Part One: The Tedium Threshold
Master Eldrin was, by all measurable standards, the most inefficient educator in Lunaris.
This assessment wasn't personal. It was systematic. He taught the village's children using a methodology that could be described as "explaining the same concept in increasingly redundant ways until everyone had given up on understanding and was just nodding to make him stop."
On this particular afternoon—I was approximately ten years old, Elara was eight, and we were sitting in the back of his makeshift classroom (the village hall, repurposed for twice-weekly educational sessions)—he was explaining the concept of "trade routes" for what I calculated was the forty-seventh time this month.
"You see," Master Eldrin was saying, gesturing at a crude map he'd drawn on parchment, "goods move from one place to another. This is trade. Without trade, we would have no external goods. With trade, we have external goods."
This was technically accurate and also completely useless. Everyone in the village understood trade. We participated in it. The explanation was adding no value whatsoever.
I was, sitting in the back row, experiencing a sensation I recognized from my previous life as "work meeting tedium." The specific kind of boredom that comes from being forced to listen to someone explain something that required approximately thirty seconds of explanation using forty minutes of redundant description.
Beside me, Elara was drawing pictures of increasingly elaborate protective formations that she apparently planned to deploy if anyone threatened me. (This was her new hobby—designing defensive strategies for the situation she'd decided was my primary vulnerability: general clumsiness.)
But I was experiencing something more complex than simple boredom. I was experiencing irritation at the inefficiency of the situation. I was experiencing annoyance at the wasted time. I was experiencing the specific frustration that came from being intellectually understimulated while being physically confined.
In other words, I was experiencing exactly the conditions under which my Glitch activated.
"—and then the traders move the goods," Master Eldrin continued, apparently having no sense for when his point had been adequately made, "which is important because without the movement of goods, trade couldn't happen, and we wouldn't have—"
The wasp appeared.
Not gradually. Not naturally. One moment there was empty air, the next moment there was a very specific wasp with very specific intentions flying directly toward Master Eldrin's face.
He didn't notice it immediately. He was too focused on his explanation. The wasp circled twice before diving directly into his mouth mid-sentence.
"—the goods, which are essential to—" Master Eldrin began, and then the wasp became his new priority.
The shrieking that followed was, I had to admit, entirely justified. He ran in several circles, flailing dramatically, making sounds that suggested genuine panic. The other children erupted in chaos—some laughing, some joining in the panic, all of them suddenly very engaged in the situation despite their previous catatonic state during the trade route explanation.
The wasp, having apparently accomplished its objective, exited his mouth and flew away.
Master Eldrin continued shrieking anyway, running outside while making sounds that probably qualified as primal screaming.
The lesson ended. The children dispersed. The afternoon was declared free time due to "unforeseen circumstances."
From my seat in the back of the classroom, I experienced something I could only describe as internal satisfaction.
*That was efficient,* I noted. *Problem: tedious lecture. Solution: introduce predatory insect directly into problem source. Outcome: lecture terminated. Efficiency achieved.*
The fact that my power had apparently developed enough subtlety to summon wasps with intent was probably concerning. I'd file that as something to worry about later.
Beside me, Elara was frowning thoughtfully at the empty space where Master Eldrin had been. "That was weird," she said finally. "Did you do that?"
"Do what?" I replied, employing my standard plausible deniability technique.
"Make the wasp happen."
"Wasps are natural creatures," I said, which was technically true. "They exist independent of my influence."
"But that one seemed really... specific. Like it had a purpose."
"Wasps always have purposes," I countered. "That's how wasps work. They pursue their objectives with little regard for human comfort or preference."
Elara narrowed her eyes at me. "You're being weird when you answer. That's how you answer when you know something but you're not saying it."
*She's becoming too observant,* I noted internally. *This is a problem.*
"I'm being efficient with my words," I said instead. "That's how I always answer."
"No it's not. You were normal before. Now you do this thing where you explain things technically so I can't prove you're doing anything weird."
This was accurate. I'd developed increasingly sophisticated methods of plausible deniability over the past few years. It was working well.
Too well, apparently, since my own sister was starting to suspect the sophisticated deflection itself was suspicious.
