He waved again — the image shifted.
"Every choice you make is a question: Where does the eye go first? Why? What's pulling it there? Is there movement? Contrast? Balance? Disruption?"
Rex's mind was racing--- every painting he'd ever seen now felt like it had secrets.
Claude appeared beside him again, voice calm as ever. "You see? Gérôme frames a blade at its climax. I frame the world around the silence before."
Gérôme smirked. "And I sell more tickets."
—
They didn't ask him to draw. They asked him to see.
Then they spun the canvas toward him.
"Now," Gérôme said. "Frame this."
The scene was chaos — a city in flames, a child crying, a knight falling from a tower, a bird flying above the smoke.
Claude said: "Find peace in the storm."
Gérôme said: "Find the scream that will echo."
And Rex had to choose.
