CHAPTER 1 The Locked Room
Everyone had a locked room inside their mind.
A place where memories slept, instincts hid, and truths were sealed away for safety. Scientists argued whether it was biological or psychological. Philosophers called it necessity. Governments quietly funded research to exploit it.
Kael Natsura was born without one.
Doctors noticed it first. Scans showed no mental barriers, no suppression zones, no cognitive locks. His mind was open, exposed, and dangerously receptive.
They called it an anomaly.
His parents called it a gift.
They were wrong.
Kael remembered everything.
Not vaguely. Not emotionally blurred.
Perfectly.
Every word spoken around him.
Every expression.
Every sound, smell, and detail etched itself into his consciousness like it had just happened.
At first, it was harmless. He corrected teachers. Finished sentences before they were spoken. Predicted outcomes with unsettling accuracy.
Then people began to stare.
By the age of eight, Kael learned to stay quiet.
The night it happened, rain pressed softly against the windows. The house was warm. Familiar. Safe.
His mother was in the kitchen. His father sat nearby, reading. Kael lay on the floor, tracing patterns he could see but couldn't explain.
A sudden silence fell.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that arrives when something terrible has already decided to happen.
The door didn't explode.
It unlocked.
Footsteps moved through the hallway with professional precision. No shouting. No hesitation.
Kael sat up.
His father stood first. He didn't even get to speak.
A suppressed shot.
A body hitting the floor.
Time slowed. Not metaphorically. For Kael, it fractured.
Every movement burned into his mind frame by frame.
The way his mother turned.
The widening of her eyes.
The second shot.
Kael couldn't scream.
He stared at the masked figure approaching him, weapon raised.
Then his vision ignited.
Blue light flooded his eyes.
Not glowing. Not shining.
Burning.
The attacker froze.
Just for a second.
In that moment, Kael saw something he wasn't meant to.
Not a memory.
Not a vision.
Fear.
Raw, human fear behind the mask.
The figure lowered the weapon.
Another voice shouted orders. The hesitation snapped. The attacker turned away.
And Kael collapsed.
He woke up in ruins.
The house was ash and police lights.
Voices buzzed around him, muffled and distant.
They told him it was random.
A robbery.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Kael listened.
His mind disagreed.
Something was missing.
The years that followed blurred together. Foster homes. Institutions. Questions no one could answer.
The visions began when he was thirteen.
Not dreams. Not imagination.
If Kael focused on an object, a place, a concept…
his mind reconstructed it perfectly.
History played out like reality.
Scenes unfolded with impossible clarity.
But every time he used it, something cracked.
A headache at first.
Then lost moments.
Then voices whispering things he didn't remember learning.
Doctors called it stress-induced hallucination.
Kael stopped telling them.
By sixteen, he learned the cost.
Using his ability didn't strengthen his memory.
It damaged it.
Small pieces disappeared.
Names.
Faces.
Emotions tied to moments he knew were important.
And the more he tried to remember what was missing…
the louder the pain became.
On the night everything changed again, Kael collapsed in an abandoned district, vision spiraling out of control.
Images slammed into him.
Labs.
Tables.
Children screaming.
He didn't recognize them.
Someone caught him before he hit the ground.
A woman.
Calm. Controlled. Alert.
Her grip was firm, almost instinctive.
"Kira," she said, when he asked her name.
She didn't explain why she was there.
She didn't ask how he knew things he shouldn't.
But something strange happened.
The noise in his head softened.
For the first time in years, the cracks slowed.
Kael noticed.
So did she.
Their eyes met.
Something passed between them. Recognition without memory.
Neither of them spoke it.
Far away, deep beneath concrete and steel, a man watched streams of data flicker across a dark chamber.
A single name appeared on the screen.
KAEL NATSURA
The man smiled.
"Still alive," he said softly.
Kael didn't know it yet, but the night of the massacre had never ended.
It had only been paused.
And somewhere inside his open mind, something ancient waited for him to remember