly absolute–dense, directionless–as though the world had stepped back for an instant. When he surfaced again, water streamed down his face and hair, and his eyes needed a fraction of a second to adjust to the light.
That was when he saw him.
From behind the stone corner leading toward the changing area emerged a boy with a towel draped loosely around his hips. He walked with ease, unhurried, as though he belonged here, as though the lavatorium were simply another neutral place rather than a space demanding caution. He paused for a moment–precisely as Mael lifted his head–and their gazes met unexpectedly, without any preparation.
The boy’s red eyes were intense, deep, a color that held nothing of warning or aggression, and yet drew attention at once–more sharply than the lamplight reflecting off the water. Mael felt time slow, or perhaps simply cease to move in its usual rhythm, as though this single image required his full presence, without filters or distance.
There was no fear in it, no embarrassment. There was pure fascination–sudden, inexplicable–directed toward a gaze that seemed to see him exactly as he was in that moment, without reference to the past and without expectations of the future.
The boy smiled slightly, almost reflexively, and raised a hand in a brief gesture of greeting that demanded no response. Then he moved on, disappearing behind the changing-room door, as though the encounter had been no more than a minor interruption in the flow of evening routines.
Mael remained still for a moment, his back against the stone, allowing the surface of the water to smooth itself again. Only after a longer pause did he turn his gaze away, aware that something had just occurred–though he could not yet have said what, or why that image lingered with him longer than anything else he had seen that day.
He submerged again, this time without haste, letting the warmth of the water close around the moment before it could become anything more than a brief, quiet suspension.
When he returned from the lavatorium, the room lay in half-light. The only source of illumination was a small lamp on Erian’s desk, beneath which an open book rested. The boy sat bent over it in the same position as before, as though the time between their encounters had not existed at all, and only the intensity of the light outside the window had changed.
“You’re back already,” he said quietly, without lifting his gaze.
“Yes.”
Erian nodded and turned a page, then, after a moment, closed the book and extinguished the lamp with a single, economical motion. Silence settled over the room–dense but not oppressive–filled with the distant life of the dormitory: footsteps in the corridor, muted voices, the soft rustle of fabric.
Mael lay down on his bed and remained still for a while, staring up at the dark ceiling, different from the one at home and from the one in the infirmary, though he did not attempt to assign meaning to that difference. The mattress was narrower, firmer, less accommodating to the body, which in some way made wakefulness easier, preventing his thoughts from drifting in any particular direction.
He could not have said when it began. There was no distinct impulse, no thought that might have served as a point of reference–only a subtle shift in the body, so slight it might have gone unnoticed had it not arisen without any external cause. With his hands resting on the mattress, Mael suddenly became aware that his breathing was slowing while growing shallower, as though his body were trying to tune itself to a rhythm whose source he could not yet locate.
The warmth that had belonged only to the water in the pool returned unexpectedly, spreading beneath the skin unevenly, concentrating in his chest and the back of his neck, where tension usually went unnoticed. His shoulders lifted almost imperceptibly, then settled again, as though the body were checking its range of motion, reassuring itself that everything was still in place.
No memory accompanied it. The only image that surfaced, for a fraction of a second, was a gaze–intense, unmistakable, a color that did not belong to the Academy’s restrained palette. It vanished almost at once, leaving behind only the trace of a quickened pulse and a faint tremor in his hands, which he had to stop deliberately by clasping his fingers more tightly than necessary.
His heart was beating faster, without cause, and his skin reacted to the air more sharply than usual, as though every movement of the fabric of his nightshirt were being registered with excessive precision. It was not anxiety or fear, but a state of alertness, a sudden sharpening of the senses, the way the body prepares for something that has not yet occurred.
Only then did he realize that this was the first moment since his awareness had come into being in this world when his body had responded more quickly–and more intensely–than the situation required, as though it had recognized a stimulus before the mind had time to classify it.
He did not know what it meant. He only knew that the sensation was unlike anything he had felt earlier that day, and that it left behind a delicate, elusive tension that did not entirely fade even when he closed his eyes.
The body had remembered something he could not yet name.
And that was enough for adaptation to tremble, for the first time, quite clearly.
Erian’s presence on the other side of the room was perceptible, though almost soundless–like a fixed point in space that demanded neither attention nor response. It was not the presence of his parents, weighted with expectation, nor the empty perfection of the house, but something in between: ordinary, unremarkable, free of narrative.
