still working on the chapters for the patreon, what to add at least five more to it, other than that, i have a draft for how the self bio kinnesis will be(ps no happy endings for anyone)
(patreon.com/GodtierSage)
The Weight of a Whisper
The incident with Kenji left a stain on my soul, a smudge of unease that wouldn't wash away. I had played with a fundamental truth—the sanctity of a person's own will. The power I had accessed felt less like a tool and more like a drug; incredibly effective, dangerously addictive, and fraught with a cost that went beyond a headache.
I made a rule for myself, a line drawn in the sand of my own conscience: Never again. The waking world was for living, not for directing. My interventions would be limited to the Dreaming, where I was steward, not puppeteer. And to the world of objects, where a suggestion was a conversation with a thing's purpose, not a override of a person's mind.
The resolve was firm, but the world, it seemed, was determined to test it.
It was a Tuesday. A perfectly ordinary, overcast Tuesday. My mother had taken me to the city center to run errands. We were in a large, multi-story department store, a labyrinth of perfumed cosmetics, glossy electronics, and soft textiles. I was holding her hand, my other arm wrapped around a new, ridiculously soft sweater she'd bought me. The air was a blend of air conditioning and a hundred different smells. The sound was a low, constant hum of muzak, conversation, and the beeping of scanners.
It was the most mundane of settings. Which is why the shift was so jarring.
It started as a change in the pressure. The air grew heavy, thick with a sudden, collective intake of breath. The hum of conversation died, replaced by a silence that was louder than any noise. Then, the screaming started. Not the loud, dramatic screams of movies, but short, sharp, terrified gasps that were quickly cut off.
My mother's hand tightened around mine, her grip becoming vice-like. Her face, which had been relaxed and smiling moments before, was now pale, her eyes wide with a primal fear I had never seen in them before. She yanked me behind a rack of coats, pulling us both down into a crouch.
"Don't make a sound," she whispered, her voice trembling.
From our hiding spot, I could see slivers of the scene. People were on the floor, crouching behind counters and displays. Their faces were masks of terror, all looking toward the store's main entrance.
Then I saw them.
Three figures. They weren't monsters. They were men. But they moved with a chilling, coordinated purpose that was more terrifying than any monster. They wore mismatched, utilitarian clothing, their faces obscured by crude, painted masks—a twisted parody of comedy and tragedy. One of them held a hand out, and a display case of watches imploded, the glass shattering inward with a sound like falling rain. His Quirk. Another gestured, and a wave of dizziness washed over the people nearest to him, causing them to slump to the ground, retching. The third just stood, a hulking presence, his mere size a threat.
Villains. Not a dramatic bank heist on the news. Here. In a department store. On a Tuesday.
This was the reality of this world. The reality my parents shielded me from. The reality heroes fought against every day. It was chaotic, senseless, and terrifyingly close.
My mother was praying under her breath, a frantic, silent mantra. I could feel her heart hammering through her hand. Her dream that night would be a refinery of this terror, I knew. This moment would be etched into her.
The leader, the one who could implode things, laughed. It was a dry, cracking sound. "Nice and easy, folks! Wallets, jewelry, phones. In the bags. No Quirks, no heroes, no problems."
This was a robbery. A simple, brutal robbery. But in a world of Quirks, "simple" didn't exist. A single misfire, a moment of panic, and the implosions wouldn't be targeting display cases.
The thugs began moving through the store, shoving bags at people, barking orders. They were getting closer to our aisle.
I could feel it then. The pressure. Not just the fear in the air, but the pressure of my own power. It rose in me like a tide, a frantic, screaming need to do something. To suggest a wire dream of tripping. To suggest a gun's trigger dream of jamming. To pour courage into the security guard I could see shaking behind his podium.
But my rule held. The cost of a direct intervention on this scale would shatter me. And worse, it would expose me. I would become a variable in a volatile equation, a unknown Quirk user in a situation where the villains would shoot first and ask questions never.
I was powerless. Truly, utterly powerless. The king of dreams, reduced to a frightened child hiding behind a rack of coats.
The hulking villain was two aisles away. I could hear his heavy footsteps, his gruff voice demanding a woman's wedding ring.
