The Cost of Control
Zyris watched the moth.
It clung to the corner of the window,its' thin wings catching the faint reflection of sunlight. It hadnt moved in minutes,but it wasnt dead.
He could see its tiny legs twitch against the wood, feel its heartbeat like a murmur against the tide of air in the room.
He didnt blink.
He barely breathed.
Instead, he watched, and beneath the stillness of his frame, he listened not with his ears, but with something deeper.
Something heavy and vast.
There it was again,the invisible tension that had haunted him since the hospital.
Since Ramit,The tension that pulsed when he looked too long at someone he hated.
The pressure that coiled in his chest when anger filled him, when disgust flared.
That feeling of something within him reaching out as if his body was just a skin stretched over an ocean.
Ramit had died without Zyris touching him.
Without poison,steel or blood.
By juust one glare, soaked in hatred and the boy had collapsed like his soul had been yanked from his spine.
Zyris had lied well.
He'd lied to the officer.
To the doctors.
He hadd cried where needed, trembled when asked.
But inside, beneath it all, he hadnt felt confusion or regret.
He had felt curiosity.
Now, he stared at the moth like a scientist with a scalpel.
His fingers didn't twitch.
His breath didn't quicken.
But something moved.
Not outside, but through him.
A massive, quiet tide pressing forward from his chest,wrapping around the moth like a second shadow.
He didn't hate the moth.
He didn't feel anything toward it.
It was just a test.
It was just data.
The moth trembled once.
He pulled the pressure back.
It stopped.
He smiled faintly.
By the third day in back in the orphanage,that,focus,pure,clinical attention guided the pressure.
That was necessary.
He used animals because humans were inefficient.
They resisted and fought.
He didnt like that,not because he feared confrontation,but because it meddled with the results.
It wasted time.
Animals didn't lie.
They simply reacted.
And that was sad.
But efficency is more important and than morals.
He tested with birds at first,pigeons that nested in the trees.
He climbed up one night,found a slow one and stared at it through the wooden beams.He pressured it softly.
At first, it flinched.
Then it seized.
Then,it went limp.
He measured everything.
Temperature,eye dilation,muscle collapse.
He recorded times in his head,exact intervals.
He learned to pull as well as press.
The difference was subtle, like tuning the strings of a violin.
A press suffocated.
A pull… drained.
A beetle he experimented on had twitched for seven full seconds before going limp.
A cat he tried it on later ran circles for a minute before vomiting and curling into a silent, shivering ball.
That one hadn't died.
That was important.
He was learning precision.
He was learning control.
A counselor came on Friday.
She wore a blue scarf,too neat for this place, and carried a clipboard.
Her smile had corners.
"Zyris," she said, with careful cheer.
"How are you?"
He looked up from the garden bench, blinking slowly. The wind moved through his hair. His palms were clean. His shoes were still tied.
He smiled.
Not too big.
"Better",he said softly.
"It's quieter now."
The counselor sat across from him.
Her perfume was lavender.
Cheap, but persistent.
"I have read your file," she said.
"I know what happened. And I know you've been through a lot. That can create feelings you might not understand."
Zyris tilted his head.
"Is that why you came?" he asked. "To explain my feelings to me?"
She paused. "To help you process them."
"I don't have any," he said flatly. Then he smiled again.
"But I can pretend, if that's what you need."
Her lips thinned.
Not angry.
Just uncertain.
She was a professional.
That made this more interesting.
"You are a very smart boy," she said.
"But smart kids can still need help."
Zyris leaned back.
"I've been helping myself," he said.
"Running tests. Studying how I respond to people. You, for example, lie with your mouth more than your eyes. That's rare."
She blinked. "wha-"
"You want to say I'm traumatized",he interrupted.
"But you don't want to admit it scares you. So you hide it behind training. Behind words like 'support' and 'process.' But you're here to check a box."
His voice was calm.
Almost amused.
"You think I don't see it. But I do. That's what makes this so fun."
She sat back,more cautious now.
He crossed his legs like a prince.
"I want to propose a deal",he said.
The silence was sharp.
"I'll give you what you need. The right answers. The proper reactions. You'll get a model recovery case. You'll write glowing reports. Maybe you'll even get promoted."
He leaned forward.
"In return you,beautiful,leave me alone.