He lay there for a long time, allowing his breathing to steady on its own, his body slowly adjusting to the new arrangement of space, the new texture of silence, the new shape of night. No thoughts arose that needed to be restrained, no images that demanded interpretation. There was only a quiet persistence in a moment that required nothing beyond presence.
Before sleep took him, it occurred to him that this was the first place he had been in that did not try to remind him of anything or impose itself upon him–and that this ordinariness, stripped of history and expectation, was something his body responded to more quickly than his mind.
Sleep came without resistance, soft and shallow, but sufficient to make the night at the Academy more than just another stage of adaptation.
⸸ * ⸸
The refectory in the morning was louder than he had expected, though the noise held nothing of chaos. It was ordered, diffuse, composed of many small sounds layered together without the need for a single dominant one–the clatter of dishes, chairs scraping softly against stone, fragments of conversation, the rustle of fabric. Light streamed in through tall windows and spread evenly across the long tables, without drama.
Mael entered with a tray in his hands and paused briefly near the entrance–not because he was looking for anyone in particular, but to allow his eyes to adjust to the density of stimuli. The space was neutral, collective, devoid of intimacy, and yet he sensed a clear rhythm within it, as though every student present knew their place and moved according to an unspoken rule.
He took a seat at one of the side tables, setting the tray down in front of him and performing a few small, almost mechanical gestures meant to aid concentration: he straightened the cutlery, slid the cup a finger’s width to the side, pulled the chair back to precisely the distance that allowed him to sit upright. It was an act of adaptation–deliberate, conscious–a way of blending into a daily routine that was not his, but that he had to learn.
Only then did he feel the familiar, indistinct tension.
It did not arrive suddenly; it gathered quietly, like the echo of a stimulus returning without warning. The skin at the back of his neck reacted first, then his chest, and for a moment his breathing lost its even rhythm, though he could not identify the cause. He shifted his gaze across the hall instinctively, as if his body were trying to locate the source before his mind could dismiss it.
He saw him at one of the central tables.
The boy sat among other students, leaning slightly forward in an easy posture that suggested neither tension nor a need to dominate. He was speaking softly to someone, smiling in a way that was almost imperceptible–and yet it was not the gesture or the voice that drew Mael’s attention, but the gaze that lifted suddenly and settled on him with unmistakable ease, as though it had known from the start where to look.
Red eyes.
They did not surprise him–they confirmed something. In an instant, the image from the lavatorium the night before returned in full intensity: the warmth of the water, the steam in the air, the sudden suspension of time.
He realized something was wrong only when the sounds of the refectory lost their sharpness, as though they had been shifted a step farther away, leaving him alone in a space that moments earlier had been full of people. Conversations continued, cutlery struck plates, someone laughed–but it all reached him delayed, distorted, stripped of clear contours.
The warmth beneath his skin did not subside.
On the contrary, it intensified, gathering in his chest and the back of his neck, as though his body were trying to maintain a state that had no outlet in any action he recognized. His breathing grew shallower, his pulse more pronounced–enough that he had to press his feet more firmly against the floor to steady himself.
He felt his fingers tighten around the edge of the tray a little more than necessary. His heart accelerated slightly–enough to register the change, not enough to call it emotion. It was neither fear nor excitement, but a clear signal that his body had recognized something significant before any thought had emerged to organize it. He looked away almost at once, forcing himself to focus on the food, on simple, repetitive actions meant to restore a sense of control.
He tried to ignore the sensation. He told himself it was an ordinary response to sensory overload, that the refectory encouraged such tensions, that the encounter the night before had been incidental and meaningless. He concentrated on taste, on the texture of bread beneath his fingers, on the weight of the cup as he lifted it to his mouth. For a few seconds, it seemed sufficient.
Then he felt the gaze on him again.
This time he did not look away at once. He raised his head and allowed their eyes to meet for longer than before–for a fraction of a second that stretched disproportionately in his perception. The boy with the red eyes smiled faintly, exactly as he had the night before, and inclined his head in a gesture that was both greeting and closure, requiring neither response nor continuation.
There was calm in that gesture–and something else as well: awareness. And then something foreign cut across his field of vision.
