The air in the library was thick with the smell of old paper and dust, a scent I'd come to associate with my human life. My fingers traced the spine of a mythology book, a bitter smile touching my lips. They got so much wrong. The stories of my kind were just that to them—stories.
"Earth to Riana!" Mia's whisper, laced with a musical chime only I could hear, broke my reverie. She flicked a strand of her shimmering, silver-blonde hair over her shoulder. To everyone else, she was just a girl with an unusual dye job. I saw the faint, ever-present glow around her, the delicate points of her ears she kept carefully hidden.
Khalifa slid into the chair opposite me, her movements smooth and silent. A shadow seemed to cling to her, a comforting darkness. "You're brooding again," she stated, her voice like soft velvet. "It makes the fluorescent lights flicker. People will notice."
"I am not brooding," I muttered, but the light above us gave a definitive *pop* and died. I sighed, a tiny, unconscious release of power. "I was contemplating."
"Same thing," Shell said, plopping down with a stack of graphic novels. Where Khalifa was shadow, Shell was warmth and solid earth. Her laughter was low and grounding, and tiny, almost invisible vines were braided into her chestnut hair today. "What's the crisis, oh Divine One? Algebra test? Or is the cosmic balance off?"
They were my anchor. My secret. Mia, Khalifa, and Shell—a fairy, a shadow-walker, and a dryad—stranded here, like me, hiding their true selves in teenage skin. We were refugees from a dying realm, our magic dampened but not gone, bound to protect the last spark of our world that slept within my human heart.
"It's both," I confessed, keeping my voice low. "The test is tomorrow. And the spark… it's restless. I had a dream last night. Not a dream. A memory. The Spire of Aethra was falling."
The playful glint vanished from their eyes. The air around our table grew still, insulated by their combined, subtle magic from the bustling students around us.
"A memory or a vision?" Khalifa asked, her dark eyes serious. "Is it trying to tell you something?"
"I think it's a warning," I said, the weight of it pressing down on me. I was Liora, Daughter of the Dawn, in another life. Here, I was Riana, who forgot her lunch and stressed about grades. The duality was a constant ache. "The veil between this world and the echoes of ours is thin here. Something is trying to get through. Not just remember. *Return*."
Mia's wings, invisible to human eyes, gave a nervous flutter against her back. "The rift at the old oak tree," she said. "The energy there has been… sour. Metallic."
Shell nodded. "The roots feel sick. They whisper of a cold presence."
That decided it. The algebra textbook before me suddenly seemed absurd. This was my real homework. "We need to check it. Tonight."
The final bell rang, a shrill human sound. As we gathered our bags, a new student, a boy with curiously ancient, green eyes, passed our table. His gaze lingered on me for a fraction of a second too long, and a shiver, completely unrelated to the school's AC, traced my spine. There was a flicker in his eyes, a recognition that had nothing to do with my ordinary face.
He saw me. Not Riana. He saw the *spark*.
"Did you see that?" I breathed to my friends.
Khalifa's form seemed to blend slightly with the lengthening afternoon shadows. "We saw. The game just changed."
As we walked out into the mundane afternoon, the setting sun painted the sky in hues of gold and violet. It reminded me of the twin suns setting over the Crystal Plains of home. The secret inside me pulsed, a soft, celestial heartbeat. I was a goddess in a teenager's body, studying for tests and guarding a universe. And with my friends—my fellow pieces of a lost —beside me, I was no longer just hiding.
We were preparing. Chapter two of our story wasn't about blending in anymore. It was about finding out why we were here, and what was trying to find us.