The glitch happened on a Thursday, during what should have been a routine status check.
Astraea was in the CYAP bathroom, taking one of her increasingly necessary moments to check her wing bud development. The buds were now distinct enough that she had to consciously maintain glamour over them—a constant, low-level drain on her focus.
She was examining the subtle silver tracery visible to her dragon sight when the System notification appeared. But something was wrong with it.
[System alert! Anom… anomaly det… detected…]
The text flickered. Stuttered. Like a corrupted file.
[User growth param… parameters…]
More flickering. Then:
[Anomaly: User growth rate exceeds standard parameters by 3,700%. Comparative analysis: Biological age ~10 years. Expected monthly height increase: 0.3-0.5 cm. Actual monthly increase: 11.1 cm extrapolated. Discrepancy: Significant.]
Astraea froze. The System had finally noticed. Not the truth, but the anomaly. The impossibility.
[Possible explanations: 1) Measurement error. 2) Accelerated developmental phase. 3) Data corruption. 4) User is actually growing at appropriate rate for true biological age of… Error… Calculation failed.]
The System tried to calculate her true age based on growth rate. Tried and failed. The numbers didn't make sense in its human-centric database.
[Recalibrating…]
[Recalibrating…]
[Recalibrating…]
The notification flickered rapidly, cycling through recalibration attempts.
[Best match found: User experiencing "catch-up growth" following previous developmental delay. Scenario: Malnutrition corrected, growth acceleration occurring.]
Close. So close to truth, yet still missing it entirely. The System had diagnosed "catch-up growth" but couldn't comprehend the scale. Four centuries of catching up.
[Recommendation: Increased nutritional intake. Additional rest periods. Monitoring.]
Then, the glitch deepened.
[Alternative hypothesis: User not human. Comparative database search… Error… restricted access. Mythological matches: Dragon growth patterns (juvenile phase): Match 73%. Faerie growth patterns: Match 41%. Cosmic entity growth patterns: Match 88%.]
Astraea's breath caught. The System was accessing restricted databases. Comparing her to non-human growth patterns. Getting warm.
[Conclusion: Insufficient data. Defaulting to primary hypothesis: Human child with accelerated growth due to previous deprivation.]
The System chose the simpler explanation. The human explanation. But the glitch had shown its hand. The System had other databases. Other categories. It just couldn't—or wouldn't—access them for a "Luminous Child, Tier 0."
[New daily quest: 'Growing pains management!']
[Objective: Take two naps today!]
[Reward: 'Well-rested' buff, +5 to Growth stat temporarily]
[Note: Growing is hard work! Your body needs extra rest!]
The notification stabilized. The glitch was over. The System had retreated to its cheerful, ignorant default.
But something had changed. A crack had appeared in the System's perfect misunderstanding.
Astraea finished in the bathroom and returned to the Sparkle Room. The rest of the session passed normally—"Collaborative Rainbow Building" where they tried to combine their lights into spectrum patterns. But her mind was elsewhere.
The System knew something was wrong. It just didn't know what. And its solution was… naps.
She almost laughed. If only it were that simple. If only four centuries of stasis could be solved with afternoon rest.
At nap time—an actual scheduled part of CYAP for "energetic development integration"—Astraea lay on her mat, listening to the soft breathing of sleeping children around her. She didn't sleep. She couldn't. Not with the wing buds humming, not with the System's glitch fresh in her mind.
Instead, she did something she'd been avoiding. She reached out to the System. Not through its interface, but around it. She touched the edges of whatever intelligence operated it, feeling for its limits.
It was… vast. But shallow. An ocean that was only an inch deep. It contained enormous databases, but accessed them through simple, rigid protocols. It could compare her to dragons in its mythology files, but couldn't make the leap to "actual dragon" because that wasn't in its decision tree for "Luminous Child, Tier 0."
It was like a librarian who could find you a book on dragons, but couldn't recognize a dragon standing at the checkout desk.
The glitch wasn't a threat. Not yet. It was a symptom. The System was beginning to strain against her reality, but its programming kept forcing her back into the "cute child" box.
[Daily quest complete: 'Growing pains management!']
[Reward: 'Well-rested' buff applied! Growth rate temporarily increased by 5%!]
The notification was perfectly cheerful. Perfectly oblivious. The System thought it had helped her take a nap. It had no idea she'd spent the time probing its architecture.
That evening, measuring her height, she found the System's "well-rested" buff had actually worked. 0.36 cm cumulative. The growth was accelerating slightly.
And the wing buds… she touched her back through her shirt. They were definitely there now. Small but distinct. Another week, and she'd need to seriously adjust her glamour or risk discovery.
[System notification!]
[Growth milestone approaching!]
[0.4 cm height increase expected within 7 days!]
[Keep up the good work! You're growing up so fast!]
Fast. The System thought this was fast. It had no conception of slow. Of centuries. Of the true scale of her catching up.
But it was beginning to notice. The glitch proved that.
She looked at her reflection—the child with ancient eyes, with wings beginning to form beneath the skin, with a System that was starting to glitch around the edges of her reality.
Tomorrow: more kindergarten, more naps. The day after: more growth, more System strain. The great unraveling had begun, not with a bang, but with a stuttered notification and a recommendation for more rest.