No therapy. No pills. No more questions."
The counselor stared at him.
"I dont think thats how this works",she said carefully.
Zyris tilted his head again, like a eagle deciding if something was edible.
"But it will",he said, voice cooling.
"Because if you dont accept this deal,I'll show you what happened to Ramit."
The counselor froze.
Zyris didn't blink.
"Accidents happen in places like this," he whispered,as if talking to a 5 year old child.
"Especially to people who push too hard."
He smiled again.
Not charming this time.
Just quiet and empty.
The counselor stood up a moment later.
Her clipboard didnt tremble but,only because she gripped it so tightly.
She left without another word.
Zyris leaned back again. The sun felt warm.
His control deepened over the next week.
He discovered weight.
Not the physical kind, but a sense of gravity that his soul exerted when focused.
Like the space around him thickened when he wanted it to.
Objects didn't move.
But living things,they felt it.
He tested it on ants.
When he applied pressure, they froze.
When he pulled it back, they scattered like sparks.
But the most exciting discovery came during an experiment with a squirrel in the courtyard.
He hadn't meant to break it,he had only wanted to test distance.
But when the pressure connected,something clicked.
A thread between them.
He could feel the shape of the squirrel's soul.
Small.
Quick.
Fragile.
And when he twisted it gently, experimentally it shuddered.
He didn't like that.
He released it immediately.
The squirrel convulsed, then ran.
Zyris spent hours that night in bed, staring at the ceiling.
A thread.
That was the word his mind settled on.
It wasnt physical.
But it was real.
He could reach across space—not with his hands, but with that invisible, crushing part of himself and move other's souls.
Not just press.
Not just pull.
But tether.
That changed everything.
By the second weekend, he could tether to birds mid-flight.
He could press a thread around them like a collar, then yank, and they would fall.
Not dead,just stunned.
As if the soul had been jerked sideways out of alignment with the body.
He began cataloguing soul textures.
Some felt soft and warm.
Others slick, like oil.
One dog had a soul like crackling glass.
He didn't break it.
He wanted to, but the dog had looked at him with trust.
Its tail wagged.
That trust made Zyris feel uneasy,weird and scared.
He didn't like it.
So he left it alone.
He noted it down.
He didn't understand it.
He didn't like not understanding.
He tried tethering to insects and seeing if he could move them,not by force, but by suggestion.
A push, not a pull.
The results were promising.
One fly landed on his hand and wouldn't leave for ten minutes,even when he waved.
Another flied in circles scared and distressed after he gently tightened the tether.
They didnt die.
That was important.
He was learning finesse.
He was becoming precise.
Mrs. Anya asked fewer questions than expected.
She was gentle, and that made her weak.
She thought kindness earned loyalty.
Zyris gave her smiles, helped with dishes, answered every call with a soft "Yes mam".
He did it perfectly.
She loved him
That was useful.
He didn't hate her.
But he didn't respect her either.
Her kindness was a blanket.
His mind was a scalpel.
He used her softness to move freely, to avoid suspicion, to wander.
At night, he practiced for hours.
On mice.
On stray cats.
On spiders.
And then, one night, after he'd exhausted his tests on small animals,Zyris realized something.
He felt heavier.
Like his body and soul had grown thick with something foreign.
He had been experimenting with more intensity lately,pushing his confines to find a limit.
But this sensation, this pressure deep inside,this was new.
It wasn't until he ran a simple experiment on a mouse and felt the familiar weight, the pull in his chest, that he understood what had happened.
When he crushed a soul,he absorbed it.
He had felt this shift after Ramit's death, when the boy's life had drained out without a touch.
Thats why zyris had passed out.
His soul had taken on too much.
The absorption had caused a violent change within him,something so unnatural that it forced his body to shut down in protest.
And the worst part was,that weight wouldn't go away unless he learned to carry it.
So, he pushed himself further.
Each time he absorbed another soul, he felt the shift.
The strain.
The suffocation.
The crushing, agonizing weight of it.
But he refused to stop.
He would learn to bear it.
And after about 60 turns,sixty painful experiments,Zyris adapted.
And when he did, his large soul felt like an extension of his own skin.
It was part of him now.
He smiled in the dark, knowing that the world would eventually knows true happiness,true balance,true stability,true love.
And he would be the one to cause it.