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Maelle turns onto her left side. Lays like that for five minutes. Gets uncomfortable.
She turns onto her right side. Lays like that for five minutes. Gets uncomfortable.
She turns onto her stomach. Lays like that for one minute. Gets uncomfortable and can’t breathe with her face in the bedroll.
She turns back onto her left side. Lays like that for five minutes. Gets uncomfortable.
She sits up.
Alright. That’s enough.
It’s gonna be one of those nights.
Where her brain doesn’t shut off. Where her thoughts are just a little too loud. Where the tips of her fingers buzz and her legs won’t stop twitching. Where something she can’t explain throbs behind her ribs and makes her want to move.
The others seem undisturbed by the same irritating sensations. Sciel is sprawled out everywhere, one leg a little too close to the crackling fire. Verso is propped against a stump, arms crossed over his chest, his brow furrowed even in rest. Monoco is sitting on a rock, head bowed forward slightly. Even Lune, who tends to stay up well into the night, is lying on her back, hands folded on her stomach, at peace.
Lucky them.
Maelle stands slowly. Her limbs ache from all the walking and fighting they’ve been doing, and she really should be resting, but she just can’t. She’s had enough of all the tossing and turning and tumultuous thoughts clouding her brain.
She takes one step, two steps, three steps away from the fire, and then a voice stops her.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Her shoulders jolt. She whirls around, fingers splaying open, almost calling forth her rapier.
On the rock, Monoco has turned his head to look at her.
So he had been awake then. The complete lack of facial features makes it hard to gauge. He must be keeping watch.
Maelle drops her hands, letting them hang limp at her sides. “Just a walk,” she says—or half-says. Her voice is quiet, frayed around the edges, like she’s afraid of waking the others—even though they’re all still dead asleep. Lucky bastards.
Monoco doesn’t move from the rock. He’s different from other Gestrals like that, able to still himself to the point of seeming like an inanimate object. His silhouette is a dark cutout against the firelight, long limbs folded, hunched just slightly forward. Even without eyes, she knows he’s watching.
“No.”
His voice is low and even. Not unkind. Just final.
Maelle lifts her chin. “Why not?”
“Because it’s the middle of the night. Because you’re tired. Because there’s Nevrons about.” His head tilts slightly. “And because you keep wandering off without telling anyone.”
“I told you.”
“After I caught you.”
“I’m not stupid. I’ll stay close.”
Monoco doesn’t answer for a moment.
Then: “You don’t sleep well.”
Maelle shifts her weight. “And you do?”
“No. But I don’t go walking into the woods alone because of it.”
She sighs, crossing her arms. “If I stay here, I’m just going to lie awake for the next four hours pretending my legs aren’t twitching and my skull isn’t vibrating. You want me to sit in silence and stare at the fire all night while my brain eats itself?”
“Preferably, yes,” he replies.
She huffs, getting annoyed now. “I’ll be fine. I’m the most efficient fighter in the whole group!”
“You’re also sixteen.”
“With a body count. If something attacks, I’ll kill it. And if I don’t, I’ll run back here.”
“And make it all of our problem.” Monoco pauses. “But I do enjoy a midnight fight.” Another pause. Then, a sigh. “Fine. Ten minutes.”
“Fifteen.”
“Fourteen.”
“Twenty.”
“Deal.”
Maelle smirks, satisfied with herself. “I’ll be back.”
She then steps out of the firelight and into the darkness. And the forest swallows her up.
For how dangerous it is, the sheer beauty of the Continent cannot be denied. They’re currently stopped in a forest of red and gold, as though it’s in a state of perpetual burning. The moonlight slipping in from up above sets the trees ablaze in radiant silver light. The night sings with all sorts of sounds- cicadas chirping in the bushes, an owl hooting from a branch somewhere in the distance, the rustling of leaves in the chilly breeze. It’s breathtaking, even with the Nevrons that lurk nearby.
She walks with her hands by her side, shoulders eased back, despite the exhaustion that ripples up and down her spine with every movement. Her boots crunch soft twigs beneath her feet. She doesn’t need a lantern. The moon is bright tonight, shining full and fat above the trees, and the light it casts is steady and pale.
