The laughter downstairs had softened to a hum by the time Kai returned inside.

  His eyes had adjusted differently now — not just to the light, but to detail. The world looked clearer, edges sharper. Even the way shadows formed on the floor seemed more distinct than before.

  He moved through the hallway quietly, letting the group’s voices pass around him like wind through branches.

  “Can you imagine being able to phase through walls?” Jonah was saying.

  “I still want to breathe underwater,” Iris replied, dryly.

  Kai paused.

  Her voice calm, and always a step removed, felt like a thread he could pull. She never asked too much, never said too little. But Kai knew one thing:

  She observed everything.

  And now… she might be the perfect one to test the next evolution.

  He stepped further in, catching her eye.

  “Iris,” he said.

  She looked up.

  “Come with me. Just for a minute.”

  There was no hesitation in her. She rose smoothly, gave a nod to the group, and followed him through the hall, past the glass doors, and into the far reading room — the quietest place in the villa.

  Once the door clicked shut behind them, the space filled with silence.

  Kai didn’t sit. He stood by the window, backlit by the soft glow of the outdoor lights.

  “I want to try something new,” he said. “Something we haven’t done yet.”

  She arched an eyebrow, waiting.

  “Not strength. Not reflexes. This time… memory.”

  “Memory?” she echoed.

  “I want to try imprinting something cognitive,” he said. “To see if the Watchers can help with… recall. Photographic precision.”

  She studied him. “You mean information retention.”

  “Yes.”

  She was quiet a moment. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re already close,” Kai replied. “You don’t guess. You observe patterns, details, phrasing. Your mind’s already sharp. I’m not giving you something unnatural. I’m just… finishing it.”

  Iris didn’t respond right away. She walked slowly toward the small chair near the bookshelf, running a finger along the armrest before sitting.

  Then she looked at him, expression unreadable.

  “What are the risks?”

  Kai hesitated.

  This was the part he never enjoyed — the dance around truth. The weight of what he knew versus what they could handle.

  “There might be none,” he said carefully. “Or there might be too many to measure.”

  “You’re not sure,” she said.

  “I’m sure of the logic,” he replied. “But the mind isn’t like the body. It stores everything — trauma, joy, boredom. I don’t know what happens when that door never closes.”

  Silence.

  She exhaled through her nose. Then:

  “Let’s try.”

  Kai met her eyes.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I trust the Watchers,” she said. Then added: “And I trust you.”

  That landed heavier than he expected.

  He nodded once, moved to stand behind her, and closed his eyes.

  The air around him thickened, not literally — but in the way it always did when time began to yield. His heartbeat stretched, the pulse of reality itself bending to his intention.

  The world dimmed.

  Not darkness.

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  Just… quiet.

  He opened his eyes into the smoky place.

  And there he was — outside of himself again.

  Iris sat perfectly still in the chair. The folds of her sleeves held their shape in mid-motion. A tendril of her hair floated as if caught in syrup, frozen in the act of falling over her shoulder.

  Everything moved in slow, syrupy time.

  Kai walked around her slowly, arms relaxed at his sides, taking in every detail.

  This wasn’t the physical world anymore — not entirely. It was thought rendered as form. Intuition painted in smoke. Here, Kai didn’t operate through force.

  He closed his eyes again, not to see less — but to see inward.

  He focused on what he remembered from the Book — about memory, emotion, vibration. How learningwasn’t just repetition, but anchoring. A moment, a smell, a feeling — all stored together, all retrievable through alignment.

  In Iris, her mind was already exceptional. He knew it. He’d seen her recall floor plans after a single glance. Patterns in how people spoke. She had the architecture. She just didn’t have the key to open it at will.

  Kai extended a hand slowly and hovered it just above her head. He imagined just a new rule set, laid like a program across her mind:

  “Anything seen… is stored.”

  “Anything stored… is accessible.”

  “No detail is forgotten — unless she wishes it to be.”

  He pictured it as a new layer — almost like a transparent sheet placed over her thoughts. Not rewriting, not overwriting. Just clarifying.

  The smoke swirled tighter.

  A small pulse echoed outward from her body.

  And Kai knew it was time.

  He stepped back toward his body.

  Stepped back into breath.

