Chapter Text
The world had lost its chroma.
Where the vibrant, suffocating primary reds and blues of the circus tent used to blare, there was only a stark, ash-gray expanse. The iconic checkered floor stretched out in a bleak layout of black and white tiles, looking less like a home and more like an abandoned chessboard. Here and there, jagged tears marred the fabric of reality—gaping, jagged punctures in the floor and walls that bled a faint, ominous violet pulse. It was the only color left, and it belonged entirely to the Void.
Yet against this draining monochrome, the players retained their hues. They stood out like painted figurines dropped onto a charcoal sketch.
Kinger stood several paces apart from the rest of the group. His gloved hands trembled, his mismatched, hyper-fixated eyes darting from the floor to the empty air.
Pomni took a tentative step toward him, her hands balled into tight, anxious fists. Her voice cracked on the intake of breath. "A-Are you sure? How did that even happen? There's no undo or anything?"
"Uh—" Kinger’s crown tilted precariously as he jerked his head. "He was messing with the console as I was working. I—I don’t know what happened. But before I could try to get him back, the floor opened up and—"
"That’s convenient," a voice muttered.
Jax stood with his arms slung loosely over his chest, his signature smug grin replaced by a flat, dangerous sneer.
"Jax," Pomni warned, her tone pleading.
"What?" Jax snapped, whirling around to face her before sweeping his arm out to point aggressively at Kinger. "Are we all just supposed to forgive this? This guy messed up in the worst possible way he could! Now, we have nothing!"
"Jax! Please, just... calm down!" Ragatha stepped between them, her voice hitching terribly. Her usual stitched-on optimism was fraying at the seams. "We—we're all..." She stuttered, her wooden hands shaking. "We're..."
Jax didn't let her finish. He marched right past her, closing the distance to Kinger, and delivered a sharp, accusing shove directly into the older man’s chest. "Anything else you wanna tell us?!"
"Jax!" Pomni cried out.
"What?!" Jax yelled back, spinning on his heel to glare at Pomni. The purple light from the Void caught the sharp edges of his plastic teeth. "He gets to mess up like this and everyone takes his side?!"
Silence crashed down over the remaining four. It was heavy, suffocating, and absolute. Nobody moved. Nobody defended him.
Kinger’s wide eyes shrank to pinpricks. The frantic jittering of his body suddenly slowed into a hollow, rigid stillness.
"...Brain scans," Kinger whispered.
The words were tiny, but they hit with the weight of a collapsing stage. The camera of their reality seemed to tight-frame on his face, catching the sudden, lucid sorrow in his mismatched eyes.
"Scratch was... trying to make a brain scanner," Kinger murmured, looking at his own gloved hands. "I didn't think it actually worked."
Horror rippled through the group. Ragatha pressed a hand over her mouth; Pomni shrank back.
"We didn't know how to work with the files," Kinger continued, his voice dropping an octave, heavy with a weight he had carried for a lifetime. "And they were impossibly small given what they were supposed to be." He let out a long, shuddering sigh that shook his entire frame. "I saw a folder full of them when I was in Caine's code. So I guess... Caine found a way to get them working."
Ragatha’s hand dropped from her mouth, her porcelain-like face pale. "That means..."
"I know what it means," Jax interrupted. His voice was suddenly devoid of its usual booming theatrics. It was quiet. It was lethal.
Slowly, Jax turned his head toward Pomni and Zooble. A bitter, jagged smirk forced its way onto his face, dripping with defense-mechanism sarcasm.
"Congratulations, Zooble! Guess you still get to leave your mark in the world! Aww, isn't that fun?"
"Jax!" Ragatha pleaded, her voice cracking.
Jax let out a sharp, breathless laugh that sounded entirely hollow. He locked eyes with the ragdoll. "Guess you still get to hang out with Mommy after all, right, Rags?"
"Shut up, Jax!" Ragatha shouted. It wasn't her usual scolding tone; it was a desperate, raw scream to make the bleeding stop.
"Guess I'm... still..." Jax’s voice trailed off, the final insult dying in his throat.
Ragatha couldn't hold herself up anymore. She crossed her patchwork arms tightly over her chest and sank to the black-and-white tiles. She cowered there, her knees pulled to her chin, as the first heavy, digital tears slipped from her eyes and began to sob. "I know. I think I've always known." She inhaled shakily, her shoulders heaving. "It just... For some reason... it hurts so much to hear it."
Pomni’s heart dropped. Forgetting her own terror, she dropped to her knees beside the doll, reaching out to press a comforting hand against Ragatha’s trembling back. "I know it hurts... but... we still have each other. We're all in this..." Pomni’s own throat tightened, the reality of their digital imprisonment crushing her chest. "...together."
The dam broke. Pomni collapsed against her, sobbing just as hard.
