Chapter 9 Painted Prophecies

Kai West - POV

The metallic taste of burnt copper fills my mouth before I even open my eyes. My synesthesia always kicks in strongest when I'm dreaming, but this tastes different. Wrong. Like blood mixed with electricity.

I roll out of bed and immediately freeze. The canvas I'd been working on—Emma surrounded by golden light, her face peaceful and strong—has completely changed. Now she kneels in what looks like dark water, her face twisted in anguish as she reaches toward something I can't quite see.

"What the hell?" I stumble closer, nearly kicking over the coffee cups scattered around my easel.

The painted water moves. Actually moves, rippling across the canvas like it's real. Emma's mouth opens in a silent scream, and the copper taste in my mouth intensifies until I have to spit into my water jar.

I blink hard, shake my head, look again. The scene has shifted completely. Now Cole lies in a hospital bed, machines surrounding him while Emma holds his lifeless hand. The beeping sound I hear might be coming from the painting or from inside my head—with synesthesia, it's impossible to tell.

"This isn't happening." My voice echoes strangely in the empty studio. "Paintings don't just change."

But even as I say it, the image flickers like a broken television. Blake now, floating face-down in dark water while Emma reaches for him from the shore. Her fingers are inches from his, but the distance might as well be miles.

The emotions pouring off the canvas hit me like a physical force. Desperation tastes like pennies. Fear smells like burning plastic. Loss feels like ice water in my veins. I double over, dry heaving from the intensity.

My phone buzzes with a text from Ryan: Working late. Everything okay?

I call him instead, my hands shaking as I dial.

"Kai? It's past midnight."

"Something's wrong with my paintings." I can't look away from the canvas as it shifts again, now showing Ryan collapsed in his study with books scattered around him. Emma kneels beside his still form, her golden light flickering like a dying bulb. "They're changing on their own, showing futures where we all die."

Long silence. Then Ryan's clinical voice, sharper than usual: "Describe exactly what you're seeing."

"First Cole in a hospital. Then Blake drowning. Now you're dead in your study." The painting flickers, and suddenly it's me on the canvas, paint-stained hands clutching my chest while Emma cries over my body. "Now it's me. Ryan, every single future shows one of us dying to protect her."

"I'm coming. Don't touch anything. Don't paint anything new."

The line goes dead, but I can't move away from the easel. The scenes keep cycling through our deaths like some sick slideshow. Each time, Emma survives but looks more broken, more alone.

Without thinking, I grab my sketchbook and start drawing what I see. But the moment my pencil touches paper, the images on the canvas become more vivid. More real. The colors saturate deeper, the movement becomes smoother, and the emotional feedback gets so strong I can taste Emma's tears.

"Stop," I whisper, dropping the pencil like it's on fire. "Don't make them more real."

Twenty minutes later, Ryan bursts through the studio door still wearing scrubs from his late shift at the medical center. He takes one look at the shifting canvas and goes completely still.

"How long has this been happening?"

"Since I woke up. Maybe an hour?" I gesture helplessly at the painting. "Ryan, what if I'm not seeing these futures? What if I'm creating them somehow?"

He moves closer, pulling out his phone's flashlight and shining it on the canvas. Under the light, I can see fresh paint layered over my original work. Paint I don't remember applying.

"Kai, when did you last eat a full meal? Sleep for more than a few hours?"

"I don't know. Few days maybe?" The question seems stupid compared to watching our deaths play out in front of me. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Extreme fatigue and malnutrition can cause visual hallucinations, but this..." He gestures at the moving painting. "This suggests your abilities are being artificially enhanced somehow."

The canvas shows all four of us now, surrounding Emma in the chapel where we first performed the binding. But instead of the ritual that connected us, this version shows us lying motionless while Emma's power burns through us like wildfire.

"We all die." The words taste like ash. "In every future, we die trying to save her."

"Or we die because we won't let her save herself." Ryan's voice is gentler than his usual clinical tone. "Kai, I need you to think. Has anyone been giving you anything recently? Medication, supplements, even food or drink?"

"Why would you—" I stop, remembering. "The tea. Dr. Kane's been bringing me herbal tea during our counseling sessions. Said it would help with the headaches from my synesthesia getting stronger."

Ryan goes very quiet. When he speaks, his voice is deadly calm. "How long has she been giving you this tea?"

"Since right after Emma's binding. Maybe five or six sessions." My stomach drops as I realize what he's thinking. "Ryan, what's in the tea?"

Before he can answer, the painting erupts into chaos. All the death scenes play at once, overlapping and bleeding into each other until the canvas looks like a battlefield. Emma stands in the center, her golden light now burning white-hot as our bodies lie scattered around her feet.

"It's not prediction," I breathe, the truth hitting me like a punch to the gut. "I'm not seeing possible futures. I'm painting them into existence."

The studio door opens, and Dr. Kane walks in wearing a long coat over pajamas. She doesn't look surprised to find us here at past midnight. Doesn't react to the impossible moving painting. Just smiles like she's been expecting this.

"Gentlemen. I thought I might find you here."

Ryan immediately steps between Kane and me. "What did you give him?"

"Nothing harmful. Just a little enhancement to help Kai access his full potential." She walks closer to the canvas, studying the chaotic scenes with obvious satisfaction. "Beautiful work, isn kai? All those tragic possibilities, all those emotional futures. And you've been weaving them into reality without even knowing it."

"You drugged me." The words come out strangled. My synesthesia is going haywire—her voice tastes like metal, her presence smells like ozone before a storm.

"I enhanced you. There's a significant difference." Kane pulls a small vial of clear liquid from her coat pocket. "The herbal tea was just the delivery method. This formula amplifies psychic abilities by dissolving the mental barriers that normally contain them. Your synesthesia was already powerful—I simply helped you break through the limitations."

The canvas behind us cycles faster through the death scenes. Cole in the hospital. Blake drowning. Ryan dead in his study. Me collapsed with paint-stained fingers. Over and over, like a broken record.

"What do you want?" Ryan's voice is ice-cold.

"To understand how artistic creation can manipulate reality. Kai's been my perfect test subject, mapping the relationship between emotional investment and probability manipulation." Kane holds up the vial. "Every painting he creates while enhanced becomes a weighted possibility. The more emotion he pours into it, the more likely it becomes real."

I back away from the easel, but the damage is already done. The painting continues its death spiral, each scene more vivid than the last.

"You can stop it," Kane continues. "One final dose, and you'll have complete conscious control. You can choose which future becomes reality." The canvas suddenly goes still, showing a new image I've never painted: Emma lying peacefully in a hospital bed, her face serene in death, while the four of us stand around her very much alive.

"That's the future you're all trying to avoid," Kane says softly. "Her death. But it's the only scenario where you survive. The question is: will you paint your friends' deaths to save the girl who's killing you slowly through the psychic bond? Or will you save yourselves?"

She sets the vial on my easel and heads for the door.

"The enhancement wears off by dawn, Kai. After that, whatever's on the canvas becomes fixed reality. Choose wisely."

The door closes behind her, leaving Ryan and me staring at the peaceful image of Emma's death and the terrible choice she's forced me to make.