The storm hadn't passed. It had transformed.
Above Forks, clouds churned unnaturally, forming vortexes that shimmered violet and black — not natural weather, but warping of the sky itself. Something was coming. No, it was already here.
Raiko stood on the rooftop again, silent and still. Below her, the town carried on — unaware. But the heavens trembled.
A ripple of energy danced across her skin.
Alice and Rosalie emerged from the doorway behind her. Rosalie's voice was low. "I feel it. It's not of this world."
Raiko nodded. "It's watching. Judging."
Alice spoke next, brow furrowed. "I tried to see it. But there's a hole in the future. Something too old to be captured by vision."
Raiko turned her head slightly. "An anomaly."
In the distance, the sun flickered — just once. Then the sky dimmed despite no clouds hiding the light.
A shape hovered high above Forks. A distortion in the air. Not a ship. Not a creature. A phenomenon.
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That evening, Raiko gathered the Cullens and the Quileute pack.
Jacob was the first to speak. "So, what — now aliens?"
Raiko's voice was calm. "Not aliens. Not gods. A force. Something that senses imbalance."
Sam frowned. "Like what?"
Raiko walked toward a bowl of water, and with a spark of her finger, she electrified the surface just enough to cause spirals. "Energy attracts energy. I disrupted this world's scale. Now something is interested in that disruption."
Carlisle asked, "Is it hostile?"
"Not yet." Raiko turned away from the water. "But if it determines that I am too great a threat to the cosmic equilibrium, it may choose to erase me."
Alice stiffened. "Then it'll try to erase us too. We're part of you now."
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As night fell, Raiko stood in the middle of a wide clearing, the same one where Jane had once issued her warnings.
Now, she was issuing her own.
"I know you're there," she said to the sky. "Come down, or I'll come up."
A streak of inverted lightning — dark and spiraling — shot down, and the air collapsed in a ring of silence.
From it stepped a figure.
Not man. Not woman. Androgynous. Humanoid but blurred at the edges. Cloaked in shifting threads of light and shadow.
Its voice spoke directly into the minds of all present. "You are anomaly. Variable. Unstable."
Raiko's gaze hardened. "I'm balance. Not chaos."
"You are outside the design."
"I am the new design."
The figure tilted its head, movements perfectly symmetrical. "Resistance noted. We will observe. If variance continues, correction will follow."
Then — it vanished. Instantly. As if erased.
Raiko exhaled. "We have a deadline now."
---------------
Back at the Cullen house, the mood was heavy.
"They're not going to wait long," Alice said.
"They'll measure you like a scale measures weight," Carlisle said. "And if the needle tips too far—"
"They'll correct," Raiko finished. "I have to prove I can coexist with this world without dominating it."
Rosalie walked up and cupped her face gently. "You don't have to hide who you are. We'll find another way."
Raiko closed her eyes briefly. "Then we'll need to teach the stars how to fear."
Outside, lightning danced on the horizon — not hers.
Something else had arrived.