Turn 2 of 7

Stay silent and let the transformation begin with Julia'sa choice

You close your mouth. The arguments are right there — logical, structured, ready to deploy — but something in Riley's words has snagged on you like a fishhook. You could have changed her password and told her. You chose to read. The truth of it sits heavy in your chest, and for once, the part of your brain that constructs rebuttals goes quiet. Julia watches you, waiting, and when the silence stretches past the point of deliberation into something else entirely, her expression shifts. The grin softens. Something almost tender flickers behind her eyes before she straightens up.

"Okay," she says, and there's a strange gentleness in it. "Okay. I'll take that as you're done talking." She looks at Riley and nods. "Let's go. My choices." Riley raises an eyebrow — a last check, a door held open — but Julia doesn't waver. She squares her shoulders and starts circling you slowly, appraising, the way someone might study a canvas before the first brushstroke. "Dark hair. Long. I always wanted a sister with dark hair. Green eyes — no, wait. Hazel. Like ours but... warmer. Softer jaw. Narrower shoulders. She doesn't need to be tall."

Riley begins to read. The words aren't English, aren't any language you recognize — they're guttural and melodic at the same time, syllables that seem to fold over themselves. The candle flames flatten horizontally, pointing toward you like compass needles. The chalk symbols flare bright enough to make you squint, and the silver cords around your wrists pulse once, hot, then settle into a steady warmth that sinks through your skin and into the muscle beneath. Your bones ache — not painfully, exactly, but the way they ached during growth spurts at fourteen, that deep structural complaint of a body being rearranged.

It starts in your hands. You watch, detached, as your fingers slim and lengthen, the knuckles narrowing, the rough calluses from years of keyboard use smoothing away like sand worn by water. Your palms shrink. The tendons become finer, less prominent. It's happening slowly enough that you can track each change, each small renegotiation of bone and sinew, and the strangeness of it is less horrifying than you expected. It's more like watching a time-lapse of a flower opening — except the flower is your own skeleton, and the gardener is your sister, and she's humming along to Riley's incantation like she's picking out wallpaper.

Julia stops circling and stands in front of you, arms folded, head tilted. "Looking good," she says, and there's genuine excitement in her voice now. "Riley, the shoulders next? I want to get the frame right before we move to the face." Riley nods without breaking the rhythm of the spell, and you feel a pressure descend across your upper body — a slow, squeezing compression, like the air itself is pressing you into a new mold. Your collarbones shift. Your shoulders draw inward. The wooden chair feels different beneath you as your center of gravity begins its long, slow migration toward somewhere new. Through it all, Julia watches with the focused intensity of an artist, and you realize with a distant, fading clarity that she's not punishing you anymore. She's creating something. She's making someone. And you're going to meet her soon.