Void Of Powers

blast-we'd The ash was gone, but Ridgeway Park still looked like it hadn’t decided whether it was going to be a park again. The playground slide shone too brightly where the sun hit it, like someone had varnished it overnight, and the swing chains squeaked every time the wind nudged them-annoyingly normal sounds for a morning that didn’t feel normal at all.

I stood on the rubber tiles beside the jungle gym and stared at my hands like they belonged to someone else. Yesterday, the volcano had gone off like a god slamming a door. Everyone had climbed out of the blast zone with only ringing ears and dirt under their nails. No broken bones. No blood that wouldn’t wash out. Just the kind of aftermath that made your brain keep checking for the missing worst-case scenario and coming up empty.

My friends were scattered around the playground in that careful way we’d started doing since the explosion-close enough to stay together, far enough that if something weird happened, it wouldn’t look like we’d planned it.

“Okay,” Juno said, too loud. She was on the lowest rung of the climbing net, bouncing her sneaker as if she could bounce the world back into place. “We’re alive. We’re… basically fine. So we can stop staring at each other like we’re waiting for the sky to punch us again.”

“Speak for yourself,” Nia muttered. She was sitting on the bench with her backpack hugged to her chest as if it could buffer reality. Her eyes kept flicking to mine, then away, like she was afraid I’d notice her watching.

Lio pushed his hair back with both hands and looked at the slide, then at the path beyond it. “If anyone asks, we say we got lucky. We say we were at the wrong place at the wrong time. We do not say ‘volcano.’ We do not say ‘powers.’”

A breeze dragged grit across the ground. It made the air feel dry against my throat. The thought of saying the word "volcano" out loud made my stomach clench anyway, like the sound itself might summon another blast.

I flexed my fingers. They didn’t crackle or glow or anything dramatic. My power never looked dramatic until it was already too late. That was the problem with rare abilities-they didn’t come with warning lights.

Mine felt like a door in my chest. When I pushed at it, the world around me went thin, like I could peel a sheet of reality away and step through the space behind it.

I wasn’t supposed to use it here. Not at Ridgeway. Not where people walked dogs and parents let kids wander in bright shirts and messy shoes. Not where anyone could see.

I wanted to pretend the volcano had been a nightmare we woke up from, a loud story other people told. I wanted to laugh at nothing and swing on a chain like a normal person.

I wanted us to be normal.

“Let’s just… hang out,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. “Like we always do.”

Juno hopped down from the net. “Finally. Something we can all agree on.”

Nia’s mouth twisted. “We can agree on the fact that we’re not going to do anything suspicious.”

Lio snorted, but it didn’t have any humor in it. “We can agree on that too.”

I took a step toward the slide. The rubber tiles under my sneakers were warm from the sun. Warmth shouldn’t have felt like betrayal, but it did. Yesterday’s heat from the blast had been a furnace; today’s warmth was just weather, and my body kept expecting the furnace to return.

We moved in a loose circle, like we were planning a game without admitting it. I tried to focus on small things-the creak of the swing, the scrape of gravel under Lio’s shoes, the distant bark of someone’s dog. If I listened hard enough, I could ignore the louder sound inside my head: the memory of power snapping into place like a key turning.

A week after the volcano, we’d tested everything in the park when no one was watching. Two months ago-if you could call it that, because time felt warped since the blast - we’d been so careful. Like secrecy was a lock we could keep turning until it clicked.

Now it was morning again, and we were still turning the lock.

Except someone had left the door open a crack.

A man walked past the entrance gate with a clipboard folded under his arm. He wore a city-worker vest and held his phone out like he was checking something. His gaze slid over the playground and landed on us a little too long.

Juno noticed first. Her shoulders stiffened. “Is he… with the city?”

“Does it matter?” Nia asked, but she didn’t sound like she believed her own question.

Lio leaned against the jungle gym post, casual, like he hadn’t spent the last two months learning how to look casual. “Maybe he’s surveying the damage. Maybe he's-"

The man’s phone buzzed. He looked down, then up, and his eyes narrowed slightly as if he’d spotted a detail he couldn’t file away.

My skin tightened.

I didn’t know what he saw. I didn’t know if it was the way we stood too still or the way we watched him back. I only knew that my power reacted to attention like it was a scent. The door in my chest pressed back.

...