The basement felt different now. The air hummed with a energy that had nothing to do with the flickering fluorescent light. Niran stood across from me, his breath coming in sharp gasps, the grotesque Nakwi gloves swallowing his hands whole.
"Focus, Niran. Don't push it. Let it happen." My voice sounded distant, even to me.
He threw another punch at the empty air. A faint 'tchi-tchi' crackle preceded a weak shockwave that barely ruffled a pile of old comics five feet away. He cursed, shaking out his arms
"It's like trying to siphon gas with a thread. It pulls more from me than it gives out."
He was right. A fine sweat beaded on his forehead, and his usual vibrant energy was dimming. He was trying to force a river through a pinhole.
The sound of careful footsteps and a soft, worried voice drifted down from the kitchen above.
"..seems so tired, honey. And Rafael... he's so quiet. More than usual."
Dao's mother. Her concern was a constant, gentle pressure ever since we'd arrived. Her father's deeper murmur followed, too low to make out words, but the tone was unmistakably protective.
We were guests here, but we felt like intrudors. We'd brought a chilling secret into their warm, normal home.
"Maybe we should take a break," I said, my eyes drifting to the ceiling.
"No," Niran insisted, wiping his brow.
"I need to get this. I can't just... I can't be useless."
The guilt from the hospital, from his desperate prayer, was fuel for him now. He was going to burn himself out trying to make it right.
He launched into another series of movements, each one punctuated by that faint, static sound. I watched him, but my focus blurred.
The 'tchi-tchi' sound began to morph, fading into another memory. It became the sound of a heart monitor, flatlining. The sterile smell of the basement was replaced by the antiseptic sting of a hospital room. But it wasn't my room from weeks ago.
It was a room from a decade past.
I was small, my feet dangling from a chair that was too big. The room was too white, too quiet. A nurse stood with her hand on my shoulder, her touch meant to be comforting but it felt like a weight.
"She never woke up, Rafael. She never got to hold you. I'm so sorry."
My mother. The ending I had always known. My life began with her ending. The hollow space in me, it wasn't created by Kephriel. He just found it. He just moved in.
The memory shifted.
A social worker's office. Different faces, kind but tired.
"He has no other family. The father... is not in the picture. He chose not to be.
...
Ask his grandma, tell me what she says."
Chose not to be. The words were a simple fact, but they carved out the hollow space a little more. I was a problem to be solved, a story of sadness that people quickly looked away from.
Niran's grunt of effort snapped me back to the present. He'd managed to knock a toolbox off a shelf with a concussive blast of air. He looked up, a triumphant, exhausted grin on his face.
"Did you see that, Raf?"
I nodded, forcing a small smile. "Yeah. I saw." I saw a friend fighting to stay afloat in a current that was pulling us all under. I saw the same determination that made him offer his laughter to a demon to save me.
The basement door opened. Dao stood there, a plate of cookies in her hand, a fragile attempt at normalcy. Preecha was behind her, his usual silent observation feeling heavier than before.
"Mom thought you might be hungry," she said, her eyes flicking from Niran's gloved hands to my face. She could always tell when I'd retreated inside. She saw the cracks.
Before anyone could say more, the air in the basement thickened, grew cold. Kephriel leaned against the washing machine, having appeared without a sound.
"Touching," he said, his voice dripping with condescension. "The mortal struggles with a trinket. Meanwhile, the two of you," his gaze landed on Dao and Preecha, "walk around with a gift you're too blind to see."
Dao stiffened, instinctively stepping back as if his gaze alone could burn.
"You offered hope,"
Kephriel stated, a fact as cold as stone. He didn't move, but a presence pressed down on Dao. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath. In her hands, the plate of cookies began to tremble. But it wasn't fear. A soft, warm, golden light—faint at first, then unmistakable—began to emanate from her chest, spilling over and making the simple cookies in her hands look like they were bathed in a sunset glow. The air around her hummed with a feeling of potential, of maybe.
It was the echo of the hope she had sacrificed.
"And you,"
Kephriel turned to Preecha, that was sitting in the corner of the room.
"You offered your joy. Your happiness."
Preecha flinched. Around him, the air wavered like heat haze on asphalt. A profound, soundless pressure emanated from him, a vacuum of noise that made the faint hum of the house suddenly scream in its absence. It was the essence of concentrated quiet, chaotic in its intensity.
Kephriel watched them, a sculptor admiring his own work. "Hollowed-out children, filled with the echoes of your own sacrifices. Useless... for now."
He pushed off the washer and vanished.
The golden light around Dao faded, absorbed back into her skin. The crushing silence around Preecha lifted. They stood frozen, staring at their own hands, feeling the new, strange truths now awake inside them.
Above us, the floorboards creaked. Dao's mother called down, her voice laced with that eternal concern. "Everything alright down there, sweetie?"
Dao looked at the plate of cookies, then at us, her eyes wide with a terrifying new understanding.
"Everything's fine, Mom," she called back, her voice miraculously steady. "We're just... playing."