I watched them turn the corner of the hallway, Lydia's laugh and Jackson's annoying voice fading away bit by bit.
The corridor emptied, and as soon as the silence returned, the pain came with it.
It was as if my body had waited for the "audience" to leave before finally admitting it was failing. My knees gave way slightly, and I had to lean against the cold metal lockers to keep from sliding down.
"Shit..." I squeezed my eyes shut, bringing a hand to my temple.
Magic Vision was still active, pulsing blue at the edges of my sight, but now it felt like a hot nail being hammered behind my forehead.
[MP: 910 / 2000]
The screen flashed a aggressive red.
Outside, the muffled sound of the coach's whistle echoed, followed by shouts of excitement. Practice was starting. The whole school was heading there.
Great. That was the cue I needed.
I pushed off the lockers and walked in the opposite direction of the field. Each step felt like it weighed a ton. The mana compression—that constant exercise of shoving my own energy inward so I wouldn't glow like a radioactive Christmas tree—was taking its toll.
I needed water. I needed silence. And, above all, I needed to stop pretending everything was fine for five minutes.
I shoved open the door to the nearest boys' bathroom with my shoulder.
Empty.
The smell of cheap disinfectant and old humidity welcomed me. The place was silent, except for the rhythmic sound of a dripping faucet.
I walked to the sink, dropped my backpack onto the wet floor without caring, and leaned against the synthetic marble counter. My hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from exertion.
I lifted my head to the mirror.
"You look terrible, Nate," I muttered to my reflection.
I was pale. There was a tension in my jaw I hadn't even realized was there, and my eyes... my eyes were glowing.
Even trying to hide it, the irises were an electric blue shade, leaking power.
And then, I felt something warm on my upper lip.
I wiped it with a finger.
Blood.
A dark red trickle was running down from my nose.
"Seriously?" I laughed, completely humorless. "First day and I'm already getting a nosebleed? Such an anime cliché."
I turned on the tap, splashing cold water on my face. It helped a little, but the pressure in my head remained. It was like trying to hold back a tsunami with a wooden door. My "tank" was full to the brim, and I had corked the outlet.
I looked at the MP warning slowly dropping.
This wasn't going to work. If I kept holding it in like this, I'd pass out before lunch.
"Okay..." I took a deep breath, staring at the mirror. "Just a little. Let's relieve the pressure."
I closed my eyes and undid the mental knot holding back my aura.
Not all of it. Just the surface layer.
Mistake.
It was like opening the valve of a pressure cooker that had been on the fire for hours. I didn't "release a little." The mana exploded out of me.
ZUUUM.
The sound was deep, vibrating in the air.
The fluorescent lights overhead flickered violently, buzzing loud like a swarm of insects. The faucet I had just closed blasted a jet of water upward, the handle spinning on its own.
And the mirror in front of me...
Crack.
A fissure ran from end to end, splitting my face in two.
My aura flooded the small bathroom. In my vision, the air became saturated with blue, dense and heavy. The headache vanished instantly, replaced by an intoxicating, almost dangerous lightness.
I felt strong. Too strong.
I breathed in that magic-charged air, feeling the blood in my nose stop flowing.
"Ok..." I opened my eyes, seeing the chaos I had caused in two seconds of losing control. "Maybe I accumulated more than I thought."
The lights stopped flickering but were visibly dimmer. The mirror was ruined.
I ran a hand through my wet hair, pushing it back.
Suddenly, the system interface shone with a new intensity.
[Magic Vision leveled up! (Lv. 1 -> Lv. 2)]
[New structural details visible.]
I blinked, surprised.
"At least the suffering yielded some XP," I grumbled.
I focused on my now "evolved" vision. The world around me seemed to snap into high definition.
Before, mana was just light and color. Now, I saw texture.
I saw my own mana floating in the air, slowly dissipating like bright blue smoke.
The sound of the bathroom door opening made me jump and spin around fast.
I deactivated Magic Vision in a panic and pulled my aura back inside in a painful reflex.
A student walked in. Just some guy wearing a lacrosse jersey, looking rushed. He stopped when he saw me standing at the back of the bathroom, with the cracked mirror and water on the floor.
He looked at me. Looked at the broken mirror. Looked at me again.
"Dude..." he said, eyes wide. "Hell of a party last night, huh?"
I let out a breath, relieved he was just an idiot and not a monster.
"Yeah," I replied, grabbing my backpack from the floor. "Something like that."
I brushed past him and left the bathroom quickly.
