The first sign that something was wrong came on a Thursday, Just after dawn.
The air in town tasted Faintly of metal.

Most people never noticed.
Most people never do.

But she did.

Iris paused halfway down the steps of her apartment building, her breath hitching the way it did when someone nearby was lying. Only...No one was around, just the empty street, the long shadows of dawn, the soft hum of the the streetlamps powering down for the day.

The taste lingered om her tongue: cold, coppery, electric.
Danger, Her body whispered.
Wrong, her bones insisted.

She pressed her hand to the rial of the stairs until her knuckles went white.
This happened sometimes, unexplained flashes of nausea, hints of dread around strangers, flickers at the edges of her vision she pretended weren’t real.
Doctors called it a sensory processing quirk. Her mother had called it nerves.
The regime’s mandatory health scanners had flagged nothing at all.

She was ordinary, they all said.

But the air that morning disagreed.

A delivery truck rumbled past, breaking the stillness. Iris forced her legs to move, even as the metallic taste sharpened. It felt like standing too close to a live wire. Or, she thought nervously, too close to the truth.

That was when a second feeling hit her—sharp and sudden, like something brushing the back of her mind.

A presence.

Not a person.
Not a thought.
More like a… pressure.
As if something had turned its head in her direction.

Her breath steamed in the cold, even though the morning wasn’t that kind of cold.

She looked down at her hands. They were trembling.

She didn’t know it yet, but miles away, another girl—one the Regime called the True Canari—bolted upright in her bed, choking on the same metallic taste, her pulse screaming in her throat.

Iris exhaled slowly, steadying herself.

It’s nothing, she told herself.
A panic surge. A bad night’s sleep. A trick of the cold air.

But the pressure—whatever it was—only grew thicker, as if the world were waiting for her to move.

She stepped onto the pavement.

Instantly, the metallic taste faded.

The pressure lifted.

And for a moment, she almost believed she had imagined it.

She started walking toward the tram stop, boots tapping on the wet concrete. The sky had shifted to a pale, bruised blue—one of those mornings where the clouds looked tired, like they were bracing for something heavy.

Her phone buzzed. A news alert.

UNEXPLAINED ELECTRICAL OUTAGE IN NORTH DISTRICT. INVESTIGATION ONGOING.

She frowned. That was close by.
The North District was only a few blocks from her building.

She tapped for more detail.

The article didn’t say much—power failure, cameras shorted out, no injuries. Officials claimed it was a grid malfunction. They always did.

But tucked between two paragraphs was a single line that made her stomach knot:

Witnesses report a faint humming in the air moments before the blackout.

Humming.

Her fingers tightened around the phone.

She had heard humming last night too—soft, rhythmic, almost like a second heartbeat hidden under the mattress. She’d chalked it up to the radiator.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

A tram screeched up to the stop, late and nearly empty. Iris climbed aboard, sliding into a seat near the back. She watched the city drift by through the fogged-up window—grey buildings, leafless trees, people wrapped in scarves against the morning chill.

Normal. Ordinary. Safe.

But a block before her stop, her breath caught again.

This time it wasn’t metal she tasted.

It was ash.

Dry. Bitter. Wrong.

She jerked upright, looking around wildly.
No fire. No smoke. No danger anyone else could see.

Yet every nerve in her body screamed: Someone nearby is about to die.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. She had felt this once before—years ago, the night before her neighbor collapsed on the stairs. But she had told no one. She had forced herself to forget.

Her fingers dug into the seat.
The ash taste thickened.

She whispered under her breath, voice shaking, “Please… not again.”

The tram slowed.

A young man stood to get off at the next stop—hood pulled up, headphones in, oblivious.

Iris’s vision flickered.

A faint shimmer clung to him.
A thin, pale line curling from his shoulder down to his chest—glowing like a quiet thread of lightning.

Iris wondered if others ever saw the line as well or if it was just her.

Her throat tightened.

The tram doors hissed open.
The young man stepped off into the street.

The world held its breath, and deep beneath the forest outside town, something very old shifted in its sleep.

Not awake.
Not yet.

Just listening.

Iris lurched to her feet.

For a moment—just one impossible moment—she saw a shadow beside him.

Not a silhouette.
Not a figure.

A blur of… hunger.

