The world didn't change all at once.
It bled.
Slowly.
Subtly.
Like water rising under a door you forgot to seal.
You don't notice the flood until your feet are already floating.
The first sign appeared when the mirrors began to warp.
The chapel had five makeshift periscopes—scrap mirrors tucked behind boarded slits to let us see outside without exposing ourselves.
They were cheap.
Cracked.
Worn.
And they had always reflected the same image: broken streets, skeletal trees, the endless gray weight of the sky.
But now?
They showed something else.
Not every time.
Just for moments.
Flashes.
A glimpse of the city as it had been.
Whole.
Unbroken.
Vivid with color, too sharp to be real.
Buildings stood tall where ruins should be.
Flags waved where there was only dust.
Faces moved through the reflections—faces I didn't recognize, walking streets that no longer existed.
At first, I thought it was the mutation.
A side effect.
A hallucination.
But Marin saw it too.
Once.
Passing the east window, she froze, staring hard enough that her knuckles whitened on the crowbar she carried.
When I asked what she saw, she said: "
"A version that hasn't been ruined."
And then she refused to talk about it again.
The second sign came from the birds.
Or rather, their absence.
Tacoma hadn't had much birdlife left since the second collapse.
Mutated crows.
Bone-thin hawks.
Nothing that sang.
But last night, at the edge of sunset, I heard a sound through the cracks in the steeple.
High.
Clear.
A bell tone.
Like a warbled chime made of hollow bone and breath.
It wasn't a song.
It wasn't a warning.
It was present.
Carried on a wind that didn't move the trees.
Felt but not seen.
Marin pretended she didn't hear it.
But she cleaned her weapons twice afterward.
And I caught her tracing something into the dust along the chapel rail:
Δ
A triangle.
But pointed upward.
Not the downward triangle Pride used.
A different shape.
Different direction.
Different meaning.
The third sign came this morning.
From the ground.
Beneath the chapel, the breath had slowed.
Not gone.
Just… shifted.
Instead of a heartbeat, it felt like a drum.
Deep.
Measured.
Like something was counting.
Waiting.
Building a rhythm.
And the cadence wasn't mine.
Not anymore.
I recorded everything.
Not because I thought it would save me.
But writing had become the only thing that made the hunger inside me pause.
Even for a moment.
Day 24.
Reality distortion localized at the chapel perimeters.
Mirror anomalies observed.
Auditory hallucinations (unconfirmed) reported.
Environmental variables are stable otherwise.
Mutation progress: Passive absorption is ongoing.
No fatigue.
No hemorrhage.
Lucid thought retention is high.
New symbol encountered: upward triangle (Δ).
Hypothesis: new vector influence.
Possible secondary Sin presence overlapping with Pride's territory.
Threat level: Unknown.
Personal stability: fractured but functional.
Marin returned from her patrol just after midday.
She carried nothing in her hands.
Her boots were wet up to her knees.
Mud stained the edges of her jacket.
Her face was still.
Too still.
She sat across from me at the altar without speaking for a long time.
Finally, she said:
"I found the cause."
My breath tightened.
"What cause?"
She pulled a torn scrap of fabric from her pocket and laid it on the stone between us.
Gray canvas.
Hand-stitched.
Markings in faded charcoal.
Δ∆Δ
Three upward triangles.
Interlocked.
Not drawn.
Branded.
The fibers of the cloth around them were burned into warped ridges.
"Northwest quadrant," Marin said. "Abandoned church on 12th. Same architecture as here. Same vault structure. But hollowed. Like someone pulled the guts out."
"Any signs of Pride?"
She shook her head.
"No. Different feeling. Cleaner. Sharper. Like it's not preserving the past. It's… offering something else."
"What?"
Marin's jaw tightened.
"Replacement."
The word tasted wrong in the air between us.
Heavy.
Final.
Because it wasn't just the city shifting.
It was the rules.
The very foundation of reality—the way buildings collapsed, the way rot spread, the way hunger gnawed at the bones of abandoned places—all of it had an order.
A slow, ugly entropy.
But now?
Something was rewriting it.
We spent that night in a slow, silent sweep of the perimeter.
Checking for signs of breach.
Shifts in sound.
New growth.
Anything.
At the south end of the graveyard, near the broken angel statues, we found the first real proof.
A tree.
But not one we'd seen before.
It hadn't grown there.
It had appeared.
Roots splayed across the cracked foundation like veins.
Branches bare.
Bark smooth and pale, like stretched linen.
And carved into the trunk—so clean it looked printed:
Δ∆Δ
I circled it.
Marin watched from ten feet back, hands hovering near her belt knives.
The tree didn't move.
Didn't bleed.
Didn't breathe.
But it watched.
Somehow.
The same way the mirror flashed had.
Reflecting not what was, but what could be.
A world rebuilt.
Refined.
Bent into a cleaner, sharper geometry.
The hunger inside me twisted.
Not with need.
With recognition.
This wasn't Gluttony's call.
Not Pride's invitation.
It was something new.
Something ascending.