For the rest of that night, Kaley didn't sleep.
Not in the way normal children did.
She closed her eyes, but her mind didn't rest. Instead, it drifted—weightless in a sea of violet haze, where thoughts weren't thoughts, but pulses of intention. The world behind her eyelids shimmered like the surface of deep water lit from below, alive with glyphs that spun and danced in perfect, alien rhythm.
Sometimes they sang.
Not with voices, but with gravity. With meaning pressed into motion.
She didn't dream. She listened.
And the glyphs whispered back.
When dawn broke, Kaley was already awake. Sitting lotus-style on her rug, sketchbook open in her lap, fingers glowing with quiet intent. Light coiled around her wrists like fog made of thought.
The symbols were new.
Echo. Thread. Bloom. Bloom. Bloom.
She had written it three times. Not for emphasis—because it had insisted on repetition. Like it wanted to be noticed. Or remembered.
Each glyph shimmered softly in her vision, even after she looked away.
Each one buzzed under her skin.
Each one was not hers.
"Kaley?" her mom called gently from the doorway.
Kaley didn't turn. She was tracing the final arc of a glyph shaped like a spiraling vine. It curled in on itself like a promise or a snare.
"She's getting closer," Kaley said quietly.
"Who?"
"The one from the dream."
Her mom crossed the room, careful and calm, and knelt beside her. "Is she dangerous?"
Kaley thought for a moment.
"She's not angry," she said slowly. "Just sharp. Like broken glass wrapped in ribbon. Pretty, but you'll bleed if you touch her wrong."
Her mom's face shifted. Not fear. Not surprise. Just... tired acceptance. "That's not very comforting, sweetheart."
Kaley finally looked up, eyes soft and clear.
"She's watching me now."
Outside, the wind stirred.
Not randomly.
It circled once around the house—like something checking the locks—then slipped away.
They didn't talk about it the rest of the day.
But the quiet was not empty.
Kaley felt it under her skin, in the way the light bent around her when no one was looking. The glyphs clung closer to her bones, her shadow moved a second too late, and her sketchbook pages rearranged themselves when she blinked.
She wasn't the only one drawing now.
Link. Hunger. Mirror.
Kaley frowned at the last one. The ink was wrong. Too red.
Across the city, on a forgotten rooftop with cracked stone and rusted rails, a small blonde girl sat in the dirt. Her knees were hugged to her chest. Her chin rested on top. Her fingers were stained dark from old blood.
She hummed.
Off-key. Strange. Happy.
She pricked her finger again, just enough.
Then dragged a line. A curve. A shape that didn't exist in any language she knew.
A glyph.
The same one Kaley had drawn moments ago.
It pulsed under her skin.
"She's real," Himiko whispered.
"She's calling. I can feel it."
Himiko's world was always too loud. The lights too sharp. The people too soft. Their faces blurred at the edges. Their voices scratched at her ears. Nothing made sense.
Until Kaley.
Kaley didn't shine like a hero. She glowed. Like the memory of a star someone forgot to forget.
She wasn't warm. She wasn't cold. She was just... present.
When they touched, it had crawled under Himiko's skin. Not pain. Not joy. Something else. Something that settled in her blood and hummed like a second heartbeat.
She'd tried to walk away. To disappear.
But her fingers wouldn't stop drawing.
The symbols weren't hers. But they came to her. In sleep. In silence. In smears of blood on broken walls. They looped through her brain like lullabies made from bone.
She didn't understand them.
But she felt them.
They were her.
And hers.
She saw Kaley sometimes now—when the veil between thoughts slipped. Floating above glyphs made of light, speaking words Himiko couldn't hear but understood anyway.
"I think she knows I'm listening," Himiko said aloud.
The only witness was a potted plant she had stolen from a windowsill two weeks ago. It hadn't died yet. She took that as a sign.
"I think she sees me even when she doesn't."
She pricked her finger one more time. Drew something new.
Call.
The glyph glowed faintly for a moment, then burned itself into the concrete.
Himiko smiled, curling tighter into herself.
"Come find me," she whispered.
"I'm already waiting."