"There's no conspiracy," I said, which was also technically true—there was no conspiracy, just a systematic pattern of power activation that I was carefully disguising.
Elara wasn't convinced, but she also wasn't going to push the issue while we were still at the village hall where other people could hear us.
*This is escalating,* I thought. *Soon, someone's going to ask direct questions I can't answer with plausible deniability. I need to prepare for that eventuality.*
I did not, in fact, prepare for that eventuality.
Part Two: The Accumulation
Between age eight and age ten, the pattern of power manifestation intensified.
It wasn't that I was becoming less capable of controlling it. I was actually becoming more capable. The problem was that my emotional regulation was becoming harder to maintain. Adolescence was approaching, and with it came the complex emotional landscape that made suppression increasingly difficult.
The chalk incident occurred when I was nine.
Master Eldrin (apparently not deterred by the wasp incident) was attempting to write on a chalkboard during another tedious lecture about agricultural cycles. He was writing slowly, inefficiently, taking approximately twice as long as necessary to communicate each point.
I was experiencing mild annoyance at the pace.
The chalk shattered.
Not dramatically. Just... shattered. All of it. He was holding a piece of chalk in his hand, and it simultaneously exploded into powder. The explosion was so precise that it created a geometric pattern—concentric circles of chalk dust that hung in the air for approximately two seconds before settling.
"That's strange," Master Eldrin said, looking at his now-chalk-dust-covered hand. "The chalk must have been defective."
No one questioned it further. Defective chalk was a reasonable explanation.
The guild banner incident occurred when I was nine and a half.
The village was holding a recruitment day for new adventurers. A pompous recruiter from the Adventurer's Guild had arrived, wearing ostentatious armor and an expression suggesting he was personally responsible for saving the world on a daily basis. He was making a speech about "the noble calling of adventurers" and "the burden of protecting civilization."
It was the most inefficient recruitment speech I'd ever heard.
He was standing beneath a decorative banner—a large cloth with the guild symbol embroidered on it. It was hanging from the village hall roof via inadequately secured ropes.
My annoyance at his self-aggrandizing monologue was reaching critical levels.
And then the ropes failed. Simultaneously. Both of them. Creating a perfectly timed collapse that dropped the banner directly onto his head.
He survived. The banner was fine. But he spent approximately fifteen minutes extracting himself from fabric and looking absolutely humiliated.
"Poor security," the villagers noted. "We should fix that."
No one suggested that the rope failure was anything other than mechanical failure.
Part Three: Elara Knows Something
By the time I turned ten, Elara had developed a theory.
She didn't know what the theory was exactly—she couldn't articulate it properly—but she was convinced that something about me was wrong in a way that coincided specifically with my emotional state.
She started testing it.
"Be annoyed," she commanded during one of our afternoon sessions in the village square. "Think about something inefficient."
"That's a strange request," I replied.
"Just do it."
I considered the inefficiency of the current weather pattern (too warm, causing discomfort without providing any functional benefit) and allowed myself to focus on that annoyance.
Three nearby leaves fell from trees that had no wind current affecting them, forming a small spiral in the air before settling.
Elara watched this happen with the intensity of someone conducting an experiment.
"See?" she said triumphantly. "I knew it. Things happen when you're annoyed."
"That's coincidence," I said, deploying my standard deflection.
"It's not. I've been watching. Wasps come when you're bored. Books move when you want them to. That banner fell when that guy was being annoying to you. And—" she paused dramatically, "—my shoe gets stuck in puddles that only appear in weird places that you probably made."
"Your shoe gets stuck in puddles because you're not paying attention to where you're walking," I countered.
"My shoe gets stuck because you MAKE puddles," she insisted. "But not on purpose. It's like... like you're thinking about them being there, and then they're there."
This was, unfortunately, not entirely inaccurate.
"Elara," I said carefully, "if I could make puddles appear with my thoughts, wouldn't I be more famous?"
"You don't want to be famous. You want to be boring so nobody bothers you."
This was also accurate, which was a problem.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, which was a lie and she knew it was a lie, but plausible deniability was maintained through sheer force of will.
