The garage door closed behind me, shutting out the Charger's rumble and the silence of the night outside. I sat in the car for a moment, hands still gripping the steering wheel, feeling the residual vibration of the magic I had used.
It wasn't physical fatigue.
It was mental.
The image of that oily purple aura pulsing through the speakers was still etched onto my retinas.
I took a deep breath, grabbed my backpack, and went inside.
I expected to find the house dark, my parents asleep, maybe a note on the fridge.
I was wrong.
The kitchen was fully lit. The smell of strong coffee permeated the air, mixed with something more metallic—the scent of spell components.
Marcus was sitting at the marble island, but he wasn't in pajamas. He was wearing a white dress shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the table in front of him was covered in topographic maps of Beacon Hills and an open grimoire that looked like it weighed about twenty kilos.
Alice was standing by the coffee maker, arms crossed, face pale and tense.
As soon as I stepped into the room, both of them turned.
"You're in one piece," Alice said, not as a question, but as a fact check. She scanned my body with her eyes, looking for blood or rips.
"I'm in one piece, Mom," I confirmed, tossing my backpack onto a chair and walking to the fridge to get some water. My throat was dry.
"And the trace?" Marcus asked, point-blank. He didn't look up from the map, where glowing blue lines—Ley lines, I realized—intersected. "Your message said it was purple. And that it was at the party."
I downed the water in one go and turned around, leaning my back against the counter.
"It was purple," I confirmed. "But it wasn't a positioning ritual, Dad. There were no circles on the ground, no candles, no physical sacrifice."
Marcus stopped marking the map. He raised his head slowly.
"Then how was he channeling?"
"Sound," I dropped the bomb. "He used the party speakers. He synchronized the mana with the music's beat. Auditory resonance. It was affecting everyone's nervous system, making people aggressive. Scott almost lost control because of it."
Silence fell over the kitchen.
The hum of the refrigerator seemed deafening.
Marcus exchanged a quick, heavy look with Alice.
"Sound..." he repeated, the word rolling off his tongue like it tasted bad. He dropped the pen and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin. "That... that changes everything."
"It does?" I asked, confused. "I thought it was worse. Sound magic is hard to block, isn't it?"
"It is hard to block, yes," Marcus agreed, eyes narrowed, focused on the void. "But it is extremely difficult to execute. Elemental magic is one thing. Fire, water, earth... that's matter manipulation. But sound? Sound is pure physics. It's vibration. It's invisible."
He stood up and started pacing the kitchen.
"To create a mass aggression spell using sound waves, without frying the caster's own brain... that requires genetic specificity. Or years of training at a very specific school."
He stopped and looked at me.
"This narrows things down, Nathan. This takes 90% of the suspects off the table. Generic Dark Mages use blood and bones because it's easy. Someone who uses sound has refinement. They have pedigree."
Alice, who had been silent until now, stepped forward. Her expression was a mix of fear and recognition.
"Marcus," she called, voice low. "If it's sound manipulation... if it's frequency and mental vibration..."
She hesitated, as if she didn't want to say the name.
"Say it," Marcus encouraged, serious.
"It's the Halloways," she said. "It has to be. No one else on the West Coast has that kind of signature. The Song of Discord, the Voice of Command... those are trademarks of their lineage."
I frowned.
"Halloway?" I asked. "Like... a magical family? Like ours?"
"Like ours, no," Marcus corrected, sharply. He went to a locked cabinet near the pantry and pulled out a phone. Not a modern cellphone, but a robust black device that looked like military or satellite tech. "The Salts build. We are architects of mana. The Halloways... they are conductors. They play reality like it's an instrument. And usually, their music isn't pleasant."
He placed the phone on the table and started dialing a number.
"But I thought the Halloways had been banished to Europe after the incident in 1990," Alice argued, nervous.
"That's what we're going to find out," Marcus replied, putting the phone on speaker.
The ringing sound echoed in the kitchen.
Tuuu... tuuu...
I looked from one to the other, trying to process. Rival magical families? Specific lineages? The supernatural world of Beacon Hills just got a lot bigger than just werewolves and hunters.
"Who are you calling?" I whispered.
"Shut up, Nathan," Marcus ordered, but without malice. Just total focus.
The line picked up.
There was no "hello." Just the sound of classical music—Bach, if I wasn't mistaken—playing in the background, and the clinking of ice in a glass.
