The mornings in the Emeritus estate were too bright for comfort. Sunlight streamed through tall glass panes and turned the marble floors into rivers of gold. For most, this would have been beauty; for Akihito, it was noise made of light.
He woke from shallow dreams, the gray book still resting on his stomach. He had tried to burn it the night before—he remembered holding a candle close to its pages—but the flame had bent away, shrinking as though afraid. The book refused to blacken.
Now it lay there, ordinary and patient, as if waiting for him to open it again.
He didn't.
Instead, he rose and crossed to the mirror. His reflection stared back, sleepy and rumpled. For a moment he thought he saw someone behind him—a taller silhouette, faceless and still. When he turned, the room was empty.
He exhaled slowly. "It's too early for ghosts," he murmured.
The day began as most did. Lessons. Etiquette. Endless repetition of noble manners that felt like theater. His tutors spoke in the same measured tones, their words washing over him. He listened, nodded, repeated. The performance was exhausting.
Yet something was different.
During arithmetic, his quill broke. The ink spilled across the paper, an ugly black stain. His tutor, a stern figure with brute force, sighed and turned to fetch another sheet. Akihito stared at the stain, irritated.
I wish it would just… clean itself up, he thought absently, half mocking the impulse.
The ink trembled.
Before his eyes, the blackness receded—slowly, smoothly—like water being pulled back by unseen hands. Within seconds, the page was spotless again.
His heart stopped.
The tutor returned, carrying parchment. "Ah, you fixed it," he said without interest. "Good. Continue."
Akihito nodded mutely. His pulse roared in his ears.
He tried again, experimentally. A droplet of ink clung to the quill's tip. He imagined it falling—drop—and landing in a perfect dot. The ink obeyed.
He set the quill down, hands trembling. It could have been coincidence, of course. He told himself that several times. But deep down, a strange thrill stirred beneath the fear, like a forgotten melody being hummed again.
At lunch, he sat alone beneath the veranda overlooking the gardens. The mist was thin today, clinging to the edges of the hedges like a sulking cat. Servants bustled quietly in the distance.
He stared at the teacup before him. Steam rose in lazy curls.
"I wish," he whispered, "you'd cool down already."
The steam vanished. The tea went still.
He touched the cup—lukewarm.
That thrill returned, sharper now. He didn't understand how, but he could feel it—the air around him bending, small threads tightening in response to his thoughts. It wasn't strength. It wasn't even power in the usual sense. It felt like persuasion, like the world was listening to him too closely.
That evening, he tested it again. A candle on his bedside table flickered. He willed it to grow brighter. It did. He willed it dimmer. It obeyed.
He laughed softly. The sound frightened him.
In the mirror, his reflection smiled back a heartbeat too late.
Days passed. His life settled into a rhythm: lessons, meals, experiments whispered into the air. Each test was small—a feather lifted, a page turned without touch, a drop of rain halting mid-fall before splattering harmlessly on the windowsill.
Yet the more he used it, the heavier it felt.
After each use, his back ached faintly, as though the air itself had leaned on him. Once, after moving a book across his desk, he felt a pressure behind his eyes so sharp he nearly blacked out.
Still, he couldn't stop. Curiosity is a hunger, and hunger ignores wisdom.
He began to notice patterns, too. The power answered emotion more than command. When he was calm, it was gentle. When he was angry, it lashed out.
He discovered that the hard way.
It was evening again, pale light filling the corridor. He was walking back from the library when he heard raised voices ahead. A servant child knelt on the floor, trembling. One of the house guards loomed over her, shouting about a broken vase.
Akihito's stomach tightened. The kid was the same one who had brought him breakfast days ago.
The guard raised a hand.
"Stop," Akihito said quietly.
The stranger froze. His arm hovered mid-air, trembling. His face went pale. He tried to move, but his body wouldn't obey.
Akihito hadn't touched him.
The hallway went silent except for the sound of the kid's ragged breathing.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the paralysis broke. The guard stumbled back, gasping. He looked at Akihito as though seeing something monstrous.
"Forgive me, young master," he stammered, and fled down the hall.
