Pisces Rising pressed her translucent palm against the smooth wall of the empty chamber. Light bent through her fingers, casting ripples across the stone. This place could work. She'd chosen it carefully—small enough to feel safe, open enough for others to enter. If she could prove her visions were real, skeptics might finally see past her surface. She stepped outside to examine the statue she'd commissioned. The crystalline figure stood taller than she remembered, its faceted body catching afternoon light. Rainbow patterns scattered across the ground as time itself refracted through the translucent form. Beautiful, yes—but would anyone understand what it meant? Her chest tightened. Maybe she should add a plaque explaining the effect. Or maybe that would make her seem desperate. The fountain behind the building called to her with its gentle splash. She approached slowly, watching water spiral upward in defying Neptune's gravity wells. The liquid twisted into shapes that reminded her of futures branching and converging. One stream split into three, then five, then collapsed back into one. She reached toward the spray, her fingers passing through the droplets. This was what she saw in every palm she touched—endless possibilities waiting to take form. Pisces Rising turned back to face the chamber's entrance. The domed roof gleamed with celestial patterns, inviting yet imposing. Tomorrow, she would open the doors. She would offer her gift to anyone brave enough to touch her palm. No more metaphors, no more deflecting. She would show them the water patterns before they became waves. Her hands trembled slightly as she walked back inside, but she didn't turn away.

Pisces Rising woke to water flowing backward. The sound pulled her from sleep—not the familiar splash of the fountain, but something closer. She stepped into her chamber and stopped. Thin streams ran up the walls in spirals, defying Neptune's usual pull. The patterns moved like writing. She pressed her palm against the wet stone. The water spelled three symbols she'd never seen before, then collapsed into droplets. Her pulse quickened. If the gravity wells could write futures without her touch, without her gift—then what made her special? She ran outside to the water garden where ancient pillars stood half-submerged in pools. The water there flowed upward too, weaving between the columns in shapes that looked deliberate. A crowd had already gathered, pointing and whispering. One woman traced the patterns with her finger, reading them aloud like instructions. Pisces Rising pushed through the crowd toward the stone circle at the garden's center. Water spiraled up from the basin, forming clear letters in the air. She recognized them now—coordinates, dates, warnings. Anyone could read these. Her translucent form caught the morning light, refracting it uselessly across the wet stones. The visions she'd promised to share tomorrow were already here, written plainly for everyone. Her chest tightened as she watched a merchant copy the patterns onto parchment, nodding with understanding she'd never been able to give him. She turned back toward her chamber, where the domed building gleamed with its aquatic patterns. The statue she'd commissioned stood beside the entrance, still beautiful, still meaningless. But inside, water still crawled up her walls in private spirals. She stepped closer and touched the stream again. This time she saw something different—not the same patterns displayed in the garden, but deeper currents beneath them. The public prophecies showed what would happen. Her visions showed why, and how to change them. The gravity wells had given everyone the map. She alone could see the territory it described.

Pisces Rising spent the rest of the day in her chamber, touching the private spirals on her walls. The deeper visions came each time—not just dates and places, but choices and consequences. By evening, her hands trembled from the effort. She needed someone who would listen, who would let her prove the difference between surface prophecies and true sight. She prepared the round table in the chamber's center, draping it with velvet that pooled on the floor. A single candle cast amber light across the fabric's embroidered patterns. She placed the lattice beside it—a shimmering weave that hummed when she whispered the old words her mother had taught her. The sound made her translucent skin glow brighter, warming the air with a scent like cedar after rain. When footsteps echoed in the corridor, she stopped whispering. Aries Mars filled the doorway, his massive frame blocking the light from outside. He carried something wrapped in cloth. "The monk said you see what others miss." His voice was quieter than she expected. He unwrapped the object—a russet stone carved with deep cracks that formed deliberate patterns. "I took this from the monument I built. Every victory I've had is marked here, but—" He set it on the table between them. "I don't know why it feels heavier now than when I started." Pisces Rising reached for his palm, not the stone. Her fingers touched his calloused skin and the vision crashed through her—not just his future, but the weight beneath it. She saw the female champion building her forge, saw him admitting pain he'd never spoken aloud, saw the monk's stillness breaking him in ten minutes. The stone wasn't heavy because of victories. It was heavy because he'd never learned to set it down. She released his hand and met his eyes. "The gravity wells show you'll fight again tomorrow. I see why you need to stop." His expression shifted—surprise, then something like relief—and she knew he believed her.

