## Chapter 12: Fractured Calm and Hidden Interfaces
The click of the lock shattered the apartment's fragile quiet. Kelvin Vance sat bolt upright in the worn armchair, the heavy textbook on mana-conductive alloys slipping slightly on his lap. He'd been staring at the same dense paragraph for ten minutes, his eyes tracing words while his mind replayed the **Blood Dance** – the whip-crack of chains, the surge of **Bloodlust**, the terrifying drain on his MP.
He forced his grip on the book to loosen, his knuckles white just seconds before. *Act normal. Be Kelvin.* The Kelvin his sister expected: injured, fragile, intellectually frustrated. He smoothed his expression into weary concentration just as the door swung open.
Elara stepped inside, the vibrant energy she usually carried muted by the weight of the day. Her dark hair was slightly wind-tossed, her shoulders slumped beneath her backpack. Her gaze, sharp and instinctively assessing – honed by years of living with a Hunter brother, even a fallen one – swept the room like a scanner. It landed on him, sitting quietly with the textbook.
"Hey," she breathed, the single word thick with a tentative relief that tugged at his guilt. "You're... reading?" Surprise and a fragile hope colored her voice. Reading was safe. Reading was mundane. Reading didn't involve impossible recoveries or phantom energies crackling in the air.
Kelvin looked up, summoning a tired but plausible smile. "Trying to. Hendricks dropped this brick on us for tomorrow." He tapped the dense cover. *"Structural Principles of Mana-Conductive Alloys."* He injected a note of dry frustration. "Apparently, resting my spine doesn't excuse my brain." *Keep it light. Keep it academic. Keep it normal.*
Elara dumped her bag by the door with a soft thud and moved further into the living room. Her eyes, however, didn't stay on him. They performed their subtle reconnaissance. They flickered over the coffee table leg near his chair. Kelvin's pulse hammered against his ribs. Had she noticed the slightly lighter patch where he'd frantically scrubbed the gouge? Then her gaze shifted to the armchair cushions. They were rearranged, plumped differently. One was conspicuously absent from its usual spot. A tiny furrow appeared between her brows.
"Rough lecture?" Kelvin asked quickly, steering the conversation away from the silent inventory of his hidden chaos.
Elara sank onto the sofa opposite him with a sigh that seemed to come from her bones. "Just… Baltic Anomaly fallout. Hendricks tried to lecture on resonance harmonics while half the class was practically vibrating with news feeds. S-Rank deployment… Category Five instability… breach risks radiating hundreds of clicks out." She rubbed her temples, the worry lines deepening. "It's terrifying, Kel. The scale of it." Her eyes found his again, searching, probing. "Sasha… she had this theory. About the global instability, the crazy mana fluxes…" She hesitated, then offered the fragile lifeline she'd clung to all day. "She thinks maybe that's why you're… healing so fast? Like, maybe it's creating weird localized effects? Healing pockets?"
Kelvin met her gaze, holding it steady. The lie was his armor. The **System**. "Maybe," he conceded, his voice carefully modulated to sound thoughtful, slightly awed by the possibility. "I remember reading some obscure Association med-journal stuff. Severe trauma combined with intense, fluctuating mana fields *can* produce unpredictable biological responses. Nerve regeneration pathways getting hyper-stimulated." He was quoting real, if niche, research he'd devoured during his initial despair. He shrugged, a gesture meant to convey helpless wonder. "Who knows? Maybe the chaos out there," he nodded towards the window, "is accidentally creating the perfect recovery bubble right here." *Or maybe an ancient horror bound to my soul is granting me Levels and Skills.
Elara's gaze remained locked on him, sharp and analytical. It dipped, almost against her will, to his left forearm. The edge of the scratch, a thin red line, was visible just below the pushed-up sleeve of his hoodie where his hand rested on the book. Her breath hitched audibly.
"Kel… your arm?" Her voice was tight, the fragile calm fracturing.
Kelvin glanced down, feigning mild surprise. "Huh? Oh, *that*." He pulled the sleeve down quickly, smoothly. "Clumsy moment. Caught it on the counter edge reaching for a glass earlier. Barely registered." He forced a self-deprecating chuckle. "Guess spatial awareness is lagging behind these suddenly cooperative legs." He tapped his knee lightly. *Mundane accident. Nothing extraordinary.*
Elara didn't smile. Her eyes held a tempest – relief at the plausible explanation warring with the deep, ingrained suspicion that nothing about his recovery *was* plausible. The scratch, the missing pillow, the faint, almost ghostly scent of ozone and heatead metal that lingered beneath the lemon cleaner, the sheer *speed* of his recovery defying every established tenet of Hunter medical science… it didn't compute. It whispered of forces beyond Association charts, beyond known physics. Forces only *he* could perceive through cold, blue screens.
"You *have* to be careful," she insisted, her voice low and thick with a fear that went beyond physical injury. "Really careful. Even little things… we don't understand *how* this is happening…" *And that terrifies me more than anything*, her unspoken words hung heavy in the air.
"I know, El," Kelvin replied softly, pouring as much reassuring sincerity into his voice as he could muster. "I *am* being careful. Promise." The words were ash in his mouth.
The silence stretched, taut and charged. The news feed on Elara's phone, discarded on the coffee table, buzzed with another urgent update about the Baltic crisis – a world destabilizing while a personal, secret revolution unfolded silently in their living room.
Elara pushed herself up, the movement breaking the suffocating stillness. "Soup. I'm making soup." It was a retreat to the familiar, the controllable.
"Sounds great," Kelvin said, the relief genuine this time. He reopened the book, his eyes glazing over the complex diagrams of alloy structures.
As she moved into the kitchen, the rhythmic chop of vegetables a comforting counterpoint to the storm in his mind, Kelvin let out a slow, controlled breath. The immediate scrutiny had passed. The scratch was explained. The physical traces of his secret power were hidden.