The Granum Tower was always the first thing Leon looked for. From his seat in the glass-walled academy, he watched it rise like a silver needle through the clouds, a monument to everything his family wasn't.
Every day at 2:17 PM, the sun struck a specific scaffold halfway up. That was his father's section, and Leon had timed it perfectly.
For sixty stolen seconds, Leon would watch that distant figure, a man adding color to a world that saw him as nothing more than grease and labor.
It was a minute of quiet pride, wedged between the equation on his screen and the sweet venom of the voices behind him. The only time the secret felt like a legacy instead of a curse.
'I'll make you proud,' Leon thought. The daily vow was now bitter on his tongue. Solvent, old metal, his father's scent, and his own inherited shame. 'And I'll hide what we are, just like I promised.'
"Seriously? Hahaha!"
Laughter burst behind Leon right on schedule, breaking the ritual.
He stared at the smudged text in his book, as if the words could shield him, especially from her.
"I mean, honestly," Vera said in a sweet and sharp voice. "Does he think staring at that building will make his father's work any less pathetic? Or even earn respect?"
Leon's knuckles tightened as he felt the words not just as an insult but a scrap that was too close to his daily secret.
Today, under the scorn, the minutes of pride turned sour.
Ding…! Ding…! Ting…!
A chorus of harmonized chimes rang through the room. Smart devices lit up on every wrist and desk, followed by murmurs.
Leon did not need to turn or look up when a gasp cut through the air. He was already picturing Vera tossing her hair, feeding on the attention.
"Oh, my gods, guys. Have you seen the news? A plane crash! Guess where this one landed?" Vera's eyes glittered as her voice swept through.
Leon kept his gaze locked at the Granum Tower, at the sunlit speck. 2:18 PM.
"Ahem…"
Leon's gaze flickered past Vera for only a second after she cleared her throat. Within the second, Leon caught Zoe's steady eyes. The silver-grey eyes looked as if she was holding something back, or holding herself back.
Then, Vera's voice sliced through again. "It says it hit a building under maintenance near an outbreak site."
She paused and giggled in ugly excitement. "Guess painters got more than paint on them, probably monster blood too."
"…monster blood? Hahaha!"
Vera and her backers' voices were like a detonation that sharpened the classroom.
Outbreak site. Granum Tower.
Leon saw every mote of dust drifting through the sunbeam. Heard every breath, sweet and sour. Felt his own pulse hammering against his throat.
'Dad. Scaffold.'
His fingers went numb and caused his biology textbook to slip and strike the floor.
Snap!
"NO…!"
Leon's father's smiling face flashed into his mind when he moved forward at once. He fumbled through his patched bag for the ancient, cracked communicator. The family relic and the only line to the one person who knew what he truly was.
Leon's hands trembled as he raised the communicator. He hit the speed-dial button. Home.
It rang. And rang. Each tone striking harder than the last. He tried again. Nothing. The final empty tone left the sharp and choking taste of solvent in Leon's mouth.
Around him, the whispers grew louder, turning from murmurs into a storm against his ears. When he turned, he caught Jade's uncaring glance. Vera's satisfied smile. And Tiger's predatory grin.
Focusing on Tiger for two seconds, the memory bounced in Leon's head. The day he had dodged that kick. Too fast for a human, and too smooth for a prime. It was just a simple slip and a hidden move for Leon. But it was enough to leave a mark in Tiger.
Leon's eyes shifted to Zoe. In the slightly big eyes, there was no mockery, nor pity. Just that same steady look that seemed to see too much.
"Some people are just born unlucky," Vera said, then laughed in a voice that sounded like broken glass. "Guess that's what you get when your dad's nothing but a painter."
As the sun lowered outside Leon's window, a shadow fell across his desk.
Mr. Lee stood at the door with a pale face and eyes that were loaded with grief.
"Leon," Mr. Lee said in a strained voice. "A word. Now."
The classroom tilted around Leon as he stood on shaking legs.
"Don't worry," Vera murmured as he passed in front of her. "We'll be here for you."
Every step through the gleaming hall felt unreal. Mr. Lee said nothing, just kept moving.
When they entered the office, Mr. Lee placed a heavy hand on Leon's shoulder and exhaled a breath that smelled of cheap coffee and defeat.
"I saw the news. I know your father was at the Granum Tower today. I am… so sorry."
The last trace of hope burned out from Leon. Just as he stared at the floor, the memory rose all at once.
After his family had celebrated his seventh birthday. Sitting at the front of their home and staring at his father.
His father's hands were stained with pigment and permanent grime. The smell of turpentine struck Leon's nose as his father gripped his shoulder.
"Son, promise me to hide what you know of our family. What you are." He was little but could hear the tremor in his voice.
"Dad… why?"
"The world isn't ready. You aren't ready. Promise me. Not until you can control it. Not until you can protect them…"
"Let me take you home," Mr. Lee said, pulling Leon out of it.
Leon nodded and followed Mr. Lee like a ghost following a mourner.
Eyes turned toward them from every window they passed. But only one stayed still. Zoe's.
She watched with the same unblinking gaze families once had when hearing and watching the news about the destroyer of worlds a decade ago.
'Until I see his body, I won't believe it,' Leon thought, but the words felt hollow.
The truth beneath them was colder. The guardian of the secret was gone. And now the secret belonged to him alone.
The sun stabbed his eyes when they stepped outside. Mr. Lee steadied Leon and guided him toward the sleek silver car as his knees threatened to give way.
Vrroom… Vroom… Vroom…
Only the hum of the engine gave Leon something to hold on to.
The city moved past the window. They passed a military tanker treated with fresh black ichor.
Leon jolted not with fear, but with a terrible, secret sympathy.
'Another outbreak? Another stain the clean world would try to scrub away?' He thought as he watched the tanker vanish from his sight.
When they climbed the high-arching bridge, the city opened below them.
To the left, towers gleamed beneath the light. Floating gardens drifted on anti-gravity platforms.
To the right, pressed into the basin like a raw scar, was Dusthollow.
Leon's birthplace. A sprawl of cracked concrete and rust-stained beams. It did not look like home. Instead, it looked like an ugly and resilient truth, hidden in plain sight.
The first place to taste the monster outbreak. The place whose elders whispered and turned away from questions.
As the car began its descent toward that scar, Leon's tears dried. The taste in his mouth changed.
No longer just solvent and dust. Now it was sharper. The electric tang of ozone. The taste before a storm. The taste of something waking up.
Under the malfunctioning street light of Dusthollow the promise was no longer: "I'll make you proud."
Now, it was: "What did you leave inside me, Dad? And what do I have to become to control it?"