Like something leaning down to listen.

The metallic taste returned in a wave so sharp she gagged.

And in the heart of the forest miles away, the ancient spirit stirred deeper, sensing the tear in fate widening.

Iris lurched to her feet.

The ash taste coated her tongue, thick and bitter.
The shimmering line along the young man’s chest pulsed—once, twice—like a heartbeat running out of time.

The tram doors hissed open.
He stepped out.

And the pressure in the air tightened so sharply Iris choked on it.

“No—!” Her voice cracked.

She stumbled off the tram after him, legs trembling, vision fracturing at the edges. The death-vector glowed brighter. The shadow—the hungry blur beside him—leaned forward, listening. Preparing.

She didn’t think.
Couldn’t.

She just ran.

“HEY!” she shouted, louder than she meant to. “WAIT!”

The young man turned, confused, one earbud dangling.
“What?”

Iris grabbed his sleeve and yanked him back just as a delivery van skidded around the corner, tires screaming against wet asphalt.

The van fishtailed—right through the spot where he had been standing.

The driver honked, swerved, cursed, and clipped a garbage bin before disappearing down the street.

Silence slammed back into place.

The young man stared at her.
Breathless. Pale.
Alive.

“Jesus—” he whispered. “How did you—?”

Iris let go of his sleeve. Her hands were shaking.

“I… heard the brakes,” she lied weakly. “Didn’t want you to get hit.”

He tried to laugh, but the sound broke halfway.
“Good reflexes.”

She nodded, unable to speak. The ash taste faded.
The shimmering line vanished.

The shadow was gone.

But she felt something else instead—
a ripple in the air, like a held breath exhaled in disappointment.

For a brief second, the world felt… annoyed.
As if she had interrupted something it expected to happen.

The young man thanked her again before walking away, checking the road twice this time.

Iris watched him go, her pulse still thundering.

Saving him should have left her relieved.
Grateful.

Instead, she felt cold.

Because in the forest miles away, the ancient spirit stirred harder this time—
roused not by death fulfilled,
but by death denied.

Something in the deep roots turned,
listening,
hungry,
aware that a thread of fate had snapped out of its grasp.

And far across the city,
the official Canari girl jolted upright in her bedroom,
a strangled gasp ripping from her throat.

For the first time in her life,
she felt her warning stolen by someone else.

Someone who shouldn’t exist.

Someone who had just changed a death the world had already chosen.

The Regime’s Canari

Elara woke with her heart hammering so violently it felt like it might crack her ribs.

Not a nightmare.
Not a vision.

A void.

A moment where something should have been—
a death, a certainty, a thread she always saw—
and then… nothing.

Like a candle blown out before she could touch the flame.

She sat up too fast, grip tightening on her sheets as a sharp, electric ache shot behind her eyes. Her breath came ragged, uneven. The air in her apartment tasted faintly of ash, lingering for barely a second.

She froze.

Ash meant one thing.

Death.

But there was no death.
No image.
No silhouette.
No echo of a life-ending event.

Just… absence.

She pushed to her feet, crossing the room in three unsteady steps before flinging the window open. Cold morning air rushed in, but it didn’t help. Her nerves still hummed in painful dissonance.

The city outside was quiet, the kind of early light that painted everything in dull gold. Nothing out of place. Nothing alarming. Nothing that explained the tremor in her bones.

She closed her eyes, reaching inward the way her handlers taught her.

Feel the threads.
The vectors.
The futures.
The endings.

They always came—clean lines, glowing faintly, stretching from one moment to the next. Predictable. Understandable. Hers to read.

But now…

Nothing.

Not silence—
silence she understood.
This was worse.

A blank.

It felt as though someone had taken a page from a book she’d already read and torn it out while she wasn’t looking.

Her hands shook.

“That’s not possible,” she whispered.

She wasn’t doubting the event.
She was doubting herself.

A dangerous thing for a Canari to do.

The Thinning ensured she was the only one—
the strongest, the last survivor, the one who held the entire burden of fate in her lungs.

There was no one else to conflict with.
No one else who could see what she saw.
No one else who could alter a death she had sensed.

So why did it feel like someone had?

Her pulse throbbed in her throat.

