The café wasn’t far from campus. Tucked between a bookstore and a flower shop, its windows fogged slightly from the late afternoon chill. The kind of place people walked past without noticing — exactly the kind of place meant for a conversation that wasn’t meant to be overheard.

  Kai sat by the window, hands wrapped around a paper cup that had long gone cold.

  Ms. Callahan arrived without a sound. No rustle of footsteps. No push of wind. She simply sat down across from him like she’d been there the whole time.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, pulling her sleeves back neatly.

  Kai looked at her, eyes calm but fixed. “I didn’t come for small talk.”

  She nodded. “Then we’ll speak plainly.”

  Outside, the city moved in rhythm. Cars passed. People walked. The world hummed, unaware.

  “I was part of the group,” she began. “The same one your father belonged to. The one that watches the threads.”

  Kai raised an eyebrow. “Threads?”

  “Of time. Of consequence. Of reality. Our job was simple — shape the world where needed. Let it breathe where not. Every major event in the last hundred years? They were involved. Some stopped. Some caused.”

  “You’re saying you control history.”

  “No,” she said. “We curate it.”

  Kai blinked. “What gives you the right?”

  She looked away, then back. “We never claimed the right. We just had the power. And once you see what’s coming — what could come — you stop asking who should. You start asking who can.”

  He didn’t respond.

  She continued, more softly, “There are wars that never began. Epidemics that were erased before they were named. Entire nations that almost vanished… until someone pulled a thread.”

  The weight of it settled between them.

  Then Kai’s phone buzzed.

  He glanced down.

  Felix.

  He answered, voice low. “Yeah?”

  “Finally,” Felix exhaled on the other end. “You good? You disappeared, man. It’s been almost a week.”

  “A week?” Kai repeated, surprised. “Felt like days.”

  “Yeah, well… Iris thought you got kidnapped or something.”

  “Alright. Just don’t vanish again.”

  Kai hung up and slid the phone away. He looked up. “Sorry.”

  Ms. Callahan shook her head. “It’s fine. “

  Kai leaned forward slightly. “Can you change things too? Like… cause events?”

  She smiled.

  “Yes. And much more.”

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  Then she blinked.

  Just once.

  “Look,” she said, nodding toward the window.

  Kai turned.

  A man in a crisp white button-down was crossing the street, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. As he stepped off the curb, a bird swooped past — chasing a fly — and with almost surgical precision, it dropped a fresh, unfortunate splatter directly onto his shoulder.

  The man froze. Looked up. Shouted something at the sky.

  Kai’s mouth parted slightly. “That was you?”

  She nodded. “Just a small ripple.”

  He leaned back, eyebrows raised. “That fast?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Then:

  “Your father is even faster.”

  That landed differently.

  Kai’s fingers tightened slightly around his cup. “Where is he?”

  Her eyes softened. “He loves you. And your mother. That’s why he stays away.”

  “He’s protecting us.”

  “Yes. The Order doesn’t know about you — not fully. He’s kept your existence… blurred. But that won’t last forever.”

  Kai looked out the window again. The man was still dabbing at his shirt with napkins.

  “You said they track changes,” Kai said slowly. “How?”

  “They monitor the threads,” she replied. “Like scientists watching distortions in space-time. Big shifts echo. Small ones… hum.”

  Kai felt the candlelit room in his mind flicker.

  “And I’ve been humming.”

  She nodded.

  “Which means,” she said, “if you’re not careful — the next blink might not be mine.”

  Kai’s thoughts moved like chess pieces. Slow. Calculated. He didn’t look at Ms. Callahan right away — just watched the steam rise from her drink, twisting through the air like smoke off a ritual flame.

  “They’re going to find me eventually,” he said.

  “Eventually,” she agreed.

  “And when they do?”

  “If you’re not ready… they won’t need to kill you. They’ll just erase the part of you that resists.” She said it calmly, without drama. “You’ll still be Kai. But not this version. Not the version who questions, who learns, who chooses.”

  Kai’s fingers drummed against the tabletop.

  “You said you used to work with them,” he said.

  “With your father,” she corrected. “Not all of them. Some of us left. The ones who realized that shaping the world without accountability was as dangerous as letting it burn.”

  “And my father? He left too?”

  “Not by choice,” she murmured. “He broke one of their laws. He used time to protect feeling. Not function.”

