Gray designed the test on the forty-fourth day, without fully understanding why he was doing it.
He had been thinking about Tala's demonstration the day before, the way the water had trembled in the bottle, the way the blue-green thread in Tala's chest had flared with light. It was proof, yes. Evidence of something real and repeatable. But it wasn't enough. Gray needed to understand the limits, the costs, the boundaries of what Tala could do. He needed to know if this was something they could use, or something that would use Tala up and leave him broken.
So he set up the test in a corner of the warehouse, away from the others, with only Elias and Mina present as witnesses. A simple cup filled with water, placed on a table. A clear space around it, nothing that could be disturbed if things went wrong. And Tala, standing before it, his dark eyes bright with a mixture of excitement and nervousness.
"I want you to focus on the water," Gray said, his voice calm and measured. "Don't try to force it. Just... imagine it moving. Will it to move. See what happens."
Tala nodded, his jaw set with determination. He had been quiet since the lesson the day before, processing what he had learned, what he had revealed about himself. Gray had watched him throughout the evening, seen the way his hands trembled slightly when he reached for his water bottle, the way his gaze kept drifting to the cup on the table as if drawn by an invisible thread.
This was different from the spontaneous movements they had observed before. This was intentional. Deliberate. And that made it dangerous.
"Ready?" Gray asked.
Tala took a deep breath. "Ready."
He focused on the cup. His face screwed up with concentration, his dark eyes fixed on the water's surface, and for a long moment, nothing happened. The warehouse was silent, the air still, the only sound the distant drip of water from a leak somewhere in the ceiling.
Then Gray's pattern-sight flared.
The blue-green thread in Tala's chest pulsed with light, brighter than before, reaching toward the cup with an intensity that made Gray's head ache. The air around Tala shimmered, the threads of reality bending and warping in ways he had never seen. And the water in the cup began to move.
It started as a tremor, a ripple across the surface, the same movement they had witnessed the day before. But it didn't stop there. The water rose, lifting from the cup in a thin stream, defying gravity, suspended in the air by nothing but Tala's will. It twisted and turned, forming shapes that made no sense, spiraling upward like a living thing.
Then it leaped.
The water exploded from the cup, splashing across the floor in a wide arc, and Tala gasped like he had been punched. His knees buckled, his hands reaching for the table to steady himself, and when he looked up, his face was pale and his nose was bleeding.
"Tala!" Mina was at his side in an instant, her hands reaching for him, her healing energy already beginning to flow. But Tala pushed her away gently, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"I'm fine," he said, though his voice was thin and shaky. "I'm fine. I just... I need a moment."
Gray stared at the empty cup, his mind racing. The water had moved. Not just trembled, not just rippled, but moved. Leaped from the cup like something alive, responding to Tala's will with a force that defied explanation. And the cost had been immediate and visible: the nosebleed, the exhaustion, the way Tala's legs had given out beneath him.
This was proof. This was repeatable. This was the beginning of everything.
But it was also dangerous. More dangerous than Gray had anticipated.
"What did it feel like?" he asked, his voice careful. "When the water moved?"
Tala wiped the blood from his upper lip, his hand trembling. "Like... like I was pulling something from inside myself. Like I was reaching into my chest and throwing a piece of it at the water." He paused, his expression troubled. "And then the water caught it. And threw it back. And then everything hurt."
Gray's pattern-sight flickered, analyzing the threads around Tala, the blue-green pulse in his chest. It was dimmer now, the light muted, as if something had been drained from it. The connection to water was still there, still present, but it was weaker. Tired.
Like Tala himself.
"You pushed too hard," Gray said, his voice quiet. "The water responded, but it took something from you in return. Energy. Life. I don't know exactly what, but something was exchanged."
Elias, who had been watching in silence, spoke up. "So there's a cost. Like with your sight. Like with Mina's healing."
"Everything has a cost," Gray agreed. "The mana isn't free. It borrows from us, or we borrow from it. And if we push too hard, too fast..." He trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought.
Mina finished it for him. "It could kill us."
The word hung in the air, heavy and cold. Tala looked at the empty cup, at the water spreading across the floor, and something shifted in his expression. The excitement from before had faded, replaced by a dawning understanding of what his abilities really meant.
"I didn't know," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I didn't know it would hurt like that. I thought... I thought it would be easy."
"Nothing worth doing is easy," Gray said. "And nothing that changes the world comes without a price."
He looked at Tala, at this boy who had emerged from the water like something born of the storm, and felt the weight of responsibility settle onto his shoulders. He had asked Tala to push, to test his limits, and Tala had paid the price. The nosebleed would stop. The exhaustion would fade. But the knowledge of what his abilities could cost, that would stay with him.
That would stay with all of them.
"We need to be careful," Gray continued, his voice firm. "We need to understand this better before we push any further. The mana is real. The abilities are real. But so are the costs. And I won't let anyone in this room destroy themselves trying to prove something."
Tala nodded slowly, his hand still pressed to his nose, his dark eyes meeting Gray's with something that looked like gratitude. "Thank you, big brother. For showing me. For not letting me hurt myself worse."
Gray didn't feel like he deserved thanks. He felt like someone who had just opened a door that couldn't be closed, who had set in motion something that would change all of their lives forever.
But he nodded anyway, because that was what Tala needed. And because, in the end, they were family. And family protected each other, even from themselves.
---
That night, after Tala had recovered and the water had been cleaned from the floor, Gray sat alone in the corner of the warehouse, his notebook open on his lap. He wrote in the dim light, his handwriting cramped and hurried, documenting everything he had observed.
*Water responds to will. Movement is possible. Cost is immediate: nosebleed, exhaustion, something drained from the thread in Tala's chest. The mana exchanges. It takes and gives in equal measure. Push too hard, and it will take more than you can afford to lose.*
He paused, his pen hovering over the page, and thought about his own costs. The migraines. The memory gaps. The times he couldn't recall what he had done the day before, the holes in his past that were growing larger with each use of his pattern-sight.
Was this the same thing? Was the mana taking from him, piece by piece, in exchange for the knowledge it provided? And if so, how much did he have left to give?
He didn't know. He couldn't know. But the test had shown him something important, something he couldn't ignore.
The abilities were real. The costs were real. And somewhere in the balance between them, they would find either their salvation or their destruction.
He just hoped they would be wise enough to tell the difference.