Chapter 53: Stop Knocking

Chapter 53: Stop Knocking

Silas’s blade struck the training pad on the return.

He hadn’t reached for it. That was the part he liked best.

Renn had knocked his opening cut aside, forcing him to turn with the contact. This time, his feet followed the movement he had practiced. He guided her wooden blade outward with Remote Grasp, brought his own back along the short inward line, and felt the padded edge land against the target strapped to her side.

"Stop there," Renn said.

Silas held the position, breathing hard. His reinforcement had thinned near the wrist, but he hadn’t lost it completely.

The instructor looked at his feet, then touched his elbow.

"Too high. Against a live counter, that gap matters."

He lowered it.

"The return was good," she added. "You can use that."

Silas tried to stop his pleasure from turning into an enormous grin. He wasn’t entirely successful.

Two days ago, she had touched his chest whenever she felt like it. Today, in this controlled exercise, his feet had finally kept up with his blade and Talent.

Renn made him repeat it from the other side, where it worked considerably less well. He took the correction without losing his good mood.

By the time he got home, his training shirt was damp and his stomach was demanding lunch. Nim met him on the desk, announced that Maelin had left a pencil behind, and refused to say where he had put it.

Silas eventually found it in the shallow dish, underneath the bent spoon.

Spirit Communion expired that afternoon while Silas was sitting on the floor.

[Spirit Communion — Temporary recording expired.]

[Assimilation preserved: 7%.]

The faint impression he had been following vanished.

One moment, he could feel Nim’s acceptance through the small offering between them. The next, all he had was the sight of a paw against his fingers and the warmth of the spirit leaning into his knee.

Silas stopped reaching.

Nim lifted his head. "What?"

"Nothing. The exercise is finished."

He rubbed under the little creature’s chin. Nim pushed into his hand, perfectly happy to continue this part.

Silas kept his hand there a little longer. He had expected the bond to survive, but this was better than having to trust a paragraph in a book.

Seven percent in a week.

He looked at the preserved figure again.

Some sessions had brought real understanding. Others had left him squinting at Nim without learning a thing. He had used the whole week, and most of the Talent still lay beyond him.

Nim climbed into his lap. Silas left the panel closed and sat with him until the pressure of small paws became uncomfortable.

Elyra had asked the previous evening whether she could visit after her conservation work. Her message had mentioned a request of her own. He had agreed, and then spent an unreasonable amount of time wondering what the request might be.

When she knocked an hour later, he was putting Maelin’s pencil into his desk drawer, where it would survive until he could give it back.

Elyra came in with a slim case under one arm. The private guest reading appeared.

Silas selected Spirit Communion.

[Spirit Communion — Temporary recording established.]

[Assimilation: 7%.]

[Duration: 7 days.]

The sense he had lost came back, faint and familiar. He dismissed the panel before he could look at it too long.

"Is he awake?" Elyra asked.

Nim answered from the bed. "Yes."

She smiled at him, then set the case on the desk without opening it.

"I wanted to ask whether you’d let me make a record of how you contacted him," Elyra said.

Silas’s good mood faltered.

"A record for whom?" he asked.

"For now, just me." Elyra pulled out the chair. "If there were ever something useful enough to share, I’d ask you both first."

She explained what she wanted: the exercise he had chosen, what he had noticed, how he had recognized a response. No blood, no invasive examination, no asking Nim to demonstrate his space. The case held a notebook and a few teaching diagrams.

Silas understood the interest. A student with Remote Grasp had followed beginner instructions and bonded with an unusual spirit. He would have wanted an explanation too.

He couldn’t give her the useful part.

Worse, every careful account he did give her would send her looking for a natural ability that might not exist at all.

"I’d rather you didn’t," Silas said.

Elyra’s hand paused on the case.

"Even if it stays private?"

"Yes," Silas said.

He expected her to ask why. Instead, she glanced at Nim, who had lifted his head from the pillow, and left the case closed.

"All right," Elyra said. Her disappointment was plain.

Silas shifted beside the desk. He hated how quickly relief could make him feel stingy.

"You can still ask things," he said. "I just don’t want to become something people pass notes about."

"I said I’d ask before sharing anything," Elyra said.

"I know," Silas said.

She studied him for a moment. "You don’t quite believe me."

Silas had no comfortable answer to that.

He remembered a scene from the game: Elyra facing Alden, her curiosity sharpened into something he hadn’t understood until far too late. Remembering that ending while she sat in his guest chair made it hard to answer the girl in front of him fairly.

She had helped him. She had kept his confidence. She had just accepted a refusal she obviously disliked.

None of that erased the memory. It deserved to count for something, though.

"I’m trying," Silas said.

Elyra looked surprised. Then she drew the case onto her lap.

"I don’t need an answer today," Elyra said.

For several breaths, neither of them spoke. Somewhere in the corridor, someone was rolling a delivery cart past his door.

Then Silas reached for the green book.

"There’s something I wanted to ask you."

The passage was about ending an invitation.

Silas had followed its instructions often enough to be irritated by them. He could stop supplying mana easily enough. What he couldn’t reliably tell apart was a fading invitation and a response he hadn’t understood yet.

Elyra read the margin note beside his finger.

"What do you do when you aren’t sure?" she asked.

"Try again," Silas said. "Usually with less."

"Immediately?" Elyra asked.

Silas nodded.

"Then you may be hearing yourself," Elyra said. "You’re trying to listen while you’re still knocking."

She turned to Nim. "Would you help us with something?"

"Do I have to move?" Nim asked.

"No," Elyra said.

Nim agreed.

Silas settled beside the bed and made the small invitation. The familiar response came almost at once. Nim knew this exercise now, perhaps better than he did.

At Elyra’s instruction, Silas withdrew the invitation and kept his attention perfectly still.

The fading impression made him want to reach out again. He resisted. For a while, there was only the effort of paying attention to something he could barely perceive.

Then Nim answered.

Silas felt the difference so clearly that he looked up.

The spirit had raised his head. No offered mana was drawing him closer this time. He had simply chosen to respond after Silas stopped asking.

"That," Silas said.

Elyra nodded. "You don’t have to fill every silence."

They repeated it. Sometimes Nim answered. Sometimes he left Silas waiting. Once, Silas announced a response that hadn’t happened at all, and Nim informed him of the mistake with enormous satisfaction.

Eventually, the spirit rolled onto his side and refused to participate any further. Silas stopped too, tired enough to understand the decision.

[Spirit Communion — Assimilation: 8%.]

He let himself enjoy the number before dismissing it.

Elyra was gathering up her case. He glanced at it, then at the book she had left on the desk.

"You can write down that the beginner kept interrupting," Silas said.

She looked back at him.

"The exercise," he explained. "And what helped. No name, no account of the bond. I’d like to see it before it goes anywhere."

"That’s useful," Elyra said. "Are you sure?"

He was. This much, at least, he could give her honestly.

After she left, Silas wrote the new expiry into his private notes: seven days from this afternoon. His slot was occupied again, with three permanent Talents and a great deal left to learn. Nim had settled on the pillow, out of reach of any more exercises.

Then he opened Returning Edge to the movement Renn had approved and watched it once more. Tomorrow, he wanted to find out whether he could manage it from the other side.