It's a strange thing, waking up in a place that never wanted you to be here in the first place—not in the way that you crashed a party or wandered into the wrong neighborhood, but in the way that the very fabric of this world seems to flinch around you, like your presence is a question it can't answer, a note out of key in a song that never had room for improvisation.
I don't know when the coldness started to bother me—not the kind you feel in the bones, but the silence in the hallway when I pass others, the way eyes don't meet mine, or worse, how they do just long enough to flinch away, as if they're afraid they'll catch whatever it is I'm carrying deep under the skin. The days are starting to blend together, one training session to the next, and although Gojo keeps telling me I'm improving, that my reactions are sharper, my instincts cleaner, I can feel it in the way the others move around me that I'm not one of them—not really, not yet, and maybe not ever.
I don't blame them, not exactly.
If I'm being honest with myself—and God, I've had way too much time for that lately—I don't even know what I am.
The cursed spirits recoil from my presence like I'm poison in their air, but I don't have cursed energy, and the thing inside me, the force that rises when I'm close to death or lost in thought, it's not something this world recognizes, at least not with names or rules or techniques. I asked Gojo again yesterday if he had any theories—if the higher-ups had uncovered anything in their digging—but he just smiled like he always does, leaned back in that infuriatingly casual way of his, and said, "Sometimes, the world writes a new rule just to deal with an exception like you."
That doesn't help me sleep at night.
Not when I know I'm being watched.
Not when I know that every burst of light from my skin is being logged, analyzed, dissected.
They're trying to understand me, or maybe they're just waiting to figure out how best to neutralize me.
Maybe both.
It's late when it happens.
The school's quiet, lights dimmed to a pale blue hum that makes the walls feel farther away than they really are, and I'm in the courtyard again, breathing cold air and trying to remember what the stars looked like back home—not just the sky itself, but the shape of it, the way the breeze carried warmth instead of ghosts, the hum of cars in the distance, the sound of my little brother snoring in the bunk below me, the way my father would leave gospel music playing just low enough that I could still hear it through the wall like some kind of protection spell written in rhythm and old voices.
I'm so deep in the memory I don't hear the footsteps until they're close.
I turn, slow and cautious, and there's a man standing at the edge of the gravel path.
I've seen him once before, during a quiet debrief with Yaga—Taguchi, I think his name was, older than most of the others here, not flashy or loud, the kind of person who blends into the background unless you know what to look for.
He's not staring at me like the others do.
He's studying me.
"Couldn't sleep?" he asks, voice low, tired.
I shake my head.
"You don't talk much," he adds, walking over and sitting on the bench across from me. "Good. You might actually listen."
There's a long pause between us, and then he says it—calm, quiet, like he's telling me a story, not laying a foundation.
"There's something in you that doesn't belong in this world."
I nod, because denying it would be ridiculous at this point.
"I've seen traces of it," he continues, "in the places you've been, in the energy you've left behind. It's not cursed. It doesn't decay the environment. In fact… the opposite."
I don't say anything.
"I touched one of the trees near that spirit you burned into ash," he says. "It was dying. Sick with curse rot. But a day after your presence passed through, new buds were growing."
He leans forward, elbows on his knees.
"That kind of energy doesn't just exist," he says. "It has to be born from something. Or someone."
I feel a chill crawl down my arms, but I keep still.
"Whatever it is inside you, Xavier… it's not evil," Taguchi says, his voice almost a whisper now, "but it is dangerous."
He doesn't mean it as a threat.
It's a truth. One I already know.
He stands, brushing off his coat.
"You're not alone in this. Not anymore."
Then he walks away, leaving nothing but the faint scent of woodsmoke behind.
Later, when I return to my room, I write for the first time in days.
I don't know why.
Maybe because I need to get the thoughts out, or maybe because I'm afraid if I don't put something down on paper, I'll forget who I'm supposed to be.
I write about the vision.
I write about the field of ash, the golden sky, the faceless figure in white.
And then I write a single word beneath it, etched into the bottom of the page like a question I already know the answer to:
Entropy.
Whatever this force is—whatever it's doing to me—it's not just reacting anymore.
It's evolving.
Becoming aware.
And somehow, so am I.