It’s chilly, but she doesn’t shiver.
Her breath puffs faintly in front of her as she walks. She watches it dissolve in the air.
Her mind hums the way her fingers do. She thinks about nothing and everything—about how Sciel always sounds hopeful even when he’s not, about how Verso sometimes winces when he sleeps, about how Lune watches the sky like she’s waiting for it to fall. She thinks about the moss under her boots, and the way firewood always crackles the same way no matter where they are, and how she sometimes wakes up with tears in her eyes even if she doesn’t remember the dream.
She thinks about how she doesn’t remember a lot of things.
It doesn’t bother her, usually.
But sometimes, when it’s too quiet, she gets this feeling like she should.
Like there’s a door inside her that’s been locked from the inside.
Like something important is waiting on the other side.
She steps over a root. Keeps walking.
The forest opens up slowly. Thins out. The trees space farther apart. The air smells colder here. Damp.
And then—
She hears it.
A gentle hush, like wind stirring tall grass.
Only it’s not wind.
It’s water.
A few more steps, and the trees part completely.
A river winds before her, soft and silver in the moonlight.
It’s not wide—maybe thirty feet across—but it flows steady, smooth, reflecting the sky in trembling streaks. The banks are strewn with flat stones, soft moss, wild white roses curling toward the sterling water.
Maelle steps closer, the buzzing in her chest beginning to calm—not gone, but softer.
She sits on one of the larger stones near the edge and folds her arms across her knees.
The water murmurs to itself. She watches it for a long time.
She doesn’t feel like throwing rocks today. So, instead, she picks up a rose and sets it into the stream.
The rose begins its slow travel down the river; Maelle follows it with her eyes. It glides away with a ghostly sheen, dragging moonlight in its wake like thread pulled through fabric.
She wonders where it’ll go. What it’ll see. If it’ll like its final destination, or if it’ll be unsatisfied with the journey it has made.
She grabs something else, a leaf this time, and puts it in the water, too. Sets it free. Releases it onto an Expedition of its own.
She keeps doing this, grabbing more random things—petals, sticks, clumps of moss, ivy. Anything light enough to float. Anything that can withstand the current.
Not all of them survive. Some get capsized by the tide. Some get stuck on rocks. Some dip beneath the waves and never come back up.
But she keeps sending more.
Over the edge of the large stone she’s seated on, Maelle bends to place a wide-sided amber leaf in the water, and it’s only then that she realizes that she’s being watched.
She just barely sees it- a flash of grey against a backdrop of illustrious red and yellow.
She doesn’t lift her head right away. She stays still, arm bent to the water, fingertips brushing the cold current. Listens. Lets her eyes drift slowly upward, scanning the tree line across the river without moving anything else.
And that’s when she sees her.
Standing on the opposite bank.
Still as stone.
The masked girl.
Maelle straightens slowly, eyes locked on the figure just beyond the river’s edge. Her mouth goes dry. Her hackles raise. Something itches in the bottom of her gut, a feeling she can’t even begin to explain.
It’s her. From the strange vision she had the night after the group reunited with Sciel. From the looming cliff the day Gustave died. From her nightmares sometimes, the one she doesn’t tell anyone about.
The same pale, nearly colorless skin, a soft grey like the gentle scratches of a pencil. The same shock-white hair, unevenly cut and hanging in limp strands over her shoulders. An empty hollow in one side of her face, the other eye—pale blue, heavy, and tired—staring straight at Maelle with a weight that makes her stomach twist. A mask of some kind—porcelain or bone, it’s hard to tell in the moonlight—covers the lower half of her face. The face that almost seems to mimic Maelle’s.
Or maybe Maelle’s face mimics hers.
She doesn’t know. It’s too strange. It makes her head hurt when she tries to think about it for too long.
Her posture is not aggressive. Not threatening. Just…still.
Like she’s been waiting.
Maelle swallows hard. There’s a weird, ashy taste in the back of her mouth all of a sudden. She swallows again, but it doesn’t go away.
