Age 6.
They say children are innocent.
But what am I, really?
I walk with children. Sit in their classrooms. Smile in their photographs.
But I am not one of them.
Not anymore.
Two weeks after my sixth birthday, Don begins the conversation we'd all been silently circling.
"You've reached saturation," he says one evening, as we walk through the orchard beyond the Stark estate. "Your body's magic threshold is nearing its limit—for now. If we don't start conditioning your vessel, you'll burst it wide open before puberty."
I nod. I've felt it myself. Magic humming beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, too much energy for too small a container.
Maggie joins us beneath the weeping willow. Her robe is open, deep blue, embroidered with phoenixes stitched in silver thread.
"It's time for a rite," she says. "A reinforcement ritual."
Her smile is sharp.
"It will hurt."
I smile back.
"Good."
The ritual is held three nights later beneath the full moon.
Seven herbs. Three stones. Two bones—not human, but close enough. A circle drawn in bloodroot and gold leaf. The potion is bitter, laced with crushed obsidian, morning glory, and the ash of a blessed hawthorn wand.
They don't hold my hand through it.
They let me scream.
Let me shake.
Let me rise from the circle barefoot, bleeding, trembling, and stronger.
After that, everything sharpens.
My body strengthens. My reflexes heighten. I stop getting tired. Stop catching colds. Start recovering from magical strain in half the time.
More than that?
My focus improves.
And I need it.
Because space and time are not simple things to learn.
Don guides me through spells older than the continents. Portal geometry. Dimensional mapping. Runes designed not to contain but to redirect the flow of chronology.
But those are base concepts. Functional.
I have something bigger in mind.
The Chronolock.
It's not a spell. Not exactly.
It's a construct. A temporal snare.
Its goal: intercept the key to the Bunker before it ever reaches Sam and Dean Winchester.
But not now. I'm not ready.
Twelve. I'll be twelve when I cast it.
Until then, I refine it.
Each glyph. Each alignment.
I test it on butterflies. On raindrops. On seconds stretched just enough to feel the change in air pressure.
Don catches me practicing once with a clock that's ticking backward. He doesn't scold me.
He just nods.
"You're folding reality into a braid," he says. "Make sure you don't tie it around your own throat."
Age 7.
I start noticing the edges of people.
Not their auras—though I can read those too. But the borders of their intent. The limits of their morality.
Children lie. Teachers manipulate. Parents pretend.
I notice it all.
And I understand now: power attracts weakness. And weakness, when threatened, becomes betrayal.
So if I'm going to share what I have—this well of chaos-borne magic—I need to ensure that what I give can also be taken back.
I begin designing the Binding Thread.
It's not mind control. I don't want slaves.
It's something cleaner.
A magical claim—woven through the soul of the one I mark. Like a thread tied around a heart. Not painful. Not noticeable.
Unless they try to sever it.
Then it hurts.
Then it burns.
And if they betray me?
I pull.
And I take back everything.
The first time I use it is on Beth.
Elizabeth "Beth" Straton is quiet. Brilliant. Fragile in the way glass is before it hardens in flame.
She's small for her age. Wears secondhand sweaters. Gets shoved by mean girls named Cara and Livvy who smell like hairspray and cruelty.
I don't step in at first. I watch.
And then I see her do something remarkable.
She catches my eye one day in the library and smiles.
Genuinely. Shyly.
She has a bruise on her wrist and blood on her lip.
And still—she smiles.
That night, I send her a dream.
A safe one.
A circle of light. A thread of warmth. A voice—not mine, not yet—telling her she's not alone.
She shows up to school the next day with a glimmer in her eyes.
And when I sit beside her at lunch and offer her half my sandwich, she accepts like we've done this a thousand times.
Our friendship grows fast.
She follows me like gravity.
And when I tell her the world is bigger than people think—when I show her a flicker of flame in my palm that doesn't burn—she doesn't run.
She leans in.
The first Binding Thread ritual is simple.
A touch. A whisper. A sigil drawn on her inner wrist with my own blood and pressed into her skin with powdered moonstone.
She doesn't feel pain.
But she gasps. Eyes wide.
And in that moment, I know—
She is mine.
"I can feel you," she whispers.
"Only if I let you," I reply.
She swallows. "Will it always be there?"
"As long as you are loyal."
Beth doesn't blink.
"I don't need to be free from you," she says. "You made me strong."
That's when I know I've done the right thing.
Because if I'm going to build something—if I'm going to rule something—it must be bound in loyalty and blood and magic that doesn't break.
Age 8.
Others follow.
Javier, who hears the wind whisper secrets.
Nora, who can find anything she's lost by touching the earth.
Theo, who dreams in languages not yet invented.
Each of them comes to me. Each of them proves themselves. Each of them chooses me.
And each one is bound.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of certainty.
I give them power.
I teach them secrets.
I protect them from the monsters that move through this world with names like Teacher, Pastor, Uncle.
And in return?
They are mine.
Maggie finds my notes on the Binding Thread.
She doesn't confront me.
She calls me to the study one evening, pours tea, and hands me a velvet pouch.
Inside is a soulstone.
Obsidian with a vein of gold. Pulsing faintly.
She sets her teacup down and says, "If you're going to bind others to you, you should anchor yourself first."
I stare at it.
Then I nod.
And I wear it on a chain beneath my collar for the rest of my life.
Age 9.
The ritual to reinforce my body is repeated, but this time, it's different.
Don introduces tempered infusion—a form of energy saturation designed to harmonize my biological structure with the magic I carry.
It involves fasting. Sweat. Movement. Incantations in a language even I don't recognize.
The potion I drink turns my veins blue for an hour.
The candles around me flicker in reverse.
And when it's done, I'm stronger.
My skin bruises less. My bones don't ache after spellcasting. My stamina doubles.
Beth watches the whole ritual from the circle's edge.
When it's done, she kneels.
And says nothing.
Age 10.
The Chronolock is not ready.
But it's close.
I test more aggressively now—using enchanted mirrors to reflect failed time-stretches, siphoning echoes into sealed vials, gathering data.
The ritual will require three anchor points in time, two blood sigils, and a shard of Men of Letters magic. That last part is the most elusive.
Don helps me design a magical mimic—a decoy that will act as the key's energy imprint during the switch.
But I want more.
I want the real key. Not just its symbol.
Maggie begins teaching me how to identify and hijack temporal beacons. Magic left in objects by others—breadcrumbs through history.
We spend entire evenings sitting in the library surrounded by relics. She holds a broken compass once owned by a seer in 1840 and says:
"This one still remembers being whole."
I take it. Close my eyes.
And I feel everything.
My coven continues to grow.
Beth becomes my second. My voice when I don't want to speak. My knife when I don't want to strike.
She's grown too. Taller. Sharper. Loyal without question.
And ruthless when she needs to be.
When two of the new initiates hesitate during their first summoning, it's Beth who whispers, "Bela gave you a gift. Don't waste it."
They don't fail again.
Late one night, I sit with Maggie beneath the stars. Her hair is loose, silver like moonlight, eyes reflecting firelight.
"I'm building something," I tell her.
She hums. "I know."
"I want it to last."
"Then build it right."
"I am."
She looks at me then, fully.
"You're not a child," she says. "Not anymore."
I don't reply.
She doesn't need me to.