Morning pressed down on the school, too ordinary for what waited inside.
Sunlight crawled over cracked asphalt. Children spilled from buses, laughter sharp as glass. The building hunched, squat, and beige, paint peeling where small hands had pressed. No sign of danger. No hint of the Dark.
Jared stood at the fence with Adrian. Plain clothes, badges hidden, nothing to mark them. Observers. Visitors. Not authorities. The lie about consulting on childhood anxiety and creative fixation pressed against Jared’s ribs, heavy and sour.
The girl arrived late.
She slipped from the car alone. Careful. Quiet. Pink ruffles brushing her knees. Black hair parted and braided, pigtails even, precise. A stuffed rabbit clutched under her arm, fur worn thin, one ear dragging along the pavement.
Jared pressed his fingers into the fence, staring. Breath tight in his chest. The girl from his dream. Her name was Eliza Hart. Eleven years old.
She did not hurry. Did not linger. Each step measured, eyes down, moving with a purpose that was not urgent. Another child brushed past. She shifted, silent. A teacher called her name. She raised her hand, never looking up.
Jared felt it. Subtle, but there. Not pressure. Not pull. Recognition, quiet and certain. Faint, like the breath before a thought. Alignment, silent, asking nothing. The Dark did not lean. Did not coil. Did not swell. It only recognized her, the way a pattern flickers at the edge of vision and then is gone.
Jared swallowed.
Adrian noticed the change in him immediately. “You feel something.”
“Yes,” Jared said quietly. “But not like before.”
They followed her inside.
The hallways reeked of disinfectant and old paper. Bulletin boards crowded with construction paper, slogans too bright, too eager. Eliza moved through it all like a ghost, steps practiced, never glancing, never pausing at corners.
Her classroom waited at the end of the hall, a wide window staring out at a courtyard left to rot. Playground bones rusted, half-torn down, fenced and forgotten. The line between use and abandonment pressed in.
The Dark hummed at the edge of Jared’s mind.
They sat at the back, clipboards untouched. Eliza near the window, rabbit perched on her desk. The lesson began: fractions, numbers, voices. Eliza opened her notebook and drew. Not houses. Not doors opening. Not monsters. Not eyes. Only doorframes.
Rectangles, simple at first. Lines clean, some tall and thin, some wide, hinting at double doors. Some alone on empty pages. Others inside walls, stairwells, arches. None revealed what waited beyond.
Thresholds with no destination.
Jared leaned in, caught himself. Too close.
The Dark thread shimmered into view. A line, thin and almost invisible, neither light nor shadow. It stretched from Eliza’s chest, looping through the air, anchoring far beyond the room. Not touching him, but close enough he could feel its heat, its hum.
It felt like the thread that once bound him to Aelith. Not the same. Related.
His breath snagged, sharp.
Erebus waited at his feet, ordinary black cat, therapy animal. Tail curled, eyes half-lidded. But Jared felt the focus sharpen beneath the surface.
Yes, they thought into his mind gently. There it is.
Adrian shifted beside him. “What is it?”
“She is aligned,” Jared said. “Stage one. Psychic alignment.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
Erebus’s presence brushed Jared’s thoughts again. The thread is intact. Untugged. She is aware, but not compelled.
Jared nodded, barely.
All morning, Eliza drew. Reading, math, free time; always the same. When told to write, she gave a single sentence, the rest of the page filled with frames. When allowed to color, she colored only the spaces around the doors. Never the inside.
When another child asked her what they were, she answered calmly. “Places.”
“Places where?” the girl pressed.
Eliza considered. “Where something changes.”
Nothing more.
Adrian watched her. Too close. His eyes tracked every movement, measuring risk. Jared saw the tension coil in him, unease slipping in through the cracks of routine.
“She shows fixation on thresholds,” Adrian said quietly during recess. “That usually presents much later.”
“Or it is miscategorized,” Jared replied.
Adrian turned to him. “You are saying the staging model is wrong.”
“I am saying it is incomplete.”
“That fixation aligns with manifestation patterns,” Adrian said. “It suggests tuning beyond stage one.”
“It suggests curiosity,” Jared said. “And pattern recognition.”
Adrian exhaled through his nose. “You are projecting.”
“I am recognizing,” Jared said evenly.
They watched Eliza alone at the playground’s edge, drawing doorframes into the dirt with a stick. She never neared the broken structure, but her lines echoed its rusted arches, precise and strange.
Erebus observed silently.
After lunch, Eliza’s counselor invited them into the art room under the pretense of a routine observation. Eliza sat at a table with fresh paper and crayons. She did not seem nervous. She did not seem excited either. She simply drew.
Jared felt the Dark thread pulse, faint, as her focus sharpened.
She hummed softly as she worked.
Adrian’s voice dropped. “If she is this aligned already, waiting could be dangerous.”
Jared turned sharply. “Dangerous to whom?”
“To everyone,” Adrian said. “Including her.”
“She is not manifesting,” Jared said. “She is not using the Dark. She is not reaching.”
“Yet.”
“That word is doing a lot of work,” Jared said.
Adrian folded his arms. “Protocols exist for a reason.”
“So do families,” Jared replied.
They stood silent. Eliza finished another doorway, set her crayon down with careful hands.
Erebus finally spoke into Jared’s mind again. She is not asking for more.
Something loosened in Jared’s chest.
Adrian noticed his shift. “What did Erebus say?”
“They agree she is not reaching,” Jared said. “That she is not at risk.”
Adrian shook his head. “Erebus does not assess risk the way we do.”
“Neither does the Shadow Investigations Unit,” Jared said.
That landed hard.
They met Kate in a small administrative office at the end of the day via secure call. Jared presented the findings with clinical clarity. Stage one alignment. No manifestations. No behavioral volatility. Obsession with thresholds noted.
Kate listened carefully. “Recommendation.”
Adrian spoke first. “Custody for observation.”
Jared inhaled sharply. “Extended monitoring without removal.”
Kate’s brow furrowed. “Explain.”
“Removing her increases stress,” Jared said. “Stress increases Dark engagement. She currently has no reason to reach for it.”
“And if she escalates?” Adrian pressed.
“We respond then,” Jared said. “Not preemptively.”
Kate was silent for a long moment. “You understand the liability.”
“Yes,” Jared said. “I also understand the harm.”
Adrian’s voice softened but did not waver. “Protocols are designed to prevent catastrophic outcomes.”
“And they may be creating them,” Jared replied.
Kate studied both of them through the screen. She saw the fracture forming. She did not comment on it.
“Home observation,” Kate said finally. “Limited. Structured. No custody transfer.”
Relief and fear knotted in Jared’s chest.
Adrian closed his eyes briefly. “Alright.”
The call ended.
They left the school together as Eliza was picked up by her mother, who kissed her cheek and listened patiently as she talked about doors.
Jared watched them leave. His heart heavy, responsibility and grief twisted together.
“This is not over,” Adrian said quietly.
“No,” Jared agreed. “It has just started.”
The space between them stretched wider.
