SEASON 1: THE AWAKENING
Chapter One: The Girl Who Remembers
Before the Divide, before the blood wars, before she learned how to hurt people with her mind… Nyah was just a girl who wanted to disappear.
She crouched beneath the twisted roots of a dead Blackvale tree, heart thudding, breath short. Her fingers trembled around a dull blade stolen from her school's rusted supply closet. The cold dirt under her bare knees reminded her she wasn't dreaming. Not this time.
They were coming.
Not them — not the guards.
Worse.
The Hollows.
Creatures made from memory and pain. Born from broken minds. Drawn to grief. Drawn to her.
A branch cracked.
Another.
Then silence.
She pressed her back against the tree and squeezed her eyes shut.
"You have to control it, Nyah," her mother used to whisper in dreams. "Or it will destroy you."
Too late.
A low hiss slid through the air like a voice in reverse. Black smoke bled through the trees, curling like fingers. A shape began to form — wrong in every direction. Its eyes glowed white, but not from light — from emptiness.
And then — a flash.
Kael tackled her to the ground, shielding her as the Hollow shrieked and dissolved into ash.
"Are you trying to die?" he growled, eyes blazing like smothered fire.
"I didn't call it," Nyah whispered. "It came on its own."
Kael looked at her the way people look at a cracked mirror — careful not to cut themselves on the reflection.
"That's worse."
Scene Break
They ran through the forest, silent except for breath and broken twigs. Nyah hated the way he always appeared right when she was about to lose control. As if he had some invisible tether to her nightmares.
Back at the rebel hideout, the alarms flickered red, pulsing like a heartbeat. Sora met them at the entrance, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
"You triggered the perimeter," they said, voice clipped. "Again."
"She didn't mean to," Kael answered for her.
Sora's eyes narrowed. "That's not good enough. If she can't control the memories she pulls… the Authority will find us."
Nyah looked down at her hands. Dirt under her nails. Blood. Her own?
"She's getting stronger," Kael said.
"She's getting dangerous," Sora corrected.
Later that night, as Nyah lay awake in the dark tunnel beneath Blackvale, a memory rose — one that wasn't hers.
A boy screaming.
Needles.
A white room.
And a name.
Her name.
Nyah gasped, clutching her head as the memory cut through her skull like static.
Someone was experimenting on her. Not in the past. In the future.
End of Chapter One