4. Fractured

  The limousine moved through the streets of Eldralid in silence.

  Blake sat by the window, his hands wrapped in makeshift bandages. Across from him, Roxanne scrolled through her phone with absolute indifference. His mother watched him with eyes heavy with a worry she couldn't quite hide, though she said nothing. And his father...

  His father was staring at him.

  "I can't believe you ran off that stage like that." His voice was cold as ice. "Have you lost your mind?"

  Blake tightened his bandaged fists. Pain throbbed beneath the cloth.

  "I'm sorry... but my fingers started hurting too much. I don't understand why, and then my nails just—"

  "Then you should have pushed through it!" His father slammed his fist against the armrest, making Blake flinch. "I don't know — shove your hands in your pockets or something! But don't make a scene like that! Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?"

  "Father, it was agony. I didn't know what to do. It felt like my skin was burning—"

  "For God's sake, Blake! They were just your nails!" The shout filled every corner of the enclosed vehicle. "You're going to throw a tantrum over something that trivial? You can't even handle a little pain?"

  "Father, I swear the pain was—"

  "Shut your mouth."

  Silence dropped like a stone. Only his father's heavy breathing filled the air, thick with barely-contained fury.

  'How can I explain what happened when I don't even understand it myself?' Blake dropped his gaze to his hands.

  "I told you not to make a single mistake, and you manage it in record time."

  He leaned forward, bringing his face within inches of Blake's.

  "Don't forget what I said. If you screw up again, you'll wish you'd taken my first offer."

  He let that sink in for a moment.

  "I have no use for a pathetic, worthless person like you in this family."

  Blake looked down. He couldn't hold his gaze.

  "I genuinely can't imagine what your teammates had to put up with, having you in their group. Dealing with your fear of monsters, your inability to handle pain — at sixteen years old..."

  His father laughed. Short and bitter, as if the very idea was too absurd to take seriously.

  "And don't think I've forgotten. I'm sure whatever happened with your nails wasn't even that bad. You exaggerated it, like you always do."

  "Father! I swear something was seriously wrong, the pain was inten—"

  "Shut that mouth! I didn't ask you to speak!"

  Blake squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lower lip to keep from saying another word.

  "There's really no reasoning with you..." His father leaned back in his seat with a long sigh. "You can't even follow a simple order."

  "Sweetheart..." His mother spoke for the first time since they'd left the ceremony. "Maybe we should be concerned. It wasn't just one nail. It was all of them."

  His father looked at her with open irritation. "And what exactly do you expect us to do about it?"

  "We could take him to the hospital to get him examined..."

  "But he was there, and they released him themselves! Did you forget that?!"

  "It's not a bad idea..." Blake murmured, looking at his bandaged hands. "Maybe they didn't consider there could be side effects..."

  His father slowly turned his head toward him. Calculated. Threatening.

  "The fact that they didn't consider it is the best thing that could have happened to you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Ha!" He laughed without a trace of humor. "You're the survivor of an anomaly that occurred inside a rift. Anyone who shows symptoms after exposure to an anomalous rift gets flagged as fractured — then they're hospitalized. Experimented on. Until nothing more is ever heard from them."

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  Blake's blood ran cold at those words.

  "Is that what you want, Blake?"

  Blake didn't answer. The words lodged in his throat.

  'Fractured...?' The word echoed in his mind.

  "That's what I thought."

  "Even so..." His mother pressed on, turning to her husband. "Maybe we should consider it. In case something like this happens again — it could be dangerous, not just for him, but for everyone around him."

  "Fine!" His father said it as if the word physically pained him. "If something like this happens again, we report it."

  He rubbed his temples with both hands.

  "God, what a headache all of this is. I'm convinced that if any of your teammates had survived, they wouldn't have caused half the trouble you do."

  Blake didn't respond. He kept his eyes on his bandaged hands and let the words wash over him the way they always did — grazing him without fully sinking in.

  Then Roxanne looked up from her phone for the first time in several minutes.

  "Before the ceremony," she said in a casual, almost bored tone, "Blake mentioned seeing something strange in front of him. But there was nothing there."

  His heart lurched.

  'What do you think you're doing...? Why are you telling them that?'

  "What?" His mother spun around in alarm, her eyes jumping between Roxanne and Blake. "Is that true, Blake?"

  "Ha! Great! So you're losing your mind too?" His father narrowed his eyes.

  "No — none of that happened." Blake shot Roxanne a burning look. She didn't even bother returning it. "Why are you telling them that? You know it's not true."

  "Don't lie," she replied without flinching, eyes still on her screen.

