Miss T. walked down a dark stone hallway, her bare feet steady and strong. Her demeanor was hopeless, and the memories of her childhood no longer held any joy for her.

  Turning a corner, she entered a room with a circular table. Two of her siblings stood there, staring down at a map of the entire world. When she entered, they both looked up, their expressions hollow. Their eyes reminded her of something. They reminded her of her own eyes. No longer bright but devoid of any light, just hollow and empty.

  The death of their father had affected each of them differently, but they unified under their oldest brother's rage. Standing before her now was Pyra, once warm and gentle, now bubbling like a volcano. His eyes never left his father's contingency plan. He focused intently on the map.

  Petra had never been cruel. Now, in her war against the Dream King, the machinations of nightmares and madness she’d created dominated the psychic field and permanently scarred it and anything within it.

  Miss T. walked to the table between her siblings, staring down at the images which shifted and swirled on the map. Seas rose and fell. In the south, tornadoes touched down, and hurricanes capable of wiping out nations were created. To the north, on the polar ice caps, her brother Minos was completing a spell to superheat the planet.

  What has this war done to him? she thought quietly, never knowing when Petra was listening in.

  "You two are the last ones," Pyra spoke up. "Petra, finish your war against the Dream King. I want his head on a pike! If you need more fresh minds, I'm sure one of our brothers can collect them," he spat out the last words with disgust.

  "Thank you, but no, brother," Petra replied with an air of arrogance. "I have all the slave minds I need to buffer myself against the Dream King's attacks. The final assault on his castle will go smoothly. There, I will remain on the Ivory Throne, continuing the plan to plunge all life into mental darkness."

  Pyra nodded approvingly and moved to the east side of the map, placing his fingers on a few mountains. The image shifted, and red dots began to form.

  "I'll begin and head down soon,” he continued. “The volcanic ash I stir up will blind any sun god. But not until you are finished, Terra,” he said, gesturing to Miss T.” Not until you finish terraforming the planet. The plant life needs enough strength to last as long as it can before I snuff out the sky."

  He looked so bored when saying it that Miss T. almost wondered if he would skip out and do something fun, like cave diving. The thought made her smile, imagining him in that scenario. But her daydream was quickly overrun with imaginary giant cockroaches devouring the dream itself.

  One of the cockroaches turned to her and spoke, "Get your head out of the clouds and respond. No more running, little sister. This is just part of nature. Everything must die to come back anew."

  Miss T. shook her head. She hated it when her sister did that.

  "So, is that a no?" Pyra asked, puzzled.

  "No, yes, wait," Miss T. stammered. "I just don't see how there isn't another way."

  An audible groan escaped Petra's mouth. "This again," she muttered under her breath.

  Miss T. pressed on. "I'm serious. Ninety-eight percent of all conscious life will be eradicated if we continue down this road. If we finish what Father planned, this will be genocide on a scale that will wipe all sapient life from the planet. Please, the gravity of the situation is so high."

  "And yet, we have the power to pay the price," Petra said in a berating tone. "You know the gods must die for what they did. To do so, we must cut off their food supply. We must stop their worshippers from giving them any more power. Erase all culture, all depictions, and all scriptures they ever made. A complete and utter reset. That is Father’s will. That is what we were made for. That is what we have trained for all these years." Pyra spoke with rigid familiarity as if he had given this explanation time and time again.

  "Honestly, little sister, none of us takes pleasure in this,” Petra interjected. “None of us look forward to ending billions of lives. But is life worth living knowing that your choices are quietly being taken away by the very thing you worship? Wouldn’t it be better to start over? Wouldn’t it be better to set them free from such caged thinking?" Petra placed a hand on Miss T.'s shoulder.

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  "How do we know, though? How do we measure the heart of another man? Are their desires truly that deeply affected by the influence of gods?" Miss T.'s bloodshot eyes pleaded with her sister. "Can we accurately say that their faith is something so dangerous that reason and understanding can’t reach and change it? If we take the time to educa—"

  "And what?” Miss T. was cut off by Pyra's voice. “Hopefully convince enough people that the gods might be weak enough for a fair fight?”

  Petra rolled her eyes.