  Kai opened his eyes slowly, the stillness of the smoky world retreating behind his gaze like fog parting before the sun.

  The room came back in waves — the woodgrain of the bookshelf, the subtle buzz of an overhead light.

  Iris was still seated.

  But something in her posture had changed.

  She wasn’t tense. Not confused. But still — aware in a way she hadn’t been before. Her eyes weren’t looking around the room, they were scanning it — absorbing, cataloguing, filing.

  Kai said nothing.

  He stepped to the side and grabbed a worn book from the shelf — thick, hardcover, dusty at the edges. An old psychology textbook Iris had never seen.

  He held it out.

  “Try this.”

  She blinked, took the book in silence, and opened to a random page.

  Her eyes moved quickly — not rushed, but precise. Line after line. Page after page.

  Thirty seconds. Flip.

  Flip.

  Flip.

  Kai watched her. Not her face — her pupils.

  They tracked like scanners.

  Not darting randomly.

  Not rereading.

  After ten pages, she stopped.

  Closed the book. Set it on her lap.

  Kai tilted his head. “Tell me about page five.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then:

  “Section heading: ‘The Illusion of Rational Behavior.’”

  She continued.

  “Paragraph one: ‘Contrary to popular belief, human decisions are largely emotional in origin, and logic is often applied after-the-fact to justify pre-determined choices.’”

  Kai’s eyes didn’t move.

  “Paragraph two?” he asked softly.

  She didn’t even blink.

  “‘This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as post hoc rationalization, occurs most clearly in split-second decisions where instinct overrides conscious reasoning.’”

  She recited the entire page.

  Word for word.

  When she finished, the silence between them was weighty.

  Then Iris looked down at the book.

  Her voice was softer now.

  “I can see the page,” she whispered. “Not just remember it. I see it. The layout. The way the ink looks. Even the crease in the corner.”

  Kai stepped closer. “And?”

  “I can flip to any page in my mind and pull it up like it’s right in front of me.”

  She looked up.

  “And I don’t know how I’m doing it.”

  They walked back into the living room slowly.

  Kai entered the room with Iris walking quietly beside him.

  The group looked up immediately.

  The laughter that had filled the space moments before slowed into a murmur. Everyone shifted — not out of fear, but curiosity.

  Jonah leaned forward. “You two just left mid-discussion. We were about to send out a search party. Was Iris summoned by the Watchers or something?”

  Kai gave a slight nod. “Something like that.”

  Mara looked at Iris, half-grinning. “Wait—what does that mean? Did you actually talk to them?”

  Iris shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Not really?” Darren asked. “What happened then?”

  Kai stepped closer into the room. His tone was steady but low. “It’ll be easier if I show you.”

  He turned toward Jonah. “There’s a book on the side table. The paperback with the yellow cover.”

  Jonah glanced down, grabbed it — The Café on the Pier, a light novel someone had tossed there days ago — and held it up. “This one?”

  “That’s the one,” Kai said. “Toss it to her.”

  Jonah tossed it gently.

  Iris caught it without breaking eye contact. She sat down and flipped it open — not dramatically, just casually, like she was skimming something she already half-knew.

  She stopped at a page somewhere in the middle. Her eyes moved.

  Ten seconds.

  She flipped.

  Again.

  Then once more.

  Then she shut it.

  “Alright,” Felix said. “Speed-reading?”

  “Page 143,” Iris said calmly. “That’s the one where the main character argues with his sister at the train station. The first line is: ‘If you keep running from everything, you’ll never stop.’ The last paragraph describes the smell of the sea and her suitcase handle peeling slightly. There’s a coffee stain near the bottom corner of the page.”

  Everyone went silent.

  Jonah raised his hand. “Okay, that’s creepy.”

  Iris looked at him, almost amused. “You’re the one who left the book there. You were eating toast when you read it. The jam ended up on page forty-eight.”

  Jonah blinked. “No one saw that.”

  “You sighed while reading it.”

  Kai stepped in. “She remembers everything.”

  Mara looked at Iris. “Like… perfectly?”

  Iris nodded once. “Like a picture. Like I’m still looking at it.”

  Felix stared, then glanced at Kai. “You gave her this?”