"Marcus Salt," a male voice sounded on the other end. It was smooth, velvety, almost hypnotic. The kind of voice you'd hear narrating a mystery audiobook. "I was wondering how long it would take for your radar to ping. I heard you moved to the countryside. Retirement?"
Marcus didn't smile. He leaned over the phone, hands flat on the table.
"Cut the small talk, Julian," my dad said, voice hard as granite. "Do you have someone in Beacon Hills?"
There was a pause on the other end. The classical music seemed to get a little louder.
"Beacon Hills?" Julian's voice repeated, sounding genuinely surprised—or faking it very well. "That forgotten hole where wolves play house? Why would I have anyone there?"
"Because tonight, my son had to neutralize a Grade 3 Auditory Resonance spell at a high school party," Marcus fired back. "Purple mana. Rage induction via synthetic beat. Sound familiar?"
The silence on the line lasted a full five seconds.
When Julian's voice returned, the smoothness was gone. It was cold and sharp.
"Purple? Did you say purple mana, Marcus?"
"Oily and unstable," Marcus confirmed. "Looked like something leaking from a rotten pipe."
We heard the sound of glass being set down hard on a table on the other end.
"That's not one of mine, Salt. Halloway mana is golden. You know that. We are perfectionists, not butchers."
"Then who is playing your music in my backyard?" Marcus pressed.
Julian let out a long sigh.
"I have a nephew. Elias. He was... disowned two years ago. Started mixing our frequency techniques with forbidden rituals he found in Eastern European grimoires. Tried to create The Sound That Cuts the Soul. We kicked him out."
I felt a chill.
The Sound That Cuts the Soul.
"Where is he, Julian?" Marcus asked.
"Last we heard, he was heading down the coast. If he's in Beacon Hills... and if he's using purple mana... he's no longer just practicing, Marcus. He's feeding. He's trying to become a Dark Maestro."
Marcus exchanged a look with my mother. Alice covered her mouth with her hand.
"Do what you have to do, Salt," Julian said, voice low. "If Elias has succumbed to corruption, he is no longer a Halloway. Consider this formal permission from the Family to... silence the noise."
The call dropped.
The busy signal filled the kitchen.
Marcus hung up the phone slowly.
"Elias Halloway," my father murmured. "A prodigy expelled from a family of sound mages, now corrupted by dark magic."
He looked at me.
"You were right to stop the music, Nathan. If that kid completes the ritual he's testing... he won't just make people angry. He's going to turn the entire city into a tuning fork to shatter the barrier between life and death."
I swallowed hard, my mind going back to the glowing-eyed figure in the forest.
"So," I began, voice shaking a little. "We have a name."
"We have a name and we have a target," Marcus confirmed, blue eyes shining dangerously. "And now we know he doesn't work with geometry. He works with rhythm."
He slammed the grimoire shut on the table.
"Go to sleep, Nathan. Tomorrow is Saturday. And we're going to start training on how to fight someone you can't see, but who can kill you with a whisper."
I nodded, grabbing my backpack.
"Dad?" I called, before leaving the kitchen.
"What?"
"Julian... he sounded scared when he talked about the purple mana."
"He was," Marcus said, looking at the silent phone. "Because purple mana in a sound mage means he stopped using magic to control sound... and started using sound to tear reality apart. And that scares even the monsters, son."
I went upstairs, feeling the weight of that conversation on my shoulders more than the backpack. My bedroom door closed, and the silence of the night, which once seemed peaceful, now seemed... suspicious.
I threw the bag on the chair and lay on the bed without taking off my clothes.
I stared at the dark ceiling.
"Elias Halloway," I whispered, testing the name.
"Dark Maestro."
The realization was sinking in slowly. Beacon Hills wasn't just the playground for the Hales and the Argents. It was the stage for an arcane experiment. The Dark Mage wasn't an old cliché in a hood; he was a rejected prodigy, probably young, using electronic music beats to hack brains.
I remembered the sensation at the party. Purple mana entering through the ears, bypassing logical defenses. If I didn't have the Charger and the natural protection of a trained mage, would I be breaking bottles on someone's head?
And Scott?
The image of him fleeing the party, terrified of his own lack of control, returned. The sound must have been torture for him. Did Halloway know that? Or was it just a happy side effect for the villain?
"Resonance," I murmured, closing my eyes. "Everything is vibration. If he controls vibration, he controls matter."