FATIGUE: ELEVATED
EMOTIONAL STATE: UNSTABLE
AROUSAL LEVEL: HIGH
PATTERN COHERENCE: REDUCED
INCONSISTENCY DETECTED
–NORMALIZATION INITIATED–
The message appeared abruptly, without warning and without connection to what he had been looking at, suspended precisely where the faces of other students had been moments before. It was neither transparent nor intrusive–it simply was, like information that cannot be ignored even when its meaning is unclear.
Mael froze.
Not because he understood the content of the message, but because his body reacted instantly, as though a cold hand had been pressed against the place where tension had just been gathering. His breathing grew even shallower and then, against his will, began to even out, losing the irregular rhythm that had emerged with the meeting of gazes. He knew only that the brief encounter–a look, a smile, a nod–had stirred something in him that resisted calming down, resisted submission to his decision to adapt.
The warmth began to recede. Not abruptly, but methodically, as though a valve were being turned, restricting the flow of something that should not have appeared at all. The tremor in his hands subsided, his pulse slowed, and the heightened alertness was replaced by a heavier, more indifferent stability.
The message vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind empty space and a state the system had evidently deemed sufficiently safe. The refectory returned to its normal rhythm, sounds regained their sharpness, and the world once again looked the way it was supposed to.
He looked away again and forced himself to eat, though the taste had grown suddenly dull, as if his body remained in a state of vigilance, reluctant to return fully to neutrality. The memory of the lavatorium the night before refused to fade, returning insistently–not as an image, but as a reaction: a quickened pulse, warmth beneath the skin, a delicate tension without a name.
Somewhere across the hall, the boy with the red eyes turned away and returned to his conversation, as though nothing had happened. And yet Mael was left with the unsettling sense that the brief, forceful correction had not concerned only his body, but also something that had just begun to take shape within him–and had been interrupted before it could assume any form.
Adaptation continued. Something foreign–something that had begun appearing in his field of vision more and more often–had reacted to his emotions. He was disoriented, unsure how to relate to it. He did not know whether the previous Mael had possessed this same capacity, or whether it was some kind of error he should never have been able to see. He felt as though he were playing a game, as though he could see statistics–yet he had no right to remember the sensation accompanying an action that he, as himself rather than his predecessor, had never performed. And still, beneath it all, he knew this could not be normal.
That strange detector had reacted clearly because his internal state had been too intense to be allowed to persist. And once again it proved that the body does not always cooperate with the mind–especially when it recognizes something the latter cannot yet comprehend. What he did know was that whatever had occurred in the refectory had been classified as an error–even though he could not yet name it, not even in thought.
Kalis approached the table where Mael was sitting, but he did not notice her at once.
Only when a chair scraped across the floor on the opposite side of the table, when someone’s presence disrupted the carefully maintained distance around him, did he lift his gaze–reacting with a delay, as though his body were still recovering from the abrupt correction. Kalis sat across from him, upright and immaculate, her tray placed exactly parallel to the edge of the table, as if the gesture were a natural extension of how she existed within the Academy.
“May I?” she asked, though she was already seated.
Her voice was calm, slightly lowered, stripped of any emotion that might be considered unnecessary. Her green eyes rested on his face with more attention than ordinary politeness required, yet without overt curiosity–rather with the professional interest of someone who senses a disturbance in a familiar system.
“Of course,” Mael replied after a brief pause, aware that this was precisely the kind of situation in which adaptation demanded a response.
Kalis nodded, as though he had confirmed something already decided. For a moment they ate in silence, and she seemed to observe him from the corner of her eye, registering small details–the way he held his cutlery, the tempo of his movements, the fact that he no longer corrected everything instinctively, that he allowed his cup to sit slightly askew.
“Everyone’s talking about what happened,” she said at last. “Not officially, of course.”
There was no sympathy in it, no sensation–just information about the state of the environment.
“You look… like a smached potato,” she added after a brief pause. “But I’m guessing that’s just exhaustion.”
Mael nodded. The explanation was sufficient, and he felt no need to amend it.
“It’s temporary,” he said quietly.
Kalis smiled faintly, as though she had been waiting for exactly that sentence.
“Of course,” she replied. “You always bounce back quickly.”
The word always hung between them more distinctly than it should have.
“Professor Lirien asked about you,” she continued. “He wanted to know whether you’d be ready for the demonstration next week. You know how much he values your precision.”
There was no pressure in her tone–only certainty that the world was still operating according to familiar rules, and that Mael occupied exactly the same place within it as before. She went on smoothly, speaking of classes, results, of how many things couldn’t be shifted because the Academy did not tolerate gaps.
