The ride back was a test of patience.
The bus smelled like cheap deodorant and teenage boredom. I sat in the back, pulling my hood over my head and keeping Magic Vision deactivated to save my sanity—and the structural integrity of the vehicle's windows. I didn't need to see the hormonal aura of thirty teenagers to know it would be terrible visual pollution.
I got off at the stop nearest to my house and walked the last few blocks.
The house was there, imposing and silent, surrounded by the forest that seemed to whisper with the late afternoon wind.
I stopped at the front door.
"Unlock with your mind..." I repeated the words from the message, dripping with sarcasm.
I looked at the lock. I could feel the mechanism inside. It would be easy to force a wave of mana and push the pins.
But then I remembered the cracked mirror.
"Better not," I decided. "If I misjudge the force, I'll rip the door off its hinges and Marcus will kill me."
I bent down, lifted the welcome mat, and grabbed the spare key.
"Analog methods. Overrated, but safe."
I turned the key in the lock with a satisfying click and pushed the door open.
"Analog methods work, but they take all the fun out of a dramatic entrance."
My mother's voice came even before I stepped inside.
Alice stood in the middle of the foyer, balancing a cardboard box in her arms that looked way too heavy for her frame. She smiled when she saw me, but there was that analytical mom-stare—scanning my face for cuts, bruises, or signs that I'd been expelled on the first day.
"Mom," I greeted, taking off my hood and closing the door behind me with my foot. "I was trying not to destroy the façade of the house. Dad has a weird emotional attachment to this door."
"He has an emotional attachment to anything that costs a lot to fix," she shot back, adjusting the box in her arms. "Speaking of which, your father called. Said he felt a mana spike coming from the school. Care to tell me why he thinks you blew up a bathroom?"
I froze for half a second.
Damn. Marcus's "radar" was better than I thought.
"It was an accident," I admitted, dropping my backpack on the floor near the stairs. "Technical. Pressure adjustment. No one got hurt, except a mirror that was already old."
Alice laughed, shaking her head.
"Well, as long as the school doesn't send the bill; your father makes money, but it's not good to push our luck. Now, since you arrived early and with all that leftover energy, can you do a favor for your old, magic-less mother?"
"You're not old, Mom," I rolled my eyes, walking closer. "And you definitely have more energy than I do right now. What is this?"
"Books. Decorations. Things your father insisted on bringing but refused to organize," she nodded toward the living room. There were three more boxes on the floor, near the empty bookshelf. "I need to put this in place before dinner. Help me?"
"Sure."
I took the box from her arms. It was heavy, full of old encyclopedias. I felt my arms protest a little—magical exhaustion didn't affect muscles directly, but it made everything slower.
We walked to the living room. The late afternoon light streamed through the large windows, painting the wooden floor in gold.
As we started taking out the books and placing them on the shelves, Alice broke the comfortable silence.
"So?" she asked, wiping down a bronze statuette. "How was it? Real school, I mean. Not the magic part."
I paused with a book in my hand. The History of Alchemy, the cover read.
"It was... loud," I answered honestly. "Too many people. Too many smells. Too much drama I didn't even know existed."
"Did you make friends?"
The image of Allison smiling, Lydia analyzing me, and Stiles interrogating me flashed through my mind.
"I think I made some interesting acquaintances," I opted for diplomacy. "There's a girl, Allison. She's nice. New too."
"Argent?" my mother asked, way too casually.
I looked at her. She kept cleaning the statuette, avoiding my gaze.
"How do you know?"
"Beacon Hills is small, Nate. And your father does his homework. He knows who the influential families are." She placed the statuette on the shelf and finally turned to me. Her look went serious for an instant. "The Argents have... history. Be careful."
"They're hunters, aren't they?" I blurted out, testing the waters.
Alice stopped. She sighed, resting her hands on her waist.
"We don't use that word out loud here, honey. But yes. They have a very... specific family business. And we are mages. We aren't their primary target, but we aren't exactly allies either."
"Got it. Keep distance, but be polite." I noted mentally.
"Exactly. And try not to glow blue in front of her father. Chris Argent isn't known for his sense of humor."
I placed the last book on the shelf.
"Mom... do you think we'll be okay here?" I asked, suddenly. The doubt I had carried since seeing the wolf's shadow on Scott and Erica's broken aura. "This town... it feels like a magnet for trouble."
Alice walked over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. Her hand was warm, firm. Human.
"Where there is magic, there will be trouble, Nate. It's the law of balance," she said softly. "But we are a family. Your father is strong. You are getting strong. And I..." she smiled, patting my cheek. "...I have a stash of wine and a lot of patience. We'll be fine."
"Thanks, Mom." I smiled back, feeling a weight lift off my shoulders. It was nice to have someone "normal" in the middle of the madness.
"You're welcome. Now go up," she pointed to the stairs. "Take a shower. Wash off that 'I fought a mirror' look. And if you're going to train magic in your room..."
She shot me a stern look. "...try not to break anything I've bought in this decade."
"I promise," I raised my hands in surrender.
I grabbed my backpack and went up the stairs, feeling my body complain with every step.
I entered my room and closed the door. The silence there was different from the library. It was mine.
I tossed the backpack on the bed and went straight to the bathroom. The shower was quick, just to wash off the sweat and the smell of the bus. I put on comfortable clothes—sweatpants and a loose t-shirt—and sat on the floor, in the middle of the room.
I took a deep breath.
There was still sunlight outside, but I closed the curtains. I needed focus.
"Alright, time to try," I murmured, extending my hand.
