The first sign was her shoes. Or rather, the lack of space in them.
"Astraea, honey, are your feet hurting?" Mrs. Evans asked one morning as Astraea sat on the edge of her bed, trying to stuff her feet into sneakers that had fit perfectly two weeks ago. "You're wincing."
"They're just… tight," Astraea said, which was an understatement. Her toes felt crimped, her heels pressed against the back. The sensation was both painful and exhilarating. Growth. Actual, measurable growth.
Mrs. Evans knelt, feeling the shoe's toe. "Goodness, you've outgrown them already! We just bought these!" She looked up, her expression shifting from surprise to delight. "You're having a growth spurt!"
That phrase became the refrain of the next two weeks.
At CYAP, Teacher Milly noticed when Astraea's usual spot in the circle suddenly made her tower over the children on either side. "Someone's been eating their vegetables!" she said brightly during morning circle. "Look at you grow, sweetie! It's all that good nutrition and positive sparkle energy!"
Astraea gave a practiced, small smile. Yes. The positive sparkle energy of stolen cosmic calories from a dimensional rift, absorbed during field trips while you weren't looking.
But the changes were undeniable. Two weeks after the field trip, the measurements told the story:
Day 1: 0.41 cm cumulative.
Day 4: 0.43 cm.
Day 8: 0.46 cm.
Day 14: 0.48 cm.
Two centimeters in fourteen days. The acceleration was no longer linear; it was exponential. Four hundred years of pent-up growth, triggered by consistent mana intake and unlocked memories, was expressing itself in a sudden, relentless surge.
To her dragon senses, it was a profound relief—a dam finally breaking, a frozen river starting to flow. To the human world, it was cause for gentle concern wrapped in cheerful misunderstanding.
Leo noticed with scientific precision. "You're 2.1 centimeters taller than you were on the fort trip," he announced one day at juice break, holding up his notebook where he'd been keeping a discreet chart. "That's statistically significant. What's your calcium intake? Protein consumption? Sleep duration?"
"I drink milk, eat my vegetables, and take naps," Astraea recited, which was all true. The calcium did nothing for her dragon bones (they required starlight and void-minerals), but the placebo effect for observers was valuable.
Counselor Davis visited for a scheduled "growth check-in." He knelt to be at her eye level—a position that was becoming less effective by the day—his professional smile in place. "We've noticed your recent growth spurt, Astraea. That's wonderful! The body often does amazing things when it feels safe and supported. Are you getting enough sleep? Maybe the System's nap quests are helping!"
"I take naps," Astraea confirmed, which was technically true even if she spent them meditating on wing development rather than sleeping.
"Excellent!" Davis made a note on his tablet. "Sometimes Tier 0 children experience growth spurts as their bodies align with their inner glow. It's a sign of healthy integration! We'll just monitor to make sure you're comfortable."
Monitor. The word should have been alarming, but his monitoring was so fundamentally misguided it was safe. He would track her height and weight against human pediatric charts, not against dragon juvenile catch-up curves. He would see a child thriving, not a cosmic entity unsticking from time.
The physical sensations were the most intense part. Her bones ached with the deep, productive ache of rapid extension—a feeling she remembered from her first century, when she'd grown a full wing-span in a single season. Her muscles tightened and lengthened, requiring constant, subtle stretching that she had to disguise as "playing limbo" or "stretching for sparkles."
The wing buds between her shoulder blades were the epicenter of activity—hot, itchy, humming with development that was now visibly changing the topography of her back even through her glamour.
She spent longer moments in the bathroom, using the mirror to adjust her illusion. The small swellings were now definite mounds, impossible to completely flatten without significant mana expenditure. Instead, she crafted the illusion of ordinary, slightly prominent shoulder blades. To a casual glance, she just had "athletic shoulders" or was "carrying herself well."
