Chapter 46
Our Power
Eilor blinked, unsure if he had heard correctly.
"Blood of what?" he asked, his tone that of someone struggling to believe what they'd heard.
The alchemist raised an eyebrow, slowly, as if he found it tiresome to repeat himself.
The stillness of his expression lingered for a few seconds longer than necessary.
Then he exhaled slowly, looked at the pen, and turned his gaze back to Eilor.
"Of an alchemist's heart," he repeated, articulating each word as if dictating a formula. "They know…" He interrupted the sentence with a dry cough, two restrained hacks in his throat.
With a brief movement of his thumb, he pointed to his chest, right over his right pectoral muscle.
"Blood from a heart," he said more quietly, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to complete the thought.
The last word hung in the air, suspended in an atmosphere that had grown dense for no reason.
Several people looked at him, first with curiosity, then with increasingly visible disbelief.
Eli frowned without saying anything.
One of the youths at the back leaned over the table, as if wanting to confirm he had heard the same thing.
Another let out a nervous laugh, which died as soon as he noticed no one else joined in.
Eilor opened his mouth, closed it, and looked back at the pen.
The bronze's gleam was still there, pulsing faintly with the ambient light, a weak glow that seemed to breathe with each silence from the group.
The alchemist kept his eyes fixed on the instrument, his posture upright, his shoulders relaxed, but there was something in his expression—a brief shadow behind the gesture—that suggested that phrase hadn't been just a technical comment.
Eli kept watching the alchemist with a furrowed brow, leaning slightly forward.
"Blood taken from a heart?" she asked with a mixture of disbelief and revulsion.
The alchemist nodded once, briefly, not bothering to open his eyes.
"Exactly," he replied, his arms crossed and a calm that sounded almost offensive.
The air around them tightened a little.
Some exchanged quick glances, seeking if someone else would laugh to confirm this was a joke.
But no one did.
Eilor watched him for a moment, trying to understand if the comment was literal or a metaphor.
His lips were slightly parted, the sheet of paper still in one hand, the other resting on the table.
"And what does that mean?" he said at last, his tone measured but tension visible in his jaw. "It doesn't mean someone died for this… right?"
The alchemist took a second before reacting.
He let out a sigh, opened his arms, and raised both palms in front of him, waving them gently.
"No, no, no…" he said, dragging the words with a certain laziness. "Most of the time, no."
The room's murmur broke into a low echo.
One of the companions, who was leaning against a column, raised his voice from the back:
"Most of the time?" he repeated, incredulous, with a nervous smile that didn't quite manage to disguise the tone of alarm.
The alchemist turned his head slightly towards the voice but didn't respond immediately.
He just shrugged, like someone accepting that the following explanation wasn't going to reassure anyone.
Eli blinked once, not taking her eyes off him.
Eilor, meanwhile, leaned forward a little, his fingers drumming on the table, expectant for a clarification that wasn't coming.
The silence returned, tense but expectant, held by the motionless gleam of the pen in the hands of the boy who still held it.
"Well…" the alchemist began, his tone calm, "we can't waste intact hearts from the deceased, can we?"
The comment landed with an almost insulting lightness.
There was a brief silence.
Then he added, twisting a wrist slightly as if explaining the obvious:
"Besides, since our power comes from our heart, most dead alchemists tend to have that organ torn to pieces."
The reaction was immediate.
Eli, who until then had listened with pressed lips, instinctively raised her hand.
"Wait," she interrupted, frowning. "There are things here we don't know. What's this about… the heart being torn to pieces?"
The alchemist looked at her for a moment, surprised that the question wasn't accompanied by fear, but by genuine curiosity.
His expression softened slightly.
"Ahh…" he said, scratching the side of his neck, letting out a small smile. "Well, that's somewhat confidential information."
He leaned back a little in his chair, crossing one leg over the other.
"You would know it if you were to become first grade," he added.
Some raised their eyebrows. The group looked at each other, trying to calculate how far they were from that category.
Eli kept her gaze fixed on him, assessing him.
The alchemist turned his head slightly, taking in the whole group with his gaze.
"It's not exactly treated as a secret either," he continued. "But, well, let's just say… it's information not everyone knows how to handle."
He brought a hand to his neck, as if adjusting an invisible collar, and changed his tone to a more relaxed one.
