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Spring had come to the forest without asking permission.
Pearl noticed it in fragments first. The air smelled wrong—green and sharp, like crushed leaves and thawing earth. The breeze carried more pollen than snow. When she shifted her weight, the ground beneath her boots didn’t crunch. Instead, it gave, soft and quiet, damp soil yielding like it was glad to be stepped on.
Pearl laughed. It burst out of her chest, light and breathless, echoing strangely through the clearing. The sound startled her dogs, and they looked up at her, ears perked, tails wagging uncertainly.
“Look at that,” she said, spinning slowly in place, axe loose in her hands. “Spring.”
The word felt foreign on her tongue. She hadn’t seen spring in weeks. Not since she spawned in this world that was sharp and white and cruel, since survival meant cold fingers and colder choices.
Behind her, Cleo staggered.
Pearl turned just in time to see the blow land—diamond axe biting cleanly into armour, the force carrying Cleo backward toward an edge. For a heartbeat, they teetered, boots scraping uselessly against grass, arms flailing and eyes wide with something that might have been surprise.
Then Cleo fell.
The sound of their body hitting the ground was dull. They fell beneath bright, cheerful birdsong that felt grotesquely out of place. Flowers dotted the clearing, bright and almost offensively alive, petals trembling gently as if someone hadn’t just died.
Cleo had never really looked alive, anyway. Not in the way most people did. Now, with her eyes shut and face slack, Pearl could hardly tell the difference between sleep and death.
Her dogs didn’t seem to mind. They crowded close, pressing wet noses into her hands, tails thumping against the grass. A few of them had already begun gnawing experimentally at Cleo’s armour, teeth scraping uselessly against enchanted diamond. Pearl laughed louder at that, sharp and bright and just a little too high.
“Easy, easy,” she cooed, running her fingers through their fur. “That’s not food.”
Some of the dogs ignored her anyway, teeth tugging at pale, bloodless skin. Pearl tilted her head, considering it. She supposed she couldn’t blame them. Most of them had been raised on rotten flesh and bones, fed in the long weeks when Pearl had only snow and spite for company.
Her precious war dogs.
Pearl felt the severing of Cleo and Martyn’s bond. It was sharp and internal, like a cord pulled too tight and suddenly cut. The soulmate bond didn’t weaken or fray, nor did it scream. It simply…ended.
Somewhere beyond the trees, Martyn screamed. The sound didn’t travel through the air. It tore straight through Pearl’s skull instead, a violent echo that vibrated behind her eyes. One moment he was alive—furious, pleading, still trying to bargain, to claw Cleo back from inevitability—
The next, there was nothing.
Pearl laughed again. It was louder this time, almost hysterical, bouncing off tree trunks. Her dogs took this as permission, barking and circling around with their claws tearing up the soft spring earth as if to celebrate.
“That’s how it works!” Pearl said brightly, voice trembling with exhilaration she didn’t fully understand. “You fall, you take him with you.”
She wandered a short distance away from the body, the dogs trailing after her like a living shadow, and began to heal. Cleo hadn’t done much damage in the end—not enough to make it interesting or to make it worth it.
That… stung.
Pearl frowned, a strange tightness blooming in her chest. She hadn’t wanted Cleo or Martyn to win. She hadn’t wanted Scott to win either, but she wanted it to mean something. For the fight to hurt, and to be the proof that she mattered.
Instead, Cleo had fallen easily. Just like everyone else.
She planted her axe into the ground and leaned on it, chest heaving. Warmth—real warmth and not the punishing cold she’d lived in for weeks—spread through her limbs. The breeze brushed her face, carrying the scent of blossom, and for the first time since the game begun, Pearl wasn’t freezing.
Only two left. Her and Scott.
The forest felt different now. Quieter, like it was holding its breath. She continued walking through as her dogs ran ahead. Somewhere deep underground, a warden bellowed, its voice reverberating through the earth.
Scott stood waiting by a clearing.
“I didn’t think it would end this way,” he said softly.
Pearl smiled wide. “I did.”
He didn’t argue. Instead, he began removing his armour, piece by piece. Each clatter against the ground echoed through the clearing, heavy with intention.
Pearl slowed. “Scott?”
“You deserve this more, Pearl.” He finally met her eyes. “You survived alone, you fought alone, and now you won.”
Something twisted violently in her chest.
“No,” she said, stepping forward. “No, I didn’t. We’re tied. You don’t get to—”
He pulled out TNT. The spring breeze carried the faint smell of gunpowder.
Understanding hit her all at once—cold and brutal, stealing the warmth from her bones. “Don’t,” Pearl said, backing away. “Scott, don’t. I didn’t ask for this.”
Scott gave a small, resigned smile. “I know.”
The flint struck.
The explosion tore through him first, and then through her. Pain ripped through her body in perfect, mirrored symmetry. Every nerve screamed as the soulmate bond did exactly what it was designed to do. Scott’s death surged through her as a reflected wound—burning, absolute, unavoidable.
