Tala recovered, but Gray couldn't stop thinking about the nosebleed.
He watched the younger man over the following day, noting the way his color returned slowly, the way the blue-green thread in his chest gradually brightened back to its normal intensity. The exhaustion faded. The spark returned to his dark eyes. By the afternoon, Tala was joking with Ren again, flirting clumsily with Mina, looking at Gray and Elias like they had hung the stars.
But Gray had seen the cost. He had watched the water leap from the cup, watched Tala crumple like something had been taken from him, watched the blood run from his nose and the light dim in his chest. And he couldn't forget it, couldn't push it aside, couldn't pretend that what they were doing was safe.
Because it wasn't safe. None of it was safe.
He thought about his own migraines, the ones that came after heavy use of his pattern-sight. The pain that blinded him, that left him curled in a ball in the corner of the warehouse, unable to speak or think or do anything but endure. He had accepted that as the price of knowledge, the cost of seeing what others couldn't. But now he wondered if there was more to it.
The memory gaps had been small at first. A forgotten breakfast. A conversation he couldn't quite recall. The name of a street he had walked a hundred times, slipping from his mind like water through his fingers. He had dismissed them as stress, as exhaustion, as the natural result of living through the end of the world.
But they were getting worse.
There were whole hours now that he couldn't account for. Times when he knew he had been awake, had been functioning, had been doing something, but he couldn't remember what. The others would mention things he had said, decisions he had made, and he would nod along as if he remembered, as if he knew what they were talking about, while inside he felt the cold creep of something he couldn't name.
Fear. It was fear.
He was losing pieces of himself. Every time he used his pattern-sight heavily, every time he pushed too hard, looked too deep, something was taken. The mana gave him knowledge, showed him the threads that connected reality, but it took memories in exchange. And he didn't know how to stop it.
He didn't know how much he had left to give.
---
That evening, after the others had settled into their usual routines, Gray approached Elias quietly. His friend was sitting by the window, his notebook open on his lap, his pen moving in that precise, measured way that meant he was documenting something important.
"We need to talk," Gray said, his voice low.
Elias looked up, his expression shifting into something cautious. "About the test?"
"About everything." Gray sat down across from him, his hands clasped between his knees. "About what we're doing. What we're risking."
Elias set his pen down, giving Gray his full attention. "Go on."
Gray took a breath. He had been turning this over in his mind for hours, trying to find the right words, the right way to explain what he was feeling. But there were no right words. There was only the truth, uncomfortable and raw.
"I think we need to slow down," he said. "The testing. The pushing. I think we need to learn more before we go any further."
Elias's eyebrows rose slightly. "Because of Tala's reaction?"
"Because of all of it." Gray ran a hand through his dark hair, his fingers catching on tangles. "The nosebleed. The exhaustion. The way the thread in his chest dimmed after he pushed too hard. That's not nothing, Elias. That's a cost. A real, measurable cost."
"I know," Elias said, his voice calm. "I documented it. We all saw it."
"But do you understand what it means?" Gray leaned forward, his intensity growing. "The mana isn't just energy. It's not just a tool we can use however we want. It takes from us. It exchanges. And if we push too hard, too fast, without understanding the limits..." He trailed off, the words catching in his throat.
Elias was quiet for a moment, his gaze distant, calculating. Gray recognized that look. It was the expression Elias wore when he was processing information, weighing options, planning three steps ahead. It was one of the things that made him valuable, his ability to see patterns in chaos, to find order in disaster.
But it was also one of the things that made him dangerous.
"What aren't you telling me?" Elias asked finally, his voice soft.
Gray hesitated. He hadn't meant to bring this up, hadn't meant to reveal the extent of his own deterioration. But Elias was watching him with those sharp, knowing eyes, and Gray found he couldn't lie. Not to him. Not about this.
"The memory gaps," he said, the words coming out rough. "They're getting worse. Whole hours I can't account for. Things I said, decisions I made, that I don't remember. Every time I use the pattern-sight heavily, something gets taken. And I don't know how to stop it."
The silence that followed was heavy, weighted with implications. Elias's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his eyes, a flicker of something that might have been concern or might have been calculation.
"How long has this been happening?" he asked.
"Since the beginning. But it's getting worse." Gray met his friend's gaze, holding it. "I'm losing pieces of myself, Elias. And I don't know how much I have left to lose."
Elias nodded slowly, his pen tapping against the notebook in a rhythm that seemed almost unconscious. "Thank you for telling me," he said. "That's important information. We need to factor it into our planning."
"Factor it into our planning," Gray repeated, a bitter edge creeping into his voice. "Is that all you have to say?"
"What do you want me to say?" Elias's voice was still calm, still measured, but there was something underneath it now, something that might have been frustration. "That I'm sorry? That I wish things were different? I do, Gray. But wishing doesn't change reality. We have to work with what we have."
"And what we have is a group of people with dangerous abilities and no understanding of the costs. People who could destroy themselves trying to prove something."
"Then we learn the costs," Elias said. "We document them. We find ways to mitigate them. That's what we're doing, Gray. That's what the testing is for."
"The testing almost broke Tala."
"The testing showed us what Tala can do and what it costs him. That's valuable information. Information we need if we're going to survive."
Gray stared at his friend, at the man who had become his closest ally in this broken world, and felt something shift between them. A crack in the foundation. A fracture that hadn't been there before.
Elias was right. The information was valuable. The testing was necessary. But there was something in his eyes, something distant and calculating, that made Gray wonder if he had said too much.
If Elias knew about the memory gaps, knew about the deterioration, would he see Gray as a liability? As a resource that was being depleted, piece by piece? Or would he see him as a friend who needed protection, who needed someone to tell him when to stop?
Gray didn't know. And that uncertainty was a weight he hadn't expected to carry.
"We should slow down," he said again, his voice quieter now. "Learn more before we push any further. For Tala's sake. For all of our sakes."
Elias nodded, his expression unreadable. "I agree. We'll be more careful. Document everything. Build a baseline before we test further."
It was what Gray wanted to hear. But as he watched Elias pick up his pen again, watched him return to his notebook with that precise, measured focus, Gray couldn't shake the feeling that something had changed between them.
A door had opened. Words had been spoken that couldn't be taken back. And somewhere in the depths of the pattern, Gray could feel the future shifting, possibilities narrowing, the threads of their friendship stretching in ways he didn't fully understand.
He had told Elias the truth. He had revealed his weakness.
Now he could only hope that trust hadn't been a mistake.
---
That night, Gray lay awake in his corner of the warehouse, staring at the ceiling, his mind churning with thoughts he couldn't quiet. The memory gaps. The costs. The look in Elias's eyes when he had spoken of documenting, of planning, of using information to survive.
He thought about Tala, sleeping peacefully a few feet away, his chest rising and falling with steady breaths. The blue-green thread was bright again, recovered from the test, pulsing with potential. Tala didn't know what he had yet. Didn't know what it would cost him in the long run.
But Gray knew. Or at least, he was beginning to.
The mana gave. The mana took. And somewhere in the balance between giving and taking, they would find either their salvation or their destruction.
He just hoped they would be wise enough to tell the difference.
And he hoped, with a desperate, quiet hope that he barely acknowledged, that when the time came to pay the price, he would have enough left of himself to make it worth the cost.