Elias stopped speaking in mid-January.Not a conscious decision. He simply ran out of words. What was the point? No one listened. No one cared. His voice had become background noise in a house that pretended he didn't exist.At school, teachers merely marked him present and moved on, their eyes already searching for the next name on their roster. Students had exhausted their interest in tormenting him—he'd become too pathetic even to bother with. Even Harrison ignored him now, having decided Elias wasn't worth the effort of cruelty.Julian still played his part. Still asked how Elias was doing during their silent car rides to school. Still offered that warm, empty smile that never reached his calculating eyes.Elias stopped answering. Julian stopped asking.The silence suited them both.The beatings continued, but they'd become routine. Predictable. Arthur didn't even need reasons anymore.Monday: the belt. Wednesday: the belt. Friday: the belt.Like clockwork.Elias's back had transformed into more scar tissue than skin now. Martha had stopped crying when she cleaned his wounds. She worked in grim silence, her mouth pressed into a thin line, her hands efficient but gentle—the only kindness he knew.They'd both accepted this was just how things were.How things would always be.In February, Elias's grades improved.Not because he was learning. Because he'd stopped trying to understand and started memorizing. Formulas, dates, facts—he absorbed them like a machine, regurgitated them on tests, forgot them immediately after.He earned Bs. Sometimes B-pluses.Arthur beat him anyway. "Blackwoods don't get Bs," he snarled through clenched teeth.Julian earned straight As. Arthur took him to dinner to celebrate, their laughter echoing through the house as they left.Elias ate soup in his storage room and felt nothing.One night in late February, Martha didn't come.Elias waited. Seven o'clock passed. Eight. Nine.His stomach cramped with hunger, but he'd learned to ignore that persistent ache. What worried him was Martha's absence. She never missed a night. Never.At ten, he crept out of his storage room and made his way to the kitchen.The mansion lay dark and quiet. He moved like a ghost through hallways he'd learned to navigate in silence, each floorboard's creak memorized and avoided.The kitchen stood empty. But there was food in the refrigerator—leftover roast chicken from the family's dinner.Elias pulled it out. Tore off a piece with his hands. Ate standing at the counter, too hungry to care about plates or manners."Well. Look at this," came a voice from the darkness.He spun around.Julian stood in the doorway, phone in hand, recording."The stray, stealing food," Julian said, his smile cold as winter frost. "That's theft, you know. Father's going to love this."Elias swallowed the chicken. Said nothing."What, no defense? No excuse?" Julian stepped closer, still recording. "You're just going to stand there like the pathetic little thief you are?"Elias looked at the camera. At Julian's face behind it. At the trap he'd walked into with such perfect predictability.He set down the chicken. Walked past Julian without a word."That's right. Run away," Julian called after him. "That's all you're good at."Elias climbed the stairs to his storage room. Closed the door. Sat on his bed.Waited.Twenty minutes later, Arthur's footsteps thundered in the hall.The door slammed open."Stealing now? You're stealing from this family?" Arthur's face flushed crimson with rage.Elias stood. Turned around. Removed his shirt.The routine.Arthur's belt fell harder than usual. Faster. Angrier.Elias counted the strikes. Lost count at thirty.When it ended, he pulled his shirt back on and waited for Arthur to leave."You're worthless," Arthur said from the doorway. "Absolutely worthless."The door slammed.Elias lay face-down on his bed and stared at the wall, tracing the familiar cracks with vacant eyes.Martha found him an hour later. She was limping—her knee had given out, she explained, her voice thick with guilt. That's why she'd been late. She'd been in her room, unable to walk, unable to bring him food.She cried when she saw his back.Elias didn't. He was past crying.Past feeling anything at all.March arrived with rain that leaked through the storage room's window. The sill was rotted, the seal broken. Water pooled on the floor, creating dark stains that spread like bruises across the worn wood.Elias reported it to Catherine."I'll have someone look at it," she said without looking up from her magazine.No one came.He slept in a damp room, his blanket growing mildewed, his clothes never fully dry. The constant moisture seeped into his bones, making him feel ancient.He developed a cough that wouldn't go away.Arthur beat him for being sick. "Blackwoods don't get sick," he roared, as if illness were merely a choice Elias had made to embarrass the family.The cough worsened, rattling in his chest like loose stones.In late March, something changed.The school announced that final exams were approaching. College entrance exams would be administered in May.Elias overheard Julian talking to Harrison in the hallway."If he does well on the entrance exam, people might start asking questions," Harrison said, his voice low but clear."He won't do well. Look at him—he's barely functional," Julian replied, his voice dismissive. "But just in case, I'll handle it."They walked away before Elias could hear more.Handle it.Elias didn't know what that meant.But he knew it wasn't good.That night, alone in his storage room, Elias made a decision.He would take the entrance exam. He would score as high as he possibly could. Not to prove anything to Arthur or Catherine or Julian.But to prove something to himself.That he still existed.That he was still more than the broken, silent ghost they'd turned him into.That somewhere inside the scar tissue and the hunger and the cold, there was still a person worth saving.He pulled out his textbooks and began to study.Not to memorize this time. To understand. To learn. To reclaim the one thing they hadn't completely destroyed: his mind.The oil lamp burned through the night, casting long shadows across his small sanctuary.And Elias, for the first time in months, felt something other than numbness.He felt determination.It was small. Fragile. Easily crushed.But it was there.And it was his.Outside his window, the rain fell, drumming a steady rhythm against the glass.Inside his room, Elias studied by lamplight and planned his last stand.The entrance exam.
His final chance to prove he was more than nothing.His final chance to be seen.
Even if no one was looking.