It wasn't a tunnel.
It was a throat.
The second my foot crossed the moss-rimmed mouth, the world tipped—and we dropped like bones down a gullet.
I didn't scream.
Not because I wasn't scared. But because my breath caught somewhere between my ribs and my teeth and refused to move.
The slide wasn't smooth. It pulsed. Slick with moss, muscle-warm, too alive. Every twist bucked like a nightmare carnival ride. The walls whispered nonsense in a dozen languages. I caught a name once—maybe mine, maybe someone else's.
Dolly shrieked somewhere ahead.
"IF THIS RUINS MY STOCKINGS I'M SETTING THIS WHOLE SLIDE ON FIRE."
Grin was behind me, muttering.
"…hate… tunnels… slimy… 's why I don't… travel…"
Something grazed my elbow. It felt like fur. Then teeth.
I didn't ask.
Antic's voice rang out from somewhere in the dark below.
"WE'RE FINE. NOBODY PANIC UNLESS YOU HEAR THE WORD 'FLARP.'"
"Why would that be the panic word?" I shouted.
"BECAUSE," he yelled back, "IT'S FUN TO YELL."
I hit a curve that yanked my shoulder sideways. My fingernails scraped something that giggled.
The darkness began to thin, little by little, like the slide itself was starting to lose interest.
Then—
Light.
Wet green and pink light. The slide flung me outward like chewed gum, and I landed in a tangle of glowing grass and aggressive flowers that hissed when I coughed.
Antic crashed down beside me a second later, limbs everywhere, overalls barely hanging on to dignity.
He blinked up at the sky.
"Okay. That was terrible. Ten outta ten. Would not recommend."
Dolly tumbled next, hair a mess, cheeks flushed with murder. "My corset! I swear, if I find so much as one scratch, I will file a lawsuit against this ecosystem!"
Grin flopped out last, face-first, and didn't get up for a full minute.
"…'m never doing that again," he croaked into the grass.
Antic sat up, rubbing his ribs, then looked at me.
"Hey. You alive?"
I nodded. My hands were shaking, but I nodded.
Then Dolly muttered, "How many more times is No Eyes going to faint in this journey? I'd like to place bets."
"I didn't faint."
"You blacked out last chapter, darling."
"I didn't faint."
Dolly smirked. "Then you should trademark your dramatic collapses. Very chic."
I rolled my eyes.
Antic offered me a hand. His palm was warm, sticky with sap. I took it.
We stood together in this new stretch of land—lush, bright, and wrong. The air smelled like sugar and grief. Trees grew upside down. Water flowed up. The rules were different here.
Grin rose slowly and squinted.
"…We're not out yet."
"Out of the Wildlife Realm?" I asked.
"No," he said, brushing moss off his shoulder. "Out of trouble."
He pointed.
Up ahead, a clearing flickered. Not fire. Not magic.
Lanterns.
Dozens.
Floating midair, attached to nothing, swaying as if in a wind none of us could feel.
Antic whistled low. "Well, well. Looks like we've got company."
I stepped closer.
Lanterns meant watchers.
Watchers meant choices.
And somewhere beyond them?
My mother's name still echoed.
Elara
The lanterns didn't flicker like they should've.
They glowed steady—stubborn things. Bright without fire, warm without heat. Each one hung midair, bobbing slightly like a breath held too long.
Antic stepped ahead like it was a red carpet. "Well, this is either a welcome party or the setup to a very artistic execution."
Dolly floated behind him, arms folded. "Do executions usually smell like peach preserves and burnt lavender?"
Grin trailed behind, silent. His eyes didn't leave the shadows between the lanterns. His steps made no sound.
We followed the glow.
The forest changed as we moved. Trees pulled back—not just bent, but folded, retreating into themselves like embarrassed hosts. Moss shifted to reveal a path, smooth and humming beneath our feet.
I walked near Antic again. He didn't say much now. Just scratched his jaw absently, eyes tracking every movement like he expected someone to pop out and yell "Gotcha!"
"Why're they just… letting us walk through?" I asked.
Antic didn't answer at first. Then: "Could be ceremony. Could be a game. Could be they're still deciding what part of us to eat first."
Reassuring.
The parade of lanterns ended at a slope carved into the land—terraces layered like cake, each level overgrown with strange plants shaped like goblets, feathers, bones. Creatures wandered through them, humanoid and not. Feathered arms. Glowing jaws. One had skin that rippled like mirrored water, reflecting my own face back at me with no eyes and a too-wide smile.
I flinched. It waved.
"They're all watching," I whispered.
Grin's voice was low, slow. "…Let 'em. Let 'em see. We're not hiding."
A large platform jutted from the hillside, carved from petrified wood. A podium rose in its center, shaped like the stump of a felled god. No one stood on it.
Until they did.
A blur. A blink.
Then a man. Maybe. Maybe not.
Tall, all angles and elegance, draped in layered leaves and smoke. His antlers—yes, antlers—were crowned with lanterns. His eyes glowed orange. Not kind.
He didn't speak.
He sang.
But not with words. With pressure.
The forest bent toward it. My spine straightened against my will. Dolly shivered—then immediately shook it off like a cat offended by its own fear.
"I hate ancient song magic," she muttered. "Always so dramatic."
Antic leaned toward me, voice low. "That's one of the Watchers. High-tier. Used to be my school counselor."