  “Not to mention how many years that will take, how many decades, how many millennia? Are you willing to live that long? Are you willing to stoke that flame? Risking everything our father stood for on a maybe?" He circled the table until he was at the other end, staring Miss T. down, his body radiating heat.

  "All the while, the gods get fatter and fatter from the power of their faith. The gluttonous celestials, with their higher purpose to bend and corrupt the free will of all mortals so they can rise to higher planes. The hubris alone is worthy of a death sentence."

  Turning his back on Miss T., he spoke over his shoulder. "And that’s before they killed OUR father."

  Pyra exited the room from the other end, gone to shift some tectonic plates and erupt something, probably. He needed to decompress somehow while waiting for Terra to comply.

  Miss T. stared after her older brother, a lump forming in her throat. Her eyes were too dry, her emotions too frayed. She had no more tears. She watched that hatred eat every single one of her siblings. She, herself, was tired of resisting it.

  Her older sister just stared at her, her face blank, her eyes just as red and dry. Then she, too, began to leave the room. Pausing at the other end before stepping out, she turned back and locked eyes with Terra.

  "You know this whole plan hinges on you,” she said. “Without you, we’ll probably die. You know that, right? The rest of us made this decision, sure, but without you, we won’t succeed. Please understand, Terra, we’re not doing this purely out of hate. We’re doing it for our family." Exiting the room, Petra went to kill the King of Dreams, leaving her sister, Terra, alone with the map. That map. All the light in the room came from that map.

  Lost in thought, she found herself staring at the map as it shifted and changed, adapting the image to what was going on in the world. "It all hinges on me," she said to herself.

  Was her sister trying to tell her something? She replayed that moment with Petra over and over again. It just wasn’t clicking. It wasn’t like her. She didn’t want to hope, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She held her breath, and after a long while, she exhaled.

  Yes, she was. It was the way she looked at her. It was small, but it was the same look Petra gave her when she had said something truly awful and mean, only to come back and apologize later. She could believe this. She could choose differently. She could find another way.

  Miss T. turned back to the doorway and began to walk out, knowing what she had to do next. She would say no. She would be wild and uncontrollable. She would show faith in her nature. She would show that her father was wrong, that the expedient way isn’t the right way. She would—

  "Stop. Wrong. Incorrect."

  Miss T. froze.

  "You’re telling the story wrong," a voice spoke all around her. Her eyes strained to scan the room, but she couldn’t even move her chin. The voice was distant but approaching quickly. It sounded an awful lot like her.

  "You had everything right up until the last moment,” the voice continued. “Your sister wasn’t trying to tell you anything, and you loved your family more than the world. You fell in line. You obeyed. And you murdered. You destroyed. You terraformed the planet." The voice took on an accusatory tone. It was now forming not all around her but just around the corner in the hallway. The voice grew louder with every step nearer.

  "This is your moment.”

  Step.

  “There comes a pivotal point—”

  Step.

  “—in every conscious creature's life—”

  Step.

  “—where they make a choice—”

  Step.

  “—that will change the course of that life—”

  Step.

  “—forever." Whoever was speaking was nearly about to turn the corner, nearly in view. "But you lie, Terra. You lie about this truth, about this SIN."

  Approaching from the hallway was an identical version of herself, superimposed in shadow. Advancing forward, the dark copy bared its teeth at her, exposing canines. Yellow light flashed deep in its throat. The superimposed shadow had tendrils in its eyes, roiling hungrily, reaching out toward Terra’s own eyes.

  "Look at you. The real you. The broken, twisted, destructive 'thing' you are," the shadow sneered. "You deserve what’s about to happen. You deserve so much more. But I just want to know," the shadow copy, now face-to-face with her, the dark tendrils reaching from its eyes to Terra’s. "Did you count? Count how many children you buried with tons of earth? How many pregnant mothers did you impale with your wild roots? How many, Terra?" The tendrils loomed now only inches from her face. "HOW MANY, TERRA?"

  Trying to scream, her throat strained, her body seized and tightened further. Her sins had caught up to her, and they had come to collect.

  "Once upon a time, there was a man who cried wolf." The room spun, and the shadow copy screamed in rage. The room unfolded like a cardboard box, and Miss T. tumbled into the open air.

  "There, in a bar called Providence, our story begins." The world around Miss T.'s eyes began to grow black as she plummeted into the story.