Delusional

**Kelly Thompson's POV**

The golden sapling doesn’t speak—it *sings*.

Its voice is a dissonant chorus of static and roots, harmonizing with the hum of the fractures splitting the sky. The survivors kneel before it, their eyes reflecting its luminous leaves, but Ravel stands apart, her gun aimed at its trunk.

“It’s not *her*,” she snarls. “Whatever that thing is, it’s wearing Kelly’s face like a mask.”

The sapling’s branches shiver, and for a heartbeat, I see my reflection in its bark—my skin threaded with gold veins, my irises flickering between stormlit blue and void-black. The sigil on my chest pulses, a cold echo of the sapling’s rhythm. *Same heartbeat. Same hunger.*

Jarek steps forward, his prosthetic arm—now fused with shards of the Keep’s monolith—crackling with unstable energy. “The fractures are spreading faster. If we don’t stabilize them—”