The final stretch of Tuesday was, to my surprise, the brightest moment of the day. The Art classroom has always been my refuge—a place where the smell of turpentine and pastel dust makes the real world feel like a poorly made draft. But today, the refuge had a guardian: Alice Cullen.
She was there, sitting on the stool next to mine, and I could almost swear her feet didn't touch the ground. She emitted a vibration of joy so pure she seemed to float a couple of inches above the wood. As soon as I sat down and began to unroll my charcoals, she swooped into my personal space with the delicacy of a butterfly and the energy of a hurricane.
"Mael!" she exclaimed, her voice sounding like a crystal melody. "Esme loved the drawings. She loved them! She already has them framed in her office; she says you captured something she had forgotten herself."
She grabbed my arm with surprising strength for someone so small. Her enthusiasm was so genuine, so vibrant, that I felt my usual wall of indifference give way a little. For the first time in a long while, a real smile—small but honest—tugged at the corners of my lips.
"She wants you to come over on Saturday," she continued, her eyes shining like jewels. "She wants to talk to you about the project, show you the blueprints, and have you start as soon as possible. You have to come."
"Fine, I'll go," I replied, trying to regain my dry tone, though the spark of satisfaction in my chest betrayed me. "But I don't have the slightest clue where you live. Forks is a labyrinth of trees and mud."
"I'll pick you up," she offered immediately. "At ten. I'll drive you myself."
I nodded, accepting the deal. The rest of the class was an exercise in technical experimentation. I decided to move away from absolute black and white. I began to use color strategically—only the essentials so the impact would be visceral. I focused on drawing Alice's eyes. I used a mix of hazel-green and amber, giving them a light of their own—a luminescence suggesting she was seeing threads of fate that the rest of us ignored. When I finished, the eyes on the paper seemed to vibrate, as if the pixie herself were trapped in the fiber of the page.
As I walked out, the freezing air hit my face, but I didn't care. I felt... valued. Finally, someone saw my drawings not as a "weird hobby," but as something with real weight. I walked toward the Chevy with an unusual lightness, ignoring the murmurs of the other students.
Bella was already there, leaning against the truck. She had that "Greek tragedy" look fixed on the other side of the parking lot, where the Cullens were gathered. Edward was there, with that face of existential agony that seemed to be his natural state.
"Bells, if you keep staring at him like that, you're going to wear out his jacket," I teased, tossing my backpack onto the seat.
She blushed, but my gaze drifted to the couple standing next to Edward: Jasper and Alice. They were leaning into each other, fitting together so perfectly it almost hurt to watch. For a second, a forbidden image crossed my mind: me, in the middle of the two of them, surrounded by that embrace of marble and silk. The thought made me blush violently, and I looked away, cursing my imagination.
Then, the sound of the world changed.
A roar of a revving engine, the metallic screech of tires losing the battle against black ice. I looked to the left and saw Tyler's blue van spiraling out of control. It was coming straight for us. Time didn't stop; it shattered.
"BELLA!" The cry didn't even leave my throat; it was born from primal instinct.
I took two quick steps, my feet finding traction where there should be none. I grabbed Bella by the shoulders and pulled her toward me, covering her with my own body, interposing myself between her and the tons of metal coming to crush us. My desire to protect her was so absolute, so fierce, that something inside me tightened like a violin string about to snap.
Don't touch her. Don't touch her. DON'T TOUCH HER.
I felt a burst of invisible pressure emanate from my back. It wasn't a conscious thought; it was a projection of my will. Something I can't name woke up and surged out of me to take form—I could feel it like a transparent film. When the van impacted, I didn't feel metal against my flesh. I felt a vibratory collision, Tyler's car hitting this "wall," if you can call it that. But it didn't hold for long; it shattered easily like glass. The blow was dry and dull, and the cerebral pressure was so immense that my vision turned black instantly. My body collapsed over Bella, protecting her as the darkness claimed me.
Edward Cullen's Point of View
From the other side, I saw it all before it happened. I saw Tyler's trajectory, I saw the panic in Bella's eyes, and I was already running. My speed was inhuman, a blurred streak across the asphalt. But what I saw next defied even my understanding of what was possible.
Mael Swan.
The boy of "mental silence" didn't run. He planted his feet. I saw him wrap his sister in a protective embrace, and just before Tyler's metal could tear them apart, the air around Mael seemed to solidify. I saw a distortion in space, a membrane of invisible force that vibrated violently when the van hit it.
