Elias convened the first formal lesson on the forty-third day.
He had been talking about it for a while, Gray knew. Planning it in that meticulous way he planned everything, organizing his thoughts into the notebooks he carried everywhere, waiting for the right moment when the group was settled enough to listen. The collapse had delayed things, as had Tala's arrival and the questions his presence raised. But on the forty-third day, with the warehouse quiet and the morning light filtering through the broken windows, Elias finally gathered them together.
"I think it's time we shared what we know," he said, his voice calm but carrying the weight of intention. "All of us. About the things we've been experiencing. The changes. The... abilities."
He said the last word carefully, as if testing its weight on his tongue. Abilities. It was a word that had been circulating among them for weeks, spoken in whispers and half-finished sentences, never fully acknowledged but always present. The word that described what Gray could do with his pattern-sight, what Mina could do with her healing, what Tala could do with water.
The word that none of them fully understood.
They gathered in a circle on the warehouse floor, the five of them, with Elias at the center like a teacher addressing his students. Ren sat cross-legged beside Mina, his young face intent with curiosity. Tala positioned himself between Gray and Elias, close enough to touch both of them, his dark eyes bright with anticipation. And Gray sat slightly apart, his back against the wall, his pattern-sight dim but watchful.
"I've been documenting observations," Elias continued, holding up one of his notebooks. "Since the beginning. The things I've seen, the patterns that have emerged. And I think... I think we're not the only ones. I think there are others out there, survivors who have changed like we have. And I think the word is spreading."
"Mana."
The word fell from Gray's lips before he could stop it, and the room went quiet. He hadn't meant to say it aloud. The word had been living in his head for weeks, a name for the energy he sensed in the threads, the cold-water sensation that accompanied his pattern-sight. But he had never spoken it to the group, never tried to explain what it meant or where it had come from.
Elias's eyebrows rose. "Mana?"
"It's what I call it," Gray said, his voice rough. "The energy. The force that runs through everything. I don't know where the word came from. It just... appeared in my head one day, and it fit."
"Mana," Tala repeated, testing the sound. "I like it. It feels right."
And just like that, the word became common currency. A name for something that had been nameless, a handle for something that had been slipping through their fingers. Gray felt something shift in the air, a weight settling into place, and he wondered if this was how all knowledge began. With a word. With a name. With someone brave enough or foolish enough to speak aloud what everyone else had been thinking.
Elias opened his notebook and began to write, his handwriting precise. "Mana. Good. We need a vocabulary if we're going to understand this."
The lesson unfolded from there, each of them sharing what they had observed. Gray found himself talking more than he intended, describing the patterns he saw, the cold-water sensation that accompanied his sight, the way intent seemed to shape outcomes. He spoke of the threads that connected things, the architecture of reality that his pattern-sight revealed, and the cost that came with using it, the migraines, the memory gaps, the sense that something was being taken from him each time he looked too deeply.
"The patterns show me structure," he said, his voice quiet but steady. "The underlying framework of things. But they don't show me the future, and they don't guide me. They simply are. I observe, and I try to understand."
Elias documented everything, his pen moving across the page in quick, precise strokes. "And the cost? You're certain it's connected to the sight?"
Gray nodded. "Every time I use it heavily, I lose something. Memories, mostly. Small things at first. What I ate for breakfast. A conversation from the day before. But it's getting worse. The gaps are getting bigger."
The room was quiet for a moment, the weight of that admission settling over them. Mina reached out and touched Gray's arm, a brief contact that carried sympathy without pity. Ren's young face was pale, his eyes wide with something that might have been fear.
"Thank you for telling us," Elias said finally. "That's important information. We need to understand the costs if we're going to use these abilities safely."
He turned to Mina next, and she described her healing in terms that made Gray's pattern-sight prickle with recognition. A transfer of energy, she called it. A movement of something from herself to the person she was healing. She could feel the wounds, sense the damage, and push mana into the broken places to make them whole. But it tired her, drained her, left her weak and hungry afterward.
"It's like giving away a piece of myself," she said, her voice soft. "A small piece, usually. But if I heal too much, too fast, I don't know what would happen. I'm afraid to find out."
Elias wrote it all down, his expression thoughtful. "So both of you experience costs. Pain, exhaustion, memory loss. The mana isn't free."
"Nothing is free," Gray said, and the words carried the weight of hard-won experience.
Then it was Tala's turn.
He had been quiet throughout the lesson, his dark eyes moving from speaker to speaker, absorbing everything. But when Elias prompted him, he spoke without hesitation, his voice carrying a casual confidence that made Gray's chest tighten.
"I don't know how to explain it," Tala said. "The threads show me things sometimes. Warnings. Directions. But mostly... it's the water. It responds to me. Moves when I'm not paying attention. Like it knows I'm there."
The room went quiet.
"Moves how?" Elias asked, his pen stilling.
Tala shrugged, his expression almost embarrassed. "Little things. Ripples in a cup. The water in a bottle shifting when I reach for it. Sometimes, when I'm really focused, I can almost feel what it's thinking. Like it's trying to tell me something."
Gray's pattern-sight flickered, reaching toward Tala without his consent. The blue-green thread in the younger man's chest pulsed with light, brighter than it had been days before, and the air around him seemed to shimmer with potential.
"Can you show us?" Gray asked, his voice careful. "Can you make it move on purpose?"
Tala hesitated. "I've never tried. It just... happens."
"Try," Elias said, his voice gentle but firm. "We need to understand what you can do. We need to know if it's something we can use, or something we need to protect you from."
Tala looked at Gray, then at Elias, then at the water bottle sitting on the floor between them. He took a deep breath, his face screwing up with concentration, and for a long moment, nothing happened.
Then the water in the bottle trembled.
It was small, barely visible, but Gray saw it. The surface rippled, the liquid shifting like something had disturbed it from below. And in his pattern-sight, the blue-green thread in Tala's chest flared with light, reaching toward the water with something that looked almost like hunger.
Tala gasped, his concentration breaking, and the water settled back into stillness. His face was pale, his breathing quick, but his eyes were bright with something that might have been wonder or might have been fear.
"I did that," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I made it move."
Elias wrote in his notebook, his expression unreadable. Gray watched Tala, his mind racing with implications. The water had responded. The thread had flared. And somewhere in the depths of the pattern, he could feel the future shifting, possibilities multiplying like ripples on the surface of a pond.
This was proof. This was repeatable. This was the beginning of everything.
And it terrified him.