The remaining pieces of cocoon dissolved into the writhing carpet beneath my feet. The worms parted, creating a path toward a doorway that hadn't been there before—an archway made from human spines fused together, vertebrae interlocking with unnatural precision.

  "Right. Move forward or die. Got it."

  I stepped through the archway into another long hallway. Unlike the organic horror show of the rest of this place, this corridor was almost... normal. Wood floors. Painted walls. Family photos hanging at regular intervals.

  Wait. Family photos?

  I moved closer to examine one—me and Rell at the beach when we were kids. Mikkel stood behind us, hands on our shoulders, smiling that perfect fatherly smile. Except in this version, his eyes were solid black, and if you looked closely, you could see tiny teeth lining the insides of his fingers where they touched our skin.

  The photos changed as I walked. Each one showed us aging, but with increasingly disturbing alterations. In one, Mikkel's arm disappeared into Rell's back like a puppeteer. In another, I had worms crawling from my eyes while Mikkel collected them in a jar.

  The hallway seemed to stretch forever, getting narrower as I walked. The ceiling lowered. The walls closed in. The air grew thick with the coppery scent of blood.

  Finally, I reached a simple wooden door, with a brass knob. Completely ordinary except for the wet, rhythmic thumping coming from the other side. Like a heart. Or someone pounding to get out.

  I reached for the knob.

  It was warm.

  I turned it.

  The door swung open to reveal a chamber bathed in dim light. The floor was smooth stone, worn in the center as if from years of kneeling. The walls were lined with chains—hundreds of them hanging from hooks.

  And in the center, illuminated by a shaft of crimson light from somewhere above, knelt a woman.

  Her arms were stretched upward, wrists bound by heavy chains that pulled them into a crucifix position. Her head hung forward, a curtain of dark hair hiding her face. She was naked, and even from the doorway, I could see she was trembling.

  "Hello?" I called out, my voice echoing in the chamber.

  No response, but her trembling intensified.

  I stepped closer, the door swinging shut behind me.

  As I approached, I realized something was wrong with her chest—something in the shadows I couldn't quite make out.

  Ten feet away, I saw it.

  Her chest cavity had been split open.

  It was precisely cracked open, the skin and muscle and ribs peeled back like the pages of a book and pinned in place with small hooks and wires.

  Her lungs had been pulled out through the opening and stretched to either side like wings, still somehow expanding and contracting with each labored breath. Her heart was exposed, beating visibly in the cavity, connected to a complex network of tubes and vessels that shouldn't have been able to function but somehow did.

  The inside of her rib cage was lined with small, writhing organisms that looked like a cross between leeches and silverfish, feeding on something that oozed from her bones.

  I stumbled back, bile rising in my throat. "What the fuck?"

  Her head snapped up at the sound of my voice.

  The face looking back at me was hauntingly familiar—high cheekbones, full lips, eyes the exact same as mine. An older version of the face I saw when I looked at Rell. The face I sometimes caught glimpses of in my own reflection.

  "Mom?" The word escaped me as a broken whisper.

  She stared at me, tears cutting clean tracks through the blood on her cheeks. "Fischer. My boy. My beautiful boy."

  This wasn't possible. She'd died in childbirth—that's what Mikkel always told us. Complications from a twin delivery. Hemorrhage. An unavoidable tragedy.

  "You're not real," I said, the words catching in my throat.

  She laughed, a wet, painful sound. "Everything here is real, Fischer. That's the cruel truth of the Trial."

  I shook my head, backing up a step. "No. You died. When Rell and I were born."

  "Is that what he told you?" Her voice was surprisingly strong despite her condition. "That I died giving birth to you?"

  "Yes."

  "No grave to visit? No stories about me?"

  I hadn't. Not really. It was just our reality—Mikkel and us. A complete family despite the missing piece.

  "He didn't let me die, Fischer." Her eyes burned with intensity. "He kept me. Right here. In your Trial space—the dimensional pocket he created for you before you were even born."

  "That's not possible. The Trial is generated when a Sacred enters their Awakening. It's not a permanent dimension."

  She smiled sadly. "Is that what the textbooks say? What the SDC teaches? Did you ever wonder why Mikkel knew so much about Sacred biology? Why he left the SDC? What he was researching?"

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  The room seemed to pulse around us, the chains rattling softly against the walls.

  "He was studying Origin formation," she continued. "How to manipulate the Trial space. How to make it permanent. How to use it as a cultivation chamber." She coughed, flecks of blood spraying from her lips. "I was his first breeding experiment."

  "Breeding experiment?" The words tasted like ash.

  "He needed Sacred children with tailored Origins. He tried with others before me, but their bodies rejected the modifications." Her eyes filled with fresh tears. "I loved him, Fischer. That wasn't a lie. But what I thought was love was just another of his manipulations."

  "What did he do to you?"

  "He implanted modified Origin seeds in my womb. Cultivated you and your sister like… like Sacred bonsai trees. Shaped your development. When you were ready to be born, he performed a cesarean. But he didn't take me to a hospital." Her gaze dropped to her exposed chest cavity. "He opened me up here, in this pocket dimension. Removed you both. And left me, suspended between life and death, to serve as an anchor for the dimension itself."

  The room lurched around me as the implications hit.

  This was a real person—my mother—who had been tortured for over twenty years, used as a living battery to power a pocket dimension.

  "The bond," I whispered. "He formed it with us before we were even born."

  She nodded weakly. "Preparing you both for consumption when your Origins matured."

  "Rell." Her name fell from my lips like a stone.

  "He's already taken her." It wasn't a question.

  "Yes."

  She closed her eyes, a tear sliding down her cheek. "And now you're here, in your Trial. Becoming what he designed you to be."

