The lunch bell rang, but the atmosphere at school felt like a wake. No one spoke loudly. The hallways were thick with whispers about the "bear" that attacked the bus, theories about a fugitive maniac, and frightened glances toward the windows.
I wasn't hungry, but I needed to be in the cafeteria.
Stiles had his mission: watch Scott.
My mission was more subtle: tame the Kanima before it was even born.
I entered the cafeteria. The popular table was there, like an island of faked normalcy in the middle of the general panic. Lydia was retouching her makeup, flawless as ever, while Allison stared at her plate with a blank expression, her mind clearly reliving the scene on the bus—or our conversation in the hallway.
And Jackson...
Jackson Whittemore was vibrating.
He wasn't afraid; he was angry. He was gesturing with a fork, barking something aggressive at a teammate, his aura pulsing with that electric, prickly blue that indicated insecurity on the verge of exploding.
I walked over to the table.
"Can I sit?" I asked, stopping by the empty chair next to Jackson.
Jackson stopped talking and looked at me. His eyes were narrow and calculating.
"You again, Salt?" he snorted, but he kicked the chair out with his foot, allowing me to sit. "Sit down. At least you don't look like you're gonna cry over a broken bus."
I sat down, ignoring the quick, hurt look Allison shot my way before she went back to staring at her salad.
"I heard practice was canceled," I commented, popping open a soda can. "Finstock said the police cordoned off the field."
"It's ridiculous," Jackson snapped, slamming his hand on the table. "It's a wild animal, Salt. A bear, a mountain lion, whatever. The police should be in the woods hunting the beast, not closing my school and messing up my schedule. We have a big game coming up."
"Priorities, Jackson," Lydia murmured, not taking her eyes off her hand mirror. "Someone almost died."
"The driver survived, Lydia. He's fine," Jackson retorted, callous. "What won't survive is my patience if I have to hear one more idiot theory about McCall having something to do with this."
I paused with the can halfway to my mouth.
"How so?" I asked, feigning innocence.
"Oh, you didn't see?" Jackson laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "McCall and Stilinski were out there, practically having a panic attack. Scott looked like he'd committed a crime. That kid is weird, Salt. He takes steroids, gets aggressive on the field, and now acts guilty whenever something bad happens."
He turned to me, his eyes shining with that desperate need for validation.
"You saw it, didn't you? You're not blind. There's something wrong with him."
This was the opening.
I could have defended Scott. I could have said "leave the guy alone." But that would make Jackson see me as an enemy.
Instead, I leaned forward, lowering my voice to create a sense of complicity.
"I saw," I agreed, holding his gaze. "Scott is... unstable. He has raw strength, Jackson, no one denies that. But strength without control is just an accident waiting to happen."
Jackson paused. The tension in his shoulders visibly lessened. He wasn't used to anyone agreeing with him about the "Golden Boy."
"Exactly!" He pointed his fork at me. "That's what I keep saying! He runs across the field like an animal off a leash. No technique. No strategy."
"And that's why you're the captain," I added, massaging his ego with surgical precision. "Leadership is about having a cool head, Jackson. If you get obsessed with what Scott is doing or not doing, you drop to his level. Let him freak out with the police. You focus on the game."
Jackson soaked up my words like oxygen. His prickly aura softened, the aggressive edges receding. He leaned back in his chair, suddenly looking more regal, more in control.
"You're right," he nodded, adjusting the collar of his polo shirt. "I shouldn't waste time with amateurs."
Lydia lowered her mirror. She looked at us, a tiny, calculating smile curling her lips. She saw what I did. And she approved.
"Speaking of distractions," Lydia intervened, tucking the mirror into her bag. "The night is far too depressing for my taste. Allison needs to get out of the house, Jackson needs to stop complaining, and Nathan needs to... well, Nathan needs to socialize."
She looked at us all with the authority of a queen.
"Bowling. Tonight. Beacon Hills Bowl."
"Bowling?" Jackson made a face. "Lydia, that's a low-rent hobby. And the place smells like dirty feet."
"It's retro, Jackson. And it's fun," she cut him off. "Besides, I invited Scott and Stiles."
Jackson opened his mouth to protest, furious.
"I'll drive us," I said quickly, before he could explode.
Jackson turned his head to me.
"In the Charger?"
"In the Charger," I confirmed, twirling the car key on my index finger, where the sapphire ring glinted discreetly. "Everyone fits. Custom sound system. And honestly... I think you'd rather arrive in my car than in Stiles's falling-apart jeep, right?"
