My mother – or the thing wearing her shape – moves through the abandoned store like water flowing uphill. Reality ripples around her, but not like it does around me. Her distortions are more... deliberate. Controlled.
"The Church," she says in that voice that isn't quite a voice, "always did love their little stories. Their prophecies. Their chosen ones." Her form flickers between human and something else. "Do you know what's funny about stories, little sister? They only have power if you believe them."
"You're not my mother."
She laughs, the sound like crystal breaking in reverse. "No? Then what am I? Another test from the Church? A manifestation of Their power? Or maybe..." Her form stabilizes into something almost human. "Maybe I'm just a memory that learned how to think."
The darkness behind my eye pulses, reaching for something in her that reaches back. "Why are you here?"
"Because you're asking the wrong questions." She runs a hand along a dusty counter, leaving trails of impossible geometry in her wake. "All this time, you've been asking what you're meant to be. What They want. What the Church wants. What destiny demands." She turns to face me fully. "But did you ever stop to ask why they're so afraid of you?"
I blink, thrown off guard. "The Church isn't afraid of me. They want to use me."
"Oh, little sister." Her smile contains too many angles. "They're terrified of you. Not because of your power, not because of what you might become, but because you prove that they don't matter. That all their rituals, all their careful plans, all their attempts to control the uncontrollable... they're meaningless."
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't. They raised you on prophecies and destinies, on careful plans and controlled evolution. But here's the truth they never wanted you to know: none of it matters. The power you hold, the changes you're going through – they would have happened whether the Church existed or not."
The darkness pulses with something like recognition. "What do you mean?"
"Think about it. Why do they need such elaborate rituals to touch Their realm? Why do their seeding attempts fail so often? Why do they have to try so hard to create what comes naturally to you?" She moves closer, her form rippling like heat waves. "Because they're trying to force something that can't be forced. Like trying to make a flower bloom by tearing open the bud."
"But their success, the man they transformed..."
"A flower forced open may look like it's blooming, but it's still broken." Her voice takes on harmonics that hurt to hear. "They think they're directing evolution, controlling the next step of human development. Such arrogance. Such small, limited thinking."
"Then what is this? What's really happening to me?"
"Life," she says simply. "Life doing what it's always done – finding new ways to exist, new spaces to inhabit. The Church thinks they're creating doorways between realities, but they're really just... catching glimpses of spaces life was always meant to explore."
The darkness behind my eye throbs as I process this. "And Their realm? The entities we touch?"
"Older siblings, in a way. Previous explorations of what life can become. Not gods, not demons, not cosmic horrors – just different ways of existing." She gestures at herself. "Like what I became. Not because of the Church's experiments, but in spite of them."
"The Convergence..."
"Is nothing but evolution doing what evolution does. Reality isn't getting thinner – you're just getting better at seeing through it. The Church thinks they're preparing for some grand cosmic event, but they're really just..." She pauses, tilts her head at an impossible angle. "Well. You'll see soon enough."
"What does that mean?"
"It means the Church is about to make a mistake. A big one. They think they've finally figured out how to control the process, how to force evolution to follow their path. But you can't control evolution any more than you can control gravity." Her form begins to fade. "Remember that, little sister. Remember that when you see what they're planning."
"Wait! I still don't understand..."
"You do. You just haven't let yourself accept it yet." Her voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. "Stop asking what you're meant to be. Stop thinking in their terms. Just... become."
She vanishes like smoke in wind, leaving behind only a faint smell of ozone and possibilities. I stand in the warped reality of the store, trying to process what I've heard, what it might mean.
The sound of footsteps makes me turn. James stands in the doorway, his expression tight with urgency.
"Vesper," he says. "We need to talk. I found something in the Church archives. Something that changes everything."
The darkness behind my eye pulses with sudden intensity, like it knows what's coming. Whatever James has discovered, whatever sent him out here in such a panic, it feels connected to what I just learned.
Time for more truth, it seems. Whether I'm ready for it or not.