Morning light filtered through Daniel's curtains like a promise he couldn't keep. He woke with the taste of metal on his tongue and his heart kicking against his ribs as if it wanted out. He pressed his palm to his chest. The beat wasn't his — too deep, too slow, ancient.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The silver mark on his wrist throbbed faintly, like a trapped moon. He slapped his hand away as if the skin would scorch him.
"Stress," he told the empty room. "Just stress."
He went to the mirror and splashed water on his face. For the briefest fraction of a second his brown eyes looked wrong — rimmed in gold, depth like a distant sky. He blinked hard and the gold was gone. He forced a laugh that sounded too small in the plain room and shoved his bag over his shoulder.
School would be normal. It had to be.
The courtyard at Eldhollow High hummed with the usual noise—students corralling themselves into groups, someone yelling about late homework, the bounce of a ball. Daniel moved through it on autopilot, every sound sharper than it should be. A passing whisper landed in his head as if the speaker stood beside him: "…heard the trees scream last night…"
"Daniel!" Zeke barreled into him, one of those loud grins he never seemed to lose. Zeke threw an arm around his shoulders the way he'd done since they were kids. "You look like a ghost. Rough night?"
"Yeah," Daniel lied. "Just tired."
Zeke's grin widened. "Bet you stayed up gaming. Or thinking about the Harvest Fair."
Before Daniel could answer, Zeke reached forward to ruffle his hair the way he always did. The motion was casual, the familiar shove that should have meant nothing.
Daniel didn't wait.
Something in him moved first — faster than thought, faster than memory. His body acted like a different animal with an older set of reflexes. He twisted his hips, grabbed Zeke's wrist and, with one clean motion, spun and slammed him into the sun-baked courtyard. Zeke hit the ground with a thud that swallowed the morning sounds.
There was a beat of absolute silence. Zeke lay on his back blinking at the sky, dazed. A dozen heads turned. Someone dropped a tray. Daniel's stomach dropped like a stone.
"Zeke—" he began, voice overed with panic. He crouched and hauled the other boy up, hands shaking. "Oh— I'm so sorry, I didn't mean— I thought—" He couldn't finish. The words tumbled and clattered and made no sense.
Zeke swore, pushing to his knees, fingers digging into the dirt. "You— what the hell, Dan? I didn't even touch you."
"I know." Daniel's apology came out rushed, sincere. "I know. It was instinct. I'm sorry. Are you okay?"
Zeke's face was a mix of humiliation and anger and something like fear. He clambered up, brushed dust from his trousers, and forced a laugh that didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah. Fine. Weird reflex, huh?" He glared at Daniel as if the boy had a secret and he didn't like it.
Leah watched from the edge of the crowd, one hand on her books. She'd been passing by with a friend when the moment snapped like a frayed wire. The way she looked at Daniel was not the open curiosity of the others; it was quieter, more careful—an attempt to read something she didn't fully understand. Her face softened, then closed again when Zeke stalked off, muttering.
Later, when the courtyard had returned to its usual rhythm, Xavier met Daniel by the stone well as if nothing had happened, though his jaw was tight. He clapped Daniel on the shoulder with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Nice save, bro."
"Save?" Daniel echoed, still breathing too fast. "I slammed him."
"You did," Xavier said, then his grin got real, the friend grin that had always been there. "You okay?" He looked at Daniel the way only a best friend could—like a mirror, like an anchor. Something in Xavier's gaze flickered for a heartbeat, a light too quick to name. A scale glinted at the corner of his neck and then it was gone.
"Yeah. I think so." Daniel tried to smile. "Weird night."
Xavier's smile softened. "Then keep weird-night energy for after school. Don't start a fight with Zeke again; he'll overreact."
They walked to class together, shoulders brushing. The school halls were a press of bodies and chalk dust and falling laughter, and Daniel focused hard on the texture of the world—on the tile under his shoes, on the hum of the lights—trying to keep from falling into the strange pull beneath everything.
At lunch, the librarian—an old man who smelled of paper and lemon oil—watched him with a look that made Daniel's skin crawl. The man's eyes were too bright for his age, studying like a scholar but holding a secret.
"You felt it, didn't you?" the librarian asked when Daniel passed the return desk.
"Felt what?" Daniel managed, heart suddenly a fist.
The librarian smiled in a way that could have been kindness or trap. "The pulse. The world shifts when great things move." He tapped the desk with a finger and, unconsciously, Daniel traced the carved pattern there. It looked familiar—like the symbol on his wrist, only worn by time. Daniel jerked his hand away as if burned.
After school, the walk home felt different, like an old track with new traps. He kept catching himself half-turning at the slightest sound. Once, footsteps behind him quickened and then slowed; he wheeled, breath held, and found only the empty street.
At the edge of the village the air itself seemed to fold: heat rippled, then steadied. He paused, head tilted, feeling his palms go slick. The mark on his wrist pulsed as if answering something under the ground.
Night arrived like a curtain. He ate in silence, the meal tasting like ash. Upstairs, he collapsed onto his bed fully clothed, fatigue folding him, but not sleep. The dreams came fast.
He stood under a sky that was not a sky, a field of stars where chains of light crisscrossed a yawning gate. A shadow leaned against its frame—massive and old, something that tasted of nothingness. A voice—thin and enormous—whispered like wind through bone: Keeper.
Daniel's hair was silver in the dream and his eyes were gold. He lifted a hand and light answered like an obedient animal. Then another voice, sharp and urgent, cried across the stars: You shall not touch him!
He woke with a gasp, sheets tangled, silver threads of something like dawn dissolving from the air around him. His wrist felt warm under his palm. He swallowed, the room still and small, a boy returned to himself.
Downstairs, in a low room he'd never known existed until this week, Aunt Maren moved like someone who had been waiting for a long time. Her hands traced runes in the air; blue light pooled in the hollows of the floor. Her lips moved in words older than the village. Sweat made her braid cling to her cheek.
"Not yet," she whispered to the darkness outside the circle. "Not yet, child." She sealed another ward and when the lines flickered she pressed her forehead to the wood. Her hands shook with a tiredness that had nothing to do with age.
Something tested the barrier and drew back. The touch was brief but enough to make her skin prickle. She murmured into the runes like a prayer and then breathed, as if she had run a long race she could not afford to lose.
Above the house, beyond the sight of anyone who mattered, gold eyes opened in the dark and watched. Xavier's heartbeat thudded like a drum in the empty fields. He had been awake for longer than any reason allowed. He said the same vow he always said in the silence between sleep and duty: I will not let them hurt him.
Far away, in a place of blackstone and low cold, something old smiled at the twinge of light that had pierced the world. A murmur ran like oil across the floor of its prison. The hunt had smelled dawn.
Daniel curled under his blanket, the mark on his wrist cool under his fingertips, and thought, for the first time, that maybe he wasn't imagining it. Maybe the world had shifted, and he was standing in the new tilt.
He blinked up at the ceiling and whispered into the dark, voice trembling with both fear and something like a small, stubborn hope: What am I?
Outside, the village slept. Inside, the air hummed. The world listened.