The sky and the trees and the blade looming over her disappeared as soon as Zoe mentally screamed yes. She was now sitting upright, her hands — claws — folded neatly on the table in front of her.

It took Zoe a moment to realize where she was.

It was just a cafe that she had gone to every now and then for the past year and a half. She didn’t go as often as she would have liked, because it was ridiculously overpriced, even by the absurd standards of San Francisco. Honestly, it was because whoever owned it wasn’t selling nine dollar coffee and stale croissants — they were selling the incredible view overlooking the bay.

It was a lovely place to relax or do some classwork, but it was far from the place Zoe would have expected to make the strongest impression on her from her previous life.

She pretty much knew exactly what was going on. She had chosen to attempt to ascend through stage one of the awakened realm, and she was now in some kind of spiritual dream realm where she would be presented with choices or challenges or something. Unfortunately, she was the only person in the cafe, even though it somehow still had a lively atmosphere.

Zoe didn’t even consider leaving. She knew with utmost confidence that this wasn’t Earth. It was just a recreation, and something in her gut told her that wandering wasn’t a good idea. Also, even if this was Earth, Zoe had remained in her mutated monster form. She didn’t really want to find out how people would react to her yet.

But still there was no indication of what was going to happen next. Was she supposed to explore the cafe and figure out what to do like some sort of escape room type situation? That didn’t feel quite right, but she didn’t have any better ideas.

Someone set down her backpack beside the chair across from Zoe.

Startled, Zoe jerked her head up, coming face to face with her reflection. The young woman looking back at her looked almost just as she had the day before her death, down to the particular jacket she was wearing. Her eyes, however, were red.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t have red eyes before the whole demonic ascension thing.

“Sorry I’m late.” Sliding into the chair opposite, the other Zoe flashed a sly grin. “But in my defense, it was you who kept me waiting.”

Ignoring the cryptic opening, Zoe decided to get straight to the point. “Alright, who or what are you?” The other Zoe pouted, but the real Zoe plowed forward. “Let me guess — you’re some corrupted elder god imitating my form because your true form would obliterate my mind.”

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Zoe was only half joking. She could think of plenty of other possibilities, but that was the first one that had come out of her mouth. Also, what a mouth it was. She sounded like some kind of giant evil robot mech. How horrible.

Her mirror just rolled her eyes in response. “What, you mean like this?”

She exploded.

The spray of blood and bits of stringy flesh hit Zoe first, followed by a torrent of writhing black tentacles. One of them pierced Zoe through the stomach, punching through her hard exoskeleton like it was tissue paper.

Thrown backwards, Zoe struggled helplessly as the building crumbled around her, revealing brilliant black stars and towering cyclopean towers, beyond which a haunting melody echoed, finite in the depth of its sadness but impossible to comprehend in scale all the same.

“Your tea is getting cold.”

Zoe looked down. There were no black stars, there were no towers, and the dominant sound was the sudden buzz of an espresso machine. She hadn’t noticed the tea. Had it always been there?”

“But to answer your question, no. I bet that kind of display was exactly what you were expecting?”

Bending her head down to lap up the tea — she didn’t want to risk fumbling it with her claws — Zoe took a few gulps before leaning back and nodding. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Her copy snickered. “Well I’m sorry to disappoint — but no, that’s not my true nature either. And no, I’m not any other kind of god, or you from the future, or an avatar of the Grand Design, or anything else like that.”

Zoe tilted her head. “Then what are you?”

“A representation of your potential.”

The other Zoe shimmered, her entire being growing hazy and disjointing from the rest of reality before settling back into a very different shape. One with four arms, talons and claws, a bladed tail…

Holy fuck, is that what I look like from an outside perspective?

It was bad enough living it, but seeing what she looked like from the outside made it even worse. Or at least, added on to the horror.

“If I have any true form at all, it would be this,” he mirror growled. “Because it now happens to be yours as well.”

Zoe slumped. “Wait, does this mean this was my true form all along and the corruption just brought it to the surface or some shit?”

Laughing, her copy shook her head. “No, nothing like that at all. No, you succumbed to the corruption and now you look like this. There’s no way around it. Granted, you’ll likely find ways to mask it, but this remains, well, you.”

Well that’s depressing.

Shaking away those thoughts, Zoe decided to get back on track. “Alright, so you represent my potential. So what do I have to do to ascend? Am I supposed to become one with you somehow or something weird like that?”

Laughing again — a rather disturbing sound — her mirror shook her head again. “No, not at all. You don’t have to prove anything to me, Zoe. The fact that I exist is more than enough. If you hadn’t gotten here at all, then that would be one answer. But here you are, and here I am with you.”

Fucking cryptic mystic nonsense.

Forcing herself not to say that out loud, Zoe met her mirror’s gaze. “Alright, that’s good to hear. But still, what do we do now? I don’t even honestly know what ascending means, other than being able to keep leveling.”

The other Zoe grinned. “You choose.”

Zoe barely registered the snap of her claws before the world folded around them again.

Why does it have to be all this wishy-washy spiritual shit, Zoe thought as she unformed and reformed. Why couldn’t we have done the same thing with just a basic system menu selection?

The other Zoe laughed yet again. “You’re about to find out.”