It started like any other Thursday.

  Grey sky. Half-slept faces. A dull chill in the classroom that always made the windows fog slightly near the corners. Kai sat in his usual seat, third row from the back, nearest the wall — a position chosen long ago for its tactical view of the room and the door. He was sketching something in the margin of his notebook — a flowchart more than a drawing, part of a theory he’d been chasing about emotional frequencies and their link to physical reactions in the brain. No one would care if they saw it. No one ever looked closely.

  Then the door opened.

  “Class, listen up,” said a voice that didn’t belong to Mr. Alden.

  Kai looked up. The woman who entered looked young for a teacher — mid-thirties, maybe. Wavy black hair tied back loosely. Long beige coat over a black turtleneck. There was something sharp about her movements, but he couldn’t place why. She didn’t smile right away. She didn’t need to. She walked like she’d been here before.

  “I’m Ms. Callahan,” she said, setting her things down on the desk without much ceremony. “I’ll be filling in for a little while. Mr. Alden had to leave for a family emergency.”

  The room barely stirred. Some of the students exchanged half-bored glances. One kid in the back muttered “lucky” under his breath. Someone else asked if they’d still be doing the oral presentations. Ms. Callahan answered, but Kai wasn’t listening anymore. He watched her write her name on the board — neat, clean, exact — and noticed the slight hesitation just before she turned around again. Barely a breath. Like she was calibrating something.

  But nothing stood out yet. Not really.

  She began the lesson. Something to do with rhetoric in historical speeches. She spoke clearly, paced her words well, didn’t rely on notes. Students responded. A few even laughed. She called on people by pointing — never by name. That made sense. She was new. Still, it struck Kai as slightly off that she hadn’t asked for anyone’s name, not even during roll call.

  His pen slowed. Something wasn’t clicking.

  Not until he noticed the third glance.

  She was good at hiding it. Each time, it was brief — a half-second longer than needed when her eyes passed over the room. Not staring. Not quite watching. Just… checking.

  And always toward him.

  Kai didn’t react. He didn’t believe in coincidences, but he believed in patience even more. He watched her just enough to not get caught, cataloguing details. She didn’t seem nervous. Didn’t seem out of place. But something about her didn’t match the usual substitute mold.

  The class dragged on.

  At the break, he passed by her desk on the way to the door. No one else did. He didn’t have a plan — just wanted a closer read. Her eyes found his as he passed. Not in an obvious way. Just enough.

  “You remind me of someone I used to know,” she said suddenly.

  Kai stopped. Half-step. Looked at her.

  “Someone important?” he asked, the question dry, casual.

  She didn’t answer right away. Just gave him a look that didn’t quite match her voice.

  Then, without another word, she turned back to the papers on her desk.

  Kai left the room.

  He didn’t think about it too much right away. People said strange things all the time. Teachers had their quirks. Sometimes glances meant nothing. But by the time he got home, the memory of the exchange lingered.

  The next day, the rest of the school day passed without event.

  Ms. Callahan handed out the assignment sheets with the kind of effortless rhythm that made her feel like she’d been teaching there for years. She didn’t talk too much. Didn’t fumble. She was polite, patient, and entirely forgettable by design.

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  Kai barely thought of her again.

  After school, he took the bus home, earbuds in, hoodie up, face half-buried in the sound of soft piano loops and crackling lo-fi static. His mom was still at work. He reheated leftover curry, finished two assignments, then collapsed onto his bed without ceremony. Another ordinary day.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that things got strange.

  He was walking up the school stairs—third period had just ended, and the hallway smelled faintly of oranges from someone’s spilled juice. He wasn’t in a rush. He rarely was. But as he turned the corner near the west wing staircase, someone stumbled out of the janitor’s closet, nearly colliding with him.

  A girl—freshman, maybe—eyes wide, shaking.

  She said nothing. Just stared at him. Like she knew him. Like she was trying to figure out if he was real.

  Then she ran.

  Not down the hall. Not toward help. Just away. Disappearing into the crowd like a dropped thought.

  Kai stood still.

  That should’ve been the end of it. Strange things happened at school all the time. But when he looked down, the janitor’s closet door was still open. He glanced inside.

  Empty.

  No mop buckets. No shelves. Just… space.

  Too much space.

  A freshly painted white wall at the back, half-dried. No labels. No tools. The room was deeper than it should’ve been. Wide, square corners, like it had been carved recently.

  He stepped back.

  Then Ms. Callahan appeared behind him.

  “Everything alright?” she asked gently.

  He turned around. She didn’t look surprised to see him there.

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Just… someone dropped something.”

  She looked over his shoulder into the open closet, then back at him. “Be careful. Some doors open before they’re supposed to.”

  She walked away.

  Kai stared after her.

