The incident with the clock established a new, precarious routine. Stolas had the grand timepiece muffled with enchanted velvet. Servants were given strict orders to move through the west wing in soft-soled shoes and to never, under any circumstances, raise their voices. The palace began to feel like a library built over a live fault line.
Stolas's "research" shifted from dusty tomes to practical application. He converted a disused sunroom adjacent to Darkness's chamber into a makeshift stabilization lab. Crystal arrays hummed with gentle, pacifying energy. A font of continuously flowing water was meant to soothe. The room smelled of lavender and charged ozone.
"It's a magical panic room," Octavia observed, watching her father adjust a floating prism.
"It is a containment and calming chamber," Stolas corrected, though the difference was semantic. "If he becomes overwhelmed, we can guide him here. The energies are designed to harmonize chaotic emotional output."
"You're trying to tune him like a radio."
"Precisely!"
Their test subject, however, was not cooperating. Darkness refused to enter the sunroom. He would stand at the threshold, his feathers bristling, all four eyes narrowed in distrust. The hum of the crystals seemed to itch at him, and the flowing water made him anxious—he'd back away from it, as if expecting a wave to leap out.
"He's not an it, Dad. He's a kid who trashed your foyer. You can't just… debug him," Octavia said, leaning against the doorframe as Stolas tried to lure Darkness inside with a glowing, harmless will-o'-wisp.
"I am attempting to provide him with tools!" Stolas insisted, frustration creeping into his voice. The wisp flickered too brightly.
Darkness hissed at it, and a tiny, localized vacuum snuffed the magical light out, leaving a smell of burnt air. He then turned and scampered back to his own room, leaving Stolas sighing in defeat.
The real progress, ironically, came from the most unlikely source: boredom.
Octavia, in her eternal quest to stave off the crushing ennui of hellish royalty, often holed up in her room with her massive headphones, drowning the world in aggressive, guitar-heavy music. She'd taken to leaving her door slightly ajar, a silent, half-hearted invitation to a father who was now preoccupied with his new project.
One afternoon, as a particularly visceral bassline thumped through her headphones, she noticed movement in the shadowy hall. Darkness was there, crouched like a gargoyle just outside her open door. He wasn't looking at her, but at the floor, which was vibrating faintly from the sub-bass.
He looked… curious. Not scared. The physical vibration of the music, unlike the shocking boom of the clock, seemed to fascinate him.
Slowly, Octavia pulled one headphone off. The muted growl of the music spilled into the hall. Darkness's head jerked up, eyes wide. He didn't flee. He took a single, hesitant step forward.
"...You like that?" Via asked, her voice flat.
He just stared at the headphone in her hand.
Acting on an impulse she couldn't explain, she held it out. "It's just sound. Here."
He flinched back, then crept forward again. With a clawed hand moving with surprising delicacy, he took the offered headphone. He stared at it, then clumsily pressed it to the side of his head, where his feathery temple met his pointed ear.
The music blasted directly into his sensitive hearing.
Octavia winced, expecting another catastrophic reaction.
Darkness froze. His four eyes blew wide. His wings gave a single, sharp shudder. But he didn't scream. He didn't break anything. He stood, utterly transfixed, as the distorted guitars and pounding drums washed over him. The chaotic noise seemed to resonate with the chaos inside him, mirroring it, giving it a shape. After a moment, a low, rusty sound—not a purr, not a growl, but something in between—rumbled in his chest. He was entranced.
Octavia couldn't help it. She smirked. "Yeah. It's good, right?"
For the next twenty minutes, they sat in silence—Octavia on her bed, Darkness on the floor by her door—sharing the headphones, connected by a splitter cord and a river of angry music. It was the most peaceful the palace had been in days.
The peace was shattered by a voice from downstairs.
"Stolas! Get your fancy-feathered ass down here! We have a situation that involves your demonic tadpole and my profits!"
Blitzo.
The moment the shrill, abrasive voice echoed up the stairwell, the spell broke. Darkness ripped the headphone off, his face contorting back into familiar panic and rage. The intruder. The loud, sharp thing. The one who brought the metal and the shouting.
"No, wait, it's just Blitzo, he's an idiot—" Octavia started, but it was too late.
The reaction was instant and violent. This wasn't the defensive ice of fear. This was the offensive fury of territorial anger.
With a snarl that tore the air, Darkness lunged from her room, not downstairs, but towards the nearest window at the end of the hall. His wings flared, and a gale-force wind exploded from him, funneling down the corridor. It ripped tapestries from the walls, scattered loose papers like frightened birds, and slammed into the window, blowing it outwards in a cascade of glass.
But the wind didn't stop there. It shot out into the garden below, where Blitzo was standing, hands on his hips, with Moxxie and Millie.
"Oh, for fu—" Blitzo's curse was cut off as the focused cyclone hit him like a freight train. It lifted him off his feet, yanked the imp gun straight from his holster, and sent him tumbling head over heels through a carefully sculpted hedge, coming to a stop in a bed of shrieking, carnivorous flowers.
The wind died as suddenly as it began. Darkness stood at the broken window, panting, feathers standing on end, glaring down at the scene with blazing eyes.
Down below, Millie helped a sputtering, leaf-covered Blitzo to his feet. Moxxie gaped up at the window. "Sir! The child! He's exhibiting conscious, targeted environmental manipulation! That's an act of war!"
"It's an act of being a little shit!" Blitzo roared, shaking a fist. "I'm billing you for this, Stolas! Emotional damages! And dry cleaning!"
Stolas rushed into the hall, his face a mask of horror that quickly shifted to stunned analysis. "He… he didn't just react defensively. He identified the source of the distress and launched a counter-attack. His Reactive Adaptation is evolving beyond instinct. It's incorporating strategy."
"He yeeted Blitzo into a man-eating petunia," Octavia said, joining him at the window. "Call it what you want."
Darkness, hearing Stolas's calm voice behind him, slowly turned. The fury bled from his posture, replaced by a trembling uncertainty. He looked from Stolas to the wrecked hall, then down at his own claws, as if surprised by what they'd commanded.
He wasn't the only one watching.
Perched on the gargoyle of a neighboring tower, unseen behind a veil of minor illusion, a figure observed the chaos. It was not Paimon. This shape was leaner, draped in feathers of deep indigo and silver. It watched Darkness's display of targeted power, and a slow, pleased smile spread across its sharp features. It had seen the emotional outbursts, the fear-based ice. But this? This was promising. This was usable.
The figure's hand closed around a smooth, dark stone that hummed with recorded energy. It had captured the entire event. A valuable piece of intelligence. With a soft rustle, it vanished, leaving only a single indigo feather behind, which the hellwind quickly snatched away.
Down in the garden, as Blitzo ranted and Stolas tried to calm the trembling child now clutching at his robes, a new understanding dawned. This wasn't just about managing a disaster. Darkness was learning. Adapting. And his power was a weapon that was slowly, terrifyingly, learning how to aim.
And others had just taken notice.