THE PETRIFACT

Burdened by years of accumulated trauma and the agonizing cognitive decline of her mother, Vera retreats to a prohibited lake where the water itself pulses and breathes with unnatural intelligence. Exhausted and carrying the weight of being the last member of a damaged family line, she had long decided that the most ethical choice was extinction, rather than perpetuating the cycle of generational suffering. When an incomprehensible, organic entity rises from the water, it offers Vera the ultimate temptation: immediate relief from responsibility, the cessation of suffering, and a chance to stop being singular and become plural, joining her dissolving mother and her deceased father in a collective consciousness.