After Aries Mars left, Pisces Rising stood alone in the chamber. Her hands still tingled from the vision she'd shared with him. She walked to the lattice beside the table, the one that hummed when she whispered to it. Her mother's voice echoed in her memory—gentle but firm. She reached toward the prism's surface, fingers trembling an inch away. The rainbow light danced across her translucent palm. She remembered the garden where she'd been twelve years old, touching the wall where prophecies appeared. The vision had torn through her so fast she couldn't breathe—futures collapsing into a single unbearable truth about a neighbor's death. Her mother found her collapsed beside the shells and pearls scattered in the nest, hands bleeding light instead of blood. "Never touch them directly," her mother had whispered, folding a paper into an airplane and writing the warning across its wings. "Always speak to the lattice first. Let it filter what you see." Pisces Rising pulled her hand back now. She'd broken that rule with Aries Mars—touched his palm directly, let the full weight of his future crash into her without protection. It had worked. He'd believed her because she'd seen everything, unfiltered and raw. But her hands still shook, and the chamber felt too bright. She could offer visions this way to every skeptic who came through her doors. Prove her gift was real by touching them all, one after another, until no one doubted. The thought made her sick. She pressed both palms against the lattice and whispered the old words. The prism hummed, refracting her voice into colors that spread across the walls. The vision came slower this time—gentler—showing her the same future she'd seen in Aries Mars but wrapped in metaphor instead of brutal clarity. The lattice had always protected her from drowning in what she saw. She lifted her hands and stared at them, steady now. She would prove her gift was real, but not by destroying herself to do it. Tomorrow, when the skeptics came, she would teach them to whisper to the lattice too. Let them see what she saw, filtered through safety instead of pain. It would take longer. Some might not believe. But she would still be whole when it was done.

Pisces Rising returned to the lattice the next morning. She placed her palms against its surface and whispered the old words, expecting the familiar hum. Instead, the prism flickered. New symbols appeared in the water below—not the usual coordinates and warnings, but something else. The lattice shifted into a swirl of colors she'd never seen before—violet bleeding into gold, then crystallizing into blue. The pattern looked like a portal suspended in light. She stepped back, but the vision followed her. It wasn't showing someone else's future. It was showing her. The symbols spelled out coordinates to a place she'd never been, and beneath them, a single word pulsed: origin. She grabbed the translucent diary from her shelf—the one where she recorded visions she couldn't understand yet. Her hands shook as she copied the symbols onto the first blank page. The lattice had never pointed inward before. Every prophecy had been about others, about futures she could help them navigate. But this vision insisted she was the subject. She pressed her palm to the page, hoping for clarity, but the lattice only showed her the same portal again, framed in stone and dripping water. Pisces Rising closed the diary and held it against her chest. The lattice had answered a question she'd never asked aloud: where did her translucent form come from? She'd always assumed she was born this way, that her gift was simply part of her. But the coordinates suggested otherwise—a specific place, a beginning she could find. She looked at the lattice, then at the diary in her hands. She could ignore this vision and continue proving her gift to skeptics. Or she could follow it and learn why she could see what others couldn't. The choice made her afraid, but she tucked the diary under her arm anyway. Tomorrow she would go to those coordinates. Tonight she would prepare to meet whatever truth was waiting there.

Pisces Rising left her chamber at dawn, carrying the translucent diary against her chest. The coordinates from the lattice vision pulsed in her mind—three symbols she'd copied but didn't understand. She'd walked Astrologica's shores her entire life, yet these markers pointed somewhere she'd never been. She found the place by midday—a depression in the seafloor where water spiraled downward in slow, dark rings. At its center floated a vortex of violet and midnight blue, defying gravity as it hung suspended above the sand. She recognized it immediately from the lattice vision. This was the portal to her origin. She stepped closer, reaching toward its shimmering edge, and the vortex responded. It expanded suddenly, pulling her translucent form into its current. The world around her refracted into a thousand prismatic angles, then collapsed into a single vision—her own reflection multiplied endlessly, each version showing a different future she might become. But before she could understand what she was seeing, the vision went dark. Pisces Rising stumbled backward, gasping. Her translucent body still glowed faintly, but she couldn't see anything through it anymore—no futures, no prophecies, not even the present moment refracted properly. The vortex had stolen her sight mid-vision. She pressed her palms together, trying to summon the familiar hum, but felt nothing except the cold absence where her gift had been. Around her, the seafloor was littered with jagged glass shards that caught the dim light, reflecting broken fragments of the vision she'd lost. The maelstrom still churned behind her, indifferent to what it had taken. She opened the diary with shaking hands and tried to record what had happened, but her translucent fingers couldn't hold the symbols anymore. The coordinates that had brought her here now seemed like a cruel trick—a path to answers that had cost her the only thing that made her special. She looked back at the vortex, then at the broken glass scattered around her feet. The lattice had shown her the source of her gift, but touching it had destroyed her ability to use it. She couldn't tell if the blindness was temporary or permanent, but she knew one thing with certainty: she'd followed the vision to its end, and it had changed her completely. Whether she could still prove her gift to anyone else no longer mattered. She could barely prove it to herself.