March 3, 2020 — Morinomiya, Joto-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka, Japan
The rain was gone, but its ghost still lingered in Kayoko Nakahara's skin. She felt the lightning again as though it had never left her, buried somewhere in her bones, coiled like a serpent waiting to wake.
Her eyes opened to a blinding white. The ceiling above was sterile, fitted with fluorescent lights that hummed just beneath hearing. She squinted. The light felt like needles.
She blinked slowly and tried to move, but her body wouldn't respond the way she remembered. Her right arm twitched. Her fingertips grazed coarse sheets. Her mouth was dry, tongue stiff like rubber. A monitor beside her bed beeped slowly, steadily.
A hospital?
Her gaze shifted sideways. A small tray held untouched pudding. Plastic spoon still sealed in its wrapper. A faint scent of ethanol floated in the air, the unmistakable trace of antiseptic. There was a window to her left, rain-streaked and barely open. Faint city noise filtered in: a car horn, the screech of tires, then quiet.
She tried to sit up.
Pain crawled across her chest, sharp and immediate, like broken glass pressed under skin. The movement had awoken something inside her. Something not physical.
Images flashed behind her eyes.
A sky split in two. Screaming wind. A jagged bolt. Her own body suspended in the air for a split second before the world turned black.
She had been struck. That much she remembered.
But she shouldn't have survived.
Where was Megumi?
Kayoko inhaled deeply, but the breath shook halfway through. The room felt wrong. Too quiet. Too clean. She pressed her hand against the mattress to sit upright and was surprised by the strength that returned to her.
Then came the flicker.
The walls shifted slightly, as if rippling. The overhead light dimmed. A low vibration trembled under her bed. Her heart beat faster.
She froze.
There was someone at the foot of her bed.
A tall figure. No coat. No uniform. Just dark, flowing layers that bent around the corners of her vision. She tried to scream, but her voice stayed buried in her throat.
Her pulse spiked. Her fingers gripped the side rails of the bed. She blinked again.
The figure vanished.
No footsteps. No door opened. Just gone.
She leaned back, heartbeat pounding in her ears, and stared at the ceiling. Her vision blurred. Her ears rang. The world dissolved into soundless static.
Then it happened.
The white walls faded into shadows. The hospital room stretched until it bent into itself. The bed, the window, the tray of food, all fell away into darkness. A vacuum of silence engulfed her.
She was floating.
Weightless. Breathless. Suspended in a void.
From that stillness, a voice emerged. It wasn't spoken. It didn't come from a mouth. It arrived in her head like thought, but it wasn't hers.
You are awake, finally.
She tried to turn toward it, but there was no direction. No up or down. Only emptiness.
"Who are you?" she asked, though her lips didn't move.
I am the Connector.
She trembled. The voice was layered. Male, female, neither. It echoed within her chest.
"You're not real."
You've already crossed the border between real and unreal. What you see is only one side of the fabric.
"What happened to me? Why am I here?"
You were touched by the storm. That was not ordinary lightning. It was meant to kill you, but it couldn't. Not completely. You were marked instead. A vessel awakened.
Kayoko wanted to scream, but her lungs were frozen.
A flash erupted in front of her eyes. A storm of images.
She saw herself as a child, laughing in a sunlit park, chasing after her cat Sato.
She saw her aunt Megumi watching her silently in the hallway, phone gripped tightly.
She saw the exact moment she stepped into the street and the sky lit up. The bolt. Her body lifted and thrown.
Then strangers. So many faces.
A woman holding her head in a room filled with clocks. A boy levitating above the ocean. A dog sitting beside a grave.
She felt them all.
Who are they?
Threads, the voice answered. Connected to you, just as you are to them.
Kayoko's head spun. "I don't understand."
You are clairvoyant. The visions are fragments from the past, the present, and futures that haven't yet taken shape. This ability belongs to those chosen to bear the burden of sight.
"I never asked for this."
No one ever does. But you were always meant to see beyond. You survived the first test. You endured death. The lightning was only the beginning.
Kayoko clutched her head. Her hands were burning. Her veins glowed beneath her skin like wires overloaded with current.
Then came the true vision.
She saw a circle of people standing beneath a crimson sky. Some wept. Some screamed. One of them—a girl with dark eyes and trembling hands—held the ground together with sheer will. The world cracked around them.
Voices shouted over each other. Names floated in the air like ashes.
Eloisa.
Geneva.
Marco.
Thomas.
Kayoko gasped. "Who are they? What do they have to do with me?"
Each has a role. Each holds a fragment of the prophecy. But you are the eye.
More flashes.
Fire swallowing trees.
A government agent flipping through pages marked with red stamps.
A woman sobbing while water filled the room around her.
A cat staring into a mirror, unblinking.
Then it all faded.
The voice lowered, almost gentle now.
The first clairvoyant left a trail behind, hidden through time. You will begin to see them. You must follow. Or this world ends exactly as it began: in silence.
Suddenly, the weightlessness was gone. The bed returned beneath her. The white ceiling flickered back into place. The window opened slightly wider now, and the sound of Osaka's distant life hummed beyond.
The hospital monitor screamed a rising tone.
Nurses rushed in.
"She's seizing! Restrain her arms!"
"Vitals are unstable—BP dropping!"
She couldn't hear them clearly. Their voices faded like echoes. The Connector's last words still lingered, vibrating inside her skull.
You are the eye.
Then, unconsciousness swallowed her again.
Just before everything turned black, she saw the shadowy figure from before.
Outside the window this time.
Watching her.
Still there.
Waiting.