Above them, the digital sky remained a mocking, empty void. Jax stared up at it, his large, neon-yellow eyes brimming with tears he refused to let fall. Without a word, he turned his back on the crying girls and walked away, disappearing past the edge of the desaturated tent.
Gangle hovered closer, her porcelain comedy mask completely gone, leaving only the blue ribbon of her tragedy mask trailing behind her. She reached out, tentatively wrapping her ribbon-hand around Zooble’s blocky wrist, trying to pull them into a collective retreat. But Zooble remained completely static, rooted to the spot like stone, staring blankly ahead.
Gangle felt the lack of response. She slowly let go of Zooble’s hand, her ribbons coiling tight around herself as she let out a small, broken wail. Cowering under the weight of the silence, she turned and fled into the shadows.
Pomni kept her eyes tightly shut, burying her face as she wept alongside Ragatha. But the silence grew heavier. Slowly, Pomni opened her eyes and looked up.
Through the blur of her tears, she watched the aftermath. She saw Gangle’s retreating ribbon-frame disappearing down one corridor. She shifted her gaze further out, finding Jax, who was already a tiny, rigid silhouette walking into the distant, colorless hills of the digital map.
Pomni let go of Ragatha. She forced herself to stand on trembling legs. Extending a small, gloved hand downward, she offered Ragatha a lifeline, a silent invitation to stand back up together.
Ragatha didn't even look at it. She remained curled in a ball, staring blankly at a crack in the floor.
Slowly, painfully, Pomni pulled her hand back. She turned her head to the right. A few yards away, Kinger was drifting toward the perimeter, his cape trailing behind him like a funeral shroud.
Pomni glanced back at Ragatha, then at the motionless Zooble, before a sudden spike of desperate adrenaline hit her. She turned directly toward the path Kinger had taken and broke into a dead sprint, running so fast and so close past the camera of her own perspective that the world briefly went entirely black.
The black faded back to the edge of the tent. Kinger stood at the lip of one of the largest, ugliest violet holes in the floor, staring straight down into the infinite data stream of the Void.
From the side, Pomni approached him. Her footsteps were slow, cautious, her shoulders hunched nervously. "Need any help?"
Kinger didn't look up, but his erratic breathing steadied slightly. "Sure." He raised a hand, concentrating fiercely. A small, pixelated black plate manifested in the air before him, stretching out like a patch of dark fabric. He guided it downward, letting it snap over a portion of the tear, sealing a piece of the violet glow away. "If you wanna give it a try."
Pomni stood upright. She closed her eyes tight, took a breath, and thrust her right hand forward, mimicking his gesture.
"Relax your body and mind," Kinger coached softly.
Pomni’s hand dropped. Her eyes snapped open, frustration coloring her features.
"Deep breaths," Kinger murmured, his voice surprisingly grounded for a man usually lost in his own mind. "And try not to think too hard about it."
Pomni took a slow, agonizingly deep breath. She let her shoulders drop, letting the tension drain from her jester suit. She closed her eyes again, clearing her mind of the arguments, the tears, and the gray world. She raised her hand.
BZZZT.
A jagged, glitching black triangle materialized in front of her fingers. Pomni’s eyes flew open in shock. For a second, the shape hovered, a perfect piece of code born from her will—but then it flickered violently, lost its stabilization, and tumbled backward into the violet abyss of the Void.
Pomni stared down at the empty space where it had been. She looked at her trembling fingers, and the dam broke all over again. "I really wanted to help...!" she sobbed, covering her face.
"You had a good start," Kinger said gently.
"I thought I could uplift everyone," Pomni wept, her voice echoing over the open pit. "But... everything's gotten so bad... God... Am I stupid for even trying?"
Kinger looked down at the floor, his crown dipping low. "No. None of this is your fault. I don't think anyone could have predicted things to play out the way they did."
Pomni sank to her knees, cowering slightly before the lip of the hole. Kinger softly closed the distance, sitting down on the checkered tile right beside her.
"I'm scared..." Pomni whispered, staring into the violet dark. "I don't know what's gonna happen..."
"You know..." Kinger started, his voice drifting into a nostalgic, quiet space. "Of all the people I've seen enter this place... I don't think any of them adjusted as quickly as you did."
Pomni let out a wet, breathless laugh through her tears. "I was a nervous wreck."
"So was I," Kinger chuckled lightly, a genuine, warm sound. "It's a lot for anybody to go through. But, while the others took weeks—hell, even months to get used to everything, myself included—you found your footing in a matter of days. And... not just that. You've also become someone they can trust."
Pomni looked at him, her eyes wide, tears still catching the dim light of the tent.
"Even if they don't seem receptive right now," Kinger said, looking out over the empty, gray circus. "It's times like these they're gonna need someone like that the most. You're very strong, Pomni. And I know you'll be able to get through this."
Pomni wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "We've been here before."
Kinger blinked, his eyes widening. "Have we?"
