The city taught him in repetitions.
Patricia's kettle whistled before the water boiled. Christian coughed once before he spoke in the morning, as if clearing rust from his throat. The courtyard made three damp echoes when Thibault kicked a ball against the far wall and pretended he wasn't. Thomas watched, counted, archived.
At two years old he had mastered the noble art of looking like he understood nothing.
Patricia called it being a good baby.
Christian said, "Sage comme une image." Thibault called it "plotting."
They were all right.
Sunlight came through the leaded panes and tiled the floor; Dust turned in the light like passing whispers. Thomas lay on his back inside one square and practiced stillness. Wanting and doing were two different verbs. He made sure Sequana saw that he knew the difference.
A neat notice glided into view, discreet as a butler.
[SEQ] Daily quest (Optional) — Hold stillness for 60 s.
[SEQ] Reward: +5 XP.
[SEQ] Failure: none.
He waited a full minute. When the minute finished, he rolled to his belly and said, "Ba!", which in this house meant, I'm done pretending to be a statue; bring me a toast, please.
Patricia smuggled him a triangle of bread with butter so soft it out-promised words. "Don't tell Christian" she whispered. "He'll claim I am training you to blackmail me."
Already trained, Thomas thought. Payment received in butter.
—
Christian's workshop was a corridor pretending to be a room: long, narrow, and full of bones. Brass lamp frames hung from chains; glass chimneys rested on padded shelves, translucent and patient. A good day smelled like warm metal and oil. A bad day smelled like someone else's deadline.
"Only look," Christian warned, as he lifted Thomas to a high stool. People always said only look to children who understood only but not look. Thomas arranged his features into blank obedience and did exactly that: he watched until the edges of things told him what they were for.
Christian heated a strip of copper until it decided to be soft. He coaxed it around a wooden form and wicked solder into the seam. Thomas noted the way color changed before shape did, the line where slack turned to spring, the instant a solid became a suggestion.
On the bench, a thin glass chimney tipped. Christian's left hand was holding flame; his right hand was elsewhere. A breath from breaking.
Thomas kept his hands still and pressed instead.
He pressed the thought into the air—don't fall—as if thumbed into wax. For a fraction of a second, the world reconsidered itself. The chimney slowed, hovered an inch from doom, and rolled back into the nest of rags as if embarrassed to have made a scene.
Christian swore softly, turned, found everything was fine, and breathed a gratitude he didn't know where to put. "Merci," he told the room.
Thomas kept his eyes on his shoelace, pretending he'd done nothing.
The pane tried to look casual when it returned.
[SEQ] Authority (I) — Progress (1/3)
[SEQ] Tip: Intent before motion.
Noted, Thomas thought. It wasn't the first time he'd pressed instead of grabbed. It was the first time the river admitted it noticed.
Christian blew out the flame and squinted at his son as if Thomas had declared an opinion about taxes. "You like the lamps," he decided. "Good. A city is safest when people see each other."
Thomas filed light under things that keep people alive. Not as good as distance, he thought, but respectable.
—
After lunch, Thibault took him for a tour of vital infrastructures, which here meant bread, gossip, and the covered galleries that tie the city.
"Les Passages are where adults go to think they're alone", Thibault announced, swinging their hands. "So important things happen there. Also, there's a man selling toys that break before you get home. We are not buying any."
The passages smelled like varnish and sugar. Glass roofs turned the sky into ribs; ironwork pretended to be delicate while doing real labor. Shop signs hung like sentences still missing their verbs. A bookbinder's window displayed spines in ranks; a watchmaker's window displayed faces that couldn't speak.
An old woman sat on a stool near a column, feeding pigeons what looked like pastry and smelled like conspiracy. Chalk dusted her fingers. She drew on the tile between handouts—small shapes, quick lines—the reflex of someone who had eloped with boredom a long time ago.
"Bonjour, Madame," Thibault said.
"Bonjour, garde du corps," she returned, eyeing Thomas with the indulgence owed to small king. She pointed her chalk toward the roofline beyond the glass. "Regardez là—see the gargouille? He always looks the wrong way. That is how you know he knows the right way."