Her knees nearly buckled under a sudden wave of dizziness, a sensory drop she’d never experienced—like her ability had skipped a breath.

Then a second sensation followed, subtle but undeniable:

Disappointment.

Not hers.

The world’s.

As if something hungry had been denied a long-awaited meal.

Elara backed away from the window.

“I’m unwell,” she said aloud, breath shallow. “It’s just fatigue.”

She knew the regime monitored her vitals, her hormones, her neurological spikes. If she reported instability, they’d sedate her. Evaluate her. Recalibrate her predictions.

She couldn’t let that happen.

She was the Canari.

She was the warning.

She was the only one.

She repeated the mantra like a prayer—
like a shield.

But for the first time in her life,
it didn’t settle her.

Her reflection in the window wavered.
For a split second, she saw a faint shimmer behind her shoulder—
the echo of a death-vector out of sync with her perception.

She blinked, and it vanished.

Her chest tightened.

Something was wrong.
Very, very wrong.

She didn’t know what.

She didn’t know why.

But deep inside, where her senses hummed closest to fate itself,
Elara felt a single truth curling coldly around her spine—

Her world had just changed.

And she had no idea what had changed it.

Elara stayed by the window until the shaking finally reached her hands.

Not fear—
fear was familiar.
Predictable.
Useful.

This was something worse.

Uncertainty.

She couldn’t afford uncertainty.

She stepped back, forcing her breath to slow the way they’d trained her:
Four counts in.
Hold.
Four counts out.

Her pulse refused to settle.

A soft chime sounded from the wall panel.
Her morning briefing.

She wasn’t ready for it.

But she couldn’t let them see instability.

The handlers never said what happened to a Canari who became… unreliable.
They didn’t have to.
The silence said enough.

Elara smoothed her hair, straightened her posture, and stepped into the scanner arch.

A light washed over her—cool, clinical, intrusive.
It read everything:

• Heart rate
• Adrenal spikes
• Truth-harmonics
• Cognitive patterns
• Emotional resonance

She kept her face still.

Stay steady. Stay linear.
She repeated the mantra inside her skull.

The scanner chimed again.

Cognitive Fluctuation Detected.
Recommendation: Additional Evaluation.

Elara’s stomach flipped.

“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “False positive.”

A voice crackled through the intercom—her handler, Dr. Velen.

“Elara. Please remain still. You’re showing irregularities.”

“I’m fine,” she said, voice flat and precise, the way they preferred.
The perfect warning. The perfect vessel.

But the ash taste lingered faintly on her tongue—
a memory, or a warning, or both.

Dr. Velen paused for just a fraction too long.

“Elara,” he said softly, “your readings show a missing vector.”

Her skin prickled.

They’d noticed.

“Vectors don’t go missing,” she said.
A truth she’d been fed her entire life.
A truth she lived by.

“That is precisely why we need to evaluate you.”

Panic clenched in her chest—quiet, invisible, but real.

She could not let them examine her.
Not until she understood what had happened.
Not until she understood why she had felt the void.
Not until she could be sure her power hadn’t… slipped.

So she did something she hadn’t done since she was a child:

She lied.

“I didn’t sleep,” she said calmly. “I haven’t slept well in three nights. Dreams. Distraction. That’s all.”

The scanner flickered—detecting harmonic distortion.
She held her breath.

A lie from a Canari was like static in a crystal radio—tiny distortions, faint cracks.
Easy to detect.

But the distortion wave… passed.

No alert.
No alarm.

Her lie slid clean.

That scared her more than anything else.

If she could lie now—
perfectly—
then something in her ability was shifting.

Breaking.

Changing.

Or being pulled.

“Very well,” Dr. Velen said at last. “I’ll log it. But if the pattern repeats—”

“It won’t,” she said.

She severed the connection before he could answer.

Then she pressed her shaking hands to her face and whispered into the dim light of the apartment:

“What is happening to me?”

A faint hum answered her.

Not from the city.
Not from the scanners.
Not from the fluorescent lights above her.

From somewhere deeper.

Somewhere older.

A harmonic she had never heard before.

A harmonic she didn’t recognize—
but something out there did.

She felt it respond.

Like a long, slow inhale from the dark.

Elara stumbled back from the window.

For the first time in her life,
the Canari felt like the prey.