CHAPTER 235: THE SILENT CRYSTALS

Zane did not know classrooms.

He knew corridors washed in pale light, the hush of the Caelum library, the scratch of quill on parchment while a private tutor’s voice drifted like dust motes in the air.

"Again," the tutor would say, tapping neat glyphs for wind and earth.

Zane would copy them, careful and quiet, glancing down where his shadow pooled beside the desk—his only audience, his only friend. When he raised his hand to mimic a rune, the shadow raised its hand, too. When he hesitated, it hesitated. It never spoke, never helped, but it stayed. And in a manor that felt too large for one small boy, that was enough.

He was homeschooled because crowds made his chest tighten and words tangle. Darius had insisted it was fine—"The world can wait"—and Selena had agreed, smoothing Zane’s pale hair with warm fingers. The cousins went off to academies and training yards; Zane stayed in sunlit rooms and learned from books, from quiet people, from silence.

On his thirteenth birthday, the silence felt different.

The family had prepared the Affinity Crystal in a chamber set aside for rites: white candles in silver dishes, the Caelum crest—a winged sun—embroidered above the mantle, and a pedestal of polished stone at the room’s center. The crystal itself gleamed like captured dawn, clear and flawless, said to answer every child with color—fire’s ember, water’s depth, wind’s shimmer, earth’s weight, light’s blessing, shadow’s veil—and with it, a measure of talent.

"Take your time," Selena murmured. She braided a loose strand behind his ear and kissed his forehead. Her smile was steady; her eyes, not.

Darius stood near the window, hands clasped behind his back, every inch the lord of House Caelum—tall, composed, the pale hair of their line catching the candlelight. "Whatever it shows, you are my son," he said. The words were granite; the gentleness underneath them was rare and real.

Zane nodded. His palms were damp.

The room held only the three of them and the quiet creak of the manor settling. Somewhere far away, servants laughed in a corridor, a reminder that the world ran on without waiting. Zane looked once at the floor; his shadow looked back. He breathed in. Out.

He reached for the crystal.

Cool glass met his fingertips.

Nothing happened.

No color bled through the shard. No tremor of light. No soft bell note to mark the moment an affinity answered. The crystal simply... remained. Perfect. Unchanged.

Zane swallowed and pressed his hand flatter, then both hands, willing heat, wind—something—into it. The crystal did not care.

A long second stretched. Then another.

Darius’s jaw flexed. "It could be flawed," he said evenly. "Crystals are refined by human hands. We will fetch another."

Selena’s hand found Zane’s shoulder and squeezed. "We try again when you’re ready, little one. There’s no rush."

Zane nodded even though the rush was inside him, a drumbeat of worry he couldn’t quiet. He drew back a fraction... and then—hope a stubborn thing—touched the crystal once more.

The candles guttered as if a draft had crept through. For an instant—so brief he wasn’t sure it was real—the crystal’s heart seemed to dim rather than shine, like the room’s light shifted away from it.

And then even that was gone.

Silence returned. The crystal remained clear.

Zane stepped back. His throat felt tight and small. He looked down; his shadow lay obediently at his feet, perfectly still. Somehow its stillness hurt more than anything else.

Selena knelt to meet his eyes. "Breathe with me," she whispered, and he did, matching her calm inhale, her calmer exhale. "Good. This doesn’t define you. We’ll call the Archivist, we’ll test again. Sometimes the first touch is shy."

"Sometimes," Darius agreed, but his gaze had gone distant—calculating paths, contingencies, names to summon before rumor could outrun them.

Zane nodded because nodding was easy. Inside, something small folded in on itself.

They doused the candles. The room felt colder without their soft glow.

On the way out, Zane slowed, watching the corridor sunlight spill across the floorboards. He lifted his hand, and his shadow lifted its hand. He wiggled his fingers; it wiggled back. He almost smiled—almost—but the moment slipped.

He didn’t see the way the other shadows in the chamber—under the table, behind the pedestal, along the baseboards—had not moved at all. For a breath, when he touched the crystal, they had vanished, as if light had forgotten to cast them. Now they returned as if nothing had happened.

"Come, little one," Selena said softly at the door, smoothing his hair again. "We’ll rest. And when you’re ready, we’ll try again."

Zane took her hand. His shadow stretched to keep up.

Behind them, the Affinity Crystal sat in perfect clarity, reflecting nothing.