Daehyun’s apartment was like a thirteen-year-old boy’s dream with a millionaire’s budget.

  The walls were cluttered with glossy posters of Eminem and Tupac. Signed vinyl records and limited edition sneakers lined the shelves. The faint smell of leather from the high-end furniture mixed with the lingering scent of stale energy drinks. It was a clash of high-end decadence and adolescent nostalgia, like a luxurious frat house that forgot to grow up.

  “I never imagined what you’d do if you suddenly had a lot of money,” Momo said, gobsmacked as she looked around. “Mostly because I never envisioned you having any money. But this… is exactly it. Yep. God. I can’t believe I let the shiny suit lead me to believe you’d actually matured. Also–I apologize on behalf of our ancestors, but I’m not taking off my shoes. Old Man Liang does not have the muscle.”

  Daehyun laughed and fell into his massive gaming chair, beginning to undo his tie as he gestured for Momo to sit on the couch. She ignored him, hobbling instead toward an old mahogany cabinet that was concealing something of great interest—little golden statues.

  “Hey, be careful in there,” Daehyun warned. “You can rip on my Eminem shrine all you want, but those things actually mean something to me.”

  That much was obvious. Unlike the haphazard decoration dominating the rest of his glorified bachelor pad, the trophies were polished like new shoes, and arranged at perfect angles, as if he’d gone in with a ruler and measured each to a T. It was endearing.

  To Momo’s surprise, they weren’t just participation trophies from his long formative years in soccer camp. Engravings on the base of the figures boasted titles like “Best Male Lead” and “Outstanding Performance in a Drama Series.” Her brother, the award-winning movie star. It was just… How could she put this… Stupid. That was the word she was looking for.

  Momo barked out a laugh suddenly. “You do realize this is a show about me, right?”

  Daehyun said nothing, so after a moment, she turned her head to look at him. She found the man staring into nothing, his eyes wide. Oh shit. She had meant that as a joke.

  “Oh my god,” he said. He was starting to look pale. He dug his hands into his hair. “Oh my god, that is so— I knew it was too fucking similar! I knew it!”

  He shot out of his chair and began pacing around the room.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Momo said, waving her hands to try and get her brother’s attention. He continued pacing, and she didn’t have the physical mass to stop him, so she just put her saggy arms on her old man hips and tried to sound calming. “It’s okay. It’s a nice thing, isn’t it? That we’ve been connected somehow even from such a distance…”

  He groaned, coming to kneel down on his carpet.

  “That’s not what I’m grossed out by, stupid.”

  “What? Grossed out?”

  “I have a massive crush on my co-star.”

  Momo’s mouth opened, then closed.

  “You don’t mean…”

  He snapped his head toward her. His face was visibly twitching.

  “Yes,” he said, slowly raising his body from the floor. “I have a crush on the girl who is playing a horrendous Hollywood interpretation of my fucking sister.” He stormed toward the balcony door. “I’m going to go end my life real quick. Be right back.”

  The balcony door slammed shut behind him. Momo watched through the glass as he frantically pawed at his pockets, finally pulling out a crumpled pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Smoke curled around his face as he downed three of them in rapid succession, the orange embers glowing briefly before being snuffed out.

  Meanwhile, Momo laughed harder than she had in her entire life.

  ***

  Old Man Liang leaned over Daehyun’s shoulder as they scrolled through the IMDb page for one Ariana Kim-Hayes. The screen glowed with a photo of a woman who looked like an Instagram filter made flesh. Perfectly styled hair framed her face, which was so airbrushed it seemed allergic to pores. Momo wasn’t completely certain she hadn’t been AI-generated.

  “Nevermind,” she said. “The casting director nailed it. She’s essentially my twin.”

  Daehyun glared at her. “Say another word, and I might actually throw up on you,” he muttered, clicking through the actress’s gallery. “Also, no she is not. You look like a thumb, and Ariana looks like an ethereal… goddess. Goddammit. Not a goddess. She just looks like… a woman. A very nice, smart, beautiful— I need another cigarette.”