  "I think that's enough reason to report it..." His mother pressed a hand to her mouth.

  "What the hell happened in that rift, Blake?" His father leaned forward again. "Are you sure you don't remember anything? Because I'm very sure you're lying..."

  "Blake..." His mother looked at him with a genuine concern that was rare for her. "You don't have a sacred cloak to hide behind. If something happened to you down there, it is absolutely vital that you tell us..."

  "Enough!" Blake said it louder than he intended. "Can we drop it? It's probably nothing serious."

  "Sweetheart..." His mother leaned slightly toward him, lowering her voice as if the words were meant for Blake alone. "I don't think we should overlook all of this. There are too many things to consider. And you shouldn't be afraid of what your father says — nothing bad is going to happen to you."

  Blake looked at her for a moment. There was something in her tone he wasn't used to hearing.

  "I'm fine..." he said finally, looking away. "There's no need to worry. Maybe I just exaggerated."

  His mother opened her mouth to respond, but said nothing.

  Silence settled back over the vehicle.

  No one said another word.

  But Blake could feel Roxanne's eyes on him. Even as she pretended to look at her phone, he knew she was watching.

  Did she suspect something?

  That worried him more than anything else.

  ***

  "We have arrived at our destination," Reginald announced from the driver's seat.

  His father was the first to step out, without sparing a glance at anyone. Then Roxanne, who pocketed her phone and climbed out with the same indifference she'd carried throughout the entire ride. Then his mother, who cast one last worry-laden look at Blake before descending.

  Not a word from anyone.

  Blake stayed seated for a few seconds longer, staring through the window at the imposing Grimswell estate. He drew a slow breath, trying to calm a heartbeat that still hadn't found its normal rhythm. And finally, he stepped out.

  The estate loomed before him. As always. Cold. Impersonal. More like a mausoleum than a home.

  He went inside and climbed the stairs toward his room with slow, heavy steps, each one feeling heavier than the last.

  "Young Master Blake."

  He stopped dead.

  Reginald approached from the side hallway, something in his hands.

  "Here." He tossed a clean set of bandages with a precise, practiced motion.

  Blake caught them in the air.

  "Make sure to cover the wounds properly. That will help you avoid infection."

  "Thank you so much, Reginald..."

  Reginald smiled warmly. An expression that stood in brutal contrast with everything Blake had endured in the last hour. It was the first genuine thing he'd felt since leaving the academy.

  "If you need anything else, don't hesitate to let me know."

  Blake nodded, unable to find more words, and stepped into his room.

  The door clicked shut softly behind him.

  Finally alone.

  He removed his shoes with slow, almost mechanical movements. Then his socks.

  And there they were. His feet.

  The nails were gone too. Only raw, exposed flesh remained where healthy nails had once been.

  "Damn..."

  He sat on the bed and began to bandage himself carefully. First his feet, wrapping each toe with precision to keep the wounds covered. Then he replaced the bandages on his hands, already stained with small drops of blood that had seeped through the cloth.

  "Why is all of this happening...?"

  The memories of the conversation with his father in the car came flooding back.

  'Fractured... Could I maybe be... one?'

  But he shook his head hard, driven by fear, as if he could physically force those thoughts out.

  "Not a chance. They'd hospitalize me. Run experiments on me — my own father said so. I'd disappear and no one would ask where I went, no one would demand answers. And besides, he'd hand me over without a second thought if it meant I'd stop being a problem. And my last name... it wouldn't matter in that situation. It wouldn't be worth anything."

  He paused.

  'As for my nails... maybe it's just psychosomatic. It's the only explanation I can find.'

  'But that doesn't explain what I saw. It was so real... it felt so real. The color, the letters, the counter ticking down. It wasn't a hallucination — or at least it didn't feel like one... I suppose the only thing I can hold onto is the theory that it's that man messing with my head, using the memory of what saved me against me. He's furious about that, and this is his way of getting back at me.'

  "And on top of all that... having to pretend from now on that I know how to use magic at the academy. As if I didn't already have enough to deal with!"

  He grabbed a pillow and pressed it hard against his face.

  "The problems just keep piling up... I have no idea how I'm going to handle everything that's coming!" he screamed into the fabric, his voice muffled but raw with desperation.

  He let the pillow fall to the floor.

  "I should make a plan... But I have no ideas. And I'm too exhausted to think. All I want is to sleep..."

  He closed his eyes, feeling the exhaustion finally begin to pull him under.

  "I guess tomorrow I'll have to figure something out..."

  And little by little, he drifted off to sleep — still wearing his ceremony uniform.