  Then, finally, the thought landed.

  That wasn’t a comment.

  That was a message.

  Kai didn’t go back to class right away.

  He walked the halls instead. Quiet steps. Loose posture. His mind somewhere behind his eyes, replaying her words over and over.

  Some doors open before they’re supposed to.

  It wasn’t what she said — it was how she said it. Calm. Controlled. No curiosity. No question about what he was doing in that hallway. She had looked straight through the situation and spoken as if it had already happened a thousand times before.

  He didn’t remember moving his hand, but at some point, his fingers brushed the edge of the janitor’s door. It was closed now. Locked. As if it had never been open in the first place.

  By lunch, the girl from earlier was nowhere to be found. No one had seen her. No one even knew her name.

  Kai asked one teacher if there’d been an incident in the hallway.

  They blinked at him.

  By the time school ended, the feeling hadn’t left his chest. It followed him down the front steps, into the wind, and onto the quiet walk home. Not fear — not even tension. Just that hollow pressure in the air before a storm. Like the world had blinked and he hadn’t.

  That night, after his mom went to bed, Kai sat at his desk without turning the light on. His fingers hovered over the notebook he kept hidden under loose sketches and theater flyers. He hadn’t planned on using his power. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.

  But something had already begun pulling the thread.

  This time, he didn’t try to force a destination. He just let the memory settle around him — the moment the girl stumbled out, the way her eyes locked onto his, the strange width of the room. The scent of fresh paint. Ms. Callahan’s voice.

  He leaned into that moment.

  And then he felt it.

  A pressure. A pushback.

  The memory didn’t want to open. Not fully. As if it wasn’t his. As if it shouldn’t exist. That’s when Kai realized it wasn’t a memory — it was a fracture. A ripple in something that had been overwritten too quickly.

  But he pressed through.

  Light filled the room in slow flashes. The closet appeared again — but this time, the wall was pulsing faintly. A shimmer. And behind that wall, a second space.

  A circular room. White. Seamless.

  Symbols etched into the ceiling.

  Not paint.

  Wards.

  And standing in the center, just for a second—before the memory threw him back—

  Ms. Callahan.

  Eyes closed. One hand pressed against the wall.

  Murmuring something he couldn’t hear.

  Then the vision broke.

  Kai gasped. The candlelight flared and dimmed. His room returned.

  He was sweating.

  But there was no doubt anymore.

  That closet wasn’t a closet.

  And she wasn’t just a substitute.

  The morning air was damp, thick with mist. Kai walked to school alone, hands in his pockets, hood down, thoughts quiet.

  It didn’t feel like something that belonged in words yet. It was still settling inside him — a slow, quiet realization that the edges of his life weren’t as sealed as he thought.

  He didn’t know what Ms. Callahan was.

  But he knew she wasn’t here by mistake.

  And now, he wanted answers.

  She was already at her desk when he entered the classroom.

  Students trickled in around him, slouching into chairs, scrolling through phones, pretending the morning didn’t exist. Ms. Callahan greeted them one by one, soft, warm, practiced.

  But when Kai walked past her desk, she paused.

  Only for a second.

  But he saw it.

  The slight nod.

  They didn’t speak until lunch. Kai found her sitting alone on a bench behind the faculty building, sipping from a thermos. The air smelled like chalk and warm concrete.

  He approached without a word. She didn’t look up.

  “You saw it,” she said quietly.

  Kai sat down.

  “You were inside,” he said. “You were inside the wall.”

  She nodded once.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” she said. “Or spy. I’m here because I swore I would be.”

  Kai looked at her, searching her face. Calm, composed. But this time, he didn’t mistake that for normal.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  There was a long pause.

  Then she answered, carefully. “Your father helped me once. A long time ago. He saved my life. In exchange, I made a promise. That if the time ever came, and the signs aligned, I’d find you. I’d make sure you knew.”

  “Knew what?” Kai asked, his voice even.

  She glanced around — no one nearby — then met his gaze fully.

  “That they’re coming.”

  “Them?”

  She nodded. “An order. An old one. Older than most people know. Their names change with the centuries, but the work remains the same — they rewrite history. Control it. Piece by piece. Person by person.”

  Kai stayed still.

  “They were watching your father before he disappeared,” she continued. “And when he vanished, we thought the trail was gone. But he left a signal behind. A set of coordinates. And a name.”

  She looked at him with something gentle behind her eyes.

  “Yours.”

  The silence settled like dust.

  Kai didn’t respond immediately.

  Then, finally: “He’s alive?”

  Ms. Callahan’s voice dropped. “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I know he wanted you found. Before they found you first.”

  Kai leaned back slightly. His fingers curled against his knees.

  “Why now?”

  “Because you opened a door,” she said.

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