Ema changed into the costume with a sense of mild relief. The sturdy boots gave her the feeling that she could finally stand on her own two feet, even though that alien, gifted power still burned under her skin.

  Friedrich was waiting for her at the castle entrance. At his feet was a prepared wicker picnic basket, and on his face was a broad, almost boyish smile that contrasted sharply with the seriousness of yesterday's alarm and the blood in the dining room.

  "No guards today, no castle," Friedrich said cheerfully as they descended to the main portal. "We are going to relax, just the two of us." He gallantly opened the door of the black car for her, and once Ema settled into the soft leather, he immediately turned on the seat heating. "How did you like the dress? I must confess, I can hardly wait to see you standing at the altar in it," he added with a charming smile.

  Ema blushed slightly and nodded. Friedrich started the car and leaned back comfortably in his seat, casually controlling the steering wheel with one hand, warmth in his voice intended to help Ema feel like one of them.

  "You must meet Cousin August," he began, merry sparks dancing in his eyes. "You see, not all of our family grew up in such luxury and quiet as this castle. August spent that summer at our smaller estate by the sea. At that time, he had barely learned to walk; he was perhaps only a year old, and the staff was already going through absolute hell. Something was always catching fire there—once a curtain, another time the upholstery in the living room. The maids ran around with fire extinguishers like madwomen, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and no one understood why fires broke out so mysteriously and often."

  Friedrich paused for a moment and grew serious. "No one expected him to take so much power from his mother. The birth of a full-fledged Architect is a great rarity, Ema, even in lineages as old as ours. Usually, the power is diluted, but August? He was a pure element from diapers."

  Then he smiled again, and the atmosphere relaxed. "And Aunt Klara? That's another story entirely. I heard stories about her that when she was little, she would take glasses of fruit juice in the garden and, just like that, directly in her palms, create popsicles from them. I didn't see it myself, but legend has it she then distributed them to the other children, who looked at her like a magician. It was said to be the most innocent demonstration of power imaginable."

  Ema laughed genuinely for the first time in a long while, and for a moment, an atmosphere of peace reigned in the car, underscored by the tones of country music from the radio.

  When they arrived at the meadow where they had found her, Ema felt a sharp constriction in her heart. All that silence and emptiness weighed on her with new force. Friedrich stopped and noticed how she paled. "I understand your concerns, Ema, but I want to show you something," he said quietly and took her hand.

  He led her a short way into the forest, where the trees parted into a picturesque clearing. "This is your wedding gift," he pronounced gallantly. "All of this place will belong to you. If you are a good wife to me and a solid part of the von Riese Family, you will gain the power to restore your city to its glory. If you wish, we will build it anew. Or you will create something entirely new here."

  Ema walked around the clearing, projecting a map of her home in her mind. Here stood the bakery... over there was the school... Then she suddenly turned to him. "Why all this for me, Friedrich? I'm just a girl who had terrible luck and then maybe a little bit of luck."

  Friedrich grew serious. "I don't believe in luck or bad luck, Ema. We didn't know what to do with this place for almost a year. It was a quarantine zone, in the creation of which many of our people died, and many others bear the consequences to this day. And then that strange, stifling energy suddenly disappeared. The place cleansed itself, and on its edge, we found you. The only living soul." He smiled, but there was a scholarly interest in his eyes. "I hope that once everything settles in your head and you are firmly established in our family, you will be able to talk about it. It interests us all immensely."

  He spread a blanket on the grass, pulled out the picnic basket, and began taking out food. Ema sat down and, after a while, asked: "How is it actually controlled? The power?"

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  "Controlling our power... it is like a dance between two worlds," Friedrich began thoughtfully, slowly pouring tea from a thermos, watching the rising steam. "We have the unconscious side and the conscious side. The first is wild, raw. It is based purely on emotions, on the deepest things we stifle within ourselves."

  He looked into Ema's eyes. "When a person succumbs to absolute despair, searing anger, or hopelessness and is not used to taming their strength, it works like a pressure relief valve. That energy accumulates in you and simply bursts out so it doesn't tear you apart from the inside. That was exactly your rain. Your soul screamed, and the sky obeyed. It is powerful, but chaotic and dangerous."