"Still," he added, with a lopsided smile, "I think those of us here are quite relevant; after all, we've survived at least one day. Don't you think?"
The comment loosened the atmosphere.
A brief laugh emerged from a corner.
Several in the group exchanged smiles or discreet nods; others snorted with relief, glad the topic was moving away from the macabre tone.
Eli rolled her eyes with a suppressed smile.
Eilor, leaning against the back of his chair, let out a small laugh through his nose, not stopping his observation of the alchemist with a mixture of respect and suspicion.
The atmosphere, for the first time since the conversation began, became almost light.
Seeing how the mood had softened, the alchemist decided to take advantage of it.
He breathed in slowly and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
His voice lowered just enough to force the others to fall silent without having to be asked.
"You see," he began, his tone calm, "one thing about each power is that… they are more than simply invisible energies or visible when we use them."
Some exchanged brief glances, others straightened up quietly.
Side conversations dissolved one by one, until all that remained was the sound of chairs scraping and the occasional creak of wood.
Curious gazes converged on him, drawn by that assured calm.
Several sat where they could: on chairs, on the edges of the table, or on stacked crates that had never been meant to hold anyone.
The air now had the clumsy concentration of an impromptu class.
The alchemist waited for everyone to settle.
He slowly raised his right arm, and with his left hand began to trace a path from his wrist to his shoulder.
"You must have noticed it more than once," he said, looking at his own arm. During your time at the academy… and outside of it.
His tone remained neutral.
Some understood the nuance; others simply kept watching, absorbed.
The alchemist continued, his fingers still tracing a slow path along his forearm.
"I'm talking about how you feel your body change," he said, turning his wrist slightly to show the veins. "The heat that rises inside, the different weight in the muscles."
As he spoke, some of those present nodded automatically, and others, thoughtful, tried to recall similar things.
The group had become a single focus of attention, captivated by the alchemist's measured tone.
"In the case of alchemists…" he continued, turning his head a little as if searching for the exact words, "as we grow, from the moment we learn to manipulate our power… and from when our eyes changed color"—he paused briefly, allowing the detail to sink in on its own—"you felt how something new began to grow inside you."
He touched the right side of his torso, just below the ribs, tracing a faint line with his fingers.
"Here," he said. "Behind the lung, next to your heart."
The phrase fell like a stone in water.
Those present—especially the alchemists—looked at each other, seeking confirmation in each other's faces.
The young man who still held the pen was the first to nod, without thinking.
Then another, and another.
Gradually, the gestures repeated in a chain: glances, slight movements of heads, murmurs of agreement.
Eli watched them with a furrowed brow, intrigued but restrained.
Eilor, on the other hand, leaned forward, his eyes very attentive.
"Are you saying that… something literally grows in there?" he asked, more as a statement than a doubt.
The alchemist nodded calmly, crossing his arms.
"Exactly."
He paused, letting the words settle.
"That is our new heart. The source of our power. Of our 'Branch.'"
He leaned back slightly against the chairback, exhaling.
"Although it starts small," he added, raising his index finger to emphasize the detail.
As he spoke, some of the blue-eyed youths brought a hand to their chests, almost reflexively.
One of them murmured quietly:
"So… the pain in my heart when I overexerted myself in the first years at the academy…"
"…was your heart. Although at the academy you weren't at risk of exhaustion, it seems they've known for decades what the limit is to prevent us from suffering cardiac arrests at that stage," the alchemist completed, looking at him with a half-smile.
The silence that followed was not one of fear, but of a dense, almost reverential curiosity.
It was as if they had just discovered a part of themselves that had always been there, hidden between heartbeats.
The alchemist lowered his voice a little more.
"Over time, that second heart stops being just an organ," he added. "It begins to have its own pulse, its own language. It learns to respond not to your body… but to your intention."
Someone from the back raised a hand, his voice somewhat hesitant:
"How do you know it starts small…? Wait…" he frowned, "so it grows just like a normal heart?"
The alchemist looked at him with approval, as if he enjoyed someone asking the right question.
"That's right," he replied in an almost didactic tone. "Although the process is slow."
He leaned forward, placing his hands on the table.
