It started with a humming in my bones.
By morning, the air in Starlake felt... off. Like static before a thunderstorm, heavy and sharp, like the sky was bracing itself. The kind of pressure that made your skin itch and your thoughts race. Something was wrong—wrong in the way you know without knowing, the way animals know an earthquake is coming.
And I wasn't the only one who noticed.
Birds circled without landing. The traffic lights at the intersection by the school flickered in strange patterns—green, green, red, yellow, then all three blinking at once. Mr. Beckman, who ran the corner gas station, stood outside muttering to himself as he poured black coffee into the bushes, like he'd forgotten what mugs were for.
Ash texted me just two words:
**"It's beginning."**
---
First period English didn't feel like school anymore. It felt like a fever dream.
Mrs. Brightwell stood at the front of the class, whiteboard marker in hand, her mouth slightly open like she'd frozen mid-thought. I watched the clock tick three full minutes before she moved. Not blinked. Not coughed. Just *stood.*
Then, like someone hit "play" on a paused video, she uncapped the marker and turned to the board, her handwriting stiff and strange:
> **WISH = WILL + ENERGY**
That's all she wrote.
No explanation. No syllabus. No "open your textbooks." She gathered her things and walked straight out of the classroom, leaving a stunned silence behind.
I looked at Ash, three rows over. He didn't look shocked. He looked *angry.*
---
At lunch, we met in the old stairwell by the boiler room. Ash was pacing before I even said a word.
"It's spreading," he said, his voice low, sharp. "The distortion field is growing. And not just here—*everywhere.*"
I blinked. "Distortion? Like what happened at the dance?"
"That was just the start." He pulled out his laptop, showing me a local map overlaid with pulsing red lines. "This was the Engine's energy field yesterday." He hit a key. The lines grew thicker. "And this is today."
It was like veins—spiderwebs of interference threading through our school, the town, the woods behind Starlake.
"You said it was evolving," I whispered. "But what does that mean? Is it... sentient?"
"I don't know." His jaw clenched. "But I think someone's *guiding* it. Or feeding it."
I stared at the map. "Feeding it how?"
Ash looked at me, then away. "Through us. Through the wishes. The stronger the emotions behind them—grief, desperation, love, rage—the more energy the Engine absorbs. Someone's been orchestrating this. Letting it grow."
A chill crept over me. "Lila."
"I think she's been manipulating us for months."
---
After school, I found Jason waiting by the track field.
The sky was washed in an eerie orange, the sun too low, the shadows too long for 3:45 p.m. Jason stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, staring at the empty space where the black horse had once stood.
There was only a single horseshoe left in the dirt, steaming faintly as if it had just been plucked from a forge.
"I remember a wish I didn't make," Jason said before I could speak.
I blinked. "What?"
"This morning, I sat down at my mom's old piano. I've never touched it. But my hands..." He flexed his fingers. "They moved on their own. I played a song I've never learned, never even heard before."
He turned to me, eyes wide. "It was like I inherited someone else's memory."
I tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Jason stepped closer. "You said the Engine changes reality, right? So what happens when it changes *people*? Who we are? What we remember?"
"I don't know," I said softly. "But I think we're past the point of undoing it."
He let out a breath, shaky. "Calla... I care about you. But I don't even know what parts of me are real anymore. I'm scared of what I'm becoming."
I reached out, my hand wrapping around his. "I never meant to drag you into this. I thought—I thought I could fix something broken. I never meant for the cracks to spread."
Jason didn't pull away. But he didn't smile, either.
"I want to believe you," he said. "But I don't want to wake up one day and not remember why."
---
That night, Ash and I broke into Lila's locker.
He'd looped the security camera feed using a portable scrambler—too advanced for any high schooler to legally own, but Ash never cared much for rules.
The hallway was eerily quiet, bathed in flickering fluorescent light. I crouched beside locker #216, spinning the dial with numb fingers until it clicked open.
Inside: the expected—lip gloss, textbooks, a pack of cinnamon gum—and then... the unexpected.
A black leather notebook, old and worn, edges soft with use.
I flipped it open and felt my breath catch.
Inside were diagrams—complex machine schematics, notes written in symbols I didn't recognize, and maps. Pages and pages of maps.
Starlake, yes, but marked with red energy lines. Convergences. Fault points. Places where wishes had bled into the real world.
And tucked into the back cover, a photo.
My father. Standing beside a younger Lila—no older than twelve—outside the ruins of the old Starlake Observatory.
He was smiling. She wasn't.
I flipped the photo over. One line written in faded blue ink:
> **Phase One complete. Initiate tethering protocol.**
My hands shook.
"I knew it," Ash whispered beside me. "She's not just some power-hungry social manipulator. She's a *node*—a tether point. She's been connected to the Engine from the beginning."
"And my dad…" My voice cracked. "He built it. He didn't just design the machine. He designed *her.*"
We stared at the photo in silence, the pieces falling into place—and forming something much darker than either of us had expected.
---
The lights in the hallway flickered violently.
Then dimmed.
Then turned blood-red.
I looked up.
At the far end of the hallway, just beyond the haze of red light, stood the black horse.
Motionless. Watching me with eyes that glowed like dying stars.
Ash saw it too. "Calla," he said, low and urgent. "Don't move."
But I did.
Because I recognized it now—not just as a symbol. Not just as some mysterious manifestation of the Engine's power.
It was a *consequence.* A harbinger.
A reflection of every wish made without care. Every fracture widened by want.
The horse's head lowered, not in threat—but in sorrow.
And then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.
---
Ash grabbed my arm. "We need to go. Now."
But I couldn't stop staring at the red lights, the echo of hooves in my ears, the photo burning a hole in my hand.
Because for the first time, I wasn't sure who the real threat was.
The Engine.
Lila,
My father
Or me .