  I ran a hand through my hair, feeling worms shift beneath my scalp.

  "I need you to end this, Fischer. For both of us." She strained against her chains, the hooks in her chest pulling at her flesh. "I've been conscious for twenty-three years in this chamber. I've felt every moment of it. I can't die. I can't live. I just... exist. As an anchor. As a battery."

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Break my chains," she whispered. "Then let your worms consume me."

  I recoiled. "What? No! I'm not going to—"

  "You have to!" Her voice cracked with desperation. "If you consume me, you'll gain the knowledge I've accumulated watching Mikkel all these years. You'll understand how he works. What his weaknesses are. And you'll set me free."

  "There has to be another way."

  She shook her head, the movement causing fresh blood to seep from the hooks in her chest. "This is the Trial, Fischer. There are no clean choices here."

  I stood frozen, staring at the woman who had given birth to me, who had suffered unimaginable torture for decades, who was asking me to end her life the same way Mikkel had ended Rell.

  "If I do this," I said slowly, "if I... consume you... will I still be me afterward? Or will I become like him?"

  "That depends on how you consume," she said. "Mikkel devours with rage and hunger. But consumption can also be an act of mercy. Of connection." She looked up at her chains. "Choose which kind of parasite you want to be, Fischer."

  My hands trembled as I approached her.

  The worms beneath my skin sensed her proximity—sensed the power in her—and began to stir with anticipation.

  I reached up and grasped the chains binding her right wrist. They were hot to the touch, trembling slightly like they were alive. I pulled, muscles straining, but they wouldn't budge.

  "They're not physical chains," she said. "They're dimensional anchors. You need to use your Origin."

  I looked at my hands, feeling the worms squirming eagerly. "I don't know how."

  "Yes, you do. The knowledge is inside you now. The worms carry it."

  I closed my eyes, focusing inward. I could feel them—thousands of white worms moving through my body, carrying information, power, purpose. I reached for that knowledge, letting it rise to the surface of my consciousness.

  The worms responded instantly.

  They flowed down my arms, emerging from my fingertips as thin white tendrils. When they touched the chains, they didn't break them—they unraveled them, converting the metal into more worms that joined the colony flowing through me.

  The right chain dissolved.

  Then the left.

  Released from her bonds, my mother collapsed forward, her exposed heart pulsing rapidly in her open chest.

  I knelt beside her. "What now?"

  She looked up at me, her face peaceful despite the grotesque state of her body. "Now you must devour me. But not like he would. Not with rage. With mercy."

  I hesitated, my hand hovering above her exposed heart.

  "It's okay," she whispered. "This is a gift, Fischer. From mother to son. The only thing I have left to give you."

  Tears blurred my vision. "I don't even know your name."

  She smiled. "Gwen. My name is Gwen."

  "Gwen," I repeated, the name feeling right on my tongue. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be sorry. Be strong. Be better than what he made you to be."

  I nodded, swallowing hard. Then I placed my hand on her heart.

  The worms knew what to do.

  They flowed from my palm, surrounding her heart, her lungs, spreading through her open chest cavity. But they didn't devour violently—they moved with gentle precision, converting flesh and bone and blood into pure information.

  As they worked, memories flooded my mind:

  Gwen, young and brilliant, working alongside Mikkel at the SDC.

  Their first kiss in a lab after hours, surrounded by dimensional research.

  The moment she realized she was pregnant—with twins—and his eyes lighting up with a hunger she mistook for joy.

  The day he brought her to this pocket dimension, explaining it would help the babies develop stronger Origins.

  The betrayal when she realized she would never leave.

  The birth—if you could call it that—as he cut open her chest and removed us while she screamed.

  Years of watching through dimensional windows as he raised us, loved us, prepared us for consumption.

  The hope she felt when she saw me fight back. When she realized I might be different.

  Knowledge came with the memories—the exact nature of Mikkel's Origin, it’s bond mechanics. The pocket dimension structure. How to navigate the Trial space. How to control the worms.

  Most importantly—how to fight him.

  As the last of her physical form converted to worms and knowledge, I heard her voice one final time echoing throughout my mind.

  “Choose what you become. The worms can be weapons, shields, tools, extensions—they're limited only by your imagination and will. Master them. Use them. But don't let them use you.”

  I stood in the empty chamber, my body thrumming with new power. I could feel the worms inside me organizing the information they'd absorbed, integrating Gwen's knowledge with my own.

  Experimentally, I held out my hand and concentrated.

  The worms responded immediately, flowing from my palm and taking shape in the air—a perfect replica of a dock worker's hook, the tool I'd used daily for years. But this hook was alive, writhing, composed entirely of white worms packed tightly together.

  I swung it experimentally. It moved like an extension of my arm, lightweight but unbelievably strong.

  I released the mental image, and the hook dissolved, the worms flowing back beneath my skin.

  Next, I imagined a shield.

  The worms surged from my forearm, forming a circular barrier three feet in diameter. I struck it with my fist—the shield absorbed the blow completely, the surface rippling but holding firm.

  "Holy shit," I whispered.

  I could feel other possibilities within reach—the worms could form nearly any shape I could clearly visualize. They could extend from any part of my body. They could even detach completely and operate independently within a certain range, though that would weaken me temporarily.

  And I could feel their hunger.

  Not blindly like Mikkel's consumption, but purposefully.

  I looked at the empty space where my mother had been. Where Gwen had been.

  "Thank you," I said to the empty air. "I'll make both you and Rell’s sacrifice mean something."

  As if in response, the chamber began to change.

  The walls melted away, revealing another hallway—this one darker, narrower, leading deeper into the Trial space.

  "Continue," Gwen's voice echoed faintly. "Complete the Trial."

  I took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway, the worms shifting eagerly beneath my skin.