My mind wandered to page 6 of the Grimoire, the one that stubbornly refused to open.
Resonance.
I had touched it today. I had felt the flow.
But against someone who manipulates sound... I needed something opposite to vibration.
I needed absolute sonic zero.
I fell asleep with that thought, dreaming of purple waves trying to enter my ears, but being barred by walls of silent blue glass.
[...]
I woke up to a sound that wasn't a dream.
It was the sound of something hitting my bedroom window.
I jumped up, hand already glowing with the start of a defensive construct, heart racing. I looked at the digital clock on the nightstand.
05:30 AM.
The sky outside was still pre-dawn gray.
I opened the curtain.
Marcus was down there, on the backyard lawn. He was wearing training gear—black tactical pants and a tight gray t-shirt. He held a stone in his hand, ready to throw another at my window.
He signaled with his head.
Come down.
Five minutes later, I was on the lawn, wearing a hoodie and sneakers, shivering slightly in the damp morning cold. The fog was low, covering our ankles.
"Good morning," I murmured, yawning. "I thought training started after coffee."
"The enemy doesn't wait for you to drink your cappuccino, Nathan," Marcus replied, voice dry. He wasn't in a mood for jokes today.
He walked to the center of the lawn, where the space was open and far from the house.
"Last night, we established that your opponent uses sound," he began, walking in circles around me. "Sound needs a medium to travel. Air. Water. Solids. If there are molecules to vibrate, sound gets to you."
"Right," I agreed, rubbing my eyes. "So the idea is to create physical barriers?"
"No."
Marcus stopped in front of me.
"Physical barriers vibrate. If he hits your shield's resonance frequency, he shatters it like a crystal glass at an opera. You saw what you did to the speakers yesterday? You froze the movement."
He raised his hand. A sphere of pure blue mana formed in his palm.
"To fight a Halloway, you don't build walls. You remove the road."
Marcus closed his hand.
Suddenly, the sound of birds vanished. The wind in the trees went mute.
I looked around, confused. I saw leaves moving, saw my father's mouth moving, but heard nothing.
It was absolute.
The silence wasn't peace.
It was pressure.
My ears popped painfully, like I was on a plane descending too fast. The air around me felt like it had been sucked out.
I tried to speak.
"Dad?"
My throat vibrated, but no sound came out. The air wasn't carrying my voice.
Marcus smiled—a soundless smile—and undid the spell with a snap of his fingers that sounded like a cannon shot to my unaccustomed ear.
The sound of the world rushed back all at once, loud and chaotic.
"Ouch!" I brought my hands to my ears, dizzy. "What the hell was that?"
"Vacuum Field," Marcus said calmly. "It's an intermediate Negation technique. You use your mana to create an area where air density is manipulated to disallow the propagation of mechanical waves."
He crossed his arms.
"In a vacuum, no one hears you scream. And more importantly, in a vacuum, Elias's music doesn't play."
I looked at him, impressed.
"You want me to learn how to create a vacuum?" I asked. "Isn't that dangerous? If I do it wrong, I could suffocate someone."
"Or yourself," Marcus agreed. "That's why we'll start slow. I want you to create a bubble of silence around that stone over there."
He pointed to a large rock near the fence.
"Don't try to remove the air. Just stop its vibration. Use geometry. Think of a cube where, inside it, the rule is: nothing moves."
I took a deep breath. Cracked my neck.
Focused on the stone. Activated Magic Vision Lvl 3.
I saw the air around the stone vibrating slightly with the wind. Tiny particles dancing.
I extended my hand.
Geometry, I thought.
Stasis.
I imagined a transparent cube around the stone.
Stop.
Mana flowed. The cube formed.
But instead of silence, I heard a sharp, annoying buzzing sound.
Zzzzzzzzzz.
"Wrong," Marcus corrected, walking up to me. "You're compressing the air. That creates pressure, and pressure creates sound. You don't want to squeeze. You want to space it out. Create a partial vacuum."
I tried again.
And again.
For two hours, the Salt backyard was a stage for buzzing, popping, and small air implosions.
The sun was already high when I finally got it.
Focused on the stone. Imagined the air molecules moving away, politely making room, creating a pocket of nothingness.
The cube formed.
Marcus picked up a smaller pebble and threw it at the large rock.
The pebble entered the cube.
It hit the large rock.
And it made no sound at all.
I saw the impact. Saw the dust rise.
But the expected clack didn't come.
