The Council was already seated when the child arrived.

No one summoned them. No gates opened. No Krakoan bark twisted in welcome. And yet they were there—barefoot, mud-streaked, a leaf tangled in their hair. Silent as moss.

Charles Xavier glanced up only once.

He had seen them before, slipping between the branches of Arbor Magna, crouched near the wild roots of the Akademos green. The child had never spoken. Never disrupted. They came and went like breath—never lingering long enough to be questioned, never close enough to be held.

Some of the Council whispered of them. A stray. A fluke of the island. No one had brought them through a gate. Their name was not on the resurrection rolls. Sinister once scanned their genome and dismissed them as a statistical hiccup. Emma rolled her eyes at the mention of them. Magneto simply ignored them.

But Charles… Charles watched.

Today, as the Council argued over a series of mutant disappearances on American soil, the child appeared again—uninvited—perched on a ledge of twisted root just beyond the Circle of Twelve.

They said nothing. They did nothing.

And yet the wind changed.

The leaves above the Council stilled.

And Krakoa shifted.

Not in warning.

In recognition.

Xavier did not interrupt the meeting. He merely folded his hands, eyes steady beneath the shimmer of his Cerebro helm. He did not speak to the child, but his thoughts reached for them like vines through stone.

Still watching, little ghost?

The others continued debating. The island continued breathing.