Thibault shaded his eyes, searching for a beast in the web of stone. Thomas didn't need to. The creature crouched where the angles met, mouth open—laugh or alarm—wings justifying its heaviness. Rain had carved a permanent tear down its chest. The city had practiced grief; stone performed it.
"He keeps rain off the gutters," Thibault said with the certainty of a boy who had chosen physics as his only church.
"He keeps other things out," the woman corrected. She drew a face with too many teeth and a neat wet line beneathit
"And sometimes, on bad nights, he climbs down."
She glanced at Thomas as if he were old enough to be blamed for it. "To sniff. To count. To see who belongs on the roofs and who belongs under them."
Under them, Thomas thought, and Catacombs occupied his mind, loud and sudden.
Thibault squeezed his hand. "She's teasing you because you're small."
"She's teasing you because you're tall," the woman said cheerfully. "It is fair to share."
She tapped the chalk, reshaping the face. "Keep lamps lit, petit roi. Gargouilles mind their manners when they can see themselves."
The system logged her story—tidy as a ledger.
[SEQ] Lore Entry added — Rooftop Wards (Gargouilles).
[SEQ] Effect: none.
[SEQ] Tags: Night, Rain, Height.
You are thorough, Thomas told the water behind the panes.
The river declined to answer. Rivers prefer to pretend they don't care about stories. He knew better.
They walked the length of the passage, gathering rumors disguised as purchases. Thibault demonstrated how to look at a pocket without any hand wanting to go inside it, how to stand with an exit behind you without looking like you'd chosen it, how to be noticed only by the person you wanted and no one else. Thomas stored the lessons under stealth that isn't magic and liked the weight of them.
Near the eastern exit, a chalk sign on a shuttered shop read FERMÉ in letters that tried to be friendly. Below it, in a smaller, impatient hand: ATTENTION AUX NUITÉS.
"Nuités?" Thibault frowned. "That's not a word."
Not yet, Thomas thought, and looked up. Nothing moved along the ribs of glass. Sometimes nothing is a performance.
—
They reached home in rain that pivoted instead of stopping. Patricia's soup leaned toward song. Christian decided salt was a hill he was willing to die on. The room smelled like a day safe from explanations.
Thomas endured being kissed. He understood this as the tax for being loved. He paid it with interest. Somewhere, the Ledger wrote credit in a small hand.
Later, while the lamps breathed as though warming up, a pane acknowledged what the house already knew.
[SEQ] Ledger updated — Credit +1 (Family kept whole).
That's generous, he told the ceiling.
The ceiling did not argue.
He practiced stillness on the rug again, matching his blink to the slow sway of the wick. He practiced reaching without touching—pulling at a thread in the room until the room conceded a fraction. A copper coin on the table turned half a degree and then snapped back. Close enough to a win if you're generous.
He did not ask Sequana for praise. If the river wanted to keep books, let it keep them.
From the window came a sound like a spoon lightly testing glass. He glanced up, expecting a branch, and saw only rain knitting itself. Far above, stone shifted the way heavy things do when they practice being heavier.
Patricia hummed—just enough of a tune to tell you what it wanted to be if timidity weren't a virtue. Christian adjusted a wick with a small knife and pretended the flame was his invention. Thibault sat on the threshold with an unread book and a guard's posture that couldn't quite conceal boredom.
"Tomorrow," Thibault told the air, "I'll show you the butcher who cuts fat wrong but smiles right."
Thomas nodded with the solemnity owed to state secrets.
He watched the shadow of the window frame move a finger's width across the floorboards. When the pane finally found him, it arrived as if it had been waiting for him to notice it first.
[SEQ] Confluence — Umbral — Black (Grade I) [stable]
[SEQ] Next trial: mobility required.
[SEQ] Umbra Bind: locked.
[SEQ] Lux: locked.
Locks were honest. They told you what you did not yet deserve.
He let his breath lengthen until the bells allowed themselves to interfere with the hour. Somewhere, outside, the river kept wearing at the stone; the stone acted unbothered.
Edges, he thought. Table edge. Window edge. Roof edge. The neat line between a falling glass and a saved one. The cost of a hand. The cost of a thought.
He balanced the day, then let it end.
The bells rang permission. He slept.