She stared at me for a long moment. "Okay. I'm going to keep watching. And when you finally admit what you're doing, I'm going to say 'I told you so' approximately eight thousand times."
"That would be inefficient," I noted.
"I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway."
This was fair.
Part Four: The Starveil Run Incident
Once a year, the village held the Starveil Run—a competition where young people raced through a predetermined course, testing their speed and endurance. It was theoretically about celebrating physical fitness. It was actually about gossip and village entertainment.
I'd been avoiding participation for the past three years through various methods of plausible incompetence (I wasn't fast enough, I'd just slow everyone else down, I preferred not to participate in competitions).
Elara, however, had decided that this year was her moment to prove herself as a runner.
She'd been training. Hard. Every morning, she'd run through the village practicing her speed and endurance. She'd developed a genuine competitive spirit, which was admirable and also problematic for my desire to maintain absolute anonymity.
The day of the Starveil Run, I stood on the sidelines watching her at the starting line.
She was going to win, I'd calculated. Not because she was the fastest runner (she wasn't), but because the other competitors were slightly less motivated. She was going to push herself past their capability limits and cross the finish line first.
This was efficient. This was good.
And then Mika appeared.
She was approximately seven years old now, and she'd become a semi-regular fixture in village life—doing odd jobs for money, eating whatever the charitable villagers offered, generally existing on the periphery of society. She'd been at the market when she heard about the Starveil Run, and apparently, she'd decided to participate.
This was a problem because Mika had, in my experience, a tendency to experience elaborate misfortunes.
I was not going to let that happen during Elara's moment of glory.
The race began. Elara burst forward with the acceleration of someone who'd trained specifically for this moment. The other competitors followed, including Mika, who was running with the dedication of someone who had nothing to lose and everything to prove.
And for approximately three-quarters of the race, nothing happened. Elara maintained her lead. Mika kept pace with the middle competitors. Everything was proceeding efficiently.
Then, at the final turn, something went wrong.
Mika's shoelace—which had been perfectly fine moments before—became mysteriously untied. She stepped on it. She stumbled. She face-planted directly into the dirt at approximately fifteen kilometers per hour.
She emerged covered in mud and humiliation, with the specific expression of someone experiencing profound disappointment with the universe.
But Elara won.
Elara crossed the finish line in first place. She was crowned the winner. She was celebrated by the village. She was exactly where she should have been.
And Mika was covered in dirt, having experienced a perfectly calibrated misfortune that allowed my sister to achieve glory without interference.
I didn't even know I'd done it until after the fact.
My power had activated—not in response to my conscious thought, but in response to my need to protect Elara's victory. It had identified Mika as a potential competitor threat and eliminated that threat through the introduction of a tragically timed mishap.
*That was unconscious intervention,* I noted, disturbed. *I'm starting to use my power without deliberate intent. This is a problem.*
Mika didn't seem to understand why everything was going wrong for her. She just accepted it as her continued bad luck and moved on.
From the cosmic void, Ætheria was definitely laughing.
Part Five: Confrontation
The confrontation happened approximately three months after the Starveil Run incident, when I was still ten and Elara was eight.
We were in the village square—the same location where Elara had made her vow to protect me approximately six years prior. The sun was setting, creating orange light across the stone path. It was almost pretty, in an inefficient way.
"Okay," Elara said, sitting down on the stone bench and patting the spot next to her. "Sit."
I sat, because she'd used her "protective sister" authority voice, which I'd learned not to argue with when she deployed it this carefully.
"I know what you're doing," she said without preamble. "I don't understand it completely, but I know you're doing it. And I need you to stop pretending with me."
"Stop pretending what?" I asked, maintaining plausible deniability out of sheer habit.
"Stop pretending you don't know what's happening. Stop making me feel crazy for noticing. Stop acting like everything's coincidence when we both know it's not." She took a breath. "You make things happen. When you're annoyed. When you need something. When you're protecting something or someone. You just... make it happen."
This was the moment where my carefully constructed deniability was going to collapse. I could feel it. The weight of her knowledge was pressing against my deflections, and they were starting to crack.
"Even if that were true," I said slowly, "what would you want me to do about it?"
