Two weeks until my sixth birthday.
Time, as always, moves strangely around me.
For everyone else, it flows in one direction—steady and forgettable. But for me? It folds. Lingers. Races when I'm still, slows when I reach too far into it. I don't manipulate it yet—not truly. But I can feel the moments bend like reeds in water.
I'll be six soon. Technically.
But inside?
I'm much older.
The Starks know this.
They don't say it aloud, but they feel it. Every time I answer a question before they finish asking it. Every time I master a sigil after a single demonstration. Every time I quote ancient theory with the ease of reciting my favorite bedtime story.
I am not normal.
But they never ask me to be.
Instead, they ask me to pretend.
Becoming a Stark
"You're powerful, yes," Maggie said as she brushed my hair that morning. "But the world doesn't reward the powerful—it rewards the presentable."
She stood behind me, long fingers moving through golden-brown curls with a silver-handled brush. Her reflection beside mine was perfect—an older woman in emerald silk, posture impeccable, eyes like finely cut citrine.
Beside her, I looked like a doll: all soft features and elegance, hair warm in the sunlight, green eyes too knowing for my face.
"You'll grow into your beauty, darling," she said. "But presence? That starts now."
Maggie Stark was many things.
Witch. Matriarch. Occult scholar.
But above all, she was a social predator. One that moved through the halls of human high society like smoke through keyholes—seen but untouchable, admired but unchallenged.
And she was determined to make me her heir in more than blood and name.
My mornings became rituals of refinement.
Not magic. Manners.
How to smile just enough to appear kind, but not soft.
How to speak when spoken to, with a voice that held weight and clarity.
How to sit, stand, turn, lift my chin—not as a child, but as a presence.
How to charm without offering too much. How to be gracious without giving.
"You must never make yourself smaller," Maggie said, adjusting my shoulders one morning. "Not for them. Not for anyone."
"But I must appear smaller."
She smiled. "Now you understand."
Meanwhile, Don taught the opposite.
Where Maggie sculpted the outer mask, Don honed the inner steel.
Discipline. Stillness. Precision.
He taught me how to hold magic like a blade behind my eyes—unsheathed but unmoving. He tested my focus daily: silent spells without motion, intent without voice, containment without tools.
"You must be your own circle," he told me once, after I held a protection charm stable for twenty minutes without blinking. "Magic doesn't need to surround you. You are the magic."
I absorbed it all.
Theory. Practice. Philosophy.
I devoured it like fire eats air.
And still, they grappled with me—not as teachers, but as parents.
They weren't prepared for what I truly was.
No one could be.
But they tried.
They tried hard.
Don's firm hands guiding me as I carved sigils into stone, then ruffling my hair when I finished without fault.
Maggie's lips brushing my forehead when I got an answer right—or wrong—but explained why it could be both.
They corrected me when I snapped too sharply.
They praised me when I softened without losing strength.
They didn't raise a weapon.
They raised me.
The World Beyond the House
"You need to go to school," Maggie said one afternoon, as if she were discussing the weather.
I raised an eyebrow. "Why? I'm far beyond—"
"Exactly," Don interrupted. "You're too advanced. Too silent. Too much in your own mind."
"You need peers," Maggie added. "Even if they aren't your equal."
"I don't have equals," I muttered under my breath.
They both heard me.
Don chuckled.
Maggie arched an eyebrow. "Humility, darling. Even gods need masks."
They enrolled me under my full name—Abigail Stark. Adopted heiress. Well-mannered, well-dressed, and "precociously intelligent."
The school was private, nestled in a leafy suburb in Massachusetts. Old enough to have legacy families, modern enough to keep up with trends.
The headmistress called me a "remarkable young lady" in our interview.
She said I was "articulate beyond her years."
I said nothing about the fact that I'd already read most of the curriculum.
I started two weeks before my birthday.
And by the end of the first day, I was already bored.
The other children were sweet, loud, messy. Their minds wandered. Their logic looped. Their questions were basic.
They didn't interest me.
But I played the part.
I smiled. I answered questions. I asked a few of my own, just slightly out of reach—enough to be "brilliant," not enough to be "alien."
I made a friend. A shy boy named Theo who loved space and dragons. He offered me a blue crayon at lunch.
I thanked him. Meant it.
Because for all my plans… I am still a child. Somewhere inside.
At home, I was different again.
My evenings were now split between school assignments—finished in ten minutes—and advanced magical disciplines.
That week, Don began teaching me Astral Projection. True projection. Not just reaching.
It was... overwhelming.
"You're not just traveling," he explained. "You're unfolding. Unzipping your spirit and stepping beyond the skin of the world."
The first few times I tried, I lost control—blurred between dimensions, got stuck between pulse beats. Maggie had to guide me back.
But eventually, I slipped through.
I saw myself from above.
Then I saw the house. The forest. The lines of energy woven into the land like roots.
I was floating. Fully aware.
This is freedom, I thought.
And then I returned.
Whole.
Changed.
The Mirror Again
The morning of my sixth birthday came quiet and golden.
I stood before my mirror again, this time not studying, just... existing.
My hair, now slightly longer, curled down around my shoulders in soft waves. The gold highlights were more pronounced now. My eyes had dark rings around them—subtle shadows of the Void—but their color was richer than ever.
I touched the glass lightly, watching the reflection.
"Do you know who you are?" I whispered to myself.
The answer came not in words—but in certainty.
I was forged in chaos. Raised in love. Trained in shadow and sun.
I was not Bela.
But I was Bela now.
And soon?
The world would know it.