Part 2-Chapter 13

Part 2-Chapter 13
~Kaisha~

The city didn’t explode. That was the first thing that struck me. No sirens screaming in unison. No walls shattering. No sky tearing itself open in a dramatic display of apocalypse. If anything, the world went eerily…ordinary. Too ordinary.

I stood at the east-facing window long after Hamish settled into whatever uneasy truce he’d struck with the Manor, watching the city breathe below us. Traffic moved. Lights flickered on and off. Somewhere, a train horn sounded, low and distant.

Life continued…and yet, I could feel it. A pressure threaded through the streets like an invisible current, tugging at everything living, everything old, everything that had ever known magic and forgotten it again. The wards hummed beneath my feet, no longer panicked, but alert. Listening. Tracking.

The fallout had begun. It didn’t announce itself with fire. It announced itself with change.

The first report came from the witches’ quarter just after noon. Dirk read it aloud from a scrying slate, his voice tightening with each line. “Spontaneous spell backlash. Three minor covens reported inverted circles. One elder collapsed mid-casting. No deaths…yet.”

“The spells did not fail,” he continued. “They…twisted. Like the magic was responding to something else.”

I swallowed. “Something like me.”

No one argued.

Syrus returned an hour later with news from the packs. Territory markers were shifting on their own, old boundary stones cracking, ancient symbols surfacing beneath modern ones. Wolves were restless. Alphas were calling emergency meets. No one could agree on what they were responding to, only that ignoring it felt wrong.

“Instinct is overriding hierarchy,” Syrus said. “That never ends cleanly.”

Corton tried to lighten the mood. “On the bright side, no one is blaming us yet.”

Redakai didn’t smile.

By midafternoon, the human side of the city began to ripple. Not catastrophes. Not headlines. Smaller things. Stranger things.

Elevators stalling between floors. Streetlights flickering in patterns no electrician could explain. People reporting deja vu so strong it brought them to their knees. A man downtown swore he woke up speaking a language he’d never learned and couldn’t remember by nightfall.

Hospitals reported an uptick in panic attacks, unexplained fevers, fainting spells. Doctors called it stress. Neurological events. Mass anxiety. They were wrong. It was memory. Not conscious. Not coherent. Just echoes brushing against lives that had once brushed against something larger. Against me.

I pressed my forehead to the glass, nausea curling in my stomach. “This is my fault,” I breathed.

Redakai’s reflection appeared beside mine. “No.”

“It started when I inverted that commander,” I protested.

“It started long before that,” he said quietly. “You did not create this. You survived it.”

I shrugged, arguing, “That doesn’t make it better.”

“No,” he agreed. “But it makes it different.”

The wards pulsed again, stronger this time. Not screaming. Broadcasting.

Dirk stiffened. “Olympus just went dark.”

That snapped my attention. “Dark how?”

“Silent,” he said. “Their outer watchers pulled back. Their sigils collapsed inward. They’re consolidating.”

Redakai’s jaw tightened. “They are afraid.”

“Or preparing,” Drayton countered.

Hamish, who had been quiet for once, spoke from the corner. “Both.”

Outside, the sky dimmed subtly, clouds thickening without rain. The air grew heavy, like the city itself was holding its breath. Then my phone buzzed. Not a call. A message.
I didn’t recognize the number.

My pulse spiked. Redakai’s hand hovered near mine, not touching, but close enough to ground me if needed.

I opened it.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE VALLEY?

My breath caught.

Another buzz.

WE DO.

The wards flared violently, reacting to the same instant my chest tightened with instinctive denial. Not memory. Not recognition. Resistance.

“I do not like that,” Corton muttered.

Dirk moved fast, throwing containment sigils around the room. “That wasn’t a trace. That was intentional.”

Redakai stepped in front of me fully now. “Block it.”

“I’m trying,” Dirk snapped. “But it’s not coming through her.”

“Then how?” I whispered.

Hamish’s gaze darkened. “Through the city.”

As if to prove him right, a distant boom rolled across the skyline. Not an explosion. A resonance. Windows rattled. Car alarms went off in clusters.

Syrus swore. “That was the old river corridor.”

I felt my stomach drop. “That’s where it started.”

Another pulse rippled outward, this one visible, a shimmer bending the air above rooftops like heat on asphalt. People screamed. Not in terror. In confusion.

I felt it then…a tug low in my ribs, not demanding, not violent. Inviting.

“No,” I whispered, backing away from the window.

Redakai caught me, hands firm on my shoulders. “Stay with me,” he ordered.
“I am,” I said, breath shaking. “Or at least...trying.”

The city lights flickered again, then steadied as sirens wailed in the distance.

Dirk’s voice was tight. “This is only the first wave.”

“Wave of what?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“Awakening,” Hamish replied softly. “Not full. Not clean…but enough to destabilize everything built on forgetting.”

Redakai looked at me, eyes dark with something close to grief. “They are going to start looking for answers.”

“And they’ll find me,” I uttered.

He nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “Eventually.”

Outside our small space, the city breathed again, uneasy but standing, for now.

Feeling the seal strain, I pressed my hand to my chest,knowing the weight of a world remembered just enough to be dangerous.

I didn’t know what I had been before, and wasn't sure I wanted to know. But the city didn’t care about my want, it only knew that something ancient had awoken.