Master Eldrin was, without question, the most inefficient educator in Lunaris.
I don't say that to be mean. It was a simple, systematic fact.
His entire teaching method could be boiled down to: "Explain the same concept in increasingly redundant ways until everyone just nods to make him stop."
On this particular afternoon, I was ten. Elara was eight. We were in the back of the village hall, and he was explaining "trade routes" for what I calculated was the forty-seventh time this month.
"You see," he droned, "goods move from one place to another. This is trade. Without trade, we would have no external goods..."
It was technically true. It was also completely useless.
I was experiencing a sensation I remembered vividly from my last life: work meeting tedium. The specific, soul-crushing boredom of being forced to listen to a 40-minute explanation of a 30-second concept.
Beside me, Elara was drawing elaborate "defensive formations" to protect me from, I assumed, tripping over my own feet. It was her new hobby.
But I was bored. And irritated. And intellectually understimulated while being physically trapped.
In other words, the perfect conditions for the Glitch.
"—and then the traders move the goods," Master Eldrin continued, blissfully unaware, "which is important because without the movement of goods, trade couldn't—"
And then the wasp appeared.
It didn't fly in through a window. One second, there was empty air. The next, there was a *wasp*, flying with incredible purpose directly at Master Eldrin's face.
He didn't notice. It circled his head twice, then dove straight into his open mouth.
"Goo—*hrrkk?!*"
The shriek that followed was, to be fair, entirely justified. He flailed. He ran in circles. The other kids exploded into chaos—some laughing, some screaming. The wasp, having apparently done its job, flew back out and vanished.
Master Eldrin, however, continued screaming and ran right out of the building.
The lesson was over. Unforeseen circumstances.
*That,* I thought, with a sliver of quiet satisfaction, *was efficient.* Problem: tedious lecture. Solution: predatory insect. Outcome: lecture terminated.
The fact that my power could now *summon wasps with intent* was probably something I should be concerned about. I'd file that under "Later."
Beside me, Elara was frowning. "That was weird," she said. "Did *you* do that?"
"Do what?" I replied. Standard plausible deniability.
"Make the wasp."
"Wasps are natural creatures," I said, which was true. "They exist."
"But that one... it seemed *specific*. Like it had a goal."
"Wasps always have goals," I countered. "They pursue objectives with little regard for human comfort."
Elara narrowed her eyes. "You're doing that thing again. You're being weird when you answer. That's how you answer when you know something but you're not saying it."
*She's getting too observant.*
"I'm being efficient with my words," I said. "I always do."
"No, you don't. You used to be normal-weird. Now you do this thing where you explain *around* the question so I can't prove you're doing anything."
This was, unfortunately, 100% accurate. My methods of deflection had become, perhaps, too sophisticated.
"There's no conspiracy, Elara," I said.
She wasn't convinced.
*This is escalating,* I thought. *Soon, someone's going to ask a direct question I can't deflect.*
I did not, in fact, prepare for that.
Part Two: The Accumulation
The "coincidences" started piling up between ages eight and ten.
It wasn't that I was losing control. I was actually getting better at it. The problem was... puberty. My emotional state was becoming a lot harder to keep on a leash.
The chalk incident happened when I was nine. Master Eldrin (who had, apparently, recovered from the wasp) was writing on the chalkboard. Slowly. Painfully, inefficiently slowly.
I was feeling mildly annoyed.
The chalk in his hand didn't just break. It *exploded*. A perfect, silent puff of geometric dust—concentric circles—that hung in the air for a second before settling.
"Strange," he muttered, looking at his powdered hand. "Defective chalk."
The guild banner incident was at nine and a half.
A recruiter from the Adventurer's Guild—pompous, armored, and radiating self-importance—was giving a speech about the "noble burden of protecting civilization." It was the worst recruitment speech I'd ever heard.
He was standing under a huge decorative guild banner, hung by two very frayed-looking ropes.
My annoyance at his monologue was... significant.
The ropes snapped. Simultaneously. The banner dropped, *perfectly*, right onto his head, muffling his speech about "glory."
"Poor maintenance," the villagers noted, pulling him out. "We should fix those ropes."
No one suggested it was anything else.
Part Three: Elara Knows Something
By the time I turned ten, Elara had a theory.
She couldn't articulate it, but she knew. She was convinced *something* about me was linked to *things* happening.
She started running tests.
"Be annoyed," she commanded one afternoon. We were in the village square.
"That's a weird request."
"Just do it. Think about... how inefficient that wobbly cart wheel is."
I did. I focused on the sheer, grating waste of energy the squeaking wheel represented.
Three leaves from a nearby, windless tree detached themselves, spiraled in the air, and landed at her feet.
Elara pointed, triumphant. "See! I *knew* it. Things happen when you're annoyed."
"That's a coincidence, Elara."
"It's *not*. I've been watching. Wasps show up when you're bored. Books move when you want them. That banner *fell* when that guy was being annoying. And," she paused dramatically, "my shoe *only* gets stuck in puddles that appear in weird, dry places *right after* you get mad at me."
"Your shoe gets stuck in puddles because you don't watch where you're going."
"My shoe gets stuck because you *make* puddles!" she insisted. "But not on purpose. It's like... you're thinking about them, and then they're just... *there*."
This was, unfortunately, getting dangerously close to the truth.
"Elara," I said carefully, "if I could make puddles with my mind, wouldn't I be more famous?"
