The twisted mental landscape pulsed around me and I knew I had maybe seconds before her hand closed around her daughter's shoulders and started pulling down. No time to think through what I was doing, just had to act on pure instinct.
I pushed deeper into the corrupted space, searching desperately for something real underneath all the poison the Whisperer had spread. Memories drifted by, but something was off, they’d been twisted to serve the entity’s purpose. Her daughter’s first birthday looked wrong—more like a tragedy than a celebration, the child’s smile empty in the warped version. A bedtime story where the child's laughter sounded like screams to her infected perception.
Every good thing between them had been reframed as proof of the lie. Every moment of joy reinterpreted as ignor
