002: Powerful…or just cursed???
1952 Words
“She’s stirring. Elena, can you hear me?”
A very beautiful voice floated through the fog in my mind like a lifeline, pulling me back from the darkness that had swallowed me whole.
My eyelids felt heavy, weighted down by exhaustion that reached into my bones.
When I finally managed to pry them open, the world came into focus slowly—cream-colored walls, soft golden light streaming through tall windows, and the scent of lavender and something else I couldn’t quite place.
This wasn’t my room. Hell, this wasn’t even my house.
I bolted upright, my heart hammering against my ribs, and immediately regretted the sudden movement as my head spun.
The room tilted sideways before righting itself, and I had to grip the edge of what I now realized was a bed to steady myself.
“Easy.” The silver-haired woman from school—Lydia, I thought—sat in a chair beside the bed, her winter-storm eyes filled with something that looked like concern. “You’ve been unconscious for nearly six hours. Your body needed time to recover from all that energy release.”
“Where am I?” My voice came out as a croak, my throat raw as if I’d been screaming.
Maybe I had been.
The last thing I remembered was golden light and the feeling of everything inside me exploding outward.
“You’re at Aethermoor Academy,” said another voice, and I turned to see the man with kind eyes—Marcus—standing by the window. “A school for people like us. People like you.”
“A school?” I glanced around the room again, taking in details I’d missed before—the stone walls that looked centuries old, the way the light seemed to move and dance without any obvious source. “What kind of school?”
And what did he mean ‘people like you?’
“A place where those with supernatural abilities could learn to control and understand their gifts,” Lydia explained. “Hidden from the mundane world, protected by ancient magic.”
“Supernatural abilities.” I repeated the words like they were foreign. I had spent years branding my condition as a ‘curse.’ “Is that what you call it? It isn’t some kind of… medical condition?”
“You’re Phoenixborn, Elena,” Sera said, moving closer with a warm smile. “Born of flame and rebirth. It’s why your touch burns, why golden light pours from your skin when you’re emotional.”
“I have no idea what you are on about.”
Sera sighed, and glanced at the older woman who just shrugged in response.
“I know that, uh… it will be a lot to take in all at once, Elena. But I promise you will understand better. Just get some rest, alright? The most important thing is that you are safe.”
“Safe?” I laughed, but it came out bitter and broken. “I don’t even know who you people are and I don’t know where I am. You could be serial killers for all I know.”
The beautiful girl—Sera—moved into view from where she’d been standing in the shadows.
Up close, her otherworldly beauty was even more striking. Her skin seemed to shimmer with an inner light, and her silver eyes held depths that spoke of ancient wisdom. “We’re not the ones you should be afraid of, Elena. We’re trying to help you.”
“Help me?” I swung my legs over the side of the bed, pleased to find I was still wearing my clothes from school, though they were wrinkled and smelled faintly of smoke. “By kidnapping me? By bringing me to some… some place I don’t recognize? What silly supernatural academy?”
“You collapsed, so we had no choice,” Lydia said calmly. “The power surge knocked you unconscious. We couldn’t exactly leave you in the middle of Millbrook High’s hallway glowing like a beacon.”
The memory hit me immediately—Madison’s cruel words, the burning in my shoulder, the golden light pouring from my skin. “Oh God. The other students. Did I hurt anyone?”
“No,” Marcus said quickly. “We got you out before anyone was harmed. Though there are some very confused janitors wondering why the sprinkler system went off in that particular hallway.”
Relief flooded through me, but it was short-lived. “Oh, shot. I need to go home. My mother—she’ll be worried sick.” The lie was bitter on my tongue as I said it out.
Mom probably hadn’t even noticed I was gone yet, or she’d be praying somewhere that I never came back.
“Your mother thinks you’re at a friend’s house,” Sera said gently. “We may have… influenced her memory slightly. She won’t worry.”
“Influenced?” I stood up too quickly, and the room spun again. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means we have abilities too,” Lydia explained, rising from her chair with fluid grace. “Just as you do, Elena. We are just like you.”
Just like me?
How long had I laid alone fantasizing, dreaming to one day hear those words? Meet a kindred.
But not like this.
“And right now, those abilities were the only thing standing between you and a very huge catastrophe.”