  Friedrich sipped his tea and continued, his voice now calmer, professorial.

  "And then there is the second way. The one we Architects aim for. Conscious control. It is not about feelings, but about absolute concentration and will. Imagine it like muscle memory. Picture a small child learning to do a somersault or a cartwheel for the first time."

  He paused so Ema could imagine the image.

  "In the beginning, it is incredibly difficult for him. He has to consciously focus on every, even the slightest movement. He has to think: Now I put my palms here, now I have to swing my leg, now I have to stiffen my back. He often falls, is clumsy, it costs him a lot of effort and thinking. But when he repeats it a hundred times, a thousand times? His brain and nervous system create new pathways. The body remembers the movement."

  Friedrich smiled and gestured with his hand into the space. "And in the end? In the end, the child runs and does a perfect series of cartwheels without thinking about it. He does it even with his eyes closed, in the middle of the night, just because he wants to. His body already knows what to do. And that is exactly how our power works. First, it is the toil of the mind, but eventually, changing reality becomes as natural and automatic a thing as breathing."

  Friedrich looked at her long and significantly and continued, his voice taking on gravity.

  "Each of us searches for our own path to that power. Those with less talent or discipline need crutches. You will see them tracing complex circles in the air, drawing invisible sigils and geometric shapes with their fingers," he said, indicating a jerky movement with his hand with slight disdain in his voice. "They do it to force their scattered minds into obedience. They need to give that abstract, wild energy some physical shape, boundaries; otherwise, it would slip through their fingers, and they would do nothing. It is like when a child learns to write and has to pre-draw lines."

  He paused and let the thought land.

  "But the truly great ones? They don't need to wave their hands like street jugglers. For them, a single, sharp flash of will is enough. They change reality as quietly and naturally as you blink. For them, there is no difference between thought and deed."

  As soon as he finished speaking, the air around his palm trembled with cold. The steam rising from the hot tea in the thermos did not dissipate in the wind. Instead, it began to twist, thicken, and obey an invisible command. It liquefied, creating a levitating sphere of water, which in a single moment, with a quiet crackling sound, turned into crystal. Directly at Friedrich's hand, a perfect, translucent ice rose formed, its petals sharp as razors and fragile as breath.

  He handed the cold jewel to the fascinated Ema.

  "Try it too, Ema," he urged her softly. "For a start, until you have a trained mind, strong feelings are the best fuel. Remember your family. The friends who lived here, breathed, laughed. Bring them back in your head."

  Ema gripped the ice rose in her palm until it chilled her, and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids, images began to emerge, first blurred, then sharp as photographs. She saw the old baker with flour on his apron, heard the laughter of neighborhood children, smelled Sunday lunch from Mrs. Nováková's. She saw them standing there, alive and real. Looking at her with love. But then the image changed. Their faces paled, features blurred. They bowed to her in farewell and then, like shadows, began to dissipate, turning into smoke and rising upward to the gray sky, far out of her reach.

  The sky above the clearing reacted immediately. It grew heavy. The first drop fell on Friedrich's face, then the second. Within a moment, a quiet, persistent, and immensely sad rain began, washing the colors from the surrounding world.

  Friedrich watched this sudden change in weather with an expression bordering on sacred awe. The rain soaked his expensive jacket and carefully groomed hair, but he didn't even move to cover himself. On the contrary. He was fascinated by the raw power emanating from her. He moved closer to her, so close that Ema could smell the radiating heat of his body and the scent of expensive cologne mixed with the ozone of the storm through the cold damp air.

  "Emotions are dangerous energy, Ema," he whispered, his voice deep, captivating, almost as if reciting a poem. "They are like a wild river tearing through a riverbed—strong, beautiful, capable of changing the landscape, but often completely uncontrollable. And you... you are that flood."

  Gently, with an intimacy that startled Ema, he reached out to her. His thumb touched her cheek and slowly, with a circular motion, wiped away a tear that had gotten stuck in the corner of her eye and mixed with the raindrops. Friedrich looked at that glistening finger as if examining a rare gem, and then his gaze slid lower. Directly to her lips.