Where am i?
What am i?
I'm Alpha
The morning light drifted through the cracks in the shutters, soft and golden, painting uneven stripes across the wooden floor. Gemma lay under her blanket, half awake, listening to the creak of footsteps below. The smell of bread had already filled the house: warm, sweet, mixed with the faint salt of the sea.
She heard her father's voice first, low and steady, humming an old song as he fastened his belt. Then her mother's laugh, light, effortless, the kind of sound that could make a day feel safe before it even began.
"Up, Gemma," her father called from the stairs. "You'll sleep through the market again."
"I'm awake!" she shouted, though she wasn't, not really.
When she finally sat up, her hair was tangled and her eyes heavy. The house was small, but full of warmth, every object seemed touched by her mother's hands. A red scarf hanging near the door. A wooden spoon with a chipped edge. The faint trace of flowers drawn on the wall beside her bed.
Downstairs, her mother was kneading dough with quick, confident motions. Flour dusted her cheeks. "There she is," she said when Gemma appeared. "The sleeping dragon."
Her father chuckled from the doorway. "She's not a dragon. Dragons wake early."
"I was dreaming," Gemma said, sitting at the table.
"About what?"
She paused, frowning. "I don't remember."
Her mother placed a cup of milk in front of her and brushed her hair from her eyes. "Then it must've been a good dream."
Gemma nodded and smiled faintly. She loved mornings like this: the smell of bread, the sound of gulls outside, her father pretending to scold her for eating too slowly. Nothing extraordinary ever happened in Seborn, and she liked it that way.
They left together once the bread was packed into a small basket. The wind outside carried the scent of fish and the crash of waves. Her father's hand was rough but warm as he held hers, leading her down the narrow path toward the market square.
People greeted them as they passed, neighbors, fishermen, merchants setting up their stalls. Her mother waved to each of them. Seborn was small, and everyone knew everyone else.
"Morning, Marel!" a woman called from a window. "Don't let her eat all your bread again."
Her mother laughed. "She's growing. What can I do?"
Gemma blushed and hid behind her father's leg.
When they reached the market, the world opened. Color everywhere: cloth banners fluttering, baskets of fruit, barrels of salted fish. A blacksmith's hammer rang out from across the street, and Gemma turned toward the sound.
The blacksmith, Relen, stood at his forge, his arms bare and shining with sweat. He looked terrifying until he smiled. "There's my favorite troublemaker," he said as they approached.
"I'm not trouble," Gemma said.
"Then who stole my last loaf last week?"
Her father grinned. "She blames the gulls."
Relen laughed and reached into his apron. He handed Gemma a small horseshoe, still warm from the forge, its edges glowing faintly. "For luck. And to keep the gulls away."
She took it carefully. "Thank you."
"Keep it close," Relen said. "This island runs on luck more than anything."
Her mother shook her head. "Don't fill her with superstitions."
"It's not superstition if it works," Relen replied, winking at Gemma.
They stayed for a while, talking about the weather, about the last fishing boat that hadn't come back, about small things that didn't really matter but somehow made the world feel whole. Gemma barely listened; she was watching the light glint off the sea, tracing the slow rhythm of the waves.
And then, somewhere beneath that rhythm, she heard something else.
At first it was nothing, just a faint vibration, almost like the hum of the forge. She thought maybe Relen had struck the anvil again, but the hammer was still. Her parents were still talking. The noise came from deeper, from inside her ears.
She blinked and rubbed the side of her head.
Her father noticed. "You all right, Gem?"
"Yeah… just a ringing sound."
Her mother frowned. "Ringing?"
Gemma nodded, trying to smile, but the sound didn't stop. It deepened, a low tone, steady and pulsing, like a whisper carried through water.
She turned toward the forge again, searching for the source, but everything looked the same. The noise crawled deeper into her skull, soft at first, then clearer, almost like someone was calling her name.
Gemma.
She froze.
"What is it?" her mother asked, her voice careful now.
Gemma didn't answer. The word had been too close, too real. It wasn't a memory. It wasn't imagination. It was there, inside her, and it was speaking again.
Gemma.
This time she gasped and pressed her hands against her ears. The sound wasn't just a whisper anymore. It was many voices layered together, low, rhythmic, impossible to separate. It felt alive.
