The first thing I learned in this life was that the world was loud. Not just with the chatter of people or the grind of traffic, but with a constant, low hum of raw power. It was an energy that bled from every person, a unique signature called a Catalyst. Mine was silent, a ghost in the hum of the city, and that suited me just fine. My last life was a cage built from silence, and I still flinched at loud noises and sudden movements. This new life was a chance to finally fade, to be a nobody in a sea of somebodies.
Then came the bully.
His name was Jax, and his Catalyst was a violent, flickering thing of fire and anger. The air around him always felt hotter, drier, and it carried the distinct metallic tang of scorched ozone. He lived in the middle-class suburb of Silverwood, a place of clean streets and well-kept lawns where children's Catalysts were celebrated and managed by doting parents. My foster home was an old, battered thing on the outskirts of that wealth, a place where people like me—unclaimed by our powers, or too old to be—were sent to be forgotten.
"Well, well," Jax sneered, blocking the sidewalk with his friends. They were all teenagers, their Catalysts flaring around them like personal auras: one's skin rippled like liquid metal, another's hair stood on end, crackling with static electricity. "Look at the little mute. No Spark? Not a flicker of light?"
My stomach clenched. I knew what he meant. My Catalyst had no flashy, visual signature. No tell-tale sign of power. In this world, that meant you were a nobody. A ghost.
"Leave me alone, Jax," I said, my voice barely a whisper. I kept my hands in my pockets, my head down, my breath held. The old me, the one in that other life, would have simply frozen. A statue. A doll. Here, now, my mind was screaming, but a strange, icy calm had started to spread from my core. It was the same sensation I got when the rain fell too hard or the streetlights flickered—the feeling of the world slowing down, hardening.
Jax laughed, a puff of hot air that smelled of burnt sugar. "Oh, it talks. Let's see what happens when you're cornered. What happens when you can't run."
He raised his hand, and a small, perfect orb of fire bloomed in his palm, a miniature sun radiating heat. The air crackled. His friends stepped back, impressed.
This was it. The old panic was a cold claw in my throat. I remembered my last life: the feeling of being an object, a thing to be broken. That feeling of being utterly powerless against a looming fist. I squeezed my eyes shut, and in the dark behind my eyelids, I didn't see a future. I saw the past. The feeling of being cornered, of not being able to move, of being a statue for someone else's rage.
When I opened my eyes, the world hadn't slowed, but something inside me had. The icy calm had spread, and I felt the familiar, heavy pull of my Catalyst. I didn't call on it. It simply was. My hand, still clenched in my pocket, felt rough and solid, like granite. My skin, beneath my worn jacket, was suddenly as hard as concrete. The sensation wasn't pleasant; it was a deep, resonating ache, a profound density that was both a shield and a prison. The old me, turned to an object. The new me, choosing to become one.
Jax's smile widened. He flicked his hand forward, and the fireball shot toward my chest. I didn't move. I couldn't. The moment it hit me, I felt a familiar, searing heat, but it was muffled, distant. The fire didn't burn my clothes or my skin. It simply crackled against the newly hardened surface of my chest, a fire against stone. It spat and fizzled, dying out harmlessly in a wisp of gray smoke.
Jax's eyes went wide. His friends went silent. I felt a surge of something hot and furious rising inside me, a feeling I hadn't known existed. It wasn't just fear. It was a righteous, boiling rage. A defiance that had been bottled up for a lifetime and a half.
My Catalyst didn't just make my skin hard. I learned that, in this moment, for the first time. The dense, stony feeling flowed from me, down my outstretched hand, and touched the air between us. The air around Jax didn't heat up. It didn't burn. It solidified.
One moment, his face was contorted in surprise and anger. The next, it was still. His expression was fixed, his arm frozen in the middle of a motion. His skin lost its color, and his fiery Catalyst, once so vibrant and terrifying, became a static, unmoving glow trapped within a shell of something that looked like petrified wood. He was a statue, a perfect, detailed likeness of his last moment of rage. His friends screamed and scrambled away.
My Catalyst, Chrono-Fossilization, was supposed to be a defensive ability. A way to endure. I just learned it could make others endure my will, too. The silence that had once defined my powerlessness was now the very thing I inflicted upon others. The world around me wasn't loud. It was terrifyingly, perfectly still.
A moment later, a siren wailed in the distance. The authorities—the Catalyst Wardens—had surely registered the large-scale stasis field that had just rippled through the air. I had just turned a bully into a piece of art, and now everyone would know my name.
My safe, quiet life was over.