"Liar."
"Would you feel better if I said he once tried to dissect me for stealing a kiss from his niece?"
"…No."
He flashed teeth. "Then I won't say it."
The Watcher's hum faded. He stared straight at me.
Not Antic.
Not Grin.
Not Dolly.
Me.
I didn't flinch.
I wanted to. But I didn't.
"You come with echoes," he said finally. Voice like glass being ground to sand. "Echoes that do not belong to you."
Dolly stepped forward before I could respond. "You'll have to be more specific. No Eyes picks up all kinds of echoes. She's like a cursed thrift shop."
Antic tried not to laugh. Failed. Snorted loudly.
The Watcher ignored them.
"You carry her name," he said to me.
My hands clenched. "Whose name?"
"Elara's."
The name hit like a skipped heartbeat.
He stepped down from the stump. Not walked. Slid. Glided. Like the land moved for him, not under him.
"Elara broke our trust," he said. "You are what remains. You are the debt she left behind."
Behind me, Grin's fingers flexed on the scythe handle.
"Debt's a strong word," Antic muttered. "She's not a receipt. She's a person."
"She's a key."
"I'm not anything you say I am," I snapped.
The Watcher paused. Tilted his head.
"Then why are you glowing?"
"What?"
He pointed.
I looked down.
My hands.
My bare feet.
My chest.
All pulsing with that same deep gold I saw in the Breaths. Same glow that poured out of the photo in the box.
"I don't…" I backed up. "I didn't mean—"
"You were shaped to carry it," he said, soft and cold. "Not by us. But by her."
A beat.
Then another figure stepped forward, smaller. Younger.
A girl.
Same wild hair. Same gold glow.
And no eyes.
Just skin where they should be.
She didn't speak.
She didn't need to.
I felt her.
A shard of myself.
Not a reflection.
A memory.
A sister.
She didn't breathe like me.
She didn't shift, didn't fidget. She just stood there, still as stone, face blank where her eyes should've been.
I don't know why that made it worse.
Like I'd walked into a mirror I hadn't agreed to.
The girl wasn't me.
But she was.
Dolly moved first.
She glided in front of me, slow and deliberate, like a storm trying to make up its mind. Her lace sleeves didn't flutter. Her voice came sharp and low:
"Trickery," she hissed. "Forest-born illusions. They want to confuse her."
The Watcher didn't flinch. "She is not illusion. She is the same thread woven twice."
"That's not how people work," Antic muttered. "That's how sweaters work."
The girl tilted her head. Not perfectly, not humanly. Like she was imitating the idea of being curious. Her face stayed smooth, but there was something behind it—recognition, maybe. Or hunger.
Grin's voice was low. "…She's not breathing…"
I took a step closer.
The glow between us pulled tight like a string.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
The girl opened her mouth.
No words came out.
Just a tone. A single, vibrating note that hit me right in the teeth. It hurt, but not in the way pain usually does.
It remembered me.
Flashes. Hands I didn't know. A cradle that smelled like lavender and coal. A voice crooning something I almost understood—
Then nothing.
Gone.
"I—" My knees wobbled. I hated that. "She's not real. She can't be real."
The Watcher spoke again. "She is what was left behind when the forgetting was made. A tether. A vessel. You are the vessel filled. She is the one that spilled."
Dolly's teeth showed. It wasn't a smile. "Poetry or riddles, pick one. You're not being deep, you're being unclear."
Antic moved closer to me, hand resting on the hilt of his flute like a weapon. "You say she's a vessel, fine. That doesn't make her hers. That doesn't mean she gets to decide who No Eyes is."
"She isn't deciding," the Watcher said calmly. "She is reconciling."
The girl's glow pulsed.
So did mine.
I felt... tugged.
Like parts of me were remembering without permission.
"No," I said, shaking my head. "No. I'm not some broken glass they get to reassemble. I'm—"
"You're scared," said a voice.
But it wasn't the girl.
It was me.
From her mouth.
Same voice. Same tone. My voice coming out of a face that wasn't mine.
I stepped back like I'd been slapped.
Antic was already in front of me, half-shielding, half-snarling.
"That's enough. No Eyes doesn't want this, and I'm about two seconds from hitting the undo button on this whole scene."
Grin's hand tightened on his scythe.
Dolly didn't move.
Neither did the girl.
"Say it," I said suddenly.
Antic blinked. "Say what?"
"To her. Say my name."
Antic looked at me. Then at her. Then back at me.
"…No Eyes," he said, unsure.
I shook my head. "My real name."
He frowned. "You said it once. You said… Pecola."
I turned to the girl.
"My name," I said. "Say it."
The girl opened her mouth.
No sound.
Just a crack.
Small, but loud.
Like something in her broke.
She shuddered.
And then she screamed.
A wordless, silent thing. A scream that shook the ground and didn't make a sound at all.
Her glow went out.
Just like that.
She dropped to her knees.
And vanished.
The lanterns above us popped like bubbles.
Darkness rushed in.
The Watcher did not move.
"You are choosing the thread," he said. "Let it be the right one."
'' Go To The Gate of Trees.''
He vanished too.
Just gone. Like breath in winter.
And we were alone again.
Antic turned to me slowly. "...What the hell just happened?"
I didn't answer.
Because something inside me was still screaming.
Not in fear.
In recognition.