The impact was brutal. Tyler's van stopped for a microsecond, as if it had hit a rock of diamond, but Mael's strength was exhausted in a burst of invisible energy, and the wall shattered like glass. The car continued forward, its momentum lessened but still lethal.
I arrived just in time. I slammed my hands under the bumper, denting the metal with my strength, stopping the vehicle inches from where Bella cradled her brother's unconscious body.
"Mael! Mael, wake up!" Bella's scream was pure terror, an echo of panic that filled the parking lot.
I stood up, feeling the adrenaline burn in my veins. Bella looked at me, eyes wide, glancing from my hands to the dented car and then to her brother, who lay like a broken statue in her arms. Mael was pale, a thin trail of blood running from his nose—not from physical impact, but from the effort of whatever he had done.
I couldn't stay. The secret was in danger. I walked away quickly, ignoring Bella's pleas as the rest of the school began to converge on them like ants.
Waking up felt like someone was using the inside of my skull as an anvil. Each heartbeat sent an electric shockwave bouncing off my temples—a rhythmic, merciless hammering. I tried to open my eyes, but the white light from the ceiling was a silver needle piercing my pupils.
In the distance, I heard voices.
"...she's fine, Dad, really. I don't have a scratch, it was Mael," Bella's voice was trembling, that high-pitched tone she uses when she's a millimeter away from a nervous breakdown. "He covered me... he took the whole impact."
"I'm sorry, really, I'm so sorry..." That was Tyler, sounding like a beaten, pathetic puppy.
"Tyler, shut up right now," Charlie's voice was absolute ice—that police chief authority he rarely used at home. "You're going to lose your license before the day is out, count on it. Now get out of here before I lose my temper."
I let out an involuntary groan. The movement of my vocal cords seemed to aggravate the earthquake in my brain.
"Mael?" Charlie was at my side in a second. I felt his heavy, calloused hand rest with a clumsy gentleness on my shoulder. "Hey, champ. How are you?"
"Like a truck ran over me... literally," I managed to articulate, though the words came out thick. I tried to sit up, but the world decided to do a 360-degree flip. A whimper of pure pain escaped my lips as I clutched my head.
"Stay still, stay still," Charlie ordered. "I'm going to get Dr. Cullen; he needs to check that head right now."
When he left, a small, cold hand intertwined with mine. "Hey, little brother," Bella said.
I opened one eye cautiously. She looked a mess—hair tangled and eyes bloodshot from crying.
"I'm fine, Mael. I'm intact because you... God, Mael, you threw yourself in front of that van. It was so stupid."
I forced a crooked smile. "Of course I'm a fool. I'm a fool who would protect one of the people who matters most to me in life. I'd sell my own soul for you, big sis."
The door opened, and a man entered who looked as though he had been sculpted from the same marble as Alice and Jasper. Dr. Carlisle Cullen.
"Good afternoon, Mael. I'm Dr. Cullen." His voice was like liquid silk. He checked my pupils with a light that felt like a bolt of lightning through my brain. "You have a concussion, which is to be expected. But your pupils are reacting well. You just need rest and darkness."
"You were very lucky," Carlisle added, glancing at Charlie. "It could have been much worse."
"Yes," Bella intervened, her voice strangely sharp. "Thanks to your son, Edward. He was there. He protected us. He stopped the van with... with his hands."
Dr. Cullen's shoulders tensed a fraction of a millimeter. His golden eyes flashed with contained surprise before returning to his professional mask.
"Edward is... very fast," Carlisle said, changing the subject with mastery. "And very strong for his age. Adrenaline does amazing things in a crisis."
When they left, I stared at the ceiling. My mind, despite the pain, was working a mile a minute. I remembered the feeling of the invisible "wall." I remembered the metal bending under Edward's fingers.
"Bella..." I whispered as the darkness of sleep began to claim me again. "You saw that too, didn't you?"
But she didn't answer. She was too busy staring at the door, lost in her own thoughts about the bronze-haired boy. Slowly, I drifted into a heavy sleep, dreaming of glass walls shattering and two pairs of golden eyes looking at me with concern.
****END CHAPTER***
"Hi everyone! Hope you're all doing great tonight. I'm here to drop Chapter 7 of the story—I really hope you enjoy it!
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