Her legs buckled. Her vision fractured into white and green. Spring blurred and flowers smeared into colour. The sky tipped sideways.
Pearl screamed, and then the world fell away.
She was falling, but she wasn’t falling downward, or anywhere at all.
Was she drifting?
The void was not dark so much as empty—a vast absence that swallowed sensation piece by piece. Pearl’s thoughts slipped in and out, consciousness flickering like a torch starved of oxygen.
She couldn’t tell where her body ended and the nothingness began.
Distant, lilting voices reached her, weaving in and out of her awareness like a half-remembered song.
“Spring crowns the one who stands,
alone you bled through distant lands.”
Pearl tried to focus, but the words slipped away before she could grasp them. Her body felt heavy and weightless all at once, like sinking and floating simultaneously. She reached for something—anything—but there was nothing to hold onto.
She wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or sleep.
The void pressed close. It wasn’t cruel or kind—just inevitable, like water closing over a struggling swimmer’s head.
“What hurt and burned will linger on,
a winner’s mark when all is done.”
Pearl drifted. Spring and winter blurred together in her mind—snow melting into flowers, ice in the mountains cracking to reveal green shoots underneath. She thought of her watchtower, of nights spent alone in the cold, of powdered snow she dumped gleefully on her head just to make Scott panic. Of Tilly. Of being alone, and surviving anyway.
She felt small and tired.
The voices faded, and the void loosened its grip.
Then Pearl fell back into the world, grasping for air she didn’t remember losing.
She woke to wind. It rushed past her ears, sharp and cold, tangling in her hair and snapping against her elytra. For longer than was reasonable, she was convinced she was still falling, still tumbling through that endless, weightless nothing, where up and down had stopped mattering and voices rhymed without mouths.
Her boots hit stone. The impact jarred her hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. Pearl stumbled forward, palms scraping against rough stone as she caught herself on instinct alone. Her breath came in shallow, uneven bursts.
She knew this place well. Hermitcraft Season Nine.
The knowledge settled into her without explanation, immediate and absolute. The sky stretched painfully blue overhead. Moss crept along cliff faces in lazy, living patterns. Waterfalls spilled through stone columns, and sunlight broke into rainbows through the mist. Somewhere nearby, redstone components clicked, and it felt somewhat comforting.
Life continued.
Pearl straightened slowly.
She felt wrong. She didn’t feel injured, or sick, just…misaligned, like she’d been slotted back into the world incorrectly and everything shifted half a step to the side. When she lifted her hands, they trembled slightly. There was no blood, or snow, or fur caught beneath her nails.
Her inventory was empty of everything that had mattered. Tilly was gone. The dogs were gone. The absence hit her harder than any blow in the game. A hollow ache settled in her chest, quiet but insistent.
Her comm vibrated. Once, twice, then a third time.
Pearl stared at the notifications until the text blurred together, then dismissed them without reading. Instead, she ran forward and leapt.
The elytra snapped open automatically, catching the air as she pitched herself into the sky. The familiar rush of flight should have been exhilarating. It always was. Instead, it stretched the hollowness wider, wind tearing through a chest that felt far too empty to ever fill. She flew without direction over cliffs and forests, over half-finished builds and redstone contraptions, over places she knew intimately and places that felt unfamiliar despite being home. She didn’t slow until her lungs burned and her wings ached, until the world below blurred into colour and motion.
She landed on a high, rocky outcrop, boots skidding slightly on stone.
That was where Gem found her.
“Pearl?”
Gem hovered nearby, wings flaring as she slowed, concern written openly across her face. “Oh—thank god. You’re back. Where have you been?”
Pearl turned, already smiling. It was the right expression. Bright and practiced. “Hey, Gem,” she said cheerfully. “Sorry. Guess I took a little unplanned vacation.”
Gem didn’t smile back. Her eyes flicked over Pearl, taking in the tension in her shoulders, and the way she stood like she might bolt at any second. “You were gone for weeks,” she said carefully. “You weren’t the only one, either.”
Pearl’s smile held. “Coincidences happen.”
“Not like that,” Gem replied. “Not when half the server disappears at once.”
That landed closer to the truth than Pearl liked.
Gem stepped nearer, lowering her voice. “Half of the server vanished within the same window. That doesn’t just happen.”
Pearl shrugged, gaze drifting deliberately toward the horizon. “Guess we needed a group holiday.”
“Pearl,” Gem said gently but firmly. “Was it another game?”
Her breath caught.
She didn’t answer.
Gem’s expression softened, worry deepening instead of fading. “You don’t have to explain everything. Just—are you okay?”
Pearl forced a laugh. It sounded wrong even to her. “I’m fine. Promise.”
Before Gem could respond, Pearl stepped backward and jumped, elytra flaring as she dove away. She didn’t look back.
Xisuma’s message came not long after.
Xisuma: Pearl. Please check in.
She ignored it.
Another followed.
Xisuma: I know you’re back on server.