It was during a "Quiet Sparkle Meditation" session that the most noticeable side effect manifested. The children were supposed to maintain a single, steady light while breathing deeply, practicing what Milly called "glow control." Astraea, her body buzzing with growth energy like a hive of awakened bees, let her three silver sparkles manifest as usual.
But they weren't usual.
They were brighter—not blindingly so, but noticeably. Larger, each the size of a marble rather than a pea. And instead of hovering perfectly still, they pulsed gently in time with her heartbeat—a rhythm so slow and deep it was fundamentally non-human.
Chloe, meditating next to her with a wobbly rose light, cracked an eye open and gasped. "Astraea… your sparkles are breathing."
The other children looked. Sam's thermal orb flickered as he lost concentration. Mia's water droplets shivered.
Teacher Milly hurried over, her face a mix of wonder and concern. "Oh my! That's a… very unique manifestation, Astraea! Are you feeling alright? Does your chest hurt?"
Astraea quickly dampened the output, pulling the mana back, letting the sparkles shrink and return to their usual placid hover. "I feel fine," she said, her voice perfectly calm. "I was just… thinking about my heartbeat. How it's always there, keeping time."
Milly's concern melted into delight. "Of course! You're connecting your inner glow to your growing body! That's advanced integration! Class, look at how Astraea is harmonizing her sparkles with her life rhythm! Good for you!"
But Leo was watching, his head tilted in that particular way. He didn't say anything during the session, but later, at juice break, he slid his notebook toward her. On a clean page, he'd drawn a graph. One line, labeled "Human Heart Rate," showed small, frequent peaks. Another, labeled "Astraea's Sparkle Pulse," showed wide, sweeping waves that looked less like a heartbeat and more like ocean tides.
"Your beat is once every six seconds," he said quietly, pointing to the space between peaks. "That's not a heart. That's… something bigger. A tide. Or a giant sleeping."
She looked at the graph, at the evidence of her otherness laid bare in crayon and careful observation. He was at the frontier again, sketching the edge of the map.
"Maybe some glows have slower rhythms," she offered, the weakest deflection yet. "Like how some songs are fast and some are slow."
Leo just nodded, closing his notebook with a thoughtful snap. He didn't press. He just stored the data, another piece of the puzzle that was Astraea.
That night, the growth aches were the strongest yet. She lay in bed, feeling her body change in real time. It was terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. After so long frozen—after centuries where the most she could hope for was not losing ground—the sensation of movement, real physical, undeniable movement, was almost overwhelming.
She waited until the apartment was quiet, then stood before the marked wall.
0.48 cm cumulative.
Two centimeters. In two weeks. A microscopic distance to a dragon who should span nebulae, a monumental leap for a human child. The System, of course, had an opinion.
[System notification!]
[Achievement unlocked: 'Growth spurt champion!']
[Description: You've achieved accelerated physical development!]
[Reward: 'Fast grower' Title, +10 to Vitality stat temporarily]
[Alert: Growth rate exceeds normal parameters. Scanning for underlying conditions… Scan complete. Conclusion: User is experiencing a robust developmental phase, likely due to excellent care and positive environment! Keep up the good work!]
The System's cheerful diagnosis scrolled past her eyes. It had scanned her and found… a happy, well-adjusted child. The glitch from Chapter 15 was buried under layers of reinforcing "data" that all said human, human, human.
Astraea touched the warm, firm mounds on her back through her pajamas. The wings were coming. The height was returning. The great thaw was becoming a flood.
And the world, with its nutrition charts and sparkle safety and growth percentiles, saw only a girl growing a bit fast. A little tall for her age. Going through a phase.
She closed her eyes, the ache in her bones a lullaby of progress, a song she hadn't heard in centuries. For the first time in four hundred years, her body was not a prison of stasis. It was a vessel, finally catching up to her soul.
Tomorrow: more growing pains. The day after: more adjustments. The great unfreezing was now a torrent, and she would need to build her dam of deception stronger than ever.