And then I felt something else. A new presence entering the store. It wasn't a physical sound. It was a shift in the dreamscape.
A hero had arrived.
I felt her mind first. Ms. Nightingale. Her consciousness was a blade of focused calm, cutting through the soup of terror. She wasn't dreaming; she was working, and her waking mind was so disciplined it had a dream-like clarity. She was assessing the situation in a split second, her Quirk—her psychic scalpel—already active.
Three hostiles. Quirks: Localized pressure manipulation. Vestibular disruption. Physical enhancement. Hostages: approximately 40. Primary goal: Contain disruption. Secondary goal: Neutralize threats.
Her thoughts were clean, clinical. She didn't broadcast them; I was just overhearing the echo in the medium of the Dreaming.
I did the only thing I could do. The only thing that was within my rules, my limits, and my purpose.
I didn't reach for the villains. I reached for the dreamers.
The forty-odd terrified people hiding through the store—their minds were screaming in unison, a chorus of pure panic. That panic was a weapon. It clouded judgment. It made people do stupid, desperate things. It was as dangerous as the villains' Quirks.
I couldn't stop their fear. But I could change its texture.
I poured my will into the collective dream of the crowd. It was like trying to stir a ocean with a spoon. The effort was instantaneous agony, a white-hot spike driven between my eyes. But I didn't stop.
I didn't suggest calm. That was too vast, too against their nature in that moment. Instead, I suggested a smaller, simpler concept. I suggested quiet.
I suggested to the woman about to scream that her voice dream of silence.I suggested to the man preparing to make a desperate lunge that his muscles dream of stillness.I suggested to the child starting to cry that her tears dream of falling without a sound.
It was a thousand tiny, individual suggestions, all at once. A massive, distributed effort that felt like holding up the sky with my bare hands. My vision tunneled. I could feel a warm trickle start from my nose.
In the waking world, the change was subtle but profound. The frantic energy of the store didn't vanish, but the screaming stopped. The gasps were stifled. The air was still thick with terror, but it was a silent terror. It was a library of fear.
For Ms. Nightingale, it was the opening she needed.
The sudden silence was her cue. She moved. There was no grand announcement. One second, the pressure villain was raising his hand toward a cowering cashier. The next, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. A psychic knockout. Clean, silent, efficient.
The other two villains spun around, disoriented by the silence and their partner's fall. The one with the dizziness Quirk tried to unleash his power, but Ms. Nightingale was already in his mind. He clutched his own head, screaming silently as his own attack was turned back on him. The big one charged, but his steps were suddenly clumsy, uncoordinated—his brain's signals to his muscles subtly disrupted. He tripped over his own feet and slammed into a perfume counter, showering himself in glass and expensive scent, before a well-placed taser shot from store security finished the job.
It was over in less than ten seconds.
The silence held for a moment longer, and then it broke into a wave of relieved sobs and frantic voices as people realized they were safe.
My mother pulled me into a bone-crushing hug, her own tears wet against my cheek. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay," she chanted, rocking us both.
I slumped against her, utterly spent. The world was a blur of sound and light. The headache was a sledgehammer pounding my skull from the inside. I was vaguely aware of the heroes and police swarming the store, of Ms. Nightingale moving through the crowd, her expression calm and reassuring.
As she passed our aisle, her sharp eyes scanned the crowd. They flicked over me, a pale, tired child clinging to his mother, a faint smear of blood under my nose. Just another victim, shaken but unharmed.
But her gaze lingered for a half-second longer. A faint, almost imperceptible frown touched her lips. She felt it. The silence had been too perfect, too coordinated. It didn't fit the pattern of raw panic. It felt… facilitated.
She moved on, but the seed of doubt was planted. Her profile on the "Oneironaut" now had a new line: Can influence collective emotional states. Possible area-of-effect capability.
I had helped. I had saved lives without breaking my rule, without directly touching a single mind. I had created the conditions for a hero to succeed.
But I had also drawn the attention of the one person I couldn't afford to.
As my mother carried me out of the store, away from the sirens and the chaos, I buried my face in her neck. I had never felt so powerful, or so powerless. I had held back a tide of panic with a whisper.
And the weight of that whisper was threatening to crush me.
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stones please