It was like watching a movie on mute.
"That's it," Marcus said, and for the first time that morning, I saw approval in his eyes.
I undid the spell, exhausted. The delayed clack echoed phantom-like in my mind.
[Skill Learned: Field of Silence (Lvl. 1)]
I fell onto the grass, sweating cold. The mana consumption to maintain the vacuum was absurd.
"That costs too much," I panted. "If I use this in a fight, my tank runs dry in two minutes."
"Then you have two minutes to win," Marcus said, handing me a bottle of water. "Or two minutes to run."
He looked at the horizon, towards the Beacon Hills forest.
"Elias Halloway won't give you time, Nathan. He'll attack your senses, your mind, and your friends. The Vacuum Field is your shield. But you still need a sword."
He turned to go back to the house.
"Take a shower. Rest. This afternoon, we'll talk about how to apply this in motion. And how not to pass out after using it."
I lay on the grass for another minute, staring at the blue sky.
I had a defense against sound.
Now I just had to hope Elias wouldn't decide to bring an entire orchestra to the next party.
The smell of homemade food was the first thing to hit me when I walked through the kitchen door, competing with the scent of ozone and sweat radiating from me.
My mother, Alice, was at the stove. No grimoires, maps, or satellite phones in sight. Just a steaming iron pot and the comforting sound of something sautéing.
"Take off your muddy shoes," she said without turning around, voice soft but with undeniable motherly authority.
I obeyed, kicking my sneakers into the corner and dragging myself to the kitchen island. I sat on the high stool, feeling my muscles protest. The "Vacuum Field" training had drained not just my mana, but my physical stamina. Maintaining geometric concentration for that long was like doing a plank with my brain.
Alice turned off the heat and faced me, placing a glass of fresh orange juice in front of me. She leaned against the counter, watching me. Her look was different from Marcus's. Marcus saw a soldier in training; Alice saw the son who, until recently, cared more about video games than magical wars.
"He's pushing you hard," she commented, brushing my messy hair.
"He's scared," I replied, drinking the juice. The natural sugar felt like an injection of life into my blood. "He knows who Elias is. And he knows I'm not ready."
Alice sighed, her gaze going distant.
"The Halloways are... complicated. Your father has a history with their family. Academic rivalry that turned into something worse. But Marcus forgets you didn't have twenty years of prep, Nathan. You've had... what? Two weeks since you 'woke up'?"
She touched my hand holding the glass.
"I see the change in you, son. You're more focused. More serious. Sometimes, I look at you and it feels like I'm seeing a grown man in my boy's body."
I swallowed hard. Maternal intuition was almost as dangerous as Magic Vision.
"Things change fast, Mom," I deflected gently. "I'm just trying to keep up."
"I know." She squeezed my hand and smiled, a sad but warm smile. "Just don't let the magic consume who you are. Salt magic is cold, logical, structural. If you don't keep your human side, your warm side... you turn into a machine, Nathan. Like your father almost did before he met me. I am his anchor. You need to find yours."
I nodded, thinking about the conversation with Allison in the car. Anchors. Everyone needed one.
The back door opened and Marcus walked in. The "human" moment dissipated, replaced by the "war room" atmosphere.
He was holding a small black velvet box in his hands.
Alice saw the box and raised an eyebrow, turning back to the stove to serve lunch, but with a slight smirk. She knew what it was.
Marcus stopped beside me and placed the box on the marble.
"You complained your tank runs dry fast," he said, straight to the point. "And you're right. Your natural reserve is impressive for a beginner, but ridiculous for real combat against a Halloway."
He opened the box.
Inside rested a ring. It wasn't a delicate piece of jewelry. It was a thick band of darkened silver, with a single stone encrusted: a raw, uncut sapphire, dark as the ocean floor.
I used Magic Vision.
The ring's aura was dense. The sapphire wasn't just a stone; it was a capacitor. There were micro-runic inscriptions on the silver channeling ambient mana into the gem, storing it under high pressure.
"A Reserve Ring," I muttered, impressed.
"Salt Family, model MK-IV," Marcus explained, with technical pride in his voice. "It acts like a second lung. It absorbs your excess mana when you're resting and stores it. When your core empties, the ring injects its charge automatically into your system."
I picked up the ring. It was heavy and cold.
"How much?" I asked, looking at him.
"Five hundred flow units, approximately," Marcus replied. "Enough to maintain a Vacuum Field for another five minutes. Or to cast what I'm going to teach you now about ten times."