Jackson weighed it for a second. The idea of arriving in a luxury muscle car with his girlfriend and his "rich new friend" while Scott arrived on a bike or in an old jeep... it was too tempting for his ego to resist.
A slow, arrogant smirk formed on his face.
"Okay," Jackson decided. "Seven o'clock. But I'm riding shotgun. I hate the back."
"The passenger seat is yours," I promised.
Allison, who had been silent until then, looked up.
"I don't know if I want to go, guys... with everything that happened..."
"You're going," Lydia and I said at the same time.
We exchanged a quick glance. Lydia smiled.
"You're going, Allison," I repeated, softer. "It'll be good. No drama. Just... pins falling."
Little did I know how ironic that phrase would be.
The bell rang, ending the break and dispersing the small alliance we had formed at the table. Jackson headed out first, as usual, followed by Lydia. Allison shot me one last hesitant look before heading to French class.
I had Chemistry now. With Mr. Harris.
I walked through the hallways, but my mind wasn't on bowling or Allison. It was on the structure of things.
I entered the classroom. The smell of chemical reagents and teenage hopelessness was strong. I sat in the back, in the same row as Stiles, who was anxiously tapping his pen on the desk.
Harris walked in, wearing the sour expression of someone who'd rather be anywhere else.
"Open to page 104. Covalent Bonds," he ordered, turning to the chalkboard.
As he started drawing hexagons and bond lines, I leaned back in my chair. To most, it was just chemistry. To me, it was a diagram of how reality held itself together.
I activated Magic Vision.
There was no "ding" sound. There was no external pop-up window. It was just my brain shifting frequencies, overlaying my logical understanding onto the raw energy of the world.
The numbers that appeared in the corner of my vision—[MP: 2,350 / 2,600]—were just my mind quantifying the feeling of "full" or "empty" I felt in my chest. It was easier to deal with numbers than the abstract sensation of an ocean draining.
I looked at my pen on the desk.
Micro-control, I thought.
My father taught me how to blow things up and create vacuums. Those were big moves. But Salt magic was about geometry. If I wanted to be a master, I needed to master the millimeter.
Without moving my hand, I extended a thread of mana.
Not a thick cable like the one I used to trip Jackson. A thread the thickness of a hair.
I tried to tie the thread around the pen cap.
It was hard. The mana wanted to expand; it wanted to flow. Compressing it into something so thin required absurd mental tension. It was like trying to write your name on a grain of rice while wearing boxing gloves.
Harris kept talking about shared electrons.
Spin, I commanded mentally.
The mana thread obeyed, trembling. The pen cap spun on the table. One rotation. Two.
Stiles, three desks ahead, subtly turned his head. Did he feel something? Or was he just restless?
I stopped the movement.
Thinner, I ordered myself.
I spent the forty-five minutes of class doing just that. Ignoring the board, ignoring the whispers about the bus. I was breaking out in a cold sweat just to make a pen cap spin without the mana leaking and alerting Stiles or any other sensitive.
When the final bell rang, I was exhausted but satisfied. I had managed to keep the structure stable for ten minutes straight.
I left school and went straight to the Charger.
The drive home was an exercise in patience. At every stoplight, I analyzed the flow of mana from the car's engine. The runes my father engraved on the chassis pulsed in a steady rhythm. It was fascinating engineering. He had managed to fuse mechanical combustion with magical propulsion.
"One day I'm going to take this car apart just to see how he did it," I murmured, taking a smooth turn onto our street.
I parked in the garage. The silence of the house greeted me.
I entered through the kitchen door.
My mother, Alice, was there. She wasn't cooking this time. She was sitting at the table with several plant pots and soil spread over old newspapers. She was replanting orchids.
There was a calm about her that always disarmed me. While my father was the storm and the war, Alice was the solid ground.
"Hi, honey," she said without looking up, her hands stained with dark earth. "You're home early."
"Finstock canceled practice. The police are still there," I replied, dropping my backpack on the floor and grabbing an apple from the bowl.
I sat in the chair across from her, watching the delicate work of her hands. She didn't have active magic, not like Marcus and me. But she had a way of making things grow that seemed supernatural in another way.
"I heard about the bus," she commented, her voice neutral, but I saw the tension in her shoulders. "Your father said it was an animal."
"A big animal," I corrected, biting the apple. "And maybe with company."
Alice stopped. She looked up at me.
"The Mage?" she whispered.
"His trail was there, Mom. Mixed in with the wreckage. He didn't attack the bus, but... he was watching. Or conducting."
Alice sighed, wiping her hands on a cloth.
"Nathan... are you going out tonight?"
"I am. Bowling. With Lydia, Jackson... and the others."
