The Silent Equation

A month had passed since the academy reopened, and Langley thrived like never before. Traders praised its organization, students walked with pride, and even skeptics from afar spoke of "the miracle duchy."

At the center of it all was Selene.

She hardly slept or ate, yet her influence was everywhere. It showed in lecture notes, supply ledgers, and building layouts. Whenever a problem arose, she solved it before anyone could even mention it.

But even she couldn't predict everything.

It started with the second condenser.

Smaller than the first, it was meant to power a wing of the academy by regulating aura through finely tuned crystal oscillators. The team of scholars followed her design closely. It activated at dawn.

By noon, the first student collapsed in the western dormitory.

By one, six more fell—convulsing, coughing, their eyes faintly glowing.

By two, the lamps in the east hall flickered on and off, their aura threads sparking erratically. Quills twitched in still hands. Doors swung open without a breeze.

By three, the entire west wing was in lockdown.

"It's not the condenser," one scholar insisted. "It's something beneath the building." 

"No, the harmonics! We miscalculated the phase drift!" 

"You saw that chair move by itself! Don't tell me it's math!"

The professors argued over tables filled with notes and crystal shards.

Selene stood in the middle of it all, silent.

She wasn't listening to them. She was hearing something else.

Something sharp.

Aura patterns danced behind her eyes. Shapes, pulses, lattice grids.

Time no longer moved forward. Every voice stretched. Every breath slowed.

She walked toward the blueprint table.

No one noticed she was bleeding from her nose again.

No one saw her hands trembling.

Only Elias did. He reached for her but hesitated—unsure. Something in her eyes told him to stay back.

Selene's gaze sharpened.

And then she began.

"Your phase drift isn't the problem," she said. Her voice was sharp and clear. "You modeled the output harmonics under the assumption that the condenser's geometric core would remain fixed to surface gravity. But Langley isn't a perfect horizontal plane. You forgot to factor in the mountain's magnetic drift."

Everyone froze.

A scholar stepped forward. "That would only cause a misalignment of—"

"—0.021 radians," Selene finished for him. "Which, at 40% output, introduces harmonic feedback loops. That's what's agitating the aura."

"You'd need to completely rewrite the crystal circuit configuration," another murmured.

"I already have," Selene said, sliding a fresh set of blueprints onto the table.

She didn't remember writing them.

She just knew they were right.

The revised core was active within hours. 

The aura stabilized. 

No more students collapsed.

And Langley held its breath.

Elias sat alone with her in the observatory after midnight.

"You shouldn't have done that alone," he said quietly.

Selene looked out over the valley, a cloth pressed against her nose. "No one else could."

"That's not the point."

She didn't respond.

He stood, pacing slowly. "I'm starting to think your mind is becoming something it shouldn't. You're too fast. Too complete. No one should think like that. Not in days. Not in minutes."

She smiled faintly. "You sound like the Church."

He stopped. "I'm serious."

"So am I."

Silence hung between them. Then Elias asked the question he had been hesitant to voice:

"Do you even feel fear anymore?"

Selene turned to face him.

In that moment, with the moonlight on her face and the cloth still catching blood from her nose, she appeared different. Not a monster. Not a hero.

A paradox.

"I'm afraid every second," she said. "But the fear doesn't stop the math."

Later that night, alone again in the dark, she closed her eyes.

And saw not numbers.

But rows of children, their eyes glowing faintly red.

Behind them stood the silver-haired woman again, skin cracking, lips smiling.

And in the distance— 

the butterflies had multiplied.

They didn't flutter now.

They stared.