CHAPTER 2 — GLITCHES
She didn’t go to class.
She wandered the hallways instead, drifting past lockers and bulletin boards and clusters of students who didn’t notice her. Or maybe they did — maybe they felt the wrongness in the air, the faint static that always followed her when her emotions were too loud.
She kept her hands shoved deep in her pockets, fingers trembling.
The crash replayed in her mind in jagged flashes. The boy’s shout. The screech of tires. The thud.
She hadn’t touched him. She hadn’t wished for it. But she had felt something — a pulse, a ripple, a shift — and the world had responded.
Her stomach twisted.
She needed to calm down.
She ducked into the nearest empty classroom, closed the door, and leaned against it. The silence pressed in around her, thick and heavy. She exhaled shakily and reached for the remote on the teacher’s desk.
The TV mounted on the wall blinked awake.
A morning news broadcast flickered onto the screen — a cheerful anchor talking about weather patterns and weekend events. Something normal. Something harmless.
She focused on the anchor’s voice, trying to let it drown out the panic clawing at her ribs.
But the anchor said the word accident.
And her breath hitched.
The screen glitched.
Not a normal glitch — not a pixel freeze or a buffering hiccup. The anchor’s face stretched sideways, smeared across the screen like wet paint dragged by invisible fingers. The colors warped into sickly greens and purples. The audio slowed into a warped groan.
She flinched.
“No, no, no—”
The screen snapped back to normal.
Then glitched again.
Then snapped back.
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. She dropped the remote, backing away from the TV as if it were alive.
Her emotions weren’t just inside her. They were in the room. In the air. In the circuitry.
She grabbed the remote again, hands shaking, and switched the channel.
A cartoon. Bright colors. Silly voices.
Safe.
Except the characters’ faces began to distort too — eyes stretching, mouths melting into jagged lines, bodies bending like rubber.
She felt her anger spike — not at the cartoon, not at the TV, but at herself.
And the screen went black.
Not off. Not broken.
Just… black.
A void.
She pressed the power button. Nothing.
She unplugged the TV. Nothing.
She whispered, “Please,” even though she didn’t know who she was talking to.
The TV stayed black.
Her pulse hammered. She stumbled backward, knocking into a desk. The lights overhead flickered, dimmed, then steadied.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.
The lights brightened again.
She opened her eyes slowly, afraid of what she’d see.
The TV blinked back on.
Perfectly normal. Perfectly clear. Perfectly fine.
Her breath shook out of her in a trembling exhale.
She wasn’t imagining this. She wasn’t cursed. She wasn’t unlucky.
Her emotions were reaching out and touching the world — bending it, warping it, breaking it.
And she had no idea how to stop.
A knock on the classroom door made her jump.
She turned.
A woman stood in the doorway — older, silver‑haired, eyes sharp and knowing.
She didn’t look surprised. She didn’t look confused. She didn’t look afraid.
She looked like she had been searching for her.
The woman said, “You felt it, didn’t you?”
Her throat tightened. “Felt what?”
The woman stepped inside, closing the door behind her.
“The ripple,” she said softly. “The distortion. The world bending around you.”
Her heart stopped.
The woman smiled — not kindly, not cruelly, but knowingly.
“You’re a Kireth,” she said. “And it’s time you learned what that means.”
The lights flickered once more.
But this time, she didn’t think it was her.
This time, she thought the world itself was reacting to the woman’s words.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsDR6NuRXxL
and then Add to home screen.