If I'm being honest, it wasn't supposed to be a big deal.
Just a party at the lake.
Just one night where I wasn't the quiet kid, or the anxious one, or the one who felt like he'd missed some unspoken memo about how to be normal. I was thirteen, crammed into the backseat of Darell's car with Malique, Ski, Leon, and Delilah, listening to them argue about who had the worst playlist.
"Kaleb definitely," Ski said, twisting around from the passenger seat to look at me. "You look like you listen to sad movie scores."
"I do," I said.
Malique slapped my shoulder. "See? This is why you need nights like this, bro. Exposure therapy."
Leon snorted. "Better than whatever noise you call music."
"Shut up," Ski said. "You're built like elevator jazz."
Delilah laughed, quiet but real. "All of you sound terrible. Just drive, Darell."
Darell, hands steady on the wheel, just shook his head. "You invited yourselves. No complaints."
The sun was dipping when we turned off the main road. Paragon Lake came into view in pieces: first the glint of water through trees, then the stretch of dirt lot already half-filled with cars that didn't belong to any of our parents. Music pulsed faintly from down the slope. The sky glowed orange and soft purple, and clouds stretched thin.
We parked. Doors opened. Warm air and sound hit all at once.
Kids clustered along the shore, near the fire pit, on the dock. Some were older—high schoolers who'd stopped pretending not to notice each other. Someone had dragged out a big speaker. Someone else had brought too much soda. There was a bag of chips getting passed around like communion.
It felt like a movie. Not the part where the monster shows up. The part right before, when everyone's still invincible.
"Okay," Malique said, clapping his hands once. "Rule one: nobody acts weird."
Ski pointed at me. "Talkin' to you."
"I'm literally just standing here," I said.
"Suspicious behavior," Leon added.
Delilah bumped my arm with hers. "Relax. You're good."
I tried.
We picked a spot near the fire as the sky kept dimming. Some kids went straight to the water, shoes off, jeans rolled, shoving each other. Someone tossed a football. The speaker rattled out a song that was mostly bass. The flames climbed, throwing orange light on faces that'd be back in school halls next week like none of this happened.
Malique drifted into the center of it immediately—laughing, talking, dapping people up. Ski followed. Leon hovered nearby with his arms crossed like security. Delilah sat beside me in the sand.
"You mad he dragged you out here?" she asked.
"No," I said. "Just… thinking."
"You always say that."
"It's always true."
She smiled a little. "Well, think about the good stuff tonight."
The good stuff. The air was cooling but still thick. The lake smelled like mud and metal and summer. Somewhere behind the noise, frogs croaked. It felt like nothing bad could fit here.
More people arrived. The sky finally tipped into full dark, stars pushing through. Someone lit sparklers. Ski tried to write his name with one hand nd almost burned his sleeve. Everyone yelled at him. He bowed.
"Kaleb," Malique called. "Come skip rocks and embarrass yourself."
I joined them at the shoreline. The water lapped softly against the sand, reflecting the fire and the first stars. Darell pointed at a smooth stone. "That one. No excuses."
I threw it. Two skips. Third was mercy.
"Tragic," Leon said.
"Character building," Malique added.
Ski launched his rock like a fastball straight into the water. "Six," he said confidently.
"That was zero," Delilah said from behind us.
"I rounded emotionally," Ski replied.
We broke into scattered, stupid laughter. For a moment, it all felt light. Like maybe this was one of those memories that stuck for the right reasons.
Then it changed.
"Yo," Darell said slowly. "Look."
It wasn't his usual tone. That was what made us listen.
He was staring past the lake, over the dark treeline. Something red hung there in the sky. At first, I thought it was a plane light, but it didn't blink. It burned—steady, sharp.
"Star?" Leon guessed.
"Too bright," Delilah said.
"Satellite?" Ski tried.
Malique squinted. "Why's it getting bigger?"
He wasn't wrong.
The red point swelled, deepened, shifting from pinprick to ember to something like a small, distant sun. The music flickered. The speaker crackled and cut off mid-beat. No one hit pause.
"Hey, what the—" the kid who owned it smacked the top. Nothing.
Around us, phones came out. Screens stayed dark.
"Mine just died," someone said.
"Same."
"Dude, I charged it—"
I pulled my own phone out. Black. No battery symbol, no anything. My watch face was dead too.
Then I realized I couldn't hear the frogs anymore.
Or the wind.
Just breathing.
Just whispers.
The air pressed in, like the whole sky had taken one long breath and hadn't let it go.
The red light in the sky dragged downward.
Not drifting. Not falling weird.
Aiming.
"Okay, that's not funny," someone said.
"Is this a prank?" another asked, but their voice shook.
The light grew. Heat seemed to come with it—not from the fire, not from cars, from above. The hairs on my arms stood up. I felt a slow vibration at the base of my skull.
"Let's bounce," Darell said. "Now."
A couple of upperclassmen were already grabbing their stuff, heading up the slope. Somebody yelled, "Everyone go, come on!" and the tension snapped. Motion everywhere. Footsteps pounding. People yanking open car doors.
"Kaleb, move," Leon said.
Malique grabbed my wrist. "We're not sticking around if the sky's about to explode."
The red light grew too bright to look at. Ski flinched. "Nope. No,o thank you. Horror movie rules: we out."
Delilah was already backing away. "Come on."
"I'll be there," I said, but it came out quiet.
