Chapter Text
Grian didn’t understand it at first.
The server spun on with new powers and chaotic games. Flight, speed, clones, meteors. Everyone was laughing. Everything was supposed to be fun.
And then Cleo appeared at spawn, flanked by two figures in decaying suits.
Mumbo. Skizz.
Back from the dead.
Her voice was proud. “Necromancer powers. I bring them back. They serve me now.”
It was a joke, everyone assumed. A dark gag.
But Grian saw how Skizz wouldn’t speak. How Mumbo flinched at the sound of his name. How Cleo’s face turned ashen the moment Grian stepped toward them.
Her smile cracked at the corners.
So did her skin.
It wasn’t a gag.
Mumbo had died. Left. Grian had mourned in silence, because saying anything would have made it real.
And now he was standing across the clearing, jaw stiff and body trembling ever so slightly, wearing his zombie skin like a burial shroud. Watching Grian.
And rotting.
Cleo waved it off.
“Just a proximity bug,” she said when her hand split open from the knuckles as she handed Grian some items. “Little decay glitch. Don’t worry about it.”
But her nose bled black when she said it.
And Mumbo had already lost two fingers.
Grian’s power let him borrow others’ abilities. He felt them drain through his skin with every touch. Flight, fire, cloning. Speed.
He didn’t use it on Mumbo or Skizz. There was nothing to take.
They had no powers.
Just presence.
Presence, and pain.
And eyes that remembered.
“I know what you did,” Grian hissed on the second day.
Cleo didn’t deny it. She sat against a tree, her arm wrapped in bandages she hadn’t needed yesterday.
“They’re conscious.”
“Of course they are.”
“You resurrected them. Not just as code.”
“Yes.”
“That’s—” Grian’s voice cracked. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s compassion.”
He turned to her, furious. “They’re decaying. Every step Mumbo takes toward me, another piece of him falls off.”
“I told him to stay away,” she said, voice quieter now. “He won’t listen.”
“And you?”
Cleo gave a broken smile. Her left cheekbone was exposed through a tear in her face.
“I’ve already lost too much to stop.”
On Day Three, Grian found Skizz beneath a tree, unblinking.
Silent.
Still.
When Grian crouched beside him and gently touched his shoulder, Skizz turned his head—slow and mechanical—and mouthed something without breath.
Sorry.
Then he stopped moving.
Just like that.
Not dead. Not alive. Just stuck.
Cleo’s hands trembled when she tried to mine. Half her inventory was bones now. Her right eye was gone, sealed with fabric. She wore a scarf over her jaw to hide the spreading crack in her skull.
She didn’t log out. She didn’t ask for help.
Every time Grian came close, she rotted faster.
Every time Mumbo lingered near him, another layer of skin peeled off.
And neither of them backed away.
Grian shouted into the void on Day Four.
He screamed at the sky, at the Watchers, at the unseen force that had given them powers and now used them like puppet strings.
“You wanted a story?” he yelled, throat raw. “You wanted power arcs and betrayal and pain? You got it. Are you happy now?”
Silence.
Above, the clouds shifted.
Below, Mumbo stood at the edge of the forest, half a face left, one hand pressed to his heart.
“Why doesn’t he leave?” Grian asked Cleo, voice splintered. “He’s dying. You’re dying. Why does he stay near me?”
“Because he loves you,” she rasped.
Her lungs rattled with every word.
“Because he made a choice, even like this. Even with what it’s doing to him.”
Grian knelt beside her, tears slipping down.
Cleo reached out, bone fingers curled toward his arm. Her hand hovered just short of touching him. She was trembling violently.
“I was supposed to be the one punished,” she whispered. “But they’re using him instead. Because that’s what’ll hurt you the most.”
She coughed, and part of her spine dislodged under her robe.
“Let him go, Grian,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“Then watch him die again.”
On Day Five, Grian dreamed of the void.
He stood in the End, alone, screaming Mumbo’s name.
Mumbo walked toward him, his skin sloughing, eyes hollow. But he smiled.
And when he reached out, Grian felt the ash slide between his fingers.
He woke up sobbing.
That morning, Mumbo came to him.
For the first time, unprompted. Uncontrolled.
Cleo lay behind him, unmoving now. Only Skizz sat beside her, head bowed.
Mumbo walked with a limp—one leg gone at the knee. His ribs showed. His throat gurgled when he breathed.
But his eyes—still Mumbo.
Still there.
“Don’t,” Grian begged. “Please—don’t come any closer.”
Mumbo stepped forward.
More skin sloughed away.
“You’ll die.”
He didn’t stop.
A tooth fell from his mouth.
He knelt.
And he spoke.
Voice wrecked. Garbled. Barely understandable.
“You’re worth it.”
Then he smiled.
And Grian—shaking, sobbing, furious—grabbed him.
The rot jumped to Grian’s arms instantly, streaking black veins up his skin.
“I didn’t want this!” he screamed. “You were supposed to stay gone! It wasn’t fair—but this is worse!”
Mumbo leaned into the hug. His body cracked. Collapsed.
Grian held him tighter.
“You stupid, loyal—I can’t lose you again.”
But Mumbo was already dust.
The server was quiet after that.
Cleo’s name blinked out that evening.
No “left the game.” No “was slain.”
Just gone.
Grian didn’t speak for a week.
Not to Scar. Not to Tango. Not to anyone.
He stayed at spawn, building tiny useless things. Flowers in boxes. Empty rooms. A fountain with no water.
When asked what his power was, he just said: “I steal things.”
And no one dared ask what he meant.
No one answered.
No one ever did.
Grian just turned, walked to the jungle’s edge, and stared at a patch of dirt no one could terraform.
Not even the Watchers.
It still smelled like smoke.
And ash.