“It’s…you,” Maelle finally says. “From my vision.”
At first, she doesn’t think that the girl heard her, she is across a river, after all, and Maelle isn’t exactly speaking above a whisper…but then, she nods. Maelle feels a shiver run down her spine. Her eyes immediately dart around, searching for that white-haired demon of a man that’s usually accompanying her, but the girl shakes her head softly, as though understanding Maelle’s anxiety and letting her know that Renoir is not around.
For some reason, Maelle believes her.
“Why are you here?” Maelle asks.
The girl doesn’t answer. Maelle doesn’t even know if she can speak at all.
Instead…she picks up a rose…and sets it into the stream.
Maelle watches it bob and bounce along the current. The girl does, too.
Maelle sighs through her nose, rubs her eyes, and leans back on her hands, letting her head tip toward the sky. “Y’know… I can’t tell if you’re here to haunt me or help me.”
The girl doesn’t move.
“But then again, I’m not sure I deserve help.”
The wind brushes past the riverbank, rustling the grass.
Her voice is quieter now. “Do you…ever feel like there’s something wrong with you? Like you’re supposed to remember something important, but it’s just gone? Like there’s a piece missing in your chest and everything’s leaking out, but you can’t figure out where from?”
She looks back across the river.
The girl is still standing there. But now her hands are full of white roses. She blinks once, twice, then drops them, her arms falling to her side unceremoniously.
Maelle almost laughs. “Of course you do. That’s your whole thing, isn’t it? Standing there, all quiet and tragic and creepy.” She pauses. “You look a lot like me, you know. Like…a sketch someone tried to redraw from memory but got all the colors wrong. It’s so weird. ”
She thinks she hears the girl breathe out, but she can’t be for certain. Not with the babble of the river whispering between them.
She huffs softly and looks down at the river again. It murmurs to itself quietly, chasing over stones. “Why are you even here? Seriously. And where’s that creepy man? You should bring him here so I can finally stick my sword in his gut.”
When she glances up again, the girl has moved.
Just a little. She’s stepped closer to the bank, one booted foot touching the edge of the water. Her hand lifts slowly, as though reaching for Maelle—but the distance between them is still too wide.
It isn’t until that moment that Maelle notices that her fingers are shaking.
“…You okay?” Maelle asks, brows furrowing.
The girl jolts. As if she forgot she had a body. Her arms drop again. She looks down at the river, then back up at Maelle, and slowly, carefully, she gives the smallest nod.
But it doesn’t convince her.
Maelle studies her in silence. The mask. The pale hair. The scarred face. The way she stands, slightly off-center, like someone still learning how to be a person.
She’s getting that feeling of deja vu again.
“…Is there something you want?” Maelle says at last, her voice gentler this time. “You keep finding me. Are you…looking for something?”
The girl’s posture shifts again. There’s tension in it now—subtle but present. Her hands clutch each other tighter, the tremble more obvious now. She looks like she wants to say something. Like her entire being is straining to speak. But the mask stays on. No words come.
She takes one step closer to the edge of the river.
Maelle rises halfway off the stone, startled. “Wait— careful—”
The girl stops.
Their eyes meet across the water.
Maelle’s chest tightens for reasons she can’t name.
The feeling is strange. It coils around her ribs like thorned ivy—aching, soft, familiar. She doesn’t understand it. She’s never seen this girl smile, never heard her laugh, let alone speak, and yet…
“Do I remind you of someone?” Maelle asks, her voice barely louder than the river.
The girl stares at her for a moment longer.
And then she takes a step into the water.
Maelle half expects what little color remains on her being to bleed off the second she gets wet. But it doesn’t, and she slowly starts to make her way across. The water climbs up to her knees, then her hips, soaking through the gauzy hem of her clothing and darkening the monochrome fabric into something like ink. Her movement is slow and soundless. Each step stirs gentle ripples, but she herself remains perfectly steady, balanced like a specter crossing a dream.
Maelle feels something twinge in her chest. Something tight and sour and off. Like the feeling of a word on the tip of your tongue you can’t quite say. Like being called by a name you know isn’t yours, but you still feel compelled to respond to it anyway.