This time, the summoning was smooth. The distortion in the air was minimal, and the book landed in my palm naturally.
[MP: 980 / 2000]
My mana had recovered a bit during the conversation and the manual labor.
I opened the book in my lap. The pages glowed blue in the dim light of the room.
I skipped the part about the Lesser Cycle. I already understood the basics—make the energy spin, don't let it stagnate. I needed something else. Something practical.
I flipped the pages until I found something familiar.
Just like Magic Vision, the page had a symbol drawn on it, and underneath, written in glowing script:
'Basic Telekinesis'
I read the text below the symbol. The handwriting was elegant, but the words were direct, almost technical.
"Will is irrelevant if the structure is flawed. Do not try to lift the object. Build a mana support around it, and it will float because it will have no other choice."
I frowned.
"Build a support..." I muttered. "So it's not Star Wars. It's engineering."
This changed everything. In most fanfics and movies, telekinesis was about extending your hand and using "force" with your mind. But my family's magic, the Salt magic, was visual.
It was about drawing the rule in the air and making the world fit into it.
I looked around the room looking for a victim.
My eyes landed on an empty glass cup I had left on the nightstand the night before.
"Perfect." I dragged myself across the floor until I was facing the nightstand.
I took a deep breath, activating the Lesser Cycle to stabilize my breathing and then Magic Vision.
The world turned blue and structured again.
I looked at the glass. I saw the physical lines of the glass, the density of the material, its friction against the wood of the table.
"Okay. Don't push. Build." I looked at the symbol in the book one more time: an inverted triangle inside an open circle. I memorized the shape.
I closed my eyes for a second, visualizing the symbol in my mind, and when I opened them, I projected the image onto the glass.
Nothing happened immediately.
Just my mana leaking and dissipating into the air.
"Focus, Nate. Compact it." I narrowed my eyes.
I forced my mana to stop flowing like smoke and to solidify into the lines of the drawing. It was hard. It was like trying to draw with ink in water. But, slowly, the bright blue triangle began to firm up around the glass, hovering in the air, trembling but visible in my Magic Vision.
I felt sweat run down the back of my neck. The MP consumption must have been absurd, but I couldn't look at the system screen right now.
"Now... rise."
I didn't push the glass. I pushed the symbol.
I commanded the geometric mana structure to rise ten centimeters.
The glass trembled.
The glass vibrated against the wood, making a high-pitched sound, tling-tling-tling.
"Come on..." I gritted my teeth, extending a shaking hand, fingers mimicking the shape of the symbol. "The structure is solid. The glass is light."
Suddenly, the weight vanished from my mind.
The symbol locked in.
The glass stopped shaking and, smoothly, lifted off the table.
One centimeter. Five centimeters. Ten.
It floated there, rotating very slowly inside the cage of blue light I had created. It was perfect. Stable. I could feel the "texture" of gravity pulling it down and my structure holding it in place.
A wide smile spread across my face. The feeling of power, of absolute control, was intoxicating.
[Skill Learned: Telekinesis (Lv. 1)]
"I am a genius," I whispered, ecstatic, moving my index finger and watching the glass obey, sliding to the left.
"NATHAN SALT!"
My father's shout exploded downstairs, deep and urgent, rising up the stairs and crashing through my bedroom door like thunder.
The shock was physical.
My heart raced. My concentration broke instantly.
The blue geometric structure in my vision shattered like tempered glass.
And gravity, which forgives no one, reassumed control.
The glass plummeted.
CRAAASH.
The sound of glass bursting on the wooden floor echoed through the silent room. Shards flew in all directions, glinting in the moonlight coming through the crack in the curtains.
I stood paralyzed, hand still extended toward nothing, staring at the mess.
[MP: 850 / 2000]
"Oh, come on..." I dropped my arms, frustrated, feeling the headache return slightly from the abrupt cut in mana flow.
"NATHAN! GET DOWN HERE NOW!" Marcus shouted again.
It didn't sound like an angry shout because I broke something. It sounded... alert.
I jumped up, ignoring the glass shards—I'd deal with that later—and opened the bedroom door, running into the hallway.
"Coming!" I yelled back.
I went down the stairs, skipping steps two at a time.
I found my father in the living room. He wasn't sitting relaxed. He was standing, near the window, looking out at the dark forest surrounding our house.
His posture was rigid, military. My mother was right behind him, arms crossed, expression worried.
Marcus turned when I reached the last step. His eyes were glowing an intense blue, his Magic Vision active and focused on something out there.
"What is it?" I asked, feeling my stomach drop. "Did things go south at the southern border?"
"Not at the south," Marcus replied, voice low. "Here. Close."
He pointed to the forest.
"Did you feel that, Nate?"
I frowned and, automatically, activated my Vision. I looked through the window, into the darkness of the trees.
At first, I saw nothing. Just the natural flow of the forest, the life of the plants.
But then I saw it.
Far away, maybe five hundred meters, there was a trail. It wasn't blue like ours, nor gray like Erica's.
It was red.
A dark, viscous red that seemed to bleed into reality. And it was moving fast.
"What is that?" I asked.
"An invitation," Marcus said, walking to the coffee table and grabbing the car keys. He looked at me. "Grab your coat. We're going for a ride."
"Marcus..." my mother warned, taking a step forward.
"He needs to see, Alice," my father cut in, gentle but firm. "He already has the grimoire. He's already awakened. If there's something bleeding red mana in our backyard, he needs to know how to identify it."
He tossed the keys up and caught them in the air.
"Welcome to the practical class of Defense Against the Dark Arts, kid." He tossed the keys in my direction. "Try not to crash the car."