The murmur of the dining room was a distant noise, almost irrelevant. Edward sat at his usual table, motionless, staring at an undefined point in front of him. Emmett was thinking about something trivial, Rosalie was mentally reviewing a complaint she didn't voice aloud, Jasper was filtering other people's emotions like someone regulating a dangerous current. Everything was normal. Too normal.

Then it happened.

Alice's mind lit up with the abrupt clarity of a vision, and Edward received it unintentionally, like a bolt of lightning piercing his thoughts. A possible future, brief, incomplete. Forks under a gray sky denser than usual, a new path through the forest. Someone unrecognizable.

Edward tensed his jaw without moving a muscle.

In the vision, the being moved through damp trees and familiar streets, but its nature remained blurred, inaccessible even to Alice. It was difficult to define—human, shapeshifter, or vampire. The feeling it left behind was not one of immediate threat, but of impact. A shockwave destined to alter the delicate balance the Cullens had maintained for decades.

“Edward?” Alice thought, aware that he had already seen it.

He didn't answer. Outside, Emmett laughed at something he had just said aloud; Rosalie feigned indifference; Jasper frowned slightly, picking up on the slight change in the emotional tension at the table. Edward remained still, caught between the present and that uncertain future that did not yet exist, but already weighed heavily as an uncomfortable certainty.

He wasn't worried about immediate danger; he was unsettled by the unknown, the things he couldn't fully anticipate. Forks had been a refuge based on control, foresight, and restraint. And now, something was approaching without them recognizing what it was.

Edward lowered his gaze, resting his fingers against the cold surface of the table. The future was not yet written; the vision could change, it always did, but that presence...that persistent feeling...would not go away.

“Whatever it is,” he finally said, with forced calm, “it will affect us all.”