Her father crouched in front of her, his face suddenly pale. "Sweetheart, talk to me. What do you hear?"
Gemma opened her mouth, but the words wouldn't come. The air trembled around her. The hammer slipped from Relen's hand and hit the ground with a sharp clang.
The sound echoed once, then died.But the voices didn't.
They were only getting louder.
The air felt heavier now. The voices were so loud that Gemma couldn't hear her parents anymore. Her mother's hands were on her shoulders, her father shouting something she couldn't make out. Every sound was wrapped inside that endless hum, one that wasn't just in her head anymore, but in the air, in the stones, in her bones.
She tried to speak. "It won't stop."
"Gemma, look at me," her father said. His voice sounded far away, as if spoken through water.
Her mother's eyes were wet, but steady. "It's all right, sweetheart. We'll get help. Just breathe with me, all right? Like this." She inhaled, slow and deep, but Gemma couldn't. The air burned going in.
Then the ground began to tremble. Pebbles rolled across the street. The horseshoe slipped from her hand.
"Move!" Relen shouted. He grabbed her father's arm, pulling them toward the forge, but the moment they moved, the voices screamed, not in anger, but in unison, as if commanding her to stop.
The air split open.
Light erupted from her chest: white, pure, violent. It poured out of her mouth and eyes, stretching upward like a pillar. The heat was blinding, the sound like thunder tearing through stone. Her mother tried to reach her, but her hand disintegrated into ash before it touched her daughter's cheek.
Her father's voice was the last thing she heard. "Gem..."
Then nothing.
The wave expanded, swallowing the square, the stalls, the sea beyond. The sky turned white.
When Gemma woke, the world was gone.
She was lying in the street, surrounded by smoke. The air was thick with the stench of burned wood and iron. What had been the market was now a plain of ash. The forge was a twisted skeleton of melted metal. The sound of the sea had vanished, even the gulls were silent.
"Mom?" she whispered.
There was no answer.
Her father lay a few steps away, face down, a shape more than a man. She crawled to him, shaking him by the shoulders. "Dad, wake up." His coat crumbled in her hands. She turned toward where her mother had been, but there was only a shadow burned into the ground, a faint outline on the stone.
Her breath came in short gasps. She pressed the horseshoe: bent, blackened, against her chest. Her tears left streaks in the soot on her face.
"I didn't mean to," she said to no one. "I didn't mean to."
Then came the hum again. Faint, distant, but unmistakable. It rose from beneath the ruins, from the sea, from the sky, she couldn't tell anymore. The same voices, but now soft, almost gentle.
You did it.
She looked at her hands. They were trembling, glowing faintly beneath the soot. The warmth crawled up her arms, into her chest, into her head. It wasn't pain, it was something else. Something vast.
She closed her fingers, and the glow followed, gathering in her palm.
She could feel it now: the same thing that had destroyed Seborn, breathing inside her veins, waiting for her to call it again.
The world blurred around her, colors draining into white.
And as the light rose once more, she understood something simple and terrible: if a single cry could erase her village, then one thought, one command, could erase everything.
The power didn't belong to the Light.
It belonged to her. And it had been waiting for her to remember.
The glow in her hands spread upward until her whole body was light. It wasn't pain anymore, it was release. The voices didn't command her now; they followed her, like echoes of something ancient returning home.
She didn't feel her body move, yet she was rising. The water below rippled, swirling into a spiral of silver as her feet left its surface. Threads of light wrapped around her arms, lifting her higher and higher through the tunnel, the air trembling with each heartbeat.
For a moment, she thought she might vanish into the light again, burn out completely, like before. But then the air broke, and she saw the world above.
Candriela was waiting there, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword, her face unreadable. The glow from below painted her in shifting colors as Gemma rose from the depths like a specter.
The light dimmed. The hum faded. Gemma floated for a breath longer, then her boots touched the stone floor.
She was trembling, drenched in that strange radiance, her eyes unfocused, her pulse still echoing in the air.
Candriela stepped forward, silent as always. She didn't ask what Gemma had seen, or what she had become. She just looked at her for a long time, then nodded once, as if she already knew.
And Gemma, still shaking, understood that the world above them was the same, but she wasn't.
What am i?
I'm Alpha and Omega. Creation and destruction.