  Kai raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

  She looked at him with a strange expression — admiration, maybe. Or warning.

  “It means he bent time not to prevent war, or to save a leader, or to collapse a regime… but to spare you and your mother pain.”

  Kai didn’t speak.

  “He fractured the thread for love. That’s something they never forgave.”

  A quiet hum filled the café — a blender starting behind the counter, a few customers chatting near the door. But at their table, the world felt paused.

  “I want to learn,” Kai said finally.

  Ms. Callahan tilted her head.

  “I want to know what he knew. How to see what’s coming. How to move through it. If they’re watching for ripples, I want to be the storm they can’t predict.”

  She smiled faintly. “That’s exactly how he sounded.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  “I can show you the beginning. But you’ll have to earn the rest.”

  Kai leaned forward. “How?”

  She reached into her coat pocket and slid a worn matchbox across the table.

  On its surface: a black ink sigil — an open eye surrounded by a broken circle.

  “Use this when you’re alone. Light a single match. Nothing more. If your mind is ready… it will open.”

  Kai picked it up slowly.

  “It’s not magic,” she added. “It’s memory. Compressed.”

  He nodded, tucking it into his hoodie.

  “And when they notice me?” he asked.

  She finished her coffee. Stood.

  “Then you’ll have a choice,” she said, slinging her coat over one shoulder. “Hide… or become undeniable.”

  With that, she walked out.

  Kai remained still, the matchbox in his palm.

  Not lighter.

  Not heavier.

  Just exactly what it needed to be.

  Kai didn’t say a word when he got home.

  He passed his mother quietly, answering her half-hearted “You good?” with a nod and a faint smile. She didn’t press. She never did.

  By the time he reached his room, he was already unzipping his hoodie, his fingers brushing against the worn matchbox in his pocket. He closed the door. Locked it. Pulled the curtains.

  The café conversation still rang in his ears like distant thunder.

  “Hide… or become undeniable.”

  Kai stood in the center of his room, the matchbox in his hand. It felt heavier now, as if it carried more than cardboard and sulfur.

  He slid one match free.

  Struck it.

  The flame burst into life — ordinary at first. Soft, orange-yellow. The kind of fire you’d light a candle with. But the silence that followed wasn’t ordinary. The air in the room shifted. Thickened.

  Then he saw it.

  A faint glow. Green, pulsing softly like breath — coming from the wall.

  No — behind it.

  Kai’s eyes narrowed. He stepped toward the far corner. The one wall that never caught sunlight. The one that hid what others weren’t meant to find.

  He whispered the words, low and clear:

  “Ut supra, ut infra”

  The wall creaked, It pulled back and slid open revealing the secret passage behind it.

  The hidden library.

  Books he hadn’t read yet, as he stepped inside, the glow was gone.

  Just a room again.

  Normal.

  Kai frowned. Still holding the match, he struck a second one.

  And the room changed.

  It began as a shimmer — faint lines crawling across the stone wall. At first, they looked like cracks. But then the firelight hit them, and they glowed.

  Symbols. Words. Entire passages.

  Written in luminous green, like ink made from memory.

  They stretched across the walls in neat rows — paragraphs, diagrams, swirling lines of script that pulsed gently in the dark. The farther he looked, the more appeared. Layers upon layers. The entire wall… covered.

  Kai stepped forward, his breath caught in his throat.

  The words weren’t random.

  He recognized them.

  Illuminatii.

  The eye inside the triangle.

  The villa.

  Names.

  Felix. Iris. Jonah. Evan. Marcus. Mara.

  Even Lila.

  Even Evan’s black SUV.

  Every detail. Every move. Every plan. Written like it had already happened.

  Like it had been intended.

  Kai’s heart raced. He reached out, running his fingers over the glowing text. It pulsed faintly beneath his touch, not warm, not cold — just… real.

  He took a step back.

  The fire burned lower.

  More words surfaced. Smaller this time.

  The pawns are in place. The child begins to see.

  Kai stared.

  He didn’t know whether to feel betrayed… or protected.

  Had it all been his choice?

  Or had it been scripted?

  Was he the writer now? Or still the ink?

  He swallowed hard. The flame kissed his fingers, then flickered out.

  The green light faded with it.

  Darkness returned.

  But Kai remained still.

  And the only thought in his head—

  He was preparing me.

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