Time skip: Age 4 years, 3 months
Kaley had stopped drawing for fun.
Her glyphs were no longer idle experiments or dreamy doodles in crayon—they were anchors. Control nodes. Quiet spells to suppress the constant humming in her chest. Every time she laughed too hard or cried too long, the house shivered. The lightbulbs dimmed.
The world tilted slightly when she wasn't careful.
Gremlin began sleeping closer again—not on her bed, but near it. Like a guardian who didn't trust the air. He no longer darted away when the glyphs lit softly under Kaley's hands. He simply watched—tail flicking, ears twitching, like he was listening to something Kaley hadn't spoken aloud.
Her mother watched her more closely than ever.
The camera feeds were checked more than once a day now. Phone calls lasted longer. When Kaley wandered out of sight, even just to the bathroom, she could hear the faint hiss of her mother's breath steadying behind closed doors.
Kaley didn't mind. Not really. But she had begun to notice that her mother never left the house anymore. Not without checking the cameras. Not without glancing over her shoulder twice.
When Kaley asked why, her mother just said, "Because you're special."
Kaley didn't like that word anymore.
Because "special" didn't feel like a compliment. It felt like a lock being turned.
Kaley began writing glyphs inside her closet walls. Not out of fear—out of instinct. Layers of them. Still. Silence. Fold. Hide.
She didn't want to disappear. But sometimes, she felt like the world needed her to blink out just a little.
Her mother found them during cleaning. She didn't erase them. She added one more: Home.
Time skip: Age 4 years, 8 months
The mirror dream returned.
This time, she walked through it.
She found herself in a world of fractured time—where her steps echoed in different directions, where glyphs hung midair like frozen birds. Her armor shimmered on and off, flickering in and out of phase with each heartbeat.
It wasn't like her earlier dreams, where she merely watched. This time, she felt every step. Felt the hum of her future self—older, stronger, wearing the weight of something vast and unspoken.
She heard her name—softly, like someone remembering it from a long time ago.
A hand reached toward her from behind the glass.
It was her own.
Older. Tired. But calm.
"Soon," the reflection said.
Kaley reached back, and just before their fingertips met, the glass exploded into glyphs. Spinning. Spiraling. Merge. Anchor. Echo. Sing.
And Kaley woke up with a glyph scorched into her pillowcase: Merge.
Her mother burned the sheet that morning. Kaley didn't ask why.
She already knew it wasn't about the sheet.
Time skip: Age 5
The Commission called for a "routine visit."
It wasn't routine.
Kaley met the agent at the kitchen table. She didn't speak. Just watched. The man smiled too much. Asked questions that weren't really questions. "Does she exhibit externalized Quirk behavior?" "Has she shown aggression?" "Would you consider her emotionally regulated for her age?"
Kaley answered none of them.
Her mother did all the talking—light and casual, every word chosen like a chess move. She called Kaley gifted. Sensitive. Unique.
Not dangerous.
But the air was heavy that day. Kaley noticed how the agent's smile didn't reach his eyes. Not once.
When the man left, Kaley watched the tail lights until they vanished and whispered to the window:
"He was afraid of me."
Her mother didn't correct her.
Later that night, Gremlin crawled into her lap while she sat cross-legged, drawing glyphs that refused to stop glowing. He curled up and fell asleep like he didn't mind the way her fingers shimmered.
"Good boy," Kaley whispered, voice small.
She didn't sleep.
The next morning, a strange letter arrived. Plain white envelope. No return address.
Inside, only a card.
A single symbol on the front: Observe.
And on the back, embossed in the faintest red ink: She is not alone.
Kaley held the card in trembling fingers, unsure why it made her feel seen and invisible all at once.
Time skip: Age 5 years, 4 months
Kaley stopped glowing when she was sad.
Now she dimmed.
Lights flickered. Rooms darkened. Sound muffled. The world recoiled from her in tiny, invisible ways. The hallway light would pulse and die. The tea kettle would hiss and then go quiet, mid-whistle. Gremlin would vanish under the couch and not come out until Kaley had slept.
Her mother bought stronger bulbs.
And started sleeping with a light on.
Kaley didn't ask why.
She already knew.
She dreamed less now. Or maybe the dreams were just deeper—coiled tight and buried in symbols even she didn't recognize. Some mornings, she would wake with a glyph drawn not on her paper, but on her skin.
The glyphs never hurt.
But they always meant something.
One morning, Gremlin batted gently at her hand before she was fully awake. When she opened her eyes, she saw what he'd been trying to warn her about—her fingertips glowing faint gold, dancing softly with light glyphs that spelled Unravel.