Maelle finds herself rising fully to her feet before she realizes it.
She takes one hesitant step forward. Then another.
Then, she’s in the river, too.
The water bites cold, even through her boots and trousers. It soaks into her skin, leeches into her bones. But she keeps moving, deeper and deeper, breath stuttering from the chill.
The girl doesn’t stop.
Neither does Maelle.
They meet near the middle—just close enough to touch, if either of them reached out.
But neither of them does. Not yet, anyway.
The current swirls around them, soft and constant, pressing fabric to flesh, brushing past thighs and knees. Somewhere far away, a bird calls once, then falls silent.
The girl tilts her head slightly. It’s the smallest gesture. But it feels weighted. Like she’s looking at Maelle, really looking at her—not just with her one pale eye, but with something deeper. Not with the curiosity of a stranger. With the ache of recognition.
Maelle can’t breathe.
And that feeling creeps up her spine again. The hollow, aching one. The sense that she’s standing at the edge of something enormous. Something familiar and forgotten. Like a song she hummed in another life.
“Who are you?” Maelle asks, and her voice comes out as a hoarse rasp. Those words almost hurt to say.
The girl doesn’t answer, but Maelle is almost happy about it. Does she truly want a response to that question?
Instead…the girl lifts her hand. Slowly. Palm turned upward. An offering.
Maelle looks at it, then lifts her own.
And they touch.
They both gasp the moment their fingers touch.
It’s like the world rips open.
With a crack, the night explodes in a burst of impossible heat. The calm river begins to hiss and bubble. The trees groan like wounded animals—and then ignite all at once. Fire roars up their trunks, dancing along the branches in a sudden inferno. Smoke rushes into the air like a beast unchained.
Maelle stumbles backward into the current, dunking herself in its icy embrace for a terrifying moment before jerking back up again, heart lurching. The flames illuminate everything in shades of blood and gold and ash. The stars vanish. The river darkens. The entire forest is burning.
“What—!” she chokes, barely able to get the word out . She looks at the girl—still holding her hand, now trembling .
Her single eye is wide with horror.
She’s not glowing. She’s not vanishing. She’s panicking.
She tries to let go, but Maelle grips tighter, terrified, confused.
And then—
In the fire, they appear.
Figures.
Not just shadows— people.
Four of them. Flickering and distorted in the blaze. Their outlines waver, molten at the edges, like they’re painted in living flame.
Two men and two women. Their faces are twisted, details obscured by fire, but the seething hatred in their eyes is visible above all else, magnified in the light of the inferno.
They are all screaming.
At the girl.
At her.
Maelle.
“You let them in! This is your fault!”
“You killed him, do you understand that? You killed him! ”
“You’re not a victim, Alicia. You’re a monster! ”
“I didn’t want to die!”
The words hit Maelle like bullets.
She sucks in a breath, staggering, but there’s smoke in her lungs, scorching her throat, and she can’t breathe.
“N-no!” she cries. “I-I didn’t— I didn’t mean to—”
The voices, the rage, the hatred, the guilt, the crackle of fire on wood, the pressure behind her eyes like she’s about to cry—
She doesn’t know these people. She’s never seen them.
But every word sinks into her skin like they were meant for her.
She grips the sides of her head, teeth clenched. Her thoughts twist violently: Who are they? Why does this feel like the truth? Why do I feel like I deserve this?
She looks to the masked girl. She’s crying.
“I-I don’t know who they’re talking about!” she says. “What are they talking about?! Who is Alicia?!”
The girl sobs.
The burning people keep shouting.
“Look what you’ve done, you horrible girl! You’re a murderer!”
“You’ve ruined it! You’ve ruined everything!”
“Why? Why did you do this?”
“You should have been the one to die!”
That last sentence is the one that lands the hardest.
And they start to repeat it.
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
The girl lets out a choked, voiceless keening noise and then finally tears herself free.
She bolts into the inferno.
“Wait!” Maelle yowls, reaching forward, too late. The girl is gone.
But the flames continue to rage on either side of her, growing higher, brighter, hotter.
The burning figures scream louder.
