Age: 2 years, 3 months.
Height: short. Vocabulary: tragic. Power stability: "Ha ha no."
Kaley had reached what some parenting blogs lovingly referred to as "the discovery phase."
They meant blocks. Finger paint. The joy of picking up things just to throw them.
Kaley, however, discovered she could astrally project herself into the washing machine.
"Void Status: Whirlpool edition."
Her mother nearly had a heart attack. That was also the day they stopped doing laundry during nap time.
Training started by accident.
She didn't mean to do it. One minute she was stacking toy cubes with the patient resolve of someone pretending not to have cosmic energy in her blood. The next, one of the cubes blinked out of existence.
Like... gone. Not exploded. Not melted.
Gone.
"Oh no. I just deleted a shape."
She reached out with her hand—and for a moment, a ghostly shimmer of her old armor flickered across her palm. Just a single symbol on the back of her hand: Form.
Then it vanished. Along with any hope of pretending she was normal.
Her mother caught her floating upside down in the hallway two days later.
"Kaley!"
Kaley's baby logic calculated three options:
Play dead.
Pretend it was gravity's fault.
Pretend to be a ceiling fan.
She chose option 3.
Wiggled arms. Rotated slightly. Made a humming noise.
"I am air circulation."
It did not help.
Her mother didn't yell. She didn't panic either. She just walked over, picked Kaley up by the armpits, and looked her straight in the eyes.
"You need to stop ascending in the middle of snack time."
Kaley giggled. Mostly out of guilt. And the crackers were still on the floor.
Training Log: Age 2.5
Void Pulse: still unreliable.
Telekinesis: 4/10, dropped a bowl of cereal on the cat.
Glyph Activation: unpredictable. Accidentally triggered Silence and muted the TV for six hours.
Mom's Suspicion Level: Moderate/High. She's upgraded the crib with anti-float mesh.
Cat's Trust Level: Negative 9000.
One night, she tried something new.
She waited until the house was quiet. Then she sat in the middle of her room, palms flat, spine straight (as straight as a toddler could manage), and she breathed.
Not just air.
She pulled in.
And the world flickered.
For just a breath, the glyphs formed a ring around her.
Balance. Watch. Echo.
"Okay," she thought. "This is it. Baby Tenno meditation mode."
Then her diaper lit on fire.
The good news: she learned to control the Void spark for 3.2 seconds.
The bad news: she now needed a fireproof rug.
The worse news: she also accidentally muted the carbon monoxide detector.
"Note to self: next training session, fewer fire elements."
That weekend, her mother locked herself in her study and made a call. No names. Just static.
"Project Quiet Angel has begun early," she said, fingers tight around a coffee mug she didn't remember pouring.
A pause.
Then the reply:
"Under observation. Do not interfere."
"I won't. But you'd better hope she doesn't remember you."
She hung up.
Then turned around and walked back into the living room to find Kaley trying to phase through the fish tank.
"No, honey. No multiverse naps with the koi."
Kaley pouted. Koi stared blankly.
Late Night Journal, Entry 7:
She is too smart. Too fast. Her words are forming faster than they should. She pretends not to understand me, but I've seen her respond to things I haven't said out loud.
Today she drew a circle. Not with a crayon. With light.
Three glyphs formed inside it: Return. Bond. Spark.
What does that mean?
And somewhere far, far away—
In a dark room lit only by monitors—
A figure in a coat watched a short data spike blink across the screen.
Another glyph. Another glitch.
And underneath it, a single line of code.
PROJECT QUIET ANGEL: STATUS—AWAKENING