  Ignoring the rest of his sentence, Momo complained, “Did you just call me a thumb? Don’t be so rude to Old Man Liang. I’d say he’s definitely more shriveled peach. Maybe with a touch of dehydrated corpse.” She cracked a grin at him in an attempt to make light of what was obviously a dreadful revelation for him, but it probably would have been more endearing if the old man had any teeth left, so she closed her mouth instead. “So, Ariana, huh? Do you think Appa would approve? I don’t see any medical degrees in her bio.”

  “Don’t even try,” he huffed, closing out of the window. “I’m not talking to you about girls.”

  “We’re grown ups now. Of course you can talk to me about girls.”

  “Oh, really?” Daehyun swiveled around in his chair, his eyebrow arched in defiance. “Does that mean you’re finally going to admit to me that you’re into girls?”

  Momo’s face tightened, but she took a deep breath and stood her ground.

  “Yes. And, unlike you, I actually have a girlfriend. Her name is Sumire. She’s a very cool, very sexy pirate, and we co-rule an entire kingdom together. Next question.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Daehyun’s jaw dropped. Momo felt unusually proud of herself.

  “Holy shit,” he said, eyes wide. “You’re serious?”

  “Somehow, yes.”

  Daehyun looked down at his lap, a groan escaping his lips. He glanced up at Momo, looking more nervous than she’d ever seen him.

  “Ariana’s… well…” He hesitated, swallowing hard. “Fuck it. She makes me laugh. She’s kind. She’s the top listener to The Trials and Tribulations of a Bay Area Bozo on Spotify, even though I told her it’s garbage,” His cheeks burned, but Momo could see right through it. He was beaming like a schoolboy. “If I’m being totally real with you, she might be the love of my life. She’s also… incredibly… well. Married.”

  Momo froze.

  “I’m sorry. She’s— what?!”

  ***

  “…It’s outrageous. All because of that girl, there hasn’t been a war or a pestilence or a bloody royal contest for the throne on Eziroth in centuries. I can’t even get a flu season past the System Administrators now, let alone a famine—"

  With a polite smile that had become second nature, Roger cut him off. "I hear you, Frezrick. Really, I do. But I’ve got a mountain of Iceland’s history to rewrite before the deadline. Let’s catch up later over some beer, alright? Good luck with your famine."

  He shut the door just as Frezrick opened his mouth to continue, the muffled rant fading as Roger turned and exhaled. Frezrick was a handful, and these planetary management types could talk for hours about the most bizarre grievances. Roger was very glad he specialized in Worldbuilding and Propaganda back in university.

  Shaking his head, he turned his attention to his computer. He swore he had turned it off to go on lunch break, but the fan was whizzing like crazy. Not only that, but his monitor was flashing red. His stomach turned. It only flashed red for one reason.

  Level 4 Incident: URGENT.

  Just as he’d thought—the Earthly public had seen something they shouldn’t. And telling by the grade of the incident, it wasn’t just Morgana doing that thing where she randomly chooses corpses to reanimate and traumatize children during Halloween.

  No, the last time he'd seen a Level 4 was during that viral monkey interview with Lesser Goddess Valerica. Normally, Level 4 incidents only happened once every few decades. Two occurring so close together? That was definitely cause for concern. He had never heard of another Lore Administrator having to deal with two critical incidents so close together.

  Dropping into his chair, he clicked the notification.

  Instantly, his screen filled with rapid popups. Images of a woman—young, vibrant, somehow familiar?—morphing before his eyes into an old man. The transformation was jarring, her smooth skin sagging, her hair fading to white. One second she was laughing, and the next, she had become a hunched, weary figure. The transformation was captured in a single blurry frame, but somehow the amateur feel of the shot made it all the more believable.

  Popups continued to flood his screen.

  **Viral Visual Anomaly: District Reports Incoming.**

  **Global Headlines: Age-Defying Anomaly: Woman’s Sudden Transformation Captured on Camera; Anomalía que Desafía la Edad: Transformación Repentina de Mujer Capturada en Cámara; ??? ??: ?? ??? ?? ? ?? ?? ??? ???; San Francisco Shocked: Woman Morphs into Elderly Man in Stunning Images; Eerie Transformation: Woman’s Age Reversal Creates Internet Frenzy; 震惊的病毒现象：年轻女性实时变成老年男子**

  Information spat out of Roger’s terminal as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He began operating on pure muscle memory, launching the usual protocol for incidents of this degree. He wouldn’t panic, he told himself. It was all routine by now: identify the affected regions, isolate the media, and run containment measures to suppress any viral spread.

