Time skip: Age 3
Kaley could speak in full sentences now, though she rarely did. Her voice was soft and even, her words chosen carefully—each one like a stone gently placed rather than tossed. She wasn't shy, just... selective. Focused.
Her mother had stopped pretending this was normal.
By her third birthday, Kaley had memorized a hundred glyphs, drawn two hundred more that didn't exist in any known record, and had begun identifying resonance triggers. The kitchen toaster, her mother discovered, was one. It hummed in the same frequency as the glyph for Ignite, which was why they now only toasted things outside.
"She's harmonizing with the world," her mother whispered once, on the phone, voice low with awe and fear.
"She is a world," came the reply.
Kaley didn't hear the full conversation, but she caught the word containment.
She didn't ask. She simply started drawing new glyphs that day—shapes meant to quiet. Meant to mask.
She started hiding herself, even when she didn't mean to.
One morning, while brushing her teeth, Kaley looked into the mirror and saw a second reflection—herself, but flickering. Her skin shimmered faintly, layered with threads of light running down her cheeks and along her collarbone like cracks in porcelain. She blinked. It was gone.
She didn't scream. She finished brushing.
In her sketchbook later that morning, she drew the glyph for Phase, then added another one she hadn't seen before: Witness.
She didn't tell her mother. Not because she wanted to keep secrets.
But because she wasn't sure if it had been hers to share.
Kaley's cat, a small, curious tabby kitten named Gremlin, had grown up alongside her.
He had been a gift for her first birthday—soft, wide-eyed, and endlessly tolerant of Kaley's strange aura. But as they both grew, so did the distance between her and normal. Gremlin didn't seem to mind, at first. He followed her everywhere, sleeping curled beside her crib, chasing her crayons, and meowing whenever she hovered off the ground like an overly opinionated chaperone.
But even as a kitten, Gremlin had instincts. He started noticing when the air thickened, when glyphs began to hum on their own. And after he was zapped by a random burst of Void shimmer one afternoon—his fur puffed up like a cartoon character and tail like a bottle brush—he began to keep his distance.
Not out of fear.
Out of caution.
He still loved her. Still followed her. But he watched now. Watched carefully.
Kaley understood.
She'd sometimes leave him a slice of turkey from her sandwich or open a book on the floor for him to nap on. And when she sketched glyphs in chalk, she always warned him with a look first—not this one, stay back.
Gremlin would blink, tail flick, and retreat to the top of the bookshelf to supervise.
Once, during a particularly intense glyph meditation, Kaley looked up to find him staring at a page she hadn't drawn yet. Staring like he knew what was coming.
And when she turned the page over… the glyph for Foresight was already burned faintly into the paper.
Gremlin meowed. Loudly.
Kaley didn't draw the next one.
Time skip: Age 3 years, 4 months
It was raining. Kaley sat by the window, watching the drops chase each other down the glass like they were racing.
A glyph formed on the fogged-up pane.
Ripple.
She hadn't drawn it. Neither had her mother.
Outside, something in the clouds pulsed—a low thrum, like thunder that hadn't committed to arriving yet. Kaley pressed her hand to the glass and closed her eyes.
The rain stopped.
Not slowed. Not eased.
Stopped.
She opened her eyes. The neighborhood was frozen in place. Drops hung midair like glass pearls. A bird hovered mid-flap.
She stood. Turned. Walked through the hallway like she was underwater, each step strangely silent.
Gremlin followed her as far as the stairs, then sat on the landing with his tail curled tightly around his feet, ears flat. He made no sound.
Down the stairs. Into the basement.
Her mother stood there already, waiting. Pale. Still.
"I knew you'd feel it," she said.
Kaley nodded. "The world paused."
"It did." Her mother looked toward a device on the worktable. "Because you told it to."
There was no fear in her voice. Just acceptance. A breath caught between pride and sorrow.
Kaley's eyes dropped to the worktable. A metal frame lay there—oval, polished. A conduit. It pulsed faintly with gold.