The hallway was still empty, but now I didn't just feel tired. I felt alert.
Beacon Hills wasn't just a town with werewolves; now there were mirrors breaking due to my anxiety.
And I still had to survive until the end of the school day.
"Forget Lacrosse," I decided, adjusting my backpack. "I need a place to train this mana before I bring the whole building down."
I looked at the sign pointing to "Library."
It was the only place where silence was the rule.
"Perfect."
I walked faster than I would have liked to show, while my mind focused on only one thing.
My dad shouldn't have sent me to school like this, that irresponsible lunatic.
The Beacon Hills High library was a temple of silence and the smell of dust. Luckily for me, during lacrosse practice or any sporting event, this place turned into a ghost town. The librarian didn't even look up from her magazine when I passed the turnstile, which was great, considering I looked like someone who had just fought a faucet and lost.
I went to the back, between the shelves of World History and Forgotten Biographies, where the tables were hidden by the shadows of the tall stacks.
I threw my backpack onto the table, pulled out a chair, and collapsed. The silence of the library was a balm, but my mind remained noisy, replaying the notification that had flashed in the bathroom.
[Magic Vision leveled up! (Lv. 1 -> Lv. 2)]
"Dammit..." I muttered, pulling the backpack closer and unzipping it with a sharp tug, rummaging through the contents just to confirm what I already knew.
School notebooks. History textbook. A chewed pen. The smashed sandwich I should have eaten at lunch.
No black cover.
"I didn't bring the grimoire with me," I stated, throwing my head back and staring at the ceiling. "Stupid. Idiot. You get a magic book and leave it at home on the first day?"
I closed my eyes, frustrated. I had the tools, I had power leaking from my pores, but I didn't have the instruction manual.
"All I can do is see what changed now at level two," I sighed, straightening up in the chair.
If I couldn't read about magic, I would have to observe the magic.
I activated Magic Vision.
The transition was smoother this time. The headache, which was previously a constant hammering, diminished to a dull, bearable pressure. The world around me changed.
Before, at Level 1, mana was just light. Glimmers, colors, vague auras.
Now, at Level 2... there was structure.
I looked at my own hands. The blue aura surrounding me wasn't just a shapeless cloud. I saw very fine lines, almost imperceptible, running beneath my skin, pulsing to the rhythm of my heart. They were channels.
I looked at the wooden table. There were residues of mana there too. Psychic fingerprints of hundreds of students who sat there before, leaving behind crumbs of anxiety, boredom, and focus. They were dust motes of different colors: gray for exhaustion, pale yellow for attention.
"Okay..." I murmured, fascinated. "This is useful."
But it didn't solve my immediate problem. I still felt the internal pressure. That "full tank" I didn't know how to drain without blowing up another bathroom. I needed to know how to move that energy. I needed the diagrams I saw at a glance in the book when I opened it at home.
"I needed that damn book," I whispered, clenching my fists on the table. Frustration mixed with the accumulated mana.
I wished for the book.
It wasn't a casual thought. It was a physical need. I visualized the black cover, the weight of it in my hand, the texture of the cold leather, the smell of old paper. My mana reacted to the intent, churning inside me, looking for a way.
I want the book. Now.
I felt a strange tingling in the palm of my right hand. It wasn't numbness. It was... space being folded.
The air above my hand rippled, distorting the light like hot asphalt on a summer day. Blue particles of mana began to swirl there, condensing, materializing out of nowhere.
First came the outline. Then, the color. And finally, the weight.
Thump.
The black book fell solid into my hand, inches from the table.
My eyes went wide, almost tipping the chair backward in shock.
"What the fuck..."
I looked at the book. It was the one. The same crescent moon and eye symbol on the cover. The same wear on the corners.
I looked at the empty air it had come from.
The system interface flashed in front of me, answering my disbelief.
[The Grimoire is an extension of your soul. Wherever you are, it is.]
[Mana Cost: 50 MP]
I let out a nervous, incredulous laugh.
"Ah," I said to the void. "That... that makes things a lot easier."
I ran my hand over the cover, feeling a connection I hadn't noticed before. It wasn't just an object. It was part of my inventory, part of me.
I opened the book greedily.
This time, under the gaze of Magic Vision Level 2, the pages were no longer blank, nor just bearing the initial symbol.
There was text. There were drawings. Lines of bluish light danced over the paper, forming an interactive manual.
