I've been told I have a problem with walls.
Not like "emotional walls" though I've got those too but actual walls. The kind you climb, hop, or sneak through when you're supposed to be asleep at the orphanage.
They say I've run away seventeen times.
Technically, it's eighteen they just didn't catch me the last time.
Ever since my parents' car "accident" ten years ago, I've been bouncing around foster homes like a defective ping-pong ball. Nice people, sure, but none of them could handle a kid who kept saying he saw cracks in the air.
"Lenny, stop making things up."
"Lenny, maybe talk to someone about your imagination."
Yeah, imagination. Right. Because seeing glowing fractures in the sky is totally normal for six-year-olds.
Fast forward to now sixteen, broke, and running from a place that smells like disinfectant and bad cafeteria food. My plan?
Get out of town. Find something real. Anything.
The night air is sharp against my face as I climb the fence and land on the wet grass. My sneakers squelch, but freedom has never sounded so gross and so good.
A few hours of walking later, I end up on a ridge outside the city. The sky's a bruised purple, clouds hanging low. That's when I see it a thin, jagged line in the air about ten feet ahead.
Like someone cracked a mirror in the middle of nowhere.
I blink. It's still there.
The edges shimmer, tiny glints of light crawling across it like fireflies trapped under glass.
My brain screams bad idea, but my curiosity apparently didn't get the memo.
So, naturally, I reach out.
The instant my fingertip touches it
CRACK.
The sound is deafening, like a thousand windows exploding at once. The world tilts. Light pours out, blinding and white-hot, and for a second I see everything veins of power snaking through the air, glowing cracks spreading across reality like spiderwebs.
And in the middle of it all, a whisper.
"Found you"
Then darkness.