  But just as he began isolating the image, a new alert flashed:

  **Error: Image Projected to be Shared Over 200.2 Million Times Within The Next One Month** **Cannot Edit The Timeline At This Scale**

  He froze. That number was far beyond his usual threshold. A single slip-up, sure, that could be patched. But hundreds of millions? This would go even wider than the monkey.

  He glided his shaking hand to a hidden control panel on the side of his desk, sliding open a panel to reveal a set of keys and switches. With a practiced motion, he inserted a key into a small lock and turned it, unlocking the access to high-level commands.

  He then punched in a sequence of numbers on a keypad. A digital display screen instantly flickered to life, showing the options for mass belief reshaping. Roger selected the “Execute Misinformation Bots” protocol from the menu, and the screen updated with the command settings. He’d need more than just social media to undo this, but it was a temporary stopgap. After the automated programs started running, he would start making calls…

  An error message blinked across the screen:

  **Command Failed: System Override Detected.**

  “What the—?” Roger muttered, his heart racing. He tried again, only to meet the same error. The entire misinformation system was down, and it wasn’t coming back online.

  A low hum vibrated through the floorboards. Roger looked up, realizing this wasn’t just a tech glitch. At first, Roger thought it was the usual noise of the office—rattling carts, hurried footsteps—but then the hum became a steady, rhythmic pulse, like the quiet flap of wings from right outside his lowly cubicle. Slowly, Roger looked up.

  The doorway, already small and plain, darkened. There, towering over it, stood the Goddess Ytra, her form too tall for the frame. She ducked slightly, her iridescent wings brushing the edges of the door frame as she stepped inside. Her robes shifted between cool blues and greens as she moved, the soft glow of the crystal in her staff illuminating the space.

  Roger swallowed, pushing back his chair as the towering figure of the goddess loomed over him. She straightened, and even in the cramped office, her presence seemed to expand, filling every corner of the room. Her eyes fixed on him.

  “Roger Earth,” her voice was gentle, yet it echoed with a power that made the air around him feel heavy. “It appears one of my disciples has chosen to make your life difficult.”

  Roger’s hands trembled slightly as he looked up at her. He tried to hide his obvious panic, bowing slightly and offering her a placid smile.

  “Goddess Ytra,” he said, clearing his throat. His monitors flashed behind him, painting his entire face red. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I think you already know.”

  Her eyes drifted to the monitor, then back to him.

  “Do not take this as a personal failure,” she said, gliding into the seat across from him. “This incident was inevitable. Earth has been building towards this for a long time now.”

  Roger felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

  He had heard of Ytra visiting the office before. But only as a warning.

  This didn’t sound like a warning.

  “As you know, Earth is a nascent planet. Nascent planets are given custodians such as yourself to maintain their equilibrium. But…”

  She studied her long white nails. To Roger, they were starting to look like knives.

  “That equilibrium has now been breached,” she breathed. “Earth has reached its maximum threshold for supernatural incidents. The population has exceeded its naivety, and it cannot be managed or rerouted any longer by the traditional means. They have seen too many things they shouldn’t, Roger. They are in a perpetual state of confusion. They don’t know what to believe anymore. You can see it in every facet of their lives. They know they are being lied to. To continue like this any longer would constitute an abuse of power.”

  She looked up at him, and her eyes were wide, emotionless. She was not smiling.

  “You have failed in your role as truthkeeper, and now things must be corrected.”

  Roger’s entire life began disintegrating before him.

  “Does that mean...?”

  Ytra’s voice was steady, and she nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

  She took a step closer, and placed her hand gently on his shoulder. White light began to emanate from her palm, and tendrils of it surrounded Roger’s trembling body like a curling serpent. His clothes and skin started to slowly dissolve, disintegrating back into the Nether from which they had originally emerged. He had served his purpose, and now he would be returned.

  “It is time,” she whispered. “Earth must be initialized.”

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