But Misery’s favorite story was the one about the angel that came to Amaranth bearing a message from the Demiurge, on the night Misery was born. The multivoiced, multihued creature that told her: Your child has been chosen for destiny greater than the mortal life zie will be born into. When zie comes of age, we will return to reveal the true purpose for which zie was born.

At five Misery recited some version of this story to anyone who would listen. Crem, furious, dragged her behind the reef to thrash her. “You’re making her delusions worse!” he’d snap. “You’re no saint, stop telling everyone you are.” By then ordained and processing up the rungs of Church hierarchy, Crem kept a fierce grip on his voidmad mother, whom he would prefer locked within Church walls and salved into silent obedience. He didn’t need a mouthy sibling repeating delusional lies. He saw his mother’s madness slowly taking his baby sister. A madness that had to be stamped out by any means necessary.

Mother died when Misery was eight. The nullvoid came through her and split her, peeling back her skin like burned film, ropes of crawling particulate erupting from the paste of blood and bone. The void claims your mind, and then it takes your body. Misery was there when it happened. She saw things no human should have to see, things she’s had to push into the dark folds of her mind in order to keep going. She knows what lives inside her, a festering tumor growing fat on her bad emotions, and one day it’ll burst through her veins and shred her to wet ribbons too. The smell of it haunts her dreams.

Still she kept on living, and by ten she was a stiff disbeliever. The bitter seed of Crem’s discipline birthed thick vines of resentment toward the Church, and after Mother’s death she swore off everything they had to offer. It’s bullshit on both sides. The Larex Forge doesn’t love humanity and the war with the Heretics isn’t some righteous fight against the nullvoid, just something the jerks in charge want. Misery isn’t special to the Demiurge and her abilities draw from the same well that fed Mother’s instability and eventually killed her. The people of the cloth are schmucks who bully their flock into obedience via threats and chemical sedation. It’s all fake, all cartons of popshit. By fifteen she’d split the world into two camps: people she can do business with, and people who are her enemies. Things are simpler that way.

Misery closes her eyes and lets her hand, amulet and all, come to rest upon her ribs. She shivers, reminded of the Tear’s song in her bones and in her blood. She woke the sacred artifact, the Archbishop said. Exactly as the prophet said. Was Mother right? Is she really destined for some holy purpose?