Thunder answered her dream.
Raiko awoke before dawn to the sound of a thousand raindrops hammering the roof, but none of them were wet. It wasn't rain — it was energy. Condensation of thought. A celestial message.
She walked barefoot to the field beyond the Cullen estate, the sky alive with streaks of white-gold light. Each bolt etched letters into the clouds.
Words.
A language not human, not divine — but dimensional.
Alice arrived moments later, carrying a notepad already covered in scribbled glyphs. "They're trying to communicate."
Raiko lifted her hand, her fingertips glowing. "No. They're responding."
The air grew thick. The clouds shaped themselves into spirals, then fractals.
Raiko closed her eyes and translated.
"Stormheart, you shift the narrative. Timeline threads are repatterning around you. Rewrite is not yet collapse. Continue under observation."
Rosalie joined them, watching the glowing messages. "They're allowing you to exist."
"For now," Raiko murmured.
Alice added, "It's like they're... giving you authorship. But not control."
"I'll take it," Raiko said. "A page is all I need to carve a universe."
---------------
At college, the world felt altered. Subtle. Slight delays in speech. Reflections lagging behind motion. The architecture of reality was flexing.
Students started reporting visions. Dreams of lightning rivers. Floating swords. Voices calling them Raiko's name.
One girl fainted in biology class after sketching Raiko's eyes perfectly without ever seeing her up close.
The Stormwalkers moved like guardians now. Raiko gave them no command — they simply knew where to be.
---------------
That night, the Cullen house was quiet.
Raiko sat by the window, watching stars blink in strange patterns. A Morse code of the cosmos.
Alice lay beside her, eyes glowing faintly. "Do you think we're real anymore?"
Raiko answered, "We're more real now than ever. We're written in thunder."
Rosalie wrapped her arms around both. "Then let's write back."
Raiko reached for the stars with her mind, and the clouds parted. A massive bolt descended into the forest clearing.
Where it struck, flowers bloomed in the shape of the Shogun's crest, a signature.
The storm had spoken. And now, so had she.