'Fundamentals of Control: The Lesser Cycle'
Below the title, a diagram showed a human silhouette with arrows indicating the energy flow.
"Stagnant mana is poison," the words seemed to echo in my mind rather than being read by my eyes. "It must circulate. From the center to the extremities. From the extremities to the world. From the world to the center."
I touched the diagram.
"Breathe," the book instructed. "Don't pull it in. Rotate it."
I followed the instruction. I closed my eyes, visualizing that diagram superimposed over my own body. Instead of holding back the dam, I imagined a water wheel.
The energy pressing against my skull began to descend. It passed through my neck, shoulders, arms... I felt my fingertips heat up... and then it went back up through my legs, spine, completing the cycle.
The headache vanished.
It didn't lessen. It vanished.
I opened my eyes, feeling an absurd mental clarity.
[MP: 900 / 2000]
[Mana Regeneration Active: Flow is stable.]
"Incredible..." I whispered.
I was so absorbed in the sensation of finally not being in pain that I almost didn't hear the footsteps.
Almost.
They were light, rhythmic, but stopped abruptly at the start of the aisle of shelves.
I froze.
In a purely instinctive reflex—and now knowing I could—I wished for the book to disappear.
The same ripple in the air happened. The weight vanished from my hand in the blink of an eye, dematerializing into particles of blue light that dissipated before anyone could see.
"Interesting research?"
The voice came from behind a stack of books on the Civil War.
I turned my head slowly, heart racing, but hands empty on the table.
Erica Reyes was standing there.
She was clutching a pile of books against her chest, shoulders hunched, blonde hair falling over her face like a protective curtain. There was something about her that screamed "invisible," but which, paradoxically, drew the eye—perhaps because of the obvious vulnerability, or the constant tension she carried.
My mind pulled her file instantly.
In the series, Erica was the shy girl, the social pariah who was bullied until she received the bite from Derek and turned into the leather-clad, red-lipsticked femme fatale. But the Erica standing in front of me now was still the "before." The sick girl. The girl who was afraid of having a seizure in the middle of the cafeteria.
"Uh..." I let out, trying to normalize my breathing after the scare. "Hi. Just... thinking about life. And you?"
She hesitated, squeezing the books tighter. Her fingertips were white.
"I needed this place," she murmured, indicating the table with her chin, without making direct eye contact. "It's the only corner where the light doesn't hit directly."
I looked at the table. It was true. We were in the densest shadow of the library.
"Sorry," I said, rising slightly to pull my backpack and clear some space. "You can sit. It's a table for two."
She looked at me surprised, as if expecting me to send her away or make some joke. After a second of indecision, she approached slowly and sat in the opposite chair, placing the books on the table with excessive care.
As she settled in, I activated Magic Vision discreetly. I needed to see.
The world turned bluish and sharp again. I focused on her.
And what I saw made me hold my breath.
Erica's mana was... broken.
It wasn't "empty" like normal humans, nor "static" like my mom's. Her aura was pale gray, weak, but the problem wasn't the color. It was the rhythm.
There were constant faults. Holes.
The energy circulated through her body, but when it reached her head, it trembled. It short-circuited. Erratic sparks snapped at her temples, like exposed wires touching each other.
"Epilepsy," I thought, fascinated and horrified at the same time. "The disease manifests in the mana."
It was a biological electrical disorder, but in my vision, it looked like a storm trying to happen in a sky that was too small. Her mana tried to flow, hit a neurological block, built up pressure, and caused the "shorts"—the seizures.
"You're staring at me," Erica said, voice low, snapping me out of the trance.
I blinked, deactivating the vision and returning to normal.
"Sorry," I spoke quickly. "It's just that... you seemed kind of tense. Everything okay?"
She let out a dry, bitter laugh.
"Tense. That's a kind word for 'about to have an attack'." She opened one of the books but didn't read. "You're the new student, right? Nathan."
"Nate," I corrected. "And you're Erica."
She finally looked up. There were deep dark circles there, and a constant fear that bothered me.
"You know my name?" She seemed genuinely shocked.
"The school isn't that big," I lied. In truth, I knew her whole life, including how she would die if things followed the original script.
An uncomfortable silence settled in. I could hear the hum of the fluorescent lamps and, now that I knew what to look for, I could almost "hear" the nervous static in her aura.
I looked at her hands trembling slightly on the book.
An insane idea crossed my mind.
The Lesser Cycle. The diagram I had just seen in my tome. It spoke about fluidity. About correcting stagnation.
Could I...?