"You see, like the change in eye color, it usually begins between the ages of eight and ten. And, well…" his voice lowered a bit, without drama, but with a hint of respect, "thanks to certain cases of fatalities at that age, we were able to understand what was happening."
The silence stretched; the laughter and bustle from before seemed far away.
The ambient sound reduced to distant footsteps and the faint rustle of paper under Eilor's fingers.
The alchemist continued serenely:
"We discovered that the alchemist's heart starts the size of a seed. Small, adhered to the side of the original heart. From there, it grows with the body… adapting, branching out, as if intertwining with the normal circulatory system. Until it becomes a separate heart."
As he spoke, he moved his hands with precision, describing the shape, the growth, the interlacing of veins.
Some watched with a mixture of awe and nervousness.
One of the youths further back brought a hand to his chest, almost without realizing it, now seeing those two simultaneous beats with new eyes.
"And I suppose you understand what that means," added the alchemist, raising his gaze with a half-smile: "that as we grow, we naturally become stronger."
The silence that followed was thick, full of thoughts no one wanted to voice aloud.
Glances crossed, seeking some certainty or humor to break the weight of what they had just heard.
The silence lasted a few seconds.
It was a different silence from before, denser, more human.
Until Eli broke it with a soft, almost pensive voice:
"And with the other powers…?" she asked, not looking directly at the alchemist. "Something new grows in us too, doesn't it?"
The alchemist turned his head towards her, arching an eyebrow slightly.
"I don't know," he replied calmly. "What do you feel as you grow?"
The question hung in the air.
For a moment, no one answered.
The entire group seemed to contract, as if they had all realized at the same time that they had never thought about it.
The air thickened with a mixture of doubt and bewilderment.
Glances drifted towards the floor, towards hands, towards any point that wasn't the center of the conversation.
Some touched their chests reflexively, others their necks, as if searching for a hint, a sensation lost in memory.
But nothing.
There was no clear answer, no defined sensation.
Because, after all, growing up had always been… growing up.
Natural. Invisible.
No one had stopped to think about it.
And suddenly, that void of an answer made them feel exposed, naive.
Eli lowered her eyes, crossing her arms on the table.
"I guess I never noticed it," she said quietly.
Eilor nodded slightly, his brow furrowed.
"Me neither…" he admitted. "It's as if it just… happened."
The alchemist watched them for a while in silence, letting the thought sink in.
He wasn't smiling this time.
There was something heavy, almost melancholic, in his gaze.
The silence lasted, but it wasn't the same.
It no longer weighed as before; now it had movement, a barely audible tremor.
The rustle of fabric, an elbow adjusting, the dry crack of a knuckle.
And among those small sounds, the faint rustle of hair being shaken by thoughtful hands.
Until a voice cut through it.
"My brainstem," someone said.
The phrase landed with the precision of a scalpel.
It wasn't a doubt, nor a speculation: it was an affirmation.
The alchemist turned his head towards the source of the voice.
The young man who had spoken was standing, his back straight, his violet eyes reflecting the light with an almost metallic gleam.
For a second, that gaze seemed to think faster than he himself did.
Eilor slowly raised his hand, instinctive, touching his neck with his fingers.
His fingertips traced the line of his throat, stopping just below the skull.
His voice was barely a murmur:
"The brainstem…" he repeated, as if testing the weight of those words.
Then, without taking his eyes off the alchemist, his eyes gradually widening, he added: "It's true, back here… is the place."
The alchemist didn't respond immediately.
He just observed, his expression still, his eyes narrowed.
Around him, the movement changed.
The others with violet eyes—Eli among them—looked at each other.
It was a quick, almost electric exchange.
A mute confirmation.
One brought a hand to the nape of his neck, another to his chest, as if searching for a correspondence.
But the sensation was the same.
They all knew it.
They all felt it.
Eli, with a more serious expression than usual, nodded slowly.
"Yes…" she said, quietly. "It's there. It always was."
For an instant, the group of psychics stood apart from the rest without moving an inch.
Not by physical distance, but by the clarity with which they understood each other.
The shared certainty.
As if each one's body confirmed what the others had just said.
The alchemist watched them in silence, with one eyebrow raised and a faint shadow of professional curiosity.
He didn't interrupt.
He just let the idea grow on its own, like a reaction that needed to reach its own boiling point.