"You don't *want* to be famous. You want to be boring so nobody bothers you."
Which, damn it, was also true.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. It was a lie, and she knew it was a lie, but it was all I had.
She stared at me for a long, long time. "Okay. I'm going to keep watching. And when you finally admit it, I'm going to say 'I told you so' about eight thousand times."
"That would be inefficient."
"I don't care."
Part Four: The Starveil Run Incident
The Starveil Run was a dumb yearly race. I'd avoided it for three years by pretending to be incompetent.
Elara, however, had decided this was her year. She'd been training. *Hard*.
The day of the race, I stood on the sidelines. I'd run the numbers. She was going to win. She wasn't the fastest, but she had the most stamina.
And then Mika showed up.
She was about seven now, still a fixture on the village periphery, still doing odd jobs, still existing on scraps. And she'd decided to join the race.
This was a problem. Mika... had a tendency to experience elaborate misfortunes around me. I did not want that to interfere with Elara's win.
The race started. Elara shot forward. Mika kept pace with the middle of the pack. Everything was fine.
Until the final turn.
Mika's shoelace—which had been fine a second before—was suddenly, mysteriously, untied.
She stepped on it. She stumbled. She face-planted, hard, into the dirt.
Elara crossed the finish line in first place. Celebrated. Victorious.
Mika, covered in mud and humiliation, just looked like the universe hated her.
The worst part? I didn't even *know* I'd done it until it was over.
My power had, on its own, identified Mika as a potential threat to Elara's victory and... debugged her.
*That was unconscious intervention,* I realized, disturbed. *This is a problem.*
Mika just accepted it as more bad luck.
Somewhere, Ætheria was definitely laughing.
Part Five: Confrontation
It happened about three months later. We were in the village square, on the same bench where she'd vowed to protect me six years ago.
"Okay," Elara said, patting the stone beside her. "Sit."
I sat. She was using the "protector" voice. You don't argue with that voice.
"I know what you're doing," she said, no preamble. "I don't get *how*, but I know. And I need you to stop pretending with me."
"Pretending what?" I tried, out of habit.
"Stop acting like you don't know! Stop making me feel crazy for *noticing*! Stop saying 'coincidence' when we both know it's not!" She took a sharp breath. "You make things happen. When you're annoyed. When you need something. When you're protecting me. You just... *do* it."
This was it. The wall of plausible deniability was cracking.
"Even if that were true," I said slowly, "what would you want me to do?"
"I want you to stop *lying* to me. I'm your sister. I'm *protecting* you. I deserve to know what I'm protecting you from."
It was a reasonable argument.
"If I told you the truth," I said carefully, "you'd either not believe me or be terrified. Neither is a good outcome."
"Let me decide that," she shot back. "I'm smart. I can handle weird."
She was right. She was eight, and she'd already figured out reality was bending around me.
"Okay." I accepted the inevitable. "Ask a specific question. I'll answer it. Honestly."
Elara thought hard. "Are you making the weird things happen? The wasp, the chalk, the puddles, the banner... Mika's shoe?"
"Yes," I admitted. "But not all of it is intentional. It's... an unconscious response. A glitch."
"Like what?"
"Like I get annoyed, and reality... interprets that as a problem to be solved. So it... adjusts. It's involuntary most of the time."
"Can you control it?"
"Partially."
"Is it magic?"
"I don't know. It's more like... editing. Debugging."
Elara nodded slowly. "And you can't turn it off?"
"No."
"Okay." She let out a long breath. "That's... actually less weird than I thought. I thought maybe you were secretly evil."
"I'm not. I'm just trying to... exist."
"You're doing better than that. You're protecting me." She paused. "That's why the wasp came. That guy was boring you, and you got so annoyed you *made* the wasp, and it solved the problem."
"Yes."
"And you didn't even realize you were doing it."
"Not until after."
She was quiet for a long time. "You're going to tell me everything. The *full* truth. But not now. Later. When you're ready. Because I'm your sister, and I'm protecting you, and I need to know *what* I'm protecting."
"That's reasonable," I agreed.
"Also," she added, "you need to stop making Mika fall over. That's cruel, even if it's an accident."
"I'll try."
"Try harder."
Part Six: The Acceptance
After that, something... shifted.
I'd always treated my power as a bug to be hidden. My connections to people as complications to be managed. I'd been trying to optimize my entire life for invisibility.
Elara had just pointed out that I was already engaged. I was already affecting people. I was already important to *her*, whether I wanted to be or not.
This was not an efficient realization. But it was true.
Over the next few months, I started to accept it. Not embrace it. Not be a *hero*. But I had to accept that hiding completely wasn't an option.
People knew. Elara *knew*. Mira suspected. Even Mika, in her own way, had to be aware that something was *wrong* with her luck.
The question wasn't *if* I could hide anymore. It was *how* I was supposed to exist, partially known.
Part Seven: The Pattern Recognition
By the time I was eleven, I had enough data to see the real problem.
The more I tried to hide, the more I stood out. The more I tried to isolate myself, the more people (like Elara) latched on. The more I insisted I wasn't important, the more my actions *made* me important.
It was a perfect, terrible feedback loop.
This was the true nature of Ætheria's Glitch.
She'd said it would force chaos. She'd said it would prevent me from living quietly. She'd been absolutely, infuriatingly, correct.