CHAPTER 2 — THE BROKEN PIECE
Rain fell with monotonous rhythm over the school's back courtyard, turning the ground into thick mud. It was the perfect weather. When the world becomes loud with the drumming of water, people lower their guard.
The victim was not anyone special. His name was Markus Gale. Seventeen years old, moderately popular, moderately intelligent. A boy who smiled too much and spoke too fast when he was nervous.
What caught Aurelian's attention was his intrinsic social clumsiness: a slip of the tongue here, an awkward comment there, a forced laugh when silence would have been more appropriate.
That clumsiness was fertile ground for planting doubt.
---
It all began in the study hall. Markus sat in front of an incomplete homework sheet, biting his lower lip with visible anxiety.
Aurelian approached with a kind, concerned expression.
"Trouble with history?"
Markus looked up, surprised that someone like Aurelian—respected, brilliant—was speaking to him.
"Yeah, kind of. I can't really memorize the dates of the Civil War."
Aurelian smiled, tilting his head with what appeared to be genuine understanding.
"I think I saw something you wrote that might help."
He pulled a sheet from his folder. A list of dates, places, and names. All of them wrong by a margin of less than three percent. Enough to go undetected in Markus's fuzzy memory, but lethal to any grade.
"You left this in the library yesterday."
Markus took the sheet. Studied it with a slight frown. Doubt was the first step toward the edge of the cliff.
"Uh… I don't remember writing this. But I guess it is mine. The handwriting… it does look like mine."
The logic of doubt had replaced the certainty of reality.
---
Over the following days, Aurelian made sure Markus encountered the "forgotten" sheet multiple times: in his locker (how did it get there?), among his notebooks (did I put it there without noticing?), inside a borrowed book (I must have used it as a bookmark).
Each appearance reinforced the false memory: I wrote this.
Aurelian perfected the technique. A subtle mistake here and there, a well-intentioned but poorly grounded piece of advice, a gentle suggestion that he should "review what he had already written with so much effort."
Without knowing it, Markus was studying a deliberately distorted map.
---
On the day of the exam, Markus was sweating heavily. Every date he wrote was inverted. Every event, misplaced. Every name, with a critical spelling error.
Aurelian observed him from three rows back, with no visible emotion. But internally, he registered every variable: the time it took Markus to hesitate, the frequency with which he erased, the exact moment his confidence collapsed.
He had learned something new and valuable: you don't have to touch someone physically to destroy their path. It is enough to change the mental map they use to orient themselves.
---
One week later, Markus lost the scholarship he needed for college. His parents, disappointed and confused, spoke of "lack of effort." His classmates, who once envied him, now whispered about his failure.
"I studied… I studied so much," Markus repeated, with the empty gaze of someone who cannot understand what went wrong. "It doesn't make sense. I was sure about the answers."
That afternoon he ran into Aurelian in the main hallway, near the lockers.
"Aurelian, do you have any idea why I did so badly? You're brilliant. What did I do wrong?"
Aurelian adopted a soft, convincing look of concern. He placed a hand on Markus's shoulder with the exact pressure: not too firm (dominant), not too light (indifferent).
"I don't know, Markus. Sometimes stress makes us doubt what we know. But I'm sure you'll recover. You're more capable than you think."
The boy smiled weakly, clinging to that small validation like a castaway to a floating plank, before walking away with dragging steps.
Aurelian watched him go. He felt neither pride nor guilt. Only analytical satisfaction: every step of the experiment had worked exactly as calculated. The variables had responded as predicted.
---
That night, while his parents talked in the living room about how proud they were of their perfect son, Aurelian held a glass of water in his bedroom. He stared at the still liquid, the surface perfectly horizontal, undisturbed.
And in his mind, a polished, definitive thought was born—almost beautiful in its clarity:
I can correct people. I can direct their thoughts the way water is directed. I can be the architect not only of my own silence, but of the silence of others.
I can build order where there is only chaos.
He set the glass on the desk. The perfect geometry of the circle of water against the wood satisfied him deeply.
Outside, the world remained noisy. But in that room, in that moment, Aurelian had created a space of absolute silence.
And now he knew how to expand it.