"It's dangerous."
"Staying home waiting for him to attack is more dangerous," I argued, finishing the apple. "I need to be close to them. If Elias Halloway decides to use the acoustics of the bowling alley to fry someone's brain, I need to be there to cut the sound."
She looked at me for a long moment. There was fear in her eyes, of course. But there was also acceptance. She knew who she had married, and she knew what her son was becoming.
"Your father left something for you in the office," she said, returning to the orchids. "He said you'd need it if you were going to face a Halloway in an enclosed space."
I stood up, curious.
"Thanks, Mom."
I kissed the top of her head and went to the office.
On Marcus's oak desk sat a small book. Not the family Grimoire. An old notebook with a worn leather cover.
I opened it.
They were Marcus's field notes from the time he hunted in Europe.
I flipped through the pages until I found one marked.
"Counter-Frequencies and Destructive Resonance."
My eyes gleamed. It wasn't a ready-made spell. It was theory. It was magical physics. Exactly what I needed.
I went up to my room with the notebook.
I locked the door, took off my shoes, and threw myself onto the bed, opening the notebook.
The next two hours didn't exist for the outside world.
I dived into those notes. Marcus described how mana could be used to create an "opposite wave." If the sound comes in a positive sine wave, you launch an exact negative wave. The result isn't forced silence (like a vacuum). The result is cancellation. Zero.
"This is much more efficient than a vacuum," I murmured, tracing the diagrams with my finger. "A vacuum spends energy to keep the space empty. Cancellation only spends energy on impact."
I stood up, my mind racing.
I needed to test it.
I couldn't use loud noise here, or my mother would hear.
I grabbed my phone. I put on a random song and turned the volume to the max.
I placed the phone on the desk across the room.
"Okay. Visualize the wave."
I activated Magic Vision.
I saw the sound waves coming out of the phone speaker. They were concentric rings of gray mana (natural sound) spreading through the air.
I extended my hand.
I didn't need to stop the air. I needed to create the anti-wave.
The pseudo-system in my mind projected the calculations. The frequency. The amplitude.
Phase invert, I thought.
I fired a pulse of blue mana. It wasn't a bolt; it was a ripple.
The blue wave met the gray sound wave in the middle of the room.
For a millisecond, the music flickered. It went mute.
Then it came back.
"Late," I diagnosed. "My wave arrived after the peak."
I tried again.
Synchronicity. It was all about rhythm. Elias was a conductor? Then I had to be the metronome that broke his time.
Music playing. Wave coming.
Fire.
Silence for two seconds.
The music was still playing on the phone (I could see the time bar moving), but the sound wasn't reaching me. My mana was "eating" the vibration in the air before it turned into noise.
"That's it..." I smiled, feeling sweat drip down my forehead. "That's control."
[New Understanding: Phase Cancellation]
It wasn't a system skill. It was me understanding how physics worked. The "Level Up" was my own brain creating new synapses.
I looked at the clock.
18:40.
I had twenty minutes to shower, get dressed, and pick up Jackson.
I closed my father's notebook.
I wasn't going to play bowling. I was going for a field test. And if the Dark Mage showed up... I had a new frequency to introduce him to.
I went to the shower, feeling the hot water wash away the ozone smell and the cold sweat from the phase-cancellation training, but my mind kept drawing waves and vectors in the steam on the mirror.
The obsession didn't stop. It was the only thing keeping me alive.
The shower was quick, just to get rid of the ozone smell and the cold sweat. I put on a basic black shirt, leather jacket, and dark jeans. The Reserve Ring gleamed discreetly on my right hand, now recharged and pulsing with the extra energy I had accumulated during the afternoon.
I went downstairs, grabbed the Charger keys, and headed out into the night.
The first stop was Jackson's house. As promised, he was waiting on the sidewalk, arms crossed, inspecting the car like he was a judge at a car show.
He got into the passenger seat and immediately ran his hand over the dashboard, approving the finish. Lydia got into the back right after, bringing with her the smell of expensive floral perfume and that aura of someone who was doing the world a favor just by existing.
"Not bad, Salt," Jackson murmured, adjusting the seat. "The engine doesn't stutter."
"It's been remapped," I replied shortly, shifting into first gear.
The final stop was the Argents' house.
When Allison got into the car, the mood shifted subtly. She sat next to Lydia in the back, avoiding my gaze in the rearview mirror. The awkwardness of our "near argument" in the hallway was still there, hanging like a static cloud.
"Hi, everyone," she said, her voice a bit restrained.