"What is it?" she asked.
"An anchor."
"For what?"
"For you."
Kaley didn't touch it. But it knew her. Responded anyway.
A glyph appeared along its surface.
Remember.
Time skip: Age 3 years, 7 months
The house had changed.
It was subtle, but there were more locks on the windows. Cameras hidden behind air vents. Her mother never said anything about them, but Kaley noticed. She noticed everything.
She didn't mind.
She liked the attention—so long as it stayed on her. But she could tell the watchers weren't watching for her. They were watching around her. Afraid of what she might touch. Or wake up.
She understood.
Because Kaley had started dreaming of doors.
Not symbolic ones. Real ones. Rusted. Heavy. Covered in glyphs. They pulsed behind her eyes, as if begging to be opened—but they never told her what was inside.
Not yet.
Sometimes, she would wake up to find her hands glowing.
Once, her mother found her floating three feet off the ground in her sleep. Silent. Arms out. Eyes open.
Another time, she sneezed and shattered every bulb in the kitchen.
Kaley apologized by handing her mother a slip of paper with a glyph drawn in pink crayon: Mend.
Her mother didn't cry, but her eyes were red for hours after.
The camera in the hallway blinked three times that night. Kaley blinked back.
The next day, the footage was gone.
Kaley began to write backwards sometimes. In languages her mother didn't know.
When questioned, she simply said, "They're not for now."
One of the glyphs she drew repeatedly began appearing on surfaces she hadn't touched.
Her bedframe. The inside of her closet. The dog's collar tag.
Veil.
It made everything quieter. Duller. Safer.
Until it didn't.
Because on a cold, gray evening, her mother came into the room pale and quiet.
"They saw it," she said.
"Who?" Kaley asked, though she already knew.
"The ones who pretend not to look."
Kaley sat on her knees and drew a circle.
Forget.
The glyph shimmered, then vanished.
Her mother didn't smile.
But she nodded.
Time skip: Age 4
The night before her birthday, Kaley had a vision.
She didn't call it that—not aloud. But when she closed her eyes that night, her body disappeared. Not floated. Not phased. Just... unhooked.
And there she stood: between two mirrors. One showed her face—childlike, curious, tinged with golden light.
The other reflected someone else entirely. An older her. Masked in shadow-armor. Eyes glowing like stars drowned in ink. Behind her, a thousand glyphs whispered in chorus. Some pulsed with warmth. Others... hissed with hunger.
It wasn't a hallucination.
It was memory—forward-facing.
She woke with a nosebleed and a single word burned into her pillow:
Summon.
It was the first time the glyph had appeared in the real world without her drawing it.
Her mother called in sick that day. She spent it watching Kaley, quietly, as if expecting her to unravel.
She didn't.
She played with blocks. She laughed at cartoons. She asked for crackers.
But every time she blinked, she saw the mirror.
Every time she laughed, she felt something listening.
And outside the fence line, behind the tree that never lost its leaves, a pair of golden eyes never blinked.
That night, while Kaley slept, her mother opened a metal case she hadn't touched in over four years. Inside were files. Photos. Test sheets. A tiny crystal device labeled with one word:
Operator.
She held it to the light, and for a moment, it shimmered with the same soft gold as her daughter's eyes.
"I told you she wasn't ordinary," she whispered.
No one answered.
She didn't need them to.
At exactly 4:03 a.m., Kaley sat up in bed.
Eyes wide.
Silent.
Her sketchbook lay open on the desk beside her. The glyphs weren't just glowing now—they were shifting. Moving.
Summon. Echo. Form. Return.
One after another, they whispered.
She placed her hand over the page.
And in the darkness behind her closed eyes, the first shimmer of armor appeared.
Not a full suit. Just the outline.
Just the beginning.
Her lips moved without sound.
A final glyph, scrawled in light across her vision:
Awaken.
And for just a moment—
The Void answered.