Chapter 1: The Vandalism Prophecy

The Hollywood sign blazed against the midnight sky like a neon promise of dreams and glory, but Kaelen Marcus saw it differently tonight. To him, it represented everything he couldn't have—the wealth, the fame, the respect that came so easily to the rich kids at his school while he scraped by in hand-me-down Jordans and a thrift store hoodie.

"You sure about this, man?" Mateo whispered, his voice barely audible over the distant hum of LA traffic below. The skinny kid clutched a backpack full of homemade explosives, his dark eyes wide with a mixture of terror and excitement.

Kaelen adjusted his own pack and flashed his signature cocky grin. "When am I not sure?" At fourteen, he carried himself with the swagger of someone twice his age, his short dreadlocks catching the moonlight as he surveyed their target. "Besides, someone's gotta show these Hollywood phonies what real art looks like."

"This ain't art, K," muttered Jayden, the third member of their crew. Unlike Mateo's nervous energy, Jay radiated the kind of cold determination that came from growing up in East LA's toughest neighborhoods. "This is straight vandalism."

"Vandalism with style," Kaelen corrected, pulling out his phone to record. "Tomorrow morning, everyone's gonna know we were here. No more being invisible."

The plan was simple—almost stupidly so. They'd planted small charges at the base of each letter, nothing that would hurt anyone but enough to bring down the iconic landmark. It was supposed to be their masterpiece, their middle finger to a city that treated kids like them as afterthoughts.

Kaelen pressed the detonator.

The explosion lit up the Hollywood Hills like daybreak. Nine letters crumbled in sequence, each collapse sending shockwaves through the earth that rattled windows for miles. But something else happened in that moment—something Kaelen's friends couldn't see.

As the last letter fell, the air itself seemed to crack. An invisible wave of energy erupted from the collapsing sign, washing over the hills with the force of a tsunami. The wave struck Kaelen like a physical blow, driving him to his knees as searing pain shot through his right hand.

He screamed, but the sound was lost in the echo of destruction. White-hot agony carved itself into his flesh, leaving behind an intricate silver glyph that pulsed with its own inner light. The pattern was impossibly complex—geometric shapes that hurt to look at directly, as if they belonged to some alien mathematics.

"Kaelen! You okay?" Mateo's voice sounded distant, muffled.

"I'm fine," Kaelen gasped, clutching his branded hand to his chest. The glyph's light faded until it was barely visible, but he could still feel it burning beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. "Just... adrenaline."

His friends couldn't see the mark. When he held up his hand, they saw nothing but normal brown skin. But Kaelen could feel it—a weight that seemed to press down on his very soul.

"Dude, we gotta go," Jay hissed, grabbing their arms. "Cops'll be here any minute."

They ran, scrambling down the hillside through scrub brush and loose rocks. Behind them, sirens wailed like banshees as emergency vehicles raced toward the destruction. Kaelen should have felt triumphant—they'd actually done it, pulled off the biggest prank in LA history. Instead, a cold dread settled in his stomach.

As they reached the parking area where they'd stashed their bikes, movement caught Kaelen's eye. A figure stood in the shadows between two cars, perfectly still. Even in the darkness, he could make out details that shouldn't have been possible—pale skin that seemed to glow with its own light, hair like spun silver that moved without wind.

But it was her eyes that made his blood freeze. They burned with violet fire, twin stars in a face too young and too old at the same time. She was maybe fifteen or sixteen, dressed in simple jeans and a plain t-shirt that looked oddly out of place, as if she'd grabbed them from a costume rack labeled "normal teenager."

She stared directly at him—not at his friends, not at the chaos behind them, but at him. Her gaze dropped to his branded hand, and her expression shifted from cold assessment to something that might have been horror.

"K, come on!" Mateo called from his bike.

When Kaelen looked back, the girl was gone.

They rode in silence through empty streets, the weight of what they'd done finally hitting them. The Hollywood sign—one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world—was nothing but rubble and dust. By morning, their faces would be on every news channel in America.

But Kaelen couldn't stop thinking about the girl. Those impossible eyes. The way she'd looked at his hand as if she could see what his friends couldn't. And the expression on her face when she'd seen the glyph—not confusion or curiosity, but recognition.

As if she knew exactly what it meant.

They split up at the intersection near Kaelen's neighborhood, each heading home with promises to keep their mouths shut and act normal. Kaelen coasted through the quiet streets of his working-class neighborhood, past houses with barred windows and cars held together with prayer and duct tape.

His own house sat at the end of a dead-end street, a small two-bedroom his mom had scraped together the down payment for after his dad left. The lights were off—she'd be asleep, exhausted from her double shift at the diner. With any luck, he could sneak in without waking her.

He was halfway up the front steps when his phone buzzed with a news alert: "HOLLYWOOD SIGN DESTROYED IN TERRORIST ATTACK—FBI INVESTIGATING."

Terrorist attack. The words hit him like a physical blow. They'd meant it as a prank, a statement. But the world would see it as something else entirely.

His branded hand throbbed, and for a moment, the silver glyph flared bright enough to cast shadows on the porch. In that brief illumination, he saw something that made his heart stop.

The girl with silver hair stood at the end of his driveway, watching him with those burning violet eyes. This time, she didn't disappear when he blinked. Instead, she raised one pale hand in what might have been a greeting or a warning.

Then she spoke, her voice carrying impossibly across the distance between them:

"We need to talk, Keystone."

The word sent ice through his veins. Somehow, she knew what had happened on that hill. She knew about the glyph, about the energy that had nearly torn him apart. But more than that, she knew what it meant.

And if the look on her face was any indication, he was in more trouble than he could possibly imagine.

The girl turned and walked away, dissolving into the shadows between streetlights like she'd never been there at all. But her words echoed in his mind as he finally made it inside, creeping past his sleeping mother and collapsing onto his bed fully clothed.

Keystone.

Whatever that meant, Kaelen had a feeling his life as he knew it was over. The Hollywood sign had been just the beginning.

As he drifted toward an uneasy sleep, the glyph on his hand pulsed once more, and somewhere in the distance, something howled—a sound that belonged to no earthly creature, full of hunger and rage and an intelligence that made his skin crawl.

The hunt had begun.