She clenched her hand shut. The light vanished.
"Not today," she whispered.
Gremlin meowed in reply.
Her mother was at the stove, humming faintly. Kaley crept up behind her and tugged on the edge of her sweater.
"I want to try something," she said.
Her mother turned slowly. "Void-safe or couch-destroying?"
"Somewhere in between."
She nodded and cleared a space in the middle of the living room.
Kaley sat down, drew a circle of salt, and placed her hand over it. Her mother knelt beside her with a notebook, Gremlin curling beside them like a fuzzy assistant.
A deep breath. Then another. Kaley placed her hand to the floor and activated a sequence: Still. Thread. Reveal.
Light spiraled from her palm, forming not armor—but thread.
A thread of light stretched across the room, humming faintly.
Her mother blinked. "Is that a communication link?"
"I think so."
"To what?"
Kaley didn't answer.
Because she wasn't sure if the voice on the other end was hers.
Time skip: Age 5 years, 6 months
The first time Kaley met Momo Yaoyorozu, she didn't quite know how to react.
It was during a gifted-child Quirk enrichment program—one her mother almost didn't let her attend until the paperwork said it was supervised by a vetted U.A. affiliate and kept under strict observational protocol.
Kaley stood at the edge of the playground under an overhang of quiet shade, arms crossed behind her back, while the other children sparred and showed off their flashy, unrefined abilities. Some could summon sparks. Others grew thorns or projected force fields that collapsed after two steps.
And then there was Momo.
Poised. Sharp. Dignified in a way that didn't quite match her age.
Her Quirk demonstration was quiet, efficient, elegant—a small flash of her creation ability summoned a simple canister, polished metal that gleamed under the sun. She explained its function clearly, with zero theatrics.
Kaley watched with interest from behind her sketchbook.
Momo noticed her first. Walked over. Sat without asking.
"You're not doing anything," she said bluntly, brushing imaginary dust off her skirt.
Kaley tilted her head. "Neither are you now."
That earned the smallest flicker of a smile. "True. I don't like wasting materials."
Kaley hesitated. Then, after a moment, she passed Momo her sketchbook. Pages filled with glyphs—some glowing faintly, others scratched out like half-finished thoughts.
"You're building language," Momo said after a long silence. Not with fear. Not with confusion. With understanding.
"You're the first person to say that," Kaley whispered.
The two sat in silence, the kind that wasn't awkward, just… settled.
From that moment on, Momo made sure to sit beside Kaley during the weekly sessions.
They didn't talk much. But when they did, Kaley felt something she hadn't felt outside her mother and Gremlin.
Seen.
Understood.
Maybe even… cherished.
One day, Momo brought a 3D model of Kaley's glyphs—printed in clear resin.
"I don't know what they mean yet," she admitted, "but I wanted to hold one. Just to see what it felt like."
Kaley picked it up gently, fingertips buzzing as the plastic shimmered briefly with faint Void trace.
"It remembers," Kaley said.
Momo blinked. "What?"
"This one. You printed it right. It remembers its shape."
Neither of them quite knew what that meant. But it didn't matter.
The connection was there.
And Kaley, for the first time, found herself watching Momo's hands—not just what they made, but how they moved. How her fingers curled around a pencil, how her brows furrowed when she concentrated.
Momo's calm made the Void in Kaley's chest quieter. Less like a storm. More like a hum.
Kaley didn't know what the feeling was yet. But she knew she wanted more of it.
Time skip: Age 5 years, 9 months
At a small workshop station in the Yaoyorozu estate, Kaley and Momo worked quietly beside one another.
Their mothers exchanged wary glances from the other side of the room, but neither interfered.
Gremlin had taken a liking to Momo. He sat on the table between them, tail wrapped like a question mark, watching her fabricate tiny clasps out of carbon-steel with her Quirk while Kaley etched calming glyphs into polished stone.
"You're not scared of her?" Momo's mother asked softly.
"No," Kaley's mother answered. "But I am scared of who might be watching her."
They said no more.
The girls didn't hear them. They were too busy building a lock that needed both a glyph and a creation circuit to open.
It wasn't for protection.
It was for each other.
A message, sealed between light and matter.
Later that evening, when the project was complete, Momo placed the lock into Kaley's hands.
"You trust me with this?" she asked.
Momo nodded. "Always."
Kaley's chest fluttered.
The Void inside her was silent that night. Still.
She fell asleep with the lock beside her bed and dreamed of starlight and ink, and Momo's hand in hers.