“I don’t want any part of this.” I backed toward what I hoped was a door, my hands shaking. “I don’t want abilities or powers or whatever you’re calling it and I definitely do not want to be a part of any academy.” Liar. “I just want to go home and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“That’s not possible,” Marcus said, and for the first time, his kind expression hardened. “Elena, you need to understand: what happened at school today wasn’t a one-time event, and this isn’t something you can just… ignore. Your powers are becoming more unstable.”
“Then I just won’t use them,” I said desperately. “I’ve gone eight years without incident. I can do it again.”
“No, you can’t.” Lydia’s voice was gentle but firm. “This isn’t about simply not using your abilities. They’re part of you, woven into your very essence. The more you suppress them, the more volatile they become.”
“You’re like a dam that’s been holding back a flood,” Sera added, her musical voice heavy with sympathy. “Eventually, the pressure becomes too much. The dam breaks.”
“So what are you saying?” I asked, though I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“We’re saying that if you don’t learn to control your power, you’ll eventually go off like a nuclear bomb,” Marcus said bluntly. “And when that happens, you won’t just destroy yourself. You’ll take everyone around you with you.”
The words hit me like ice water. “That’s not… that can’t be true.”
“It is true,” Lydia said quietly. “I’ve seen it happen before. A Phoenixborn named Gabriel, about thirty years ago. He refused training, insisted he could handle it on his own. When he finally lost control…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but she didn’t need to. I could see the answer in her eyes, in the way Marcus’s jaw tightened, in the sadness that crossed Sera’s perfect features.
“How many?” I whispered.
“Seventeen,” Sera said softly. “An entire city block. Gone in minutes.”
My legs gave out, and I sank onto the bed, my head in my hands. “I can’t. I can’t be responsible for that. Not again.”
“You don’t have to be,” Marcus said, moving closer. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’ve been searching for you.”
“For decades,” I remembered. “That’s what you said. But I’m only sixteen. How could you have been searching for me for decades?”
The three of them exchanged a look that spoke of shared secrets and long history.
“Time works differently for our kind,” Lydia explained. “We age, but slowly. And sometimes, we receive… visions. Glimpses of important events that are meant to happen.”
“You saw me? In a vision?”
“We saw what you could become,” Sera said. “Both the light and the shadow. Both the salvation and the destruction.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will,” Marcus promised. “But first, dear child, you need training. You need to learn control.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you go home. We don’t plan to force it on you, Elena. But you must understand that with each second that passed by, you were endangering everyone you care about. When you eventually explode—which, from my calculations, might just be a few days away—everyone around you will die,” Lydia said simply. “Including your mother.”
The words were like a knife to my chest. Despite everything—despite the drinking, despite the cruel words that morning, despite the way she looked at me like I was a monster—I couldn’t let anything happen to her.
She was all I had left.
“If I agree to this training,” I said slowly, “what happens to my mother? I can’t just disappear. She needs me.”
“She needs you alive more than she needs you present,” Sera said gently. “But we can arrange for her to be cared for. There are ways.”
“What kind of ways?”
“We have resources,” Marcus explained. “People who can help. A counselor who specializes in grief and trauma. Someone to make sure she has what she needs—food, bills paid, someone to check on her.”
“Without her knowing it’s from you,” Lydia added. “She’ll think it’s from a local charity or social services.”
I stared at them, these three strangers who somehow knew exactly what buttons to push, exactly what I needed to hear. “You promise? You promise she’ll be safe and cared for?”
“We promise,” they said in unison, and something in their voices made me believe them.
“And once I learn control? Once I can manage these… abilities… I can go home?”
“If that’s what you choose,” Lydia said. “Though I suspect you’ll find you have a greater purpose than returning to Millbrook.”
“I don’t want a greater purpose. I just want a normal life.”
“Normal was never an option for you, Elena,” Sera said sadly. “But safe can be. Controlled can be. And perhaps… peaceful.”
I closed my eyes, thinking of my mother’s face that morning, of the pain and hatred there. Thinking of Madison’s cruel words and the golden light that had poured from my skin.
Thinking of Sofia, who never got the chance to grow up because of what I am.
If I had known how to control this curse… or power, as they called it, my sister would still be alive. My family would still be together.
I had to do this… because a part of me owed it to her. Somehow this should atone for my sins… hopefully.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll learn this control but once I’m done, I’m going home.”
- Writer