The servant child whispered, "Thank you."
Akihito managed a weak smile. "Be careful next time."
When she was gone, he leaned against the wall, shaking. His hands were ice-cold.
"What… am I doing?" he whispered.
The air didn't answer.
That night, sleep came late. He dreamt of fog rolling through narrow streets, of whispers calling his name from far away. A faceless shadow reached out to him, its fingers made of mist.
He woke to darkness. The gray book lay open beside him. New words had appeared across its blank pages.
"Every act has weight. Every wish takes shape."
He slammed it shut, heart pounding.
But the words had already taken root.
The next morning brought rain. Thin, steady rain that blurred the gardens into watercolor. Akihito sat by the window, chin in hand, watching droplets chase each other down the glass.
He tried not to think of the power, but it pulsed quietly beneath his skin. A constant hum.
When Yume entered, he nearly jumped. She carried two cups of tea.
"You look pale," she said, sitting beside him. "Bad dreams again?"
He hesitated. "You believe in… strange things, don't you?"
Her eyes lifted to the window. "In Serathis, everything is strange. We just learn to name the strangeness differently."
He almost smiled. "If you could change things just by wishing, would you?"
"Depends on the cost," she said simply. "Nothing answers without taking."
He stared into his cup. The surface rippled faintly.
The cost revealed itself that night.
He was reading by candlelight when a sharp pain seized his head. He dropped the book and clutched his temples. The room spun. The flame guttered violently, flaring tall and blue.
Then it went out.
He gasped for breath. The air had grown thick, heavy with the smell of rain. He looked toward the balcony. Mist pressed against the glass again, denser than before, swirling like something alive.
His heartbeat thundered.
"Enough," he whispered.
The mist pulsed. A faint outline appeared—tall, featureless, watching.
"Go away!"
The shape didn't move. Instead, the windows began to frost over. A cold wind brushed his cheek from inside the room.
Akihito stumbled back. The power surged through him instinctively. The candles relit at once, filling the chamber with blinding light.
When the brightness faded, the mist was gone.
He collapsed to his knees, gasping.
For two days he didn't speak to anyone. The servants whispered that he was ill again. Yume visited once, leaving food he didn't touch.
He couldn't tell her that the fog had spoken—not in words, but in feeling. That when it touched him, he had sensed familiarity, as though it recognized him.
And worse—when he'd shouted, when he'd driven it away—he had felt it hurt.
That guilt haunted him. The power was his, he understood that now. But it was not a gift. It was something old, threaded through the mist itself, something that had simply chosen him as a vessel.
On the third night, the gray book opened by itself. Pages turned with invisible fingers until they stopped near the end. New ink bled across the parchment, letter by letter:
"You asked for freedom. This is its shape."
He stared until the words blurred. Freedom. He had wanted freedom from pain, from obedience, from a world that used and discarded him. But this? This wasn't freedom. It was a chain made of fog and silence.
He closed the book carefully and whispered to the empty air, "Then why me?"
From the garden below came a low, hollow sound—the echo of a bell. Once. Twice. Thrice.
The mist rose again, curling toward his window like a hand.
He didn't move this time. He simply watched it, eyes wet, whispering, "If you're mine… then let's stop hurting each other."
The mist paused, trembling, as if listening.
Then it withdrew.
When dawn came, he found the air clear for the first time in weeks. The sun was gentle. Birds returned to the garden. The servants smiled nervously, as though waking from a shared dream.
Akihito moved slowly, each motion careful. He felt hollow and fragile, but something inside him had settled—a quiet acceptance. The world was still listening. The power was still there. But perhaps he could learn to speak softly to it, instead of shouting.
He stepped out onto the balcony. The city of Serathis stretched below, roofs gleaming with rain. For a brief, impossible moment, he felt a peace that did not belong to this world.
It lasted until he noticed the gray book waiting on the railing, its pages fluttering in the breeze.
Across the open leaf, a new sentence had appeared:
"Every peace is the calm before a remembering."
He watched the words fade back into blankness and thought, not without a hint of sorrow, that remembering was the most dangerous miracle of all.
TO BE CONTINUED...