  “I didn’t give her anything,” Kai said. “The watchers helped her unlock it.”

  The room was silent — but now it felt like the air was vibrating. Like something just shifted and no one could fully name it.

  Iris leaned back slightly. “It’s not just words. It’s voices. Expressions. Colors. Faces. I don’t know where it ends.”

  Lina whispered, “That’s… kind of cool.”

  “Or dangerous,” Marcus added quietly.

  Darren nodded. “Depends who remembers what.”

  Jonah looked down at the book in his lap. “So… what else can the Watchers do?”

  Kai didn’t answer.

  Because that answer was still unfolding.

  Mara was the first to speak.

  “Okay,” she said, sitting forward on the couch, eyes wide with mischief. “So if Iris can remember every word she’s ever seen, then… can I ask the Watchers for, I don’t know—super hearing?”

  Lina raised a hand. “I’d like instant language download, Matrix-style. Wake up fluent in Japanese. Or Russian. Or Morse code.”

  Jonah leaned back, thinking aloud. “No, I want something more practical. Like photographic aim. Hit anything I throw, perfect accuracy.”

  Felix perked up. “I want to be able to type code without ever making a typo.”

  “You already do that,” Lina muttered.

  “Yeah, but faster.”

  Darren crossed his arms. “I’d take super speed. Just enough to blur past people in a hallway and freak them out.”

  Marcus grinned. “Okay, but hear me out. What if I could shoot lightning from my hands?”

  “Shut up,” Mara laughed.

  “No, seriously. Just, like—one zap. A day.”

  “Why not fly while you’re at it?” Iris deadpanned.

  Felix pointed at her. “Actually, flight would be cool.”

  “I’d rather teleport,” Jonah said.

  Evan finally spoke from his usual seat by the window. “I’d just like to always know when someone’s lying.”

  That quieted the room for a beat.

  They all looked at him.

  “That’s terrifying,” Mara said.

  Evan just shrugged. “Still useful.”

  Marcus nodded slowly. “I mean… fair.”

  Felix sat up. “Okay, Kai. Real question.”

  Everyone turned to him. Then to Kai.

  Felix leaned forward. “Can the Watchers actually give us any of that?

  Kai stood near the wall, arms crossed, watching them all with a look that was half-smile, half-study. He let the question hang for a second before answering.

  “They can give you a lot,” he said. “But not anything.”

  Mara tilted her head. “What’s the difference?”

  Kai looked around the room, then walked to the center slowly.

  “There are rules,” he said. “Everything the Watchers give has to follow logic. Universal design. You can’t just break reality because you want something cool.”

  “For example breathing underwater,” Kai replied. “That’s a popular one.”

  He paused. The room was quiet.

  “For that to happen, your lungs would have to change. Not slightly — completely. You’d need a different respiratory system. And if that happened… you wouldn’t be able to breathe air anymore. Your body would adapt for water — but at the cost of what you already have.”

  Lina blinked. “So… we’d become fish people?”

  Kai nodded. “More or less. Biology is not optional. You don’t get powers — you get adaptations. If it doesn’t make sense within the rules of the body or the world, the Watchers can’t give it to you. Or they won’t.”

  Felix frowned. “So no teleportation?”

  “Not unless you figure out a way to disassemble your atoms, survive the pain, reassemble them somewhere else, and not lose your mind in the process.”

  Mara raised her hand like a student. “What about invisibility?”

  “Bend light perfectly around your body without burning yourself or going blind,” Kai said. “Theoretically possible. Practically? Fatal.”

  Darren leaned back with a thoughtful look. “So if I asked for super speed, they’d have to strengthen every bone, muscle, tendon, and my heart just to survive it?”

  “Correct,” Kai said. “And even then, it’d have limits.”

  Marcus rubbed his chin. “So… what’s the best kind of ability?”

  Kai didn’t answer right away.

  Then: “The kind that improves what you already are.”

  He looked around the room again, and this time, his gaze was heavier.

  “The Watchers don’t make you someone else,” he said. “They make you more of yourself.”

  The group fell into silence again, but this time it was thoughtful.

  For the first time, they weren’t just dreaming about powers or tricks.

  They were thinking about who they could become.