Maelle spins around, eyes wide, heart slamming against her ribs as the fire paints the world in memories that don’t belong to her, in voices that do, in pain she’s never lived through but feels down to the marrow of her bones.
And through it all:
The name Alicia repeats again and again.
Spoken like a curse.
Spoken like a confession.
Spoken like it’s hers.
She doesn’t know what else to do.
So, she runs.
Into Hell.
All she can see is the fire.
Hunting, haunting, roaring around her. A cornea of light. Embers burning against her eyelids, boring holes through the sclera.
Make it stop. Make it stop.
Breathe. She can’t— she can’t breathe. Like acid, like lemon juice coating her lungs. The smoke. Every inhale hurts. Screaming. Her chest keeps screaming . The people keep screaming. The fire keeps screaming, and it sounds like someone she thinks she once knew.
She runs. She runs. Then stumbles. Falling. Face into the dirt. Scrambling up, pushing so hard her fingers break from the knuckles. Piercing bone stark white against this throbbing orange haze.
She hears voices in the blaze,
no, screams,
no, memories,
no—her name.
“ALICIA!”
No—
“MAELLE!”
NO—
She doesn’t know who she is.
She doesn’t care.
She just needs to get out.
But where is the way out? How does she get free from the fire?
Run. Run. Run.
She runs—
through flame
through ash
through smoke, thick like wet velvet—
mouth open—
lungs crackling
limbs heavy
burning
burning—
the fire kisses her skin—
first soft
then teeth.
sleeve goes up in light.
she slaps it out.
can’t breathe.
can’t—
can’t—
where is she
where is she
where is—
not supposed to be here
shouldn’t have touched her
shouldn’t have come
shouldn’t have let them it
but the woods
won’t
let
her
go.
she stumbles—
gets up.
face blistering.
hands raw.
hair smoldering at the ends.
“help—!” she tries to scream
but it tastes like cinders
like salt
like rot
like
like home—
the world is breaking around her—
red
orange
black
black
black—
She stumbles into the clearing like a thing gone rabid, a comet of ash and torn cloth and blistered skin. Her hair is half-burnt. Her hands are shaking violently. Her body— wrecked.
And she’s screaming.
Not words. Not names. Not anything intelligible.
Just sound. Raw and guttural and animal.
A cry like something dying.
Lune jerks upright, fists full of lightning before her eyes are even open. Sciel scrambles to her feet, tripping over her bedroll. Monoco lurches off his rock. Verso already has his sword summoned.
“Maelle?!” Lune yells, voice breaking. “Maelle— what the hell happened?! What’s wrong?!”
But Maelle doesn’t hear them.
She’s screaming still, back arched, body seizing.
The others are moving, rushing to her, hands outstretched—but she flinches from all of them. She’s trembling so hard she can’t stay standing. She sinks to her knees in the grass, breath rasping, teeth clenched so tight they squeak.
Sciel tries to touch her. She pulls away with a sound like a wounded animal.
“No, no, no, no—” Maelle sobs. “Make it stop! I didn’t— I didn’t do anything! I didn’t mean to hurt anyone!”
“Maelle! Maelle, sweetie, calm down,” Sciel says. “You’re okay. You’re safe. But I need you to breathe. Can you do that for me?”
Breathe? How can she breathe? There’s smoke in her lungs. Her throat is seared to red ruin.
She can still hear them.
“You should have been the one to die!”
She screams again. Louder. Louder. LOUDER. Anything to block them out.
And then—
“Maelle—!!”
“Shit, she’s going to—”
“I’ve got her—!”
“You should have been the one to die!”
—she goes under.
She hopes she never comes back up.
Maelle wakes up all at once and not at all.
The world is wrong. It’s doing that weird folding thing, like a book bending the wrong way on its spine. Her thoughts feel gelatinous—like they’ve been sitting in the sun too long, and now everything’s sticky, soft, melting off the page before she can read it. Her head hurts. Not in the normal way, not like a bruise or a fever or a too-loud noise, but like someone rearranged the furniture inside her skull and didn’t tell her where anything went.