"Hi, sweetie," Lydia replied, already reaching for her phone. "Try to cheer up. Scott will be there. It's couples' night... and Nathan and Jackson's, apparently."
Jackson snorted beside me but didn't snap back. I just turned up the radio a bit, letting the bass from the sound system fill the awkward silence as we drove toward Beacon Hills Bowl.
As the asphalt blurred under the tires, my mind wandered to what was coming.
I knew exactly how this night was supposed to end in the original script.
Scott would be a disaster at bowling. The recent full moon and stress would leave him without motor coordination, throwing gutter balls and embarrassing himself in front of Jackson.
And then... the magic would happen.
Not my magic. Allison's magic.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. Allison was looking out the window, her expression soft, almost innocent, lit by the streetlights.
Innocent, I thought, holding back an ironic smile. Sure.
Most people saw Allison as the hunter's little porcelain princess, the good girl who followed rules. But anyone who watched the show knew the truth. She was the one who took the initiative.
I involuntarily remembered a future episode. That dinner at her house, when Derek was dying from an aconite bullet wound. Scott would try to steal the other bullet from Kate's bag and get caught.
And what would the "sweet" Allison do to save his skin?
She would jump in, pull a condom out of her psychopath aunt's bag, and lie through her teeth—in front of her father and aunt—saying she was the one looking through the bag for that.
"A girl who uses a condom as an alibi at a family dinner isn't a saint," I concluded mentally. "She's tactical. And, let's be honest, a bit of a tease."
It was fascinating. Scott might be the potential Alpha Wolf, but she was the one with her claws in the relationship. She used sexual tension like a safety harness.
I remembered the bowling scene that was coming up. To help Scott focus, she wouldn't give him posture tips. She would press herself against his back, whisper in his ear, hold his hands, and turn the bowling lane into public foreplay.
And it would work.
"Scott's instinct doesn't want to kill when she's near," I analyzed, taking a smooth turn. "He wants to mate. And that replaces rage with protection. It's a primitive form of emotional magic."
"So the plan is simple," I decided, seeing the neon bowling sign appear ahead. "Let Allison do the dirty work of calming Scott with her 'methods,' while I take care of Jackson and keep an ear on the sound."
I parked the Charger in a prominent spot, far from the old cars that might scratch the paint.
"We're here," I announced, killing the engine.
The muffled sound of pins crashing and generic pop music leaked through the establishment's double doors.
Jackson got out of the car, straightening his polo collar as if he were walking into a courtroom, not a small-town bowling alley.
"I hope they have shoes that haven't been worn by hobos," he grumbled.
"It's the charm of the place, Jackson," Lydia said, stepping out of the car and smoothing her skirt. She looked at me. "Come on, Nate. Try not to look so analytical. It's supposed to be fun."
I gave a half-smile.
"I am having fun, Lydia. In my own way."
We went inside.
The smell of floor wax, old frying oil, and lemon disinfectant hit me. The place was half-full for a Monday.
My eyes went straight to the shoe rental counter.
Scott and Stiles were already there.
Scott looked tense, his shoulders hunched. Stiles was talking fast and gesturing wildly, probably trying to convince his friend not to have a panic attack.
Jackson walked ahead, clearing a path as if he owned the place.
"McCall! Stilinski!" he greeted, his voice dripping with fake camaraderie. "You're early. Practicing so you don't embarrass yourselves?"
Scott turned, surprised.
"Jackson?" He looked at me and the girls arriving behind. "Oh. Hi."
Scott's gaze went straight to Allison. And hers to him.
The tension in the air shifted instantly. It was almost visible. The hurt from the Friday "no-show" was still there, but the gravitational—and hormonal—pull between the two was stronger.
"Here we go," I thought, leaning against the counter and asking for my shoes. "The teen drama has begun. Now we just need the Dark Mage to decide this is the perfect soundtrack for a disaster."
I discreetly activated Level 1 Magic Vision.
The bowling alley was clean for now. But the sound system... the speakers hanging from the ceiling were vibrating with a slightly dissonant frequency.
It wasn't purple mana. Not yet.
But the acoustics of the place were perfect for a trap.
I grabbed my shoes.
"Let's play," I said, passing Scott and giving him a light pat on the shoulder, feeling the muscle rigidity. "Try to relax, Scott. It's just a game. No one's going to die here today."
I hope, I added mentally.
We headed to Lane 4.
I had to keep Jackson feeling like the king, ensure Allison "anchored" Scott before he turned into a werewolf in the middle of the lane, and monitor every decibel coming out of those speakers.
I sighed, tying my laces.
"I should have stayed home and studied page 6."