Chapter 1 : A Silent Anomaly
A copper plaque, tarnished by damp, bore an inscription in straight-cut letters: Child Psychiatry and Behavioral Analysis.
Through the frosted glass of the vestibule door, two adult silhouettes argued in harsh, feverish whispers.
“This isn’t just defiance anymore,” the father said, his voice worn down by exhaustion. “He doesn’t respond to the same things. Look at his eyes when we enter his room. It takes him a moment to recognize us.”
“The doctor says he’s gone somewhere inside himself,” the mother whispered, panic edging every word. “That the trauma fractured something. What are we supposed to do if he never comes back?”
“If he doesn’t come back?” The father gave a dry, joyless laugh. “Look at what’s taken his place. It’s as though he stopped existing and let a stranger move into his body.”
A gust of autumn rain struck the clinic’s metal shutters, drowning the rest of their argument beneath the low rumble of London’s cobbled streets.
Then silence swallowed the memory. Nine years vanished into shadow.
The warm light of late afternoon washed over the Eshvlack family living room. Grind finished putting away a box of wooden blocks on the threadbare carpet.
Beside him, little Alec, seven years old, was desperately trying to retie his left shoelace.
“Wait, let me,” Grind said, crouching with a gentle smile. “You’re pulling the outside loop too hard. There. Make a loop first, then pass the lace underneath. See?”
The child nodded solemnly, reassured, then grabbed his sketchbook and hurried into the kitchen. Grind stood, smoothed the creases in his school uniform shirt, and ran a hand through his brown hair. At fifteen, looking after everyone in the house had become a habit. It came naturally to him—a second nature, effortless and protective.
A burst of laughter rang out down the hallway. Zela and Zefa, the thirteen-year-old twins, were fighting over a velvet ribbon in front of the entrance mirror, until Zela finally gave in and stuck her tongue out at her sister.
“Dinner, children!” their mother called from the dining room.
The meal passed amid the comforting clink of cutlery against crockery. Their father, in his forties, his face lined but relaxed, cut his meat methodically while their mother served the vegetables with almost excessive care.
Whenever her eyes settled on Grind, something peculiar flickered in them: relief so intense it bordered on unease.
While the twins laughed at Alec’s antics across the table, Grind caught a quiet exchange between his parents.
“Did you see his history marks?” his father murmured in his wife’s ear, a half-smile on his lips. “Flawless, as always. He even helped the little one with arithmetic tonight.”
“Everything’s so much better since he changed,” she replied almost inaudibly, gently squeezing her husband’s fingers on the table. “So much better. The nightmare is over.”
Grind looked up from his plate, his brows drawing together.
“Mum? Did you say something?”
His mother startled, then her face lit up with a perfectly tender smile.
“Nothing, darling. I was just telling your father how lucky we are to have such a responsible eldest son. You’re still staying at Baron’s tonight, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Grind confirmed. “We’re finishing our literature presentation before the end of the week. I’ll get my things right after dessert.”
Upstairs, his bedroom was meticulously tidy. Schoolbooks stood in order of size, and the bed was made with military precision.
On the dark wooden dresser sat a mechanical wristwatch with a weathered leather strap. Grind approached, slipped it around his left wrist, and adjusted the buckle. Its steady ticking echoed through the room like a metallic heartbeat.
He raised his eyes to the mirror above the washbasin.
For a thousandth of a second, his heart skipped a beat.
In the blink of an eye, he thought his reflection hadn’t blinked with him. The face opposite his seemed frozen, rigid, almost icy, before instantly becoming his familiar reflection again: a fifteen-year-old boy whose features were softened by the room’s shadows.
Grind closed his eyes, pressed two fingers to his temples, and shook his head.
Exam fatigue. Nothing more.
He picked up the shoulder bag resting on his chair, gave his room one last glance, and went downstairs quietly so as not to disturb Alec’s bedtime.
Outside, a fine drizzle chilled the night air. Gas lamps cast yellow halos across the slick black cobblestones.
A few dozen yards away, at the corner of a narrow lane, a girl wrapped in a dark coat hurried along: Lisa. When she spotted Grind on his doorstep, she paused beneath the rain, a shy smile brightening her wind-reddened cheeks. She raised a gloved hand in brief greeting before disappearing around the corner.
Grind returned the smile, his breath misting in the cold, then crossed the narrow paved path separating his front steps from the neighboring house.
Before he could even knock, the door flew open.
“Took you long enough, Eshvlack,” Baron announced, leaning against the doorframe with theatrical annoyance. “Those books aren’t going to open themselves.”
Baron’s eyes were sharp and direct, always carrying a cutting irony that concealed his constant attentiveness. He stepped aside to let Grind in, shut the door behind them, and led him up the creaking stairs to his attic bedroom.
A few minutes later, seated on the bedroom carpet among scattered sheets of draft paper, Grind stopped halfway through a sentence.
Through the dormer window overlooking the street, his gaze was drawn irresistibly toward the front of his own house, directly opposite.
One by one, the ground-floor lights had gone out. Then the upstairs hallway light. The Eshvlack home had become a dark, silent block against the rain-heavy sky.
A thick, oppressive silence seemed to have settled over the entire neighborhood.
“Grind?” Baron called, frowning as he saw his friend motionless, staring out the window. “What are you looking at?”
Grind blinked, as though suddenly pulled from a trance.
“Nothing,” he murmured, without taking his eyes off the house. “Just... a strange feeling.”
Across the street, in the utter darkness of the family home, an almost imperceptible click marked the door being locked from the inside.
