Chapter 7: When the time stop
The cafeteria buzzed with low voices and the clatter of trays. Children huddled in small groups, their conversations hushed but intense. Something lingered in the air—tension unspoken, but shared. The incident in the courtyard had become a quiet wildfire, passed from mouth to mouth with wide eyes and lowered voices.
"I heard he didn't even touch anyone," a boy whispered. "They just dropped. Like the air hit them."
"That's not how it happened," someone replied. "I was there. He moved—fast. Too fast. Like a blur."
"He's dangerous," said a girl at the end of the table. "You all saw how Edward looked at him."
"He saved Elliot," another voice offered.
"Yeah, but did you see his face?" someone else said. "He didn't look heroic. He looked… cold."
At one of the center tables, Daniel sat hunched over his food, not eating. Mia sat beside him, frowning at the group across from them.
"He's not a monster," Mia said, sharper than she meant to. "He's scared."
"He didn't look scared," a younger boy mumbled.
"He looked like Sir Edward," added someone else.
Daniel looked up. "That's what scares me."
The group went quiet.
Daniel set his fork down, his voice low. "The way Michael stood there, the way everything stopped… it was the same feeling I had the day Sir Edward stepped in. That weight. That cold."
"There is definitely a reason," Mia said, softer now. "Broken by something and not by choice and definitely not like them."
"And what if that's all he knows now?" Daniel asked. "What if we're not the same? What if there's no going back?"
Mia didn't answer at first. Her hand reached across the table and rested on Daniel's wrist.
"Then let's be what pulls him back," she said. "Let's show him there's more than what he came from. That he's not alone."
Daniel didn't speak. But he didn't pull away either.
The table stayed quiet, the others unsure whether to agree or argue.
Then the doors opened.
Michael stepped inside.
Every head turned. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. The scrape of a spoon on a tray was suddenly too loud. No one called to him. No one smiled.
He moved through the room without hesitation, tray in hand, eyes low. He passed the table where Daniel and Mia sat. Daniel glanced up, mouth slightly open, unsure whether to speak. Mia watched him pass with something like hope, or maybe warning.
Michael didn't stop. He took his usual seat by the far window, alone.
The room didn't breathe until he started eating.
When the conversation resumed, it was different. Quieter. Uneven.
Whatever Michael had become, it had changed the way the others looked at him. Not as a peer but not as a threat either.=
They left it there.
The silence persisted—until Elliot was hurt again.
Michael rounded the corner just in time to see him on the ground, arm twisted unnaturally, sobbing silently. The same group of boys laughed as they ran. Daniel reached him first this time, fire in his eyes but like a cold shower he noticed Michael – and saw it.
Anger.
Real unfiltered rage, Daniel took a step forward, voice trembling as it left his throat. "Michael, wa—"
But the word never finished.
Michael stepped forward, his lips parting.
"So this... is what being mad for someone else feels like."
Time stopped.
Then he vanished. To everyone else, he simply disappeared. But to Michael, the world had frozen again—breathless. Leaves left hung in the air. Birds paused mid-wingbeat.
He moved. Down the alley. Toward the voices. Toward laughter that still echoed in frozen time. He positioned himself just out of sight, watching the three boys—smug, oblivious. And then, he let time breathe.
Time resumed.
The first boy turned, just in time to see the blur of a fist. Michael's strike caught him clean in the throat. A choked gasp, eyes bulging—he collapsed, clawing at his neck.
The second reached into his pocket, stunned. Michael swept his legs from under him, stepped in with practiced precision, and drove his knee into the boy's face. Bone met bone. The boy flew backward into the brick wall. His head cracked against it with a sickening thud and he dropped like dead weight.
The leader stood alone, frozen.
Michael stepped from the shadow. The boy screamed and tried to flee, bolting for the alley's end.
But Michael was already there. He gripped the boy's shoulder, breath hot at his ear. His voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut like glass.
"Tell me—what will your father say when he sees you broken?"
The shoulder twisted. A pop echoed in the tight alley. The boy's scream shredded the silence.
The first attacker, now coughing and dizzy, swung a wild punch at Michael's back. Without looking, Michael turned and hauled the leader into the path of the strike. Fist collided with nose. The leader shrieked.
Michael turned fully, driving a front kick just above the knee of the last boy. A crack, sharp and wet. He fell screaming.
And then came the bodyguards. Trained, wary, armored by years of instruction.
But they stopped short. Because what stood before them wasn't a child anymore. It was something ancient. Silent. Heavy with the memory of pain. Something their instincts warned them not to challenge.
Then Michael vanished.
But before the bodyguards could act, a pressure greater than anything they'd felt crashed down on them.
Sir Edward.
His presence descended like an anchor dropped from the heavens. Michael's body hit the ground, his magic stilled—suppressed under a weight that warped the very air.
The guards crumpled, not from harm, but from instinct. Lowering their head as if instinct told them to not look at Sir Edward in the eyes.
Sir Edward sighed, stepping into the alley one step at time, his coat fluttering from the shift in force. Noticing the state of thing he murmured in disappointment. "I was too late".
He turned toward Michael, now struggling under the invisible weight. With a sigh he release the pressure allowing him to breath again.
"You really make this hard for an old man, Michael."