The vibration in my chest wasn't fear. It was… familiarity. Like the feeling before a storm, if storms could remember your name.
Malique squeezed my wrist. "Don't be stupid, man."
"I'm just gonna grab our stuff," I lied. "Go with them. I'm right behind you."
He stared at me for a heartbeat, then swore. "Two minutes," he said, and took off after the others.
I watched them go.
The lot became a mess of engines trying to turn over, headlights blinking and dying. Voices lifted in new panic. The red light swelled until it washed the treetops.
The fire gutted itself and went out.
It was just me and the lake.
The orb — because that's what it was now — hung above the water, huge and wrong, molten red veined with blinding white. The air tasted like coins and rain that hadn't fallen.
Then it dropped.
It didn't streak or arc. It descended. Direct. Certain.
The moment it touched the lake, the world flinched.
No burst. No cinematic explosion. The surface accepted it, then ripples of light exploded outward, red and white racing toward the shore in perfect rings. A sound came with them, some layered, shuddering tone that wasn't quite sound, more like pressure rearranged into a voice.
My feet refused to move.
The ripples hit the shore and stopped. The lake went motionless, glowing faintly from the inside.
I took a step forward.
Sand shifted under my shoes. The hum inside my chest rose, syncing to my heartbeat.
Another step.
My breathing was off now. Too loud in my ears.
The glowing center of the lake brightened. The water pushed upward, drawn into a column that rose slowly and smoothly, carrying the orb with it—no longer fire, now something cleaner and worse. It pulsed, each beat forcing the air to vibrate.
The column leaned.
Toward me.
I should've run.
Instead, I whispered, "What are you?"
The answer hit everywhere at once.
Not in syllables. In meaning.
The pulse slammed through my bones, turned my name over like it had been holding it for years.
Kaleb Young.
My knees buckled. I didn't fall.
A strand of light snapped out from the column and touched my chest. My heart stuttered under it.
"Stop," I rasped, but my voice didn't matter; this was older than language.
The presence spoke again, and this time I could hear it as words shaped into my thoughts.
Who are you?
My lips were dry. "Kaleb. Kaleb Young."
The lake brightened. The pressure swelled.
What are you?
I swallowed. I didn't even know why I said it. "I don't… I'm nobody."
Wrong.
The word wasn't cruel. It was a fact, cutting clean.
The orb pulsed brighter.
What are you?
The second time, I understood the real question.
I forced the words out. "I'm human."
The presence is considered that. It didn't feel pleased or disappointed. Just measuring.
The column tightened. The orb shifted, patterns of red and white curling over its surface like something alive.
I am the Nexus, it said.
The convergence.
The equation that binds.
The words came like the shape of a law carved into the air.
"I don't—" I started.
"I have searched."
"Countless variables."
"Fragile vessels."
"Fractured time."
"Filtered outcomes."
"None held."
The pressure focused, pinning me in place. Tiny arcs of light crawled over my arms, under my skin.
You reached back, it said. You came to me.
I shook my head. "No. I didn't—"
You endure, it said simply.
Fear. Isolation. Harm.
You bend, not break.
My mind flashed images—hallway floors, bathroom tiles, trash bag water running down my face, kids laughing as they walked away. The memory of being small, wet, and alone. The gulf between me and everyone else. All the times I'd felt like a mistake still walking around.
It had seen all of it.
"You will hold," the Nexus said.
You will contain.
I felt the choice approaching before it asked for it.
I did not understand the scale. I did not see Sentinel, Harbingers, or broken timelines. I didn't see years of being hunted. I just saw a moment where something impossible was asking me to step forward instead of vanish.
I will not choose for you, it said.
Do you accept convergence?
The hum filled my skull. My chest was tight. I was thirteen and alone and completely seen for the first time in my life, and it was by something that might break the world.
My throat burned.
"I'll do it," I said.
The lake exhaled.
The column snapped inward.
Light hit me from every direction at once. It poured into my mouth, my eyes, my chest, my bones. There was pain, but it was so far past what I knew to call pain that it stopped fitting the word. It was rewriting. Like every atom had been scribbled out and redrawn in real time.
I saw flashes — not memories, not yet, just impressions. A world made of threads of light, each decision a path. A thousand versions of the lake overlaid: empty, full of bodies, on fire, frozen in time. A star is collapsing. A city folded. A storm looping itself.
At the center, a single fixed point.
Me.
Conduit accepted, the Nexus said.
You are Apex.
You are an interface.
You are not alone.
I tried to breathe. The sound came out as a ragged gasp. The light under my skin pulsed one last time, then settled, embedding itself in places no one could see.
The column collapsed back into the lake. The glow sank. In a blink, the surface was dark again, quiet, indifferent.
The hum dimmed but didn't vanish.
I staggered forward, dropped to my knees in the wet sand. My hands shook. Tiny sparks flickered out between my fingers and died.
"Wait," I whispered. "What does that—"
The world tilted hard left.
My vision dimmed around the edges, closing in. The monitor-beep sound that didn't exist yet ticked once in my head.
I heard tires somewhere far away. Voices fading. No one on the shore. No one had seen.
My body tried to stand.
Failed.
The last thing I felt was the reassuring, terrifying weight of something infinite resting just behind my heartbeat.
Then everything went black.
And somewhere, beneath the darkness and the hospital and the month I wouldn't remember, a voice I'd invited in stayed awake.
You will remember, it said.
When it's time.