After the final bell, I expected the usual post-confrontation awkwardness. Instead, I found Layla waiting by my locker, her green eyes shining with what looked like recognition.
"Thank you," she said simply. "Though I suspect you didn't do it entirely for me."
There was something in her tone, an understanding that went deeper than just gratitude. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"May I?" She gestured toward the pendant that had somehow slipped outside my shirt collar. When I nodded, she reached out and touched it with her fingertip.
The reaction was immediate and electric. The pendant blazed with silver light, and my birthmark responded with such intensity that I gasped. But even more shocking was what I saw in that moment of connection. Layla's eyes weren't just green; they held a depth that I could hardly comprehend.. They were ancient. Older than the school, older than the town, older than anything I had ever imagined.
"Sister," she whispered, and that word carried a weight that had nothing to do with family.
"What are you?" I breathed.
"The same thing you are," she replied. "A daughter of the Threshold. A child of two worlds." Her smile was both sad and beautiful. "And I've been looking for you for a very long time."
Annie appeared at my shoulder, and I wondered how much she had witnessed. "Hey, you two look like you've seen a ghost. Everything okay?"
"More than okay," Layla said, her expression shifting back to that of a typical teenager. "I was just about to invite you both to karaoke. My treat is a celebration of new friendships."
But as we walked toward the school exit, Layla leaned close to my ear. "We need to talk. Tonight. There are things you need to know before"
"Before what?"
"Before they find you."
The karaoke bar was a dive called The Siren's Call, a name that now seemed prophetic. We had been there for an hour, singing off-key versions of pop songs and sharing increasingly personal stories, when I noticed something strange.
Every song I chose seemed to resonate with a supernatural intensity. "Kira," Annie said during a break, "I've never heard you sing like this. It's like… you're casting spells or something."
Layla and I exchanged glances. "Just feeling the music," I replied weakly.
As the evening wore on, Layla began steering the conversation toward topics that felt random but significant. She asked about my dreams (which always involved forests and starlight), my favorite subjects (Latin and ancient history), and whether I'd ever felt like I didn't belong in this world (the answer was every single day).
"My aunt says some people are born between worlds," she mentioned casually. "That they spend their whole lives trying to find their way home to a place they've never been."
"Your aunt sounds wise," I replied.
"She's had to be. Our family has always been… different. We're what you might call guardians, protectors of the spaces between," she explained.
Annie looked confused. "Between what?"
"Between what is and what could be. Between the world you know and the worlds you don't."
Before I could ask her to elaborate, the bar owner announced last call. We gathered our things and headed into the night, but as we walked, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched.
We stopped at a convenience store for snacks. The store was too bright after the dim bar, with fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like trapped insects. We loaded up on snacks and energy drinks, the kind of junk food that felt necessary after hours of singing and emotional revelations.
As we left the store, Annie grabbed my arm. "Kira, someone's following us."
I looked back and saw a figure in dark clothing about half a block behind us. He was tall and moved with the kind of casual precision that suggested military training.
"Probably just a coincidence," I said, but my hand instinctively moved to the pendant at my throat.
"No," Layla said quietly. "He's been tailing us since we left the bar. Maybe longer."
At the junction where our paths diverged, Annie and Layla headed toward the residential district while I took the longer route back to St. Agatha's. But as I walked, I became increasingly aware that the footsteps behind me matched my pace exactly.
When I sped up, they sped up. When I slowed down, they slowed down. When I stopped to tie my shoe, they stopped too.
My heart began to race, but alongside the fear came something else, a strange sense of anticipation. It felt as if this moment had been inevitable, written into the fabric of my existence long before I was born. I ducked into an alley, pressing myself against the brick wall as I tried to control my breathing. The footsteps stopped, and the street fell silent except for the distant hum of traffic. When I turned around, I saw a figure silhouetted at the mouth of the alley.
The hooded figure moved toward me with deliberate steps. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Rough hands grabbed my throat, squeezing with terrifying strength.
Then something extraordinary happened. My body surged forward with incredible speed and unfaltering precision. It felt as though an ancient instinct I had never known before guided me. The tables turned in an instant. Suddenly, my attacker was the one gasping for air, clawing desperately at my grip. I couldn't stop myself; a primal force had taken control. I watched in horror as life drained from his eyes. By the time I released him, he was motionless.
My birthmark began to burn not with the gentle warmth I had sometimes felt, but with a searing pain that made me cry out. Looking down at my shoulder, I saw it glowing with an otherworldly light, the familiar shape shifting and transforming into something that resembled runes.
The pain intensified, spreading through my entire body like liquid fire. I stumbled away from the scene, my vision blurring and my consciousness slipping away like sand through my fingers.
That's when I noticed it: a door that hadn't been there moments before, glowing with the same ethereal light as my birthmark. It called to me with a voice I felt rather than heard, and despite every rational thought warning me to resist, I couldn't help myself. I stepped through. The last thing I remembered was the sensation of falling through starlight. My burning birthmark was the only constant as the human world faded away. When I finally lost consciousness, I found myself lying on soft earth beneath an alien sky, in a forest that existed beyond the borders of any map.
The girl who had lived seventeen years as an orphan, named Kira, was gone. What would emerge in her place remained to be seen.