Three days in the ghost town. Three days of watching reality ripple around me like water around a stone, distortions growing stronger as my control slips further away. The darkness behind my eye pulses constantly now, a rhythm like heartbeat, like breath, like inevitability.
My phone sits on the counter of the abandoned general store, its screen lighting up periodically with James's attempts to reach me. Forty-seven missed calls. Twenty-three voicemails. Countless texts, each more desperate than the last. I've stopped reading them. Stopped counting them. They pile up like accusations, like possibilities I can't bear to face.
Please answer. I swear I didn't know.
Vesper, let me explain. This wasn't what I meant to happen.
I know how it looks but please, just talk to me.
They found bodies in the wreckage. Not everyone was transformed. Some just died. Please, I need to know you're okay.
I haven't listened to the voicemails. Can't bear to hear his voice, to risk hearing truth or lies in his tone.
The general store has changed since my first visit here, or maybe I've changed. The walls breathe now, subtle ripples of reality responding to my presence. The metallic sheen on the floorboards has spread, turning the wood into something that exists partially in Their realm. The shadows move wrong, but I've stopped caring. Let reality warp. Let it all change. Nothing matters anymore.
I sleep on the floor behind the counter, using my jacket as a pillow. Dreams come differently here – not really dreams at all, but glimpses through tears in reality. I see the resistance headquarters folding in on itself like cosmic origami. See Marcus melting into shapes that shouldn't exist. See Sarah's fingers still typing equations into the spaces between spaces. Sometimes I wake up screaming. Sometimes I wake up laughing. Sometimes I'm not sure I wake up at all.
A rat scurries across the floor, its form warping slightly as it passes through the spaces I've unintentionally changed. It doesn't die or transform like that first one did years ago. Just... shifts, becomes something not quite rat but not quite something else either. I watch it go, feeling a kinship with this thing that exists between states of being. Neither one thing nor another. Just... lost.
The phone buzzes again. I don't look. Don't want to know if it's James trying to explain, trying to prove his innocence, trying to tell me more secrets that will tear my world apart. Don't want to know if it's not James, if it's someone else, if there's anyone else left to care where I am or what I've become.
The darkness offers answers, offers power, offers ways to know the truth. I push it back. Not ready for that. Not ready for anything except this emptiness, this hollow space where purpose used to be.
I think about the resistance. About movie nights in the break room, everyone pretending to be normal people doing a normal job. About Sarah's excited rambling when she made a breakthrough. About Marcus... god, Marcus. Even if he helped create the Church, even if everything was built on lies, he gave people hope. Gave them purpose. Gave them family.
And now they're gone. Transformed or dead or lost in spaces between spaces. Because I wasn't there. Because I let James lead me away with his secrets and his photos and his urgent need to tell me truth that doesn't matter anymore.
The darkness pulses stronger, reaching for something that might be an answer or might be oblivion. The walls ripple faster, reality growing softer around me. Would be easy to let go. To let the transformation take me like it took Marcus. To become something that doesn't have to feel this hollow ache where certainty used to be.
I look at my hands, watch them flicker between human flesh and something else. The change comes easier now, like my body is remembering other ways to exist. Sometimes I catch glimpses of myself in broken windows – shapes that shouldn't be possible, geometries that mock normal space. Sometimes I forget what I'm supposed to look like. Sometimes I forget why it matters.
The phone has gone quiet. Maybe the battery died. Maybe James gave up. Maybe time doesn't work right here anymore, in this space I've unconsciously reshaped with my grief and guilt.
I should care about that. Should worry about how my presence is affecting local reality. Should do something other than sit here letting the void eat away at everything I used to be.
But I can't. Can't move. Can't think. Can't be anything except this empty thing that used to be Vesper, used to be someone's messiah, used to be someone's weapon, used to be...
Used to be human.
The darkness pulses, gentle now, almost comforting. It offers transformation not as power but as escape. A way to stop feeling, stop hurting, stop being this hollow thing caught between what I was and what I'm becoming.
Would it be so bad? To let go? To let the change take me? To become something that doesn't have to remember Sarah's broken body or Marcus's twisted form or all the others who trusted me to protect them?
A sound escapes me – not quite laugh, not quite sob. The walls ripple in sympathy, reality bending around my pain like water around a stone.
I am alone.
Completely, utterly alone.
And maybe that's what I deserve. Maybe that's what I've always been heading toward, since the moment I was born with darkness behind my eye. Since the moment I first learned to touch Their realm, to change reality, to become something that shouldn't exist.
The phone stays dark. The shadows move in patterns that might be language or might be madness. The darkness pulses with possibilities I'm too tired to resist.
I close my eyes and let myself drift, becoming less solid, less real, less human with each passing moment. Let the hollow spaces inside me fill with void, with power, with whatever's left when hope dies and purpose fades and love proves itself just another kind of lie.
Let it all go.
Let it all change.
Let me become nothing, if nothing is all that's left.
The ghost town holds its breath, reality warping around a girl who used to be someone, used to matter, used to have a reason to stay human.
The darkness pulses, and I pulse with it, fading into spaces between spaces where nothing hurts and nothing matters and nothing stays the same.
Maybe this is evolution too.
Maybe this is what becoming means.
Maybe this is all I ever was – a hollow thing waiting to be filled with void.
The night stretches endless around me, and I let myself dissolve into its embrace.