At first, I’d probably tell myself it was nothing.

A headache. A weird fever. A bad night’s sleep. Then I’d notice the little things. Hearing things I shouldn’t hear. Catching something before I even realized it was falling. Walking away from pain a little too easily. The kind of moments you explain away because the truth sounds ridiculous.

Until it doesn’t.

Because eventually the world would start pushing back in ways I couldn’t ignore. Doors opening too easily. Time feeling slower when something went wrong. My body reacting before my mind could catch up. That’s when I’d know this wasn’t an accident I could just recover from. It was a beginning.

And beginnings like that are never clean.

Before the powers, there would be confusion. Before the confidence, fear. Because no one talks enough about that part. The part where your body becomes unfamiliar to you. The part where every reflection looks like a question. The part where you realize that whatever happens next is going to divide your life into before and after.

I think that’s how I’d start changing. Not by becoming fearless, but by being forced to keep going while I was still afraid. Learning my limits by breaking through them. Learning what I was by surviving the moments that should have destroyed me.

That’s the real transformation.

Not the strength. Not the speed. Not the power.

The moment you realize you can’t go back to who you were, and you have to decide whether what you’re becoming is a curse, a weapon, or something you might actually learn to carry with purpose.