The announcement dropped on a Tuesday morning, between two math exercises, carried by a loudspeaker voice so neutral it became almost absurd.
— Reminder to all seniors: the career orientation day will be held in two weeks. The presence of a parent or legal guardian is mandatory for file validation.
Seven remained perfectly still, the pen suspended over a sheet of paper he had no intention of filling out anyway.
A parent.
The word rolled through his mind like a stone thrown into a bottomless well—no noise, no echo, just the absence that kept falling.
He had no parents. No memory of ever having had any. There was someone, somewhere above all this, who had raised him—who had taught him to hold a blade, to breathe under the pressure of the sky, to distinguish courage from recklessness. But that man wasn't exactly the type to show up in a human classroom with a visitor's badge around his neck. And anyway, Seven no longer had a way to reach him. Not for a long time.
He must be busy, he thought, without much conviction. He is always busy.
Beside him, Kael scribbled absentmindedly in the margin of her notebook, seemingly unaffected by the announcement. For her, this kind of administrative detail obviously posed no problem.
For him, it was one. A real one. The kind you don't solve with a scythe or an aether barrier.
That evening, lying on his bed, his eyes fixed on the cracked ceiling of his apartment, Seven thought about something else—something that had been bothering him for a while, but which he had never really looked in the face.
He had money. Enough to eat, to smoke, to more or less live. And this money always came from the same place: the pockets of the dead, right before he sent them to the Underworld. A crumpled bill here. A forgotten wallet there. No one needed it anymore, after all—that was the kind of reasoning that had always sufficed.
But phrased like that, out loud in the silence of his room, it sounded different.
— …It's really morbid, when I think about it.
He almost caught himself laughing—a short, dry laugh, without joy, the kind you let out when you discover you've been doing something wrong for months without ever realizing it.
He had centuries of experience reaping souls. Zero seconds of experience living a human life, with all the mundane realities it entailed—a salary, a job, something honest.
The word sounded almost foreign in his mouth.
— What exactly are you looking for? Liah asked the next day, a book still open on her lap, sitting on the high school steps.
— A job.
She blinked.
— You? A job?
— Is it really that surprising?
— You wear a coat that obviously costs more than everything I own, and you teach me how to control my aether on an empty lot after school. I hadn't exactly put "job hunting" on the list of things you'd do one day.
— Times change.
She observed him for a moment, as if to check that he wasn't joking. Then she closed her book.
— My father is looking for someone, actually. At the café. He refuses to admit it, but he's been getting tired lately. Too many people, not enough hands.
Seven raised an eyebrow.
— Serving coffee to strangers. Yeah. That should be humiliating enough to count as a real life experience.
— You're really a hopeless case.
— I get that a lot.
The first day was a polite disaster.
Seven broke two cups, mixed up an order for three different customers, and nearly spilled an entire tray of pastries on an old man who, by some miracle, took the whole thing with an almost suspicious calm.
Elias, meanwhile, observed all this from the counter with an expression that oscillated between amusement and polite despair.
— Are you sure you've never done this in your life?
— Never.
— It shows.
— Thanks for the support.
— I'm a pastor. Encouragement comes with the job. Honesty too.
Seven let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.
Over the following days, he improved—not quickly, but steadily. He learned to memorize orders, to smile at people who didn't always deserve to be smiled at, to hold a tray without it wobbling dangerously. And above all, he got to know Elias, a little more each evening, in that quiet moment after closing when they put the chairs away in silence.
It was on an evening like that, while the rain drummed softly against the windowpane, that Seven felt something he hadn't seen coming.
A pressure. Faint, almost imperceptible, but undeniable.
Aether. From Elias.
He stopped dead, a chair suspended mid-motion.
Elias noticed immediately—he already knew this kind of silence.
— You just felt it, huh.
It wasn't a question.
Seven slowly set the chair down.
— You're an Awakened.
— Have been for a long time, yes. Weak. Almost useless, most of the time. I sense things, sometimes. Rarely more.
A silence settled between them—not awkward, just heavy.
— Why did you never tell me?
Elias shrugged, wiping a cup that didn't really need it anymore.
— Because it never changed what I'm supposed to be. A father. A pastor. A man who serves coffee to tired people. This little extra thing… it doesn't really matter, compared to everything I should be able to do and don't.
His voice dropped slightly.
— Liah awakened, and I didn't even see it coming. She ended up facing things I can't even imagine, and meanwhile, I was serving coffees thinking I understood everything about her life.
He stopped, the cup motionless in his hands.
— What kind of father is that?
Seven looked at him for a moment, searching for words—not the ones you say to reassure politely, but the ones that are true.
— The kind who has a daughter that comes home every night, he finally said. Who eats a real meal. Who has a place where she feels safe. Who laughs with you at the table, even when she pretends otherwise.
He paused.
— I never had that. So believe me, from where I stand, you don't have much to feel guilty about.
Elias remained silent for a long moment. Then a smile formed on his face—a bit sheepish, but sincere, the kind of smile you haven't worn in a long time and rediscover almost by surprise.
— You really don't know how to take a compliment, do you.
— I get that a lot too.
Elias's laugh echoed softly in the empty café. He stood up, almost light on his feet, and walked over to a shelf at the back of the room, behind the counter—a place Seven had never seen open before.
— This calls for a drink.
He pulled out a dusty bottle, its label half-erased by time.
— This has been passed down in the family for... I don't even know how many generations. My father gave it to me. His before him. We never actually drink it—we just bring it out for the moments that count.
He placed it on the counter, between them.
Seven looked down at the bottle.
And the world froze.
An image. Then another. A similar glass, held by a hand he didn't fully recognize—his own, perhaps, or another's, he couldn't remember anymore. A smell of amber and burnt wood. A voice, very far away, pronouncing a word he couldn't grasp before it dissolved. A laugh that wasn't Elias's, in a place that wasn't this café.
His hand tightened without him deciding to.
— Seven?
Elias's voice reached him as if from very far away.
The bottle slipped. Shattered against the tiled floor with a sharp crack, splashing the amber alcohol among the shards of glass.
Silence.
Seven stared at his own hands, as if he no longer entirely recognized them.
— …Sorry, he finally muttered. I don't know what came over me.
Elias didn't say anything right away. He looked at the mess on the floor, then at Seven—and something in his expression wasn't anger. It was concern. And, beneath it, an ounce of recognition he couldn't quite name aloud.
— Don't worry about the bottle, he finally said, in a strangely soft voice. That's not what matters.
He crouched down to pick up the pieces, never taking his eyes off Seven.
— This is the first time I've actually seen you lose control of something.
Seven didn't answer. He was still staring at his hands, searching his memory for an image that refused to stay long enough for him to grasp.
Outside, the rain kept falling on Eryndor, indifferent to everything.