"What changes us most… is what we never talk about."
The examination bell rang, echoing like a pulse across the corridor.
Pens clattered. Students sighed in relief or panic. The final science paper was done. Just two more subjects remained — and the school year would end.
But inside Ameira, Rudren, and Vikran, something else was ending too.
The Feeling They Couldn't Unfeel
It had started subtly.
For Ameira, it was the air.
Wind moved differently when she passed. The breeze seemed to bend — lifting her skirt, twirling her hair — as if greeting her. As if recognizing her. When she looked out windows, curtains shifted before she even touched them.
She didn't tell anyone.
Because how could she?
For Rudren, it was lightning.
Streetlights buzzed louder near him. Phones glitched in his hands. The air around him sometimes sparked with a faint smell — like rain on metal.
One night, his ceiling fan sparked blue when he was angry — then stopped, normal again.
His mother thought it was faulty wiring.
He said nothing.
Vikran's change was the land.
The soil near his feet stayed soft longer. Plants he watered flourished quickly. Even when a breeze passed through their metal-sheet home, it never touched the oil lamp near him.
His sister called it luck.
He smiled.
But he knew luck didn't explain it.
One Last Day Together
"Let's skip prep class," Rudren muttered after school.
Ameira blinked. "You? Skip class?"
Rudren looked away. "We're not going to have many more of these."
They all knew what he meant.
So they walked — past the tuition building, beyond the street market, down to the riverbank where they had once built sandcastles as kids.
Vikran sat on a rock.
Ameira traced leaves with her finger.
Rudren threw stones across the water, watching them skip.
No one said it was goodbye.
But every silence between their words whispered it.
The First Glitch
Ameira's hand brushed against a feather floating by.
Only… it didn't fall.
It hovered midair. Light and slow.
Her fingers trembled.
"Did you see—?" she started to say.
But Rudren cut in, pointing at the sky. "Storm clouds. No forecast for it. Weird."
Vikran stared at the clouds too.
All three of them felt it now.
Not fear.
Not excitement.
A pull. From inside.
That Night
Ameira sat by the window and felt her sketchbook pages turning — without wind.
She closed her eyes. Somewhere within, something shifted. Like air forming words in her ribs.
Rudren's alarm clock blinked wrong numbers. Outside, a streetlamp cracked, and a sparking thread crawled up his forearm before vanishing.
Vikran, while milking the cows with his mother, felt the ground gently vibrate when he stepped forward — but only for him.
Later, he whispered to the calf again.
"What's happening to me…?"
The Souls Stir, But Say Nothing
They could have spoken.
They could have revealed themselves.
But they didn't.
Because it wasn't time yet.
The souls inside each of them — dragon and lion alike — knew one thing:
"Power without readiness leads only to ruin."
So they waited.
Not hidden, but silent.
Like thunder before a storm.
Like light before a flare.
Like fate holding its breath.
To be continued