Chapter 6: The Unseen Current
The world had not just sharpened; it had become a symphony of data. As Silas walked to his Alchemical Principles class the next morning, he found he didn't just see the students in the hall—he perceived them. The slight hesitation in a girl's step spoke of a twisted ankle not fully healed. The nervous flicker in a boy's aura betrayed a poorly prepared assignment. It was overwhelming, a torrent of information he had no idea how to process.
"Your cognitive faculties have been enhanced, but your filtering mechanisms are underdeveloped," Lurk's voice resonated in his mind, a calm anchor in the sensory storm. "Focus. Designate a single point of observation."
Silas forced his gaze to the floor ahead of him, focusing on the worn grooves in the stone. The cacophony of data receded to a manageable hum. The newfound strength in his limbs was intoxicating, a coiled spring of power waiting to be released. He had to consciously temper his steps to avoid moving with an unnatural, predatory grace.
The alchemy lab was a stark contrast to the other classrooms, filled with the smells of ozone, rare herbs, and hot metal. Glass beakers and copper distilling coils covered long stone tables. Their instructor, a wiry woman with goggles pushed up on her forehead named Magus Anya, gestured to a complex diagram on the board.
"Today, we begin the foundational work for a basic Mana Potion," she announced. "The goal is not to create a viable potion—that is years away—but to successfully catalyze the first reaction between powdered moonstone and dawnwater. The reaction should produce a stable, silver vapor. Any other color indicates impurity or instability."
Silas found a station at the back, next to Leo, whose hands were already shaking. "I heard you did something weird in warding yesterday," Leo whispered, his wisp bobbing anxiously. "A dampening field? That's a super rare defensive skill."
"It was an accident," Silas said, which was truer than Leo could possibly imagine.
"Right, an accident," Leo said, not believing him. "Well, try not to have an 'accident' that blows up our station. I can't afford the lab fees."
As they began weighing the delicate moonstone powder, Silas found his enhanced perception applied here too. He could see the latent energy sleeping within the ingredients. The moonstone wasn't just a white powder; it was a captured echo of pale light. The dawnwater wasn't just water; it was a vessel for potential, waiting for a command.
He followed the instructions meticulously, his movements unnaturally precise. When it came time to combine them in the heated crystal flask, he watched, his new sight activated without the accompanying headache or nosebleed. He saw the exact moment the energies touched, the way they were supposed to weave together into a harmonious, silver whole.
But he also saw the flaw. A minute instability in the heat source, a tiny impurity in the water that everyone else would miss. It was a hair's breadth from failure.
"Your prediction is accurate," Lurk observed. "The reaction will produce a corrosive yellow gas."
Silas acted on instinct. He didn't try to add energy or force the reaction. He remembered Lurk's words: We do not add. We reveal what is already there. He focused on the flaw, the point of instability. He didn't push his will against it; he simply acknowledged it. He gave the imperfection his full attention, and in doing so, he felt a thread of cold power—minute, controlled—leach from his fingertip and into the flask.
It wasn't a correction. It was a simplification.
The unstable, chaotic energy of the flaw simply vanished. It was subtracted from the equation. The reaction stabilized instantly, blooming into a perfect, shimmering silver vapor that coiled gracefully within the flask.
Leo, who had been holding his breath, let out a sigh of relief. "Wow, yours is perfect. Mine's just grey." Indeed, a dull, smoky grey mist hovered in Leo's beaker.
Magus Anya made her rounds, offering curt critiques. She paused at Leo's station. "Insufficient catalyst focus. The energies failed to properly synergize. A common first attempt." She moved to Silas, her eyes widening slightly at the pristine silver vapor. "Excellent purity, Vale. A remarkably stable first attempt. No instability at all."
She made a note on her crystal slate. Silas felt a flicker of pride, quickly extinguished by a wave of caution. Excellence drew attention.
His caution was warranted. From the front of the class, Seraphina turned her head, her eyes narrowing as she took in the perfect silver vapor in his flask. Her own experiment was a similar, though slightly less vibrant, silver. The slight frown on her face was not one of failure, but of calculation. He had matched her. No, he had, in the instructor's eyes, surpassed her.
The rest of the class passed without incident, but Silas felt the weight of her scrutiny like a physical touch. When the bell rang, she was at his station before he could leave.
"That was not an accident," she stated, her voice low.
"I followed the instructions," Silas replied, keeping his tone neutral.
"Instructions do not account for that level of stability on a first attempt. Your familiar does not just dampen. It perfects, does it not? It removes error." Her analytical mind was piecing it together with terrifying speed. "What is the cost, Vale? Nothing that unnatural comes without a price."
He had no answer for her. He simply gathered his things and walked away, feeling her gaze boring into his back. She was getting too close.
The confrontation left him unsettled. He needed to understand the limits of this new power. After nightfall, he slipped out of the dormitory and made his way to a deserted training yard on the edge of the campus grounds. The moon was high, casting long, deep shadows.
"Show me," Silas whispered into the quiet night. "Show me what the First Seal really means."
"Observe."
Lurk's presence swelled within him. This time, there was no pain, only a seamless fusion. Silas looked at a practice dummy made of woven enchanted reeds across the yard. He didn't will it to break. He simply looked at the spaces between the reeds, the points where tension held it together, and he subtracted the cohesion.
The dummy didn't explode or shatter. It simply unraveled, collapsing into a neat pile of separate, inert reeds as if it had never been assembled.
He turned his attention to a heavy stone block. He focused, not on breaking it, but on the microscopic fractures within its structure. He poured a fraction more power into the thought.
The block didn't crack. It disintegrated into a fine, uniform grey sand that whispered to the ground.
The power was immense. And utterly silent. It left no flashy light show, no roaring explosion. It simply ended things. It returned them to a state of base potential.
This was what he was now.
A flicker of movement in the shadows of a nearby archway caught his enhanced sight. He saw the distortion in the darkness, a patch of shadow that was too still, too dense.
He didn't run. He stood his ground, his newfound power humming in his veins.
"Come out, Corvus," Silas said, his voice echoing flatly in the empty yard. "I know you are there."
The patch of shadow detached itself from the archway. Agent Corvus stepped into the moonlight, his white suit seeming to glow. His expression was not one of anger or surprise, but of profound, clinical satisfaction.
"No light explosion this time, Mr. Vale," Corvus said, his voice soft. "No chaotic fluctuations. Just quiet dissolution." He gestured with his chin towards the pile of sand that had been a stone block. "The progression is remarkable. And it confirms my hypothesis."
He took a step forward, and the air grew cold.
"You are not a user of forbidden magic, Vale. You are a source of it. Your familiar is not a separate entity you command. It is a part of you. A symbiotic anomaly that is rewriting your very existence."
He raised his crystalline device. This time, it didn't hum with a scanning beam. It glowed with a harsh, golden light that felt aggressive, purging.
"And that," Corvus said, his wintery eyes locking with Silas's, "makes you a Class Three Reality Deviancy. And my mandate regarding such deviations is very, very clear."
The hunter was done observing. The purge had begun.