My posters, still rippling, suddenly smoothed. Not just visually, but physically. The abstract print warped, its chaotic lines twisting into a perfectly symmetrical, almost hypnotic spiral. The faded band poster, which had been peeling at the edges, suddenly adhered perfectly to the wall, its colors vibrant, as if freshly printed. Reality Distortion. Just like that.
I stumbled back, tripping over my own feet, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest. My hands flew out, trying to steady myself, to push away the impossible.
"What the fuck?!" I shrieked, my voice raw, laced with pure, unadulterated panic.
As the word "fuck" left my lips, the cheap plastic lamp on my bedside table didn't just flicker; it exploded. Not with a bang, but with a silent, concussive force that sent shards of plastic flying. The windowpane rattled violently, and a crack, fine as a spiderweb, snaked across the glass. Echo Blast. A raw, concussive force. And I hadn't even known I was doing it.
My eyes, I realized, were no longer just violet. They were shifting. A terrifying, mesmerizing dance of color. From the deep, bruised plum I knew, they bled into a shimmering silver, then a vibrant, almost electric violet, then back again, swirling like a storm in a teacup. And on my left forearm, where there had only ever been clear skin, an intricate, swirling pattern of lines, like a stylized echo, began to bloom. It pulsed with a faint, violet light, mirroring the chaos in my eyes. The tattoo. It was real.
A sudden, intense chill filled the room, making goosebumps erupt on my arms. I looked towards the window, and a thin sheet of ice, shimmering faintly, began to creep up the pane, forming delicate, crystalline patterns. Elemental Manipulation. Ice. My breath hitched.
"No! Stop! This isn't real!" I yelled, my voice cracking, my hands trembling as I held them out, as if to ward off the madness.
As I spoke, the water pipe beneath my sink, which had been dripping for weeks, suddenly burst with a violent spray. Water gushed out, cold and furious, soaking the floor. A gust of wind, impossibly strong for a closed room, whipped through the apartment, tearing at the curtains, sending papers scattering. More Elemental Manipulation. Water. Wind. My own words, my own panic, were literally tearing my apartment apart.
I stumbled backward, my back hitting the wall with a thud. My mind raced, trying to find a foothold in the rapidly dissolving reality. This wasn't a dream. This wasn't a hallucination. This was… magic. My magic. And it was a terrifying, uncontrollable beast.
My eyes, still shifting between violet and silver, caught my reflection in a shard of the broken lamp. The swirling tattoo on my arm pulsed, a living thing. I saw the fear in my own face, the wide, disbelieving eyes, the trembling lips.
"This is just… great," I muttered, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in my throat. "Eighteen. And I'm officially a walking, talking, reality-bending disaster. Happy birthday to me, I guess. What's next? Am I going to accidentally turn myself into a toad?" The sarcasm was a desperate shield, a flimsy attempt to keep the sheer, overwhelming terror at bay.
But even as I spoke, I felt a strange, new sensation. A faint, almost imperceptible hum, different from the roaring chaos, began to resonate in my ears. It was like a chorus, a song woven from countless, unseen threads, and my voice, my very being, was a new, discordant note in its melody. I wasn't just commanding reality; I was re-weaving it. The sheer scale of it, the raw, untamed power, was incomprehensible.
I sank to the floor, surrounded by the wreckage of my mundane life, the ice on the window, the gushing water, the unnerving silence outside. My eyes still pulsed, a terrifying kaleidoscope of violet and silver. I was a Fae Witch. An Elarian. And I had absolutely no idea what the hell I was going to do next. The mundane world was gone. And the mystical one had just crashed into my living room like a drunken comet.