I slid the ring onto the index finger of my right hand.
I felt a cold prick, like an ice needle, and then a sensation of expansion. It wasn't that I got stronger, but it felt like my "tank" had gained an annex.
In my mind, the counter adjusted.
[MP: 2.100 (+500 Reserve) = 2.600 Total]
I closed my hand, feeling the extra power vibrating in the silver.
"Thanks, Dad."
"Don't thank me. It's survival gear." Marcus motioned to the door. "Eat fast. We're going to the basement. You have a shield. Now you need a weapon."
[...]
The Salt Mansion basement was, predictably, a concrete bunker reinforced with magic insulation plates. There were test targets at one end, reinforced wooden dummies, and steel plates.
Marcus positioned himself at the firing line.
"You know how to use Telekinesis. You know how to push and pull. That's useful for utility, but in combat, it's slow. The force dissipates over a large area."
He raised his right hand, making a "finger gun" shape, but without the childishness of the gesture. It was an aiming stance.
"Offensive magic is about Compression. You take the same amount of mana you'd use to push a chair, and compress it to the size of a coin."
He took a deep breath.
"Observe the geometry. It's not a cube. It's a vector. A line with direction and magnitude."
I saw the mana accumulate at the tip of his index finger. But unlike my telekinesis which was a blue mist, Marcus's mana condensed. It spun in on itself, getting denser and denser, until it became a point of white light, solid and dangerous.
"Kinetic Bolt."
THUM.
The sound was dry, muffled, like a pistol silencer.
There was no fire, no lightning. Just pure force.
The wooden dummy ten meters away exploded. It didn't just break; the dummy's head was pulverized into splinters, and the torso was thrown against the concrete wall with a violent thud.
My jaw dropped.
"That's not magic," I muttered. "That's an invisible .50 caliber shot."
"It's applied physics," Marcus corrected, lowering his hand. "Mass times Acceleration. Mana is the mass. Your will is the acceleration. If you compress it enough, it pierces steel. If you compress it poorly, it's just a strong shove."
He stepped aside, giving me space.
"Your turn. Aim for the metal plate."
I got into position.
Raised my hand. The sapphire ring weighed on my finger, reminding me of the extra reserve.
Vector, I thought. Straight line. Compression.
I pulled the mana. Tried to imitate what Marcus did. Imagined the energy spinning, tightening, becoming a solid point.
But my mind was still stuck on the defensive cubes from the morning. The mana resisted becoming pointy. It wanted to be a wall.
"Focus, Nathan," Marcus's voice came from behind. "Don't protect the target. Destroy the target. Convergence on a single point."
I closed my eyes for a second. Visualized a blue glass bullet. Dense. Heavy.
Opened my eyes and aimed.
"Go!"
I released the mana.
POUF.
The sound was weak. The projectile came out, but unraveled halfway, hitting the metal plate like a strong breeze that just made the sheet vibrate.
"Dispersion," Marcus diagnosed immediately. "You released compression before impact. You have to maintain geometric shape until the moment it touches the target. Again."
I took a deep breath, feeling frustration rise. But I also felt determination. I had 2,600 mana to burn.
"Again."
[...]
I spent the next three hours shooting at nothing.
My fingers tingled. My head hurt. But with every shot, the "bullet" went a little further, became a little more solid.
On the fiftieth attempt, something clicked.
I felt the mana lock into the shape of a needle. I felt the pressure on my finger, begging to be released.
I aimed at the dented metal plate.
"Kinetic Bolt."
TACK!
This time, the sound was crisp.
The metal plate didn't vibrate. It punctured. A small hole, the size of a dime, appeared in the center of the steel, edges twisted inward.
The recoil of the magic made my arm jerk upward.
I smiled, panting.
"Better," Marcus said, crossing his arms. "But it took you four seconds to charge. In a fight, you'd be dead three times over."
He walked to the plate and touched the hole, his serious expression softening minimally.
"But the penetration was good. This would go through a bulletproof vest. And the skin of an Omega."
He turned to me.
"Train until you can do this in one second. Elias Halloway won't stand still waiting for you to aim."
I nodded, wiping sweat from my forehead.
I had a Vacuum Shield.
I had a Kinetic Bolt.
And I had a Reserve Ring.
For the first time, I didn't just feel like an observer with parlor tricks. I felt armed.