Her body is hot. No. Her body is cold. But she’s sweating. So maybe both? Everything’s slippery. Her skin, her thoughts.
“She’s waking up!”
She blinks. Her eyes are sticky. One of them might be glued shut. Or melted. Or maybe it’s just…crusty.
A shadow moves near her. Something cool and wet touches her forehead, and she tries to lean into it. It feels nice.
“Hey. How are you feeling?
There’s that voice again. It’s one of them.
The them she travels with. The ones with names. She knows them. She always has.
“Loom,” she murmurs.
“What?”
“Loom,” she says again, louder this time. “Your. Name.”
“Uh— it’s Lune,” says the woman above her, slowly, carefully, like she’s trying not to frighten a wild animal.
That’s what I said, Maelle thinks. She doesn’t say it. Her mouth feels unplugged somehow, like she could open it and the wrong things would fall out.
“How’re you feeling?” Lune asks again.
“Fuzzy,” she says. Except it comes out like: “Fuh-sshh.”
Lune frowns. Maybe. It’s hard to tell when there’s three of her. “You have a fever, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t like that word.”
“What word?”
“Feather.”
“I didn’t say feather.”
“Yeah, you did. Just now.”
“I said fever.”
“Don’t like that one either.”
She laughs. Or maybe cries. It comes out the same.
“Oh, poor baby,” someone else coos. “She’s so delirious.” That’s definitely Scone. Nobody else can master such a motherly tone.
Wait. Scone? That’s not a name. Scone’s not here. Is Scone a thing or a person?
“Who’s Scone?” Maelle asks aloud.
They all pause. Too long. The silence stretches like a taut, fraying rope.
“…She said ‘whose scone,’ right?” Lune says softly to the others.
“Yeah,” Scone says back. “She’s mixing things up. Definitely delirious.”
“I didn’t mix anything,” Maelle insists, trying to sit up. Her limbs feel rubbery, boneless. Someone pushes her gently back down. Maybe the scone. Maybe the fire. Maybe a branch.
“I’m not burning,” she adds suddenly.
Everyone looks at her.
“What?” says Scone.
“I’m not burning,” she says again. “This time. I’m not.” She smiles. It feels like it stretches too far. “Last time I was. But now I’m just soup.”
“Okay,” Lune says. She’s nodding. “That’s good. That’s…good, Maelle.”
“Bark,” says Monoco. “Bark bark bark bark bark.”
Maelle’s eyes snap open. She stares at him.
“Bark?” he says tentatively.
“Holy shit…” she whispers.
Scone’s hand, gentle and steady, brushes back sweaty strands of hair stuck to her face. She offers a waterskin. “Here. Drink something, sweetheart.”
Maelle drinks greedily. Her throat burns for some reason, like she was guzzling down lava an hour before this.
“…How long have I been…” She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t know what the word is. Gone? Asleep? Maelle?
“Only a couple hours,” Scone says.
A couple years, her brain whispers, unhelpfully. For some reason. Whatever that means.
“The tea is almost ready.”
Maelle’s heart lurches. Her head whips up, despite Scone’s protests.
“Verso?” she calls.
Verso, who had been kneeling by the fire, looks over. “Yeah? You okay?”
“You’re alive?”
Silence.
Everyone is staring at her.
“What?” Verso says.
“Y-you’re alive!” Maelle cries in joy. “You’re alive! I-I thought— I thought— I… I…?”
“Bark bark?” Monoco says.
“Maelle, honey, lay down,” Lune says, easing Maelle back down. Maelle doesn’t fight her. She’s already drifting again. Eyes fluttering.
She murmurs something that might be, “I’m sorry.”
Or maybe it’s, “I’m someone.”
Or maybe she just made a noise.
She doesn’t remember.
“I… I feel…bad,” she croaks.
“I know, sweetheart,” Scone says. “I know. But it’s going to be okay, I promise. Just rest.”
Will it be okay? Will it really?
She’s too afraid to ask. So, she presents a different question instead.
“Was I…dreaming? The fire?”
“Sleep, Maelle,” Lune says.
She sleeps.
But…that’s not her name.