I never asked to be special. I never wanted to be different. I was just Riana, a sixteen-year-old girl trying to survive high school algebra and the awkwardness of cafeteria lunches. But the truth was, I wasn't just Riana. I was something else, something I'd spent my whole life hiding: a goddess, trapped in a human body, with no memory of how I got here or why.
My only solace was my circle of friends, the only people who knew my secret. They weren't exactly normal either.
There was Mia, who could make flowers bloom from concrete with a whisper and whose laughter sounded like wind chimes. Khalifa, whose eyes changed color with his mood and who could calm a storm with a single, steady breath. And Shell, the quiet one, who could speak to stones and whose skin shimmered with a faint, pearlescent light when the moon was full. They were my anchors, my guardians in this confusing, mortal world.
We met in the forgotten corner of the school library, behind the dusty geography section. It was our sanctuary.
"The static is getting worse," I whispered one afternoon, rubbing my temples. It was a pressure, a buzzing in my veins that happened when my power—whatever it truly was—tried to push against the confines of my human form. A book on the shelf beside me trembled.
Mia placed a cool hand on my wrist. A tiny forget-me-not sprouted from the spine of the trembling book, and the shaking stopped. "It's the veil," she said softly. "It's thinning. The human world and ours… they're brushing against each other."
Khalifa nodded, his eyes a worried slate gray. "We've all felt it. Whispers in the plumbing. Shadows that move wrong. It's seeking a way through."
"It's seeking *you*, Riana," Shell said, her voice barely audible. She was tracing the grain of the wooden table. "The imbalance started when you arrived. You are the lock. Or the key."
A cold dread settled in my stomach. I'd always feared my secret would be discovered, that I'd be seen as a freak. I never considered that my mere existence here could be causing a rift, endangering both worlds.
The crisis came on a Tuesday. A strange, silver mist began seeping from the old storm drains in the park after school. It wasn't water vapor; it swallowed sound and made the air taste of ozone and old magic. Animals fled. The few people nearby walked through it with glazed, confused expressions.
My friends and I stood at the edge of the playground, watching it spread.
"It's a tear," Khalifa said, his breath creating a clear, mist-free bubble around us. "A small one, but it will grow."
The buzzing in my blood became a roar. The pressure was immense, painful. I felt a pull, a call from within the mist. It was familiar and terrifying.
"I have to go in," I said, my voice trembling.
"We're coming with you," Mia stated, her usual gentleness replaced by steel.
We stepped into the silver fog. The human world fell away, replaced by swirling, half-formed shapes—memories of a world I couldn't remember. Towers of light, forests of crystal, a sky with two moons. And at the center of the tear, a pulsing, dark knot of corrupted energy, feeding on the instability my presence caused.
It wasn't a monster. It was a wound.
The power within me surged, no longer just a static buzz but a song, a command. I didn't know what I was doing. I just reached out, not with my hands, but with the essence of what I was. Mia's vines of light wrapped around my will, strengthening it. Khalifa's steadying breath gave it focus. Shell's ancient whispers from the earth below gave it form.
I didn't destroy the knot. I… remembered it. I sang a note of pure, golden harmony, a piece of the divinity I carried. The dark knot unraveled, absorbed into the light. The silver mist dissolved, retreating back into the drains with a sigh. The park was just a park again.
I slumped, exhausted, into Shell's steadying arms. The pressure was gone. For the first time, the power inside me felt settled, integrated, like a part of me I finally understood.
"You sealed it," Khalifa said, awe in his voice.
"We sealed it," I corrected, looking at my friends—my fellow exiles, my found family. I wasn't just a goddess in a human body, a secret to be hidden. I was Riana. And with Mia, Khalifa, and Shell by my side, I was home. The veil was stable again, for now. But we knew our work wasn't over. We were the guardians of the threshold, and this was only the beginning.