No. It was too dangerous. I barely knew how to control my own mana, let alone interfere with someone else's magical biology. If I messed up, I could cause a seizure right there.
But seeing her like that... knowing she would accept the bite of an unstable werewolf just to stop feeling fear...
"Erica," I called, before my common sense could shut me up.
"What?"
"Do you..." I hesitated, choosing my words. "Do you believe in... energies? Like, meditation, that kind of stuff?"
She frowned, looking at me like I was crazy.
"My doctor tells me to do breathing exercises," she said, skeptical. "Doesn't work much when your brain decides to shut down on its own."
"Maybe you're breathing the wrong way," I ventured.
I placed my hand on the table, palm up, in a gesture of peace.
"Look, it might seem stupid, but... my family has some tricks to calm down. To 'focus'. Want to try?"
Erica looked at my hand, then at my face. The distrust was there, but the exhaustion was greater.
"What do I have to do?" she asked, in a defeated sigh.
"Just close your eyes," I instructed, lowering my tone. "And imagine that you aren't holding the air. Imagine the air comes in, takes a lap around your body, and goes out. No stops."
She rolled her eyes but obeyed. She closed her lids, lashes trembling.
I activated Magic Vision again.
I saw the storm in her head. Sparks accumulating. She was close to a crisis. The stress of the day, the library light... it was all converging.
I extended my hand, without touching her. I just brought my fingers close to her hand on the table.
Circulate, I projected the thought, using my own mana as a guide.
I sent a very thin thread of my blue aura. Not to invade, but to suggest the path. I touched her grayish aura with mine.
Her mana recoiled for an instant, scared, but then... it followed.
I guided her energy away from her head. Pulled it down, towards the heart, towards the hands. I forced the flow to bypass the "short circuit."
I heard Erica let out a deep sigh. Her shoulders, which were glued to her ears with tension, dropped.
In my vision, the sparks in her head diminished. They didn't vanish—the disease was still there, physical and real—but the magical pressure aggravating everything dissipated. The gray of her aura cleared up a little.
[MP: 880 / 2000]
I withdrew my hand and my mana slowly.
"You can open them," I said softly.
Erica opened her eyes.
She blinked, confused. She looked at her own hands, which were now steady on the table. She touched her own forehead.
"What..." She stared at me, eyes wide. "The headache... it stopped."
She seemed scared. As if the absence of pain was something as strange as its presence.
"Breathing," I said, shrugging and offering a weak smile. "It works miracles."
Erica kept looking at me. This time, there was no skepticism. There was an intense, almost hungry curiosity.
"Who are you, Nate?" she whispered.
Before I could invent an enigmatic answer, the bell rang, shrill, echoing through the entire library.
The spell broke. Erica jumped in her chair, snapping back to reality in an instant. She started gathering her books clumsily.
"I... I have to go," she stammered, standing up fast. "Chemistry class. Harris will kill me if I'm late."
"Go ahead," I said. "See you around."
She stopped before leaving the aisle of stacks. She turned to me one last time. Her face had a little more color.
"Thank you," she said. And this time, it didn't sound like the invisible girl. It sounded like someone who had just been seen.
I watched her walk away, the gray aura now flowing in a slightly less chaotic rhythm.
I leaned back in the chair, feeling the fatigue return, but this time with a different flavor. Satisfaction.
"Ok," I murmured to myself. "Maybe I don't need to wait for Derek to bite everyone to save this town." I smiled.
"Now... how do I explain this to my dad without him magically beating me up?"
As soon as Erica's silhouette disappeared around the bend of the corridor, I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding. The silence of the library returned to weigh down, but now it felt less oppressive and more complicit.
[MP: 905 / 2000]
"Not bad for the first day," I muttered, closing the grimoire.
I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pants pocket. I pulled out the device, expecting some useless notification from a social network the old Nathan followed, but the name on the screen made my posture straighten.
Dad.
I opened the message.
"Unforeseen event. A mana breach at the southern border needs to be contained before it attracts worse things. Come back by bus. The key is in the plant pot (just kidding, unlock it with your mind, you need to train)."
I stared at the screen, incredulous.
"Seriously?" I spoke out loud, earning an aggressive "shhh" from the librarian across the room.
He was lying, obviously. I put the phone away, indignant.
"I just cured—or at least patched up—a future werewolf, I have enough mana to blow up a bathroom and... I'm going to have to take the loud, yellow school bus."
The life of a modern mage didn't have the glamour the movies promised.