"I want you to stop lying to me. I'm your sister. I'm protecting you. I deserve to know what I'm protecting you from."
This was a reasonable argument. It was also going to be deeply inconvenient if I started being honest.
"If I told you the truth," I said carefully, "you'd either not believe me or be terrified. Neither outcome is preferable."
"Let me decide that," she said. "I'm smart. I can handle weird things."
She was right. She was eight years old and she'd already figured out that reality was bending around me. She was probably more capable of handling truth than most adults.
"Okay," I said, accepting the inevitable. "Ask me a specific question, and I'll answer it honestly."
Elara considered this carefully. "Are you making the weird things happen? The wasp, the chalk, the puddles, the banner falling, Mika's shoe?"
"Yes," I admitted. "Though not all of them are intentional. Some are unconscious responses to emotional states."
"Like what?"
"Like... I experience annoyance, and reality interprets that as a problem that needs solving. So things adjust. It's involuntary most of the time."
"Can you control it?"
"Partially. Sometimes. It's complicated."
"Is it magic?"
"I don't know. It's something. It's not like the magic that normal people do. It's more like... editing reality. Debugging problems."
Elara nodded slowly, processing this information. "And you can't turn it off?"
"No. I've tried. It's built into me."
"Okay," she said. "That's actually less weird than I thought it would be. I thought maybe you were deliberately evil or something."
"I'm not trying to hurt anyone," I clarified. "I'm just trying to... exist."
"You're doing better than that. You're protecting people. Protecting me." She paused. "That's why the wasp showed up. That guy was boring you with his stupid lecture, and you were so annoyed that you made the wasp happen, and then it solved the problem by making the lecture stop."
"Yes."
"And you didn't even realize you were doing it."
"Not until after, no."
Elara was quiet for a long moment. Then she said: "You're going to tell me the full truth about what you are. But not now. Now we just sit here. And later, when you're ready, you'll explain everything. Because I'm your sister, and I'm protecting you, and I need to know what I'm protecting."
"That's reasonable," I agreed.
"Also," she added, "you need to stop making Mika have bad luck. That's cruel, even if you're not doing it on purpose."
"I'll try," I said, though I wasn't entirely sure I could control it.
"Try harder."
Part Six: The Acceptance
After the confrontation with Elara, something shifted in my understanding of the situation.
I'd been treating my power as a problem to hide. I'd been treating my connections to other people as complications to manage. I'd been approaching my entire existence as a system to optimize for invisibility and non-engagement.
Elara had pointed out that I was already engaged. I was already affecting people. I was already important to someone—her—regardless of whether I wanted to be.
This was not an efficient realization.
But it was accurate.
Over the next several months, I began a gradual process of acceptance. Not of being a hero (I still refused that designation). Not of embracing my power (I still considered it a glitch). But of acknowledging that hiding completely wasn't going to be possible.
People knew something was wrong. Elara knew explicitly. Mira suspected deeply. Even Mika, in her way, was aware that something was targeting her specifically with consistent misfortune.
The question wasn't whether to hide anymore. The question was how to exist while being partially known.
This was more complex than I'd anticipated.
Part Seven: The Pattern Recognition
By the time I was eleven years old, I'd accumulated enough data to form a comprehensive theory about my situation:
**Theory: The Visible Invisibility Paradox**
The more I tried to hide, the more visible my existence became. The more I tried to isolate, the more people became attached to me. The more I insisted I wasn't important, the more important I became.
This was, in many ways, the inverse of what Ætheria had promised (or threatened) when she'd installed the Feedback Loop Glitch.
She'd said it would force chaos. She'd been right.
She'd said it would prevent me from living quietly. She'd been absolutely right.
What she hadn't explained was that it would force me into genuine connection despite my every effort to avoid it.
Elara wouldn't let me hide anymore. Mira was becoming too observant to avoid. Mika's misfortunes were becoming too elaborate to ignore. Even Lyra, in her kind and persistent way, was starting to ask questions about why reality seemed to rearrange itself around my emotional state.
I couldn't stay invisible anymore.
This was inefficient.
Also, in a strange way, it was okay.