Aiden, Age 6 – One Month After the Attack
The house was gone.
The land had been cleared, ashes swept, and flowers placed. But the air still remembered. The forest line was darker here. The grass, quieter.
Aiden sat cross-legged on the stone where the front step used to be, a small, half-burned photo of his family resting in his lap.
He hadn't cried in weeks.
But he hadn't smiled either.
⸻
[He Closed His Eyes]
The world dimmed.
The breath slowed.
And then, there it was again.
That hum. That quiet heat behind his heart. The thing that had exploded out of him the night they died. The thing that made lightbulbs shatter and spoons twist.
Aura.
Psychic.
Both were there. Tangled like threads in his veins.
He raised his hand in front of him and focused.
A leaf drifted past. Light. Fragile.
Aiden focused his mind—not his muscles.
The leaf paused midair, caught in an invisible thread.
His temples throbbed.
Sweat beaded down his brow.
Then the leaf burst into flames.
His aura had flared without warning.
"Too much," he hissed, pulling back, heart pounding.
The leaf turned to ash and drifted away.
⸻
[Later – Deeper in the Woods]
He returned every day.
After school. After Oak stopped watching. After the others left.
He practiced moving things: twigs, pebbles, feathers.
He failed—often.
Sometimes the objects just wouldn't move.
Other times they exploded or melted from aura discharge.
He burned himself once. On the fourth day. A shard of aura flicked back into his palm like a razor.
He didn't scream.
He just wrapped it, stared at the blood, and kept going.
⸻
[On the Tenth Day – Progress]
Aiden stood ten feet from a wooden log.
He reached out a hand—not to push, not to lift, but to pull.
Aura around his fingers glowed faintly gold-white. Psychic energy shimmered like heat off stone.
"Together… steady…"
The log trembled.
Then it dragged forward an inch.
Then two.
Then it lifted — just a little, but it lifted.
He gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his neck.
Then it dropped with a thud.
But it was enough.
He smiled.
For the first time in a month.
⸻
[That Night – Back at the Lab]
He crept in late.
Oak didn't wake. The Kadabra stationed outside gave a small nod but didn't stop him. It knew. It had seen.
In his small cot, Aiden stared at the ceiling.
"I'm not ready yet," he whispered to himself.
"But I will be."
"I'm going to master this."
"And when I get my Talent… I'll rise beyond every limit this world thinks it has."
He closed his eyes, aura flickering faintly around his chest like a heartbeat.
And the forest wind seemed to carry his silent vow far beyond the walls of Pallet Town.