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Entire online communities existed for adults who pretended to be medieval villagers, space soldiers, vampires, or cartoon ponies. Perhaps the Blackwells had devoted themselves to a private mythology so thoroughly that they had started confusing it with reality.

My phone buzzed again. Julie had sent a photo of Caldwell sitting on the kitchen counter, quietly drawing.

Seeing him so calm in the middle of their madness gave me a sudden, ridiculous thought. If I was going to test whether this was real, I needed concrete proof. Not vague text messages. Not a photograph of an oversized dog with a purple tail. Something direct enough to either settle the question or confirm that I’d accidentally joined a multigenerational delusion.

I hesitated.

If they were role-playing, they would come up with excuses.

If they weren’t⁠—

I refused to finish that thought.

Sloane: It’s been a while since I’ve been around other shifters.

Several people reacted with hearts. Guilt coiled in my stomach, but I continued.

Sloane: I’ve forgotten how fast everyone is. Who can shift quickest now?

Byron: Me.

Trevor: No, you take forever.

Byron: False. I’m quicker than you, for sure.

Trevor: challenge accepted

I swallowed hard.

Sloane: Videos or it doesn’t count.

Surely, they would make a joke. They would claim recording transformations was forbidden, physically impossible, private, dangerous, or poor etiquette.

Fifty-three seconds later, Trevor sent a video. I almost dropped the phone.

The thumbnail showed his bedroom. Band posters covered the walls, several hanging crookedly above shelves filled with clay mushrooms, resin key chains, embroidered patches, and painted figurines. Trevor stood in the center, wearing black athletic shorts and no shirt, grinning at the camera.

I pressed play.

“This is a terrible idea,” someone said from outside the frame.

Trevor glanced at the doorway. “It’s for science.”

Then his body changed.

There was no dramatic explosion or flash of light, no convenient cut in the video. His shoulders folded forward. His limbs shortened and rearranged. Dark fur spread across skin that stopped being human before my mind could identify the exact point when it happened.

Within seconds, a black-and-brown wolf stood where Trevor had been. The animal sneezed. Then it nosed the camera hard enough to knock the phone sideways.

The video ended with a view of the carpet and someone yelling, “You broke it, didn’t you?”

I stood motionless in my kitchen, my fingers trembling.

The transformation had been too fluid for a costume. Too detailed for it to be a filter. The wolf occupied the same space, moved against the same objects, and cast the correct shadow across the carpet.

It had to be fake somehow.

AI could make disturbingly good videos now. People generated celebrities dancing in grocery stores, babies discussing tax policy, historical leaders reviewing skin-care products, and cats giving legal advice. Trevor could have entered a prompt and sent the result.