"Well well," the man mused, setting the notebook aside. "The birdie finally flew back to the nest."
Caspian blinked. "Silas…?"
"In the flesh," Silas replied with a smirk, swinging his legs off the desk and leaning forward. "Well—" he gestured vaguely at the room, "—not technically in the flesh. But close enough for this part of the story."
"What do you mean 'not technically'?" Caspian asked, his voice still groggy.
Silas didn't answer immediately. Instead, he plucked something small and glinting from the desk—a coin. A simple quarter, at first glance. He turned it over in his fingers, the ridged edge catching the light like a serrated halo. He examined it with the reverence of a priest handling a relic, though his smirk remained.
"This," Silas said, holding it up between thumb and forefinger, "is just a coin. Nothing special, right? A common, everyday object. Tossed into fountains. Lost between couch cushions. Slipped into the hands of beggars or vending machines without a second thought."
He began to roll it across his knuckles—deft, practiced, hypnotic.
"But look closer," he murmured. "Because sometimes, even the smallest object can echo with meaning."
He flicked it high into the air.
The coin spun, slicing the fluorescent light into perfect discs as it rose. It lingered for a moment—hung there, suspended, as though gravity had forgotten it. The air around it seemed to ripple, shimmer, warp.
And then, impossibly, it began to change.
The solid silver blurred. Its edges melted. Not with heat, but with purpose—as though the coin were shedding its form, like a dream unraveling at the seams. The ridges along its edge grew soft, then curled outward, unfurling into thin strands of lavender.
It was no longer metal.
It was petals.
Hundreds of them.
Velvet-soft and impossibly weightless, each petal fell slower than the one before, spinning gently in the still air of the room. Their color shifted with each revolution—violet, then sapphire, then deep plum. They touched nothing. They made no sound. They simply fell, as if from a tree no one had seen, in a forest no one remembered.
Caspian stared, lips slightly parted. His breath hitched. The petals brushed past his face without touching him. They cascaded down like tears from the sky, and then—
They began to burn.
Not with fire, not exactly. But each petal, upon reaching the floor, flickered with ghostlight—blue-violet flames that rose silently from the delicate matter, consuming them utterly. The flame gave no heat. It gave no smell. Just a shimmer, like watching a soul vanish.
The fire consumed each petal, and from the ashes, something new began to form.
Coins.
Identical quarters, hundreds of them, clinking softly into being where the flames had died. They did not drop or fall. They appeared, upright, rolling on their edges across the cold concrete floor. Each one moved as if guided by some unseen hand, forming spirals, intersecting paths, fractals of movement. They danced silently around Caspian's feet—an impossible symphony of motion.
Some collided. Some spun wildly out of control. Others curved inward, stopping only when they hit the edge of the bed. One settled directly beneath his palm, as if offering itself.
Silas knelt down, picked up one of the coins, and held it out again.
"Every action," he said, voice lower now, "no matter how small… echoes."
He let the coin fall again.
This time it struck the floor with a sharp, deliberate clink.
And nothing happened.
No petals. No fire.
Just cold, dull metal.
Silas looked up at him, eyes sharp behind the violet glasses.
"Once it's real… it doesn't get to be beautiful anymore."
Caspian stared, wide-eyed. "So I'm… just dreaming?"
Silas nodded. "Yes. Since you decided to go rogue with your ability and collapsed like a poorly programmed puppet."
"How do you even know that?" Caspian demanded. "I haven't seen you in months. I never told you about Julius, or about the plan, or—"
Silas chuckled, that same slow, unnerving cadence Caspian remembered. "What do I not know, Cas?"
"But it's just an ability. My hair turning brown? Who cares? It's cosmetic," Caspian argued. "Julius is the one breaking rules, not me."
Silas stood slowly, walking toward him with a scientist's deliberation. He stared at Caspian's hair—at the brown streaks that stained the midnight black, the color of overburdened magic. His eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in thought.
"Tell me, Caspian," Silas asked gently, walking toward the far side of the room, "have you ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton?"
"Of course," Caspian said cautiously. "He was a renowned physicist and mathematician."
Silas smirked and reached into a drawer. From it, he produced two perfectly polished metal spheres, no larger than small apples. He rolled them in his hands for a moment, then placed them on the desk.
With a flick of his wrist, he nudged one ball into the other.
Clink.
The second ball swung away on its string and returned. Clink. The first moved.
Silas repeated the process again, this time letting them swing faster, the crisp metallic rhythm growing louder.
"For every action," he began, "there is an equal… and opposite… reaction."
He stepped aside, letting Caspian see the steady, hypnotic motion of the spheres.
"That's Newton's third law. Balance, Caspian. Consequence."
Caspian furrowed his brow. "What does that have to do with—"
"Everything." Silas's voice cut clean through the air. "Your ability is a force. A violent one, when left unchecked. You don't summon power from nowhere—you borrow it from the fabric of time. And like any borrowed thing, it demands repayment."
Caspian looked down. "So what? If I use it, something bad happens?"
Silas picked up the two balls and placed them directly in Caspian's hands.
"Swing one," he instructed.
Caspian did. The ball on the left smacked into the stationary one, which shot forward with equal strength.
"You see?" Silas said softly. "Use your power recklessly, and it pushes back. Always. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But eventually, it hits you."
Caspian looked at the metal spheres again, then at the brown ends of his hair.
"So… the hair…"
"A warning," Silas confirmed. "A fracture in the foundation of who you are."
"But I had to," Caspian whispered. "Alexander would've destroyed everything. Julius—he's trying to collapse the Tower."
"You think I don't know what Julius is doing?" Silas asked, his voice sharpening. "He told me himself. He tells everyone—because deep down, Julius doesn't care if his plans are stopped. He just wants to watch what people do when they think it's the end."
He stepped closer again, now only a foot from Caspian's bed.
"You've always been afraid of becoming something monstrous," Silas murmured. "And in trying to prevent destruction, you're courting it."
Caspian swallowed. The air felt heavier now, as though the entire room were leaning in to hear their conversation.
"So what do I do?" Caspian asked.
"You learn restraint," Silas replied, placing the two spheres back on the desk. "And you remember the law. Not Newton's—yours. You are not a weapon. You're the wielder."
Silas turned around, hands behind his back, and took a few steps forward before stopping.
"There's only one way back," he said.
Caspian blinked. "Back to what?"
"Reality," Silas replied with a smirk. "The part where you're lying unconscious in the freezing rain with Julius pacing like a maniac."
He turned on his heel, walked back to Caspian's side, and looked down at him with an almost paternal expression.
"It's time to wake up, little god," Silas whispered.
Then he raised his hand—and snapped.
A crack echoed through the room like a gunshot.
And suddenly—
Cold. Wet. Hard.
Caspian's back slammed against the concrete, a violent return that sucked the breath from his lungs. His eyes flew open. The sky above him was a dull, bruised gray, heavy with storm clouds. Rain pelted his face, clinging to his clothes and skin. He gasped, coughing hard, fingers clawing at the rooftop of the Blackwood Building.
His vision spun briefly, and then everything came back into focus.
The scent of blood. The sound of wind howling across the top floor. The crunch of shattered glass beneath his boots.
And not far off—Julius, standing near the edge, staring at him with wide, confused eyes.
"You alright there, sunshine?" Julius asked, half-smiling. "You dropped like a corpse."
Caspian didn't answer. He stared at his hands. Still trembling. Still whole. But something inside had shifted.
Balance.
He stood up slowly, rain tracing paths down his cheekbones.
And then, without a word, he turned his eyes back to Julius—this time with a very different kind of clarity.
Something had changed.
And now, he understood the cost.