Karura Haven had a rhythm. After the chaos of the FOB, I found it strange—almost unsettling—how easily the days fell into a gentle cadence. Morning bell. Communal breakfast. Training. Duties. Evening council. Storytelling around the lantern-fruits. Children laughing. Spirits drifting lazily through the grove like living echoes of dawn. And under that peaceful surface… everything was changing. Especially my children. Especially me.
Lyra and Orion reported to training each morning after breakfast, escorted by either Mara or Zara. I pretended not to hover, but I hovered. A lot.
One of their first instructors was an older woman named Sanyu, tall, broad-shouldered, and possessed the kind of calm usually reserved for mountain peaks.
"Before you can control power," she told the class, "you must understand the vessel."
She placed a hand over her chest.
"The body. The breath. The mind. They are your foundation. Unsteady ground leads to unsteady power."
Lyra rolled her eyes at the "breath" part. Orion looked terrified he would be asked to participate. Sanyu breathed deeply, slowly. The air around her shimmered faintly, then steadied.
"Now you."
The class tried. Some managed a slow inhale. Others coughed, a few sneezed. Lyra's breath flickered with sparks. Orion's breath echoed with the emotions of everyone around him. He trembled. Sanyu tapped his forehead gently.
"You," she said, "feel too much. You open the door, but forget to close it."
"How do I close it?" he whispered.
"By remembering you are the one in the center. Not them."
She guided his breathing until color returned to his cheeks. For the first time, Orion didn't look overwhelmed by "the noise." He looked… grounded.
Meanwhile Lyra's training corner was on fire. Literally on fire. Sanyu didn't panic. She simply marched over, scooped a bucket of water from the Water Orchard barrel, and poured it over Lyra's makeshift flame hurricane.
Lyra sputtered. "I was getting better!"
"You were getting bigger," Sanyu corrected. "Better comes later."
Lyra tried again, flames curling around her fingers like eager pets. For once, she didn't scorch anyone's eyebrows.
Progresd
On day three, Sanyu introduced visualization.
"Your mind," she said, "is a room. You choose the size. You choose the doors. You choose who enters."
Orion whispered, "Mine is a stadium with no walls."
"Then we shall build walls."
Sanyu guided the children through a meditation where they imagined weaving light around their bodies. Orion's light flickered at first, but the moment Amu sat beside him, their combined "threads" strengthened. Psychic resonance, Mara later called it.
Lyra imagined her fire as a sleeping animal. The trick, Sanyu said, was not to cage it—but to earn its trust. She whispered to her own flame as if it were a friend. For the first time, it settled instead of bursting. When she opened her eyes, she looked proud. I felt proud too.
While the children learned to shape energy, I was busy with Harmony Construction—digging trenches, building walls, bending vines into supports.
But something strange began happening. It started when I was lifting a beam with two other workers. The beam shook in our hands, a tremor running through it like it was… humming. My vision blurred briefly. And then—just for a heartbeat—I saw something that wasn't there.
Lines. Veins. Fractures in the air. As if the world had hairline cracks made of light. I gasped and dropped my side of the beam.
"Kailen, you alright?" Elias asked, sprinting over with the speed and concern of a small terrier.
I blinked rapidly, the cracks fading.
"Yeah," I lied. "Just tired."
But I wasn't tired. I was… awakening. The world was speaking. Or breaking. Or both. And it wasn't done.
Elias was impossible to ignore. He showed up everywhere—fixing pipes, adjusting spirit lanterns, tinkering with broken radios, drawing schematics on every surface available, including a soldier's arm. But what always struck me was how he saw things. Not with eyes. With instinct.
While adjusting a stabilizer that kept the village from sinking into shifting earth, he said; "Machines are like people. They talk. You just have to listen to the vibration."
He pressed his ear to the metal coil, humming thoughtfully.
"See? It's upset. It doesn't like the way the root anchor is pulling on it."
Zara frowned. "Elias, how do you know that?"
He blinked at her. "How do you not know it?"
It hit me then — Elias wasn't just smart. He was attuned. Not to spirits. Not to emotions. Not to fire. But to machines. The same way Orion heard thoughts and Lyra felt flame, Elias felt circuitry, pressure, metal, energy.
Technokinesis.
He didn't manipulate machines with his mind. He conversed with them — reading their vibrations, their balance, their hidden language. Like a mechanic-whisperer.
I'd be lying if I said it didn't unsettle me. But he was brilliant, and kind, exactly the kind of chaotic brightness the village needed.
Karura Haven didn't only rely on instructors. The settlement's resident wildlife played a role too. Cirebirds (spirits in feathered form) taught children balance by swooping unexpectedly at their heads.
A massive beast called a Mokoro-bull let children climb its back to teach them confidence; its skin felt like warm stone.
A spirit-wolf visited the Mindflow class daily, sitting in front of Orion as if daring him to read its thoughts. He never could. It amused the wolf endlessly.
One afternoon, Lyra's flame meditation was interrupted by a miso-fox crawling onto her lap. She laughed and lost focus, which caused a burst of flames to singe the fox's tail.
The fox turned, scolded her with a squeaky chirp, then pounced onto her head and refused to move. Lyra trained the entire hour with a fox hat. She loved it. Orion couldn't stop laughing. Zara took a picture.
There was laughter in Karura Haven. There were jokes from the elders about spirits stealing their pillows. There were games where the children tried to "tag" glowing vines (they always lost). There were communal meals where someone inevitably spilled honeyleaf syrup onto their clothes. Lyra mock-complained daily, "It's not my fault everything in this village is sticky." Zara replied, "It's not the village. It's you."
Orion's psychic class was quieter but not without humor, one student accidentally broadcasted a crush on another to the entire group. Another kept hearing the thoughts of a chicken, which were disappointingly simple:
Seed. Seed. Bigger seed. Seed. Danger? No. Seed.
Elias nearly fell off a scaffolding laughing when he heard about it. Even I found small joys, helping build homes, drinking water from glowing fruit, watching Lyra master her fire without burning something every five minutes. For the first time in a long time, I felt human again.
But amid the peace, the flickers kept coming. Lines in the air. Moments where the ground felt like it was breathing. Echoes I couldn't explain. Mara watched me closely. As if she knew. As if she'd been waiting.
One evening, after a long day of work, I sat alone near the Spirit Grove. The trees swayed without wind, leaves whispering secrets. And then—softly, like a sigh—I heard it: 'Kailen.' Not with my ears. Not with my mind. But with something deeper. A tremor ran through the earth. The air rippled, and for a split second, the cracks reappeared—glowing gently like veins of the universe.
My heart pounded. I wasn't losing my mind. Something was awakening in me.
"When you're ready," a voice said behind me, "we will talk about what you are."
I turned. Mara stood there, her eyes glowing faintly gold. Lyra had fire. Orion had mind. Elias had machinery. And I… I had something older. Quieter. More dangerous. But that revelation would come later. For now, the lesson was simple, Karura Haven wasn't just a refuge. It was a beginning.