Pearl clenched her jaw, fingers tightening around her comm.
Pearl: I’m fine.
The reply was immediate.
Xisuma: I’m coming to find you.
Panic spiked sharp and sudden. Pearl twisted midair and surged forward, using a firework to push her elytra harder instead of landing, instead of letting anyone catch up to her. Wind roared in her ears as she flew fast and unforgiving, the land smearing into colour beneath her until cliffs gave way to open ocean. She landed there and folded in on herself, knees drawn to her chest.
Spring had followed her.
Grass was green and stubborn beneath her boots. Wildflowers dotted the cliffside in defiant bursts of colour. The breeze smelled of salt and new growth. The world was healing itself whether she wanted it to or not.
She stared out at the horizon until the sun dipped low, setting the sea ablaze with gold and fire.
“Found you.”
Pearl didn’t turn.
Grian landed beside her, boots crunching softly against stone. He didn’t crowd her, joke, or pretend that this was normal. “You’re getting good at disappearing,” he said lightly.
She huffed. “Learned from the best.”
They sat in silence.
“You won,” Grian said eventually.
Pearl’s fingers tightened in her sleeves. “Did I?”
Grian looked at her. “You don’t have to tell me. I already know.”
Something in Pearl cracked. Her shoulders sagged, tension draining all at once. “I don’t feel like I won,” she admitted. “I feel like I just… stopped falling.”
Grian nodded. “Yeah. That tracks.”
She laughed weakly and buried her face in her hands. “I hurt him. On purpose. Over and over. The snow, the damage—I liked how it made him panic.” Her voice wavered. “And then he—he chose it.”
“Same way Scar did for me,” Grian said quietly.
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” Grian agreed. “But it makes it not your fault.”
The words didn’t fix anything. But they made it hurt less.
“I should talk to Scott,” Pearl murmured.
Grian nodded. “You will. When you’re ready.”
She wasn’t ready for the memory of the first game, or playing in the second, and then the third.
She avoided Scott through one MCC, but by the time the next tournament rolled around and the other Hermitcraft members encouraged her to sign up, dread had coiled so tight in her chest that it was hard to breathe.
The MCC lobby materialised in front of her eyes after the fourth game. Floating platforms stretched into the void, and banners representing each team and their current positions waved in the wind. Other players milled about—laughing, bouncing, climbing, their voices overlapping into a constant hum of noise.
Pearl stood very still. The enchanted comm band settled automatically behind her ear, warm against her skin. She could hear her team talking about the plan for the second half of the event, and joking back and forth. She didn’t contribute.
She instead focused on not looking around too quickly, keeping her breathing steady, and on pretending this was just another normal tournament and that she isn’t sharing a lobby with the man she’d killed in a death game.
“Pearl?” Scott’s voice came tentatively from nearby.
Her heart dropped straight into her stomach, and despite everything telling her to not look at him, she turned.
Scott stood a few platforms away, adjusting his clothes. He looked…normal. Fine, like nothing had ever happened between them.
“Oh,” she said, far too quickly. “Hey.”
There was a pause. The lobby noise seemed to dim around them.
“Can we talk?” Scott asked. “Properly?”
Pearl’s nails dug deep into her palms. “Yeah,” she said, because she didn’t know how to say no.
They both muted their teams and walked to an empty area of the lobby, away from the others. The world shifted subtly as Scott toggled the privacy enchantment on their comms, and the surrounding noise faded into a distant murmur.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Pearl broke first. “I’m sorry,” she blurted, the words spilling out in a rush. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t team with you properly, I didn’t listen, I kept running off, I took Joel and Etho’s armour when you told me not to and that’s why they attacked me and why we lost out first life—”
“Pearl,” Scott said gently.
She barely paused.
“And the snow,” she continued, voice cracking. “The powdered snow. I hurt myself on purpose just to scare you. I liked watching you panic and I hate that about myself and I don’t know why I kept doing it and—” She sucked in a sharp, shaky breath. “I used the bond like a weapon,” she said, quieter now. “I didn’t cooperate. I didn’t trust you. I didn’t listen. And then you died for it.”
Silence stretched between them.
Scott exhaled slowly.
“Pearl,” he said, steady and kind. “Stop. Please.”
She swallowed hard. “Aren’t you angry?”
“No,” he said immediately. “I was scared. But I wasn’t angry.”
She shook her head, voice small. “You should be.”
“I chose my ending,” Scott replied softly. “Same way you chose how you survived.”
Her vision blurred. She looked down at her hands, clenched so tightly her knuckles ached. “I don’t know how to be normal again,” she whispered.
Scott’s voice softened even further. “You don’t have to be,” he said. “Not yet.”
A horn sounded across the lobby—bright, clear, calling players to attention.
The privacy enchantment dropped. Noise rushed back in.
Pearl didn’t feel fixed.
But for the first time since she’d woken on cold stone under a blue Hermitcraft sky, she didn’t feel completely alone.