In the beginning, there was silence. Not the kind of quiet that comes with peace, but the heavy, suffocating silence of uncertainty. The kind that fills the cracks of a soul trying to remember itself. I was seventeen, lost in the echo of who I thought I was and the shadows of who I might become. There was a storm brewing, one I couldn’t see but could feel in my bones, rattling my foundation. It was the kind of storm that shakes your world and rearranges every piece of you, leaving nothing untouched. When it began, I didn’t know it was a beginning at all. Life seemed as it always had: small, boxed in, and unassuming. But that’s the thing about truth—it doesn’t knock politely. It kicks the door in, floods your house, and leaves you gasping for air. That’s what happened to me. It didn’t arrive as a whisper but as a torrent, a series of revelations so raw and unforgiving that I could barely keep up. And behind it all, I could feel something watching, waiting—a force older than time, darker than night. The Catalyst My life was ordinary by all outward appearances. A seventeen-year-old caught in the monotony of daily life, navigating the trivial dramas and small victories that make up adolescence. But there was always something beneath the surface, a low hum of something otherworldly that I couldn’t quite put into words. And then, there was this lady M.