Mael listened attentively, responding when necessary with short, neutral sentences that betrayed neither resistance nor engagement. He felt his body working to maintain balance, felt adaptation demanding consistency, while somewhere beneath it all the echo of the earlier tension persisted–muted, but not entirely erased.
“It’s good that you’re back,” Kalis said at last, setting her cutlery aside. “I can’t manage all the elements of our plan on my own.”
She looked at him intently, as though expecting confirmation that he was still who he had been–though he had no knowledge of any plan at all. Mael raised his eyes and, for a brief moment, looked at her without a mask–not because he wanted to reveal anything, but because he did not yet know which one to choose.
“I’ll try to get a better handle on things,” he said finally.
The sentence was true and yet empty of content–perfectly calibrated to expectation. Kalis nodded, satisfied, as though she had obtained exactly what she had come for. She stood, collected her tray, and adjusted the cuff of her sleeve.
“Then I’ll see you in class,” she said. “As usual.”
She walked away with a steady stride, without looking back. Mael remained at the table, aware that the conversation had been another attempt to seal a gap the world had noticed faster than he was prepared for. Kalis had not seen emptiness. She had seen only a break in continuity–and had immediately tried to repair it.
She was already some distance from the table when something shifted in Mael’s field of vision.
It was not pain or dizziness, but a brief, almost technical sensation, as though his sight had momentarily lost the ability to choose a point of focus. His gaze, which had been following Kalis’s figure reflexively, stalled mid-motion, and the space around her softened, receding into the background.
The information appeared again, without warning.
OBJECT: EXTERNAL UNIT
EMOTIONAL STATE: ELEVATED
CONTROL LEVEL: HIGH
SOURCE OF AROUSAL: RELATIONAL
THREAT TO COHERENCE: POTENTIAL
DEVIATION DETECTED
Mael froze.
This message was not directed at him. It did not describe his body, his state, or his reaction. It concerned her–the person who had just been walking away, calm, upright, impeccable, with the same control she had displayed throughout their conversation. His heart rose into his throat. Whatever this was, it interfered not only with his own life, but with the lives of others. He did not know the weight of the information he had just been given, but he knew he would have to come to terms with it sooner or later.
The message vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. The refectory was once again just a refectory, and Kalis merely one of many figures dissolving into the crowd of students. Mael sat motionless, feeling the cool awareness of what he had seen settle into him more slowly than the previous messages, because it offered no point of reference.
Apparently, the system did not recognize ambition.
It did not name control.
It did not know what pride was, or the need to dominate.
It had registered only the tension generated within a relationship–and had classified it as a potential threat.
For the first time, he understood that what he was seeing was not a tool of understanding, but someone else’s emotional X-ray–one that asked neither permission nor justification. That the system could expose a person’s internal state with complete indifference to who they were, or how carefully they maintained appearances.
And also that Kalis–so perfectly embedded in the structure of the Academy–was now someone different to him than she had been moments earlier. Not because she had changed, but because he had seen something he should not have seen.
He had seen her differently.
Not as a top student.
Not as a stable axis of the Academy.
But as someone holding herself together through force–through control so perfect that without the dry system report he would never have noticed. Her calm, which had seemed natural only moments before, revealed itself as effort. Her certainty, as a construction requiring constant maintenance.
This knowledge brought no satisfaction. He felt no sense of advantage or triumph, no thought that he “knew more.” On the contrary, a discomfort set in–almost physical–stemming from the fact that he had been drawn into a domain he should not have access to. What he had seen was not a secret to be used, but someone else’s tension, laid bare without consent and without context.
This aberrant lens did not distinguish intimacy from information, privacy from threat, relationship from data. It displayed whatever it deemed relevant, then vanished–leaving him alone with the burden of interpretation it simultaneously denied him.
He placed his hands on the surface of the table and looked down at his fingers, as if to check whether they still belonged to him in the same way they had before. Nothing had changed.
And yet something had been disturbed–not in his body, but in the way he looked at others.
The adaptation he had promised himself suddenly felt more difficult. Not because the world demanded too much of him, but because he now saw fractures in places he had once assumed were smooth. He knew he should not notice them, that for his own safety he ought to pretend they did not exist and return to the simple division of roles, functions, and behaviors.
Adaptation continued.
Adaptation required silence–but knowledge, even unwanted knowledge, did not disappear so easily.