"Yeah. Back in the Mildenhall Manor," Pomni said, her voice softening. "I doubt you remember."
"Well," Kinger smiled gently, "it's still true. It may take time, but they'll come around."
The heavy weight in Pomni's chest finally began to lift, a genuine smile breaking through her grief.
"We can't fix every problem," Kinger added, standing up and brushing off his robe. "Not with ourselves, not with the world around us... But we can still do what we can."
Pomni wiped away the last of her tears, looking up at him. "That's gonna be a lot of work."
"But it won't be a lot of work..." Kinger stopped, extending a gloved hand down to her. "...alone."
The soft, melancholy chords of a lonely piano began to echo through the empty spaces of the circus tent, a gentle melody bleeding into the air.
🎵 I don't know what the trouble's been... 🎵
Pomni reached up and firmly grasped Kinger’s hand, letting him pull her to her feet.
The scene shifted, panning across the vast, desaturated circus tent. It was completely empty of life, a haunting monument to what they had lost, but the music began to swell, adding a steady, rhythmic pulse to the silence.
The focus cut back to the edge of the pit. Pomni stood with her feet planted, sweating with concentration. Kinger manifested a flawless, gleaming black circle. Beside him, Pomni tried to duplicate it, her hands shaking as a triangle formed—only for it to pop like a bubble. She didn't cry this time. She took a breath, reset her stance, and tried again. This time, a shaky, glitching circle appeared. It held its shape.
With one final burst of focus, Pomni raised both hands. A perfect, smooth black disc materialized in the air, completely free of glitches. Kinger smiled, clapping his gloved hands together in silent celebration, before helping her guide the patch down to seal another rupture in the floor.
🎵 But it's too much to get over you... 🎵
A few yards away, Ragatha sat against a monochrome wall, watching them pull the code together. Her expression was bored, empty, but her eyes followed Pomni’s movements. Further back, Zooble and Gangle stood side-by-side, watching the quiet physics lesson unfold in the ruins.
The piano transitioned, blending into a warm cascade of acoustic tones as Pomni and Kinger finally took a break, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the newly patched floor.
🎵 You're much too much to get over... 🎵
From the background, a shadow moved. Ragatha stepped out, her posture tense, her wooden fingers twisting together nervously. Hearing her footsteps, Pomni and Kinger both turned around. They didn't scold her; they didn't bring up the screaming. They just smiled.
The music suddenly surged, a sweeping wave of rich, emotional violins overtaking the melody. The sky above the tent blurred into a time-lapse, the digital stars spinning in a rapid, dazzling wheel over the canvas roof, marking the passage of hours in their eternal twilight.
Kinger was patient. He stood over Ragatha, guiding her hands as she tried to manifest her own code. She struggled, the shapes fracturing instantly, but Kinger reached out, adjusting her posture. The camera pulled back, revealing a wide shot of the tent—Kinger coaching Ragatha on one side, while Pomni practiced on her own in the background, a steady rhythm of creation taking hold.
Further behind them, two more figures approached. Zooble stepped out from behind a gray tent flap, their mismatching limbs clicking against the floor. Ragatha noticed them first, her face lighting up with a warm, genuine smile. Zooble paused, then lifted a blocky arm, gesturing back toward the corner.
Gangle peered out from the shadow of the curtain. She was still wearing her tragedy mask, but the tight, fearful coil of her ribbons relaxed. She smiled, stepping out into the open light, and walked forward to join the circle.
The scene shifted again to the horizon outside the tent, the digital stars sweeping rapidly past the jagged edges of the low-poly mountains.
The camera cut back inside, catching a brief, quiet moment of Zooble leaning in, talking animatedly to Kinger as he nodded along.
The violins began to soften, the grand orchestration slowing down to a quiet, lingering refrain.
In the deep shadows near the far entrance of the arena, a lone silhouette stood against the wall. Jax. He kept his distance, his hands buried deep in his pockets, watching the distant, colorful group huddled together around the glowing patches of code. He looked down at the black-and-white tiles beneath his feet, his ears drooping slightly. He stood there for a long moment, lost in the dark, before turning silently and walking out of the frame.
The final notes of the song drifted into a single, fading piano chord.
Pomni stood near the center of the tent, her back to the screen. Sensing a shift in the air, she slowly turned around.
Jax was standing just a few feet away from her. The bravado was completely gone. He looked smaller, his sharp posture slouched. He looked at her, his jaw shifting as he slowly opened his mouth to speak—to apologize, to mock, to say anything at all.
Pomni stood her ground, her large, segmented eyes watching him quietly, waiting for whatever was coming.
The camera closed in tight on Jax’s face. His golden eyes flickered with something raw and uncertain. He held her gaze for a beat, his throat working, before he slowly closed his mouth again, leaving the words unspoken in the quiet gray of the tent.
The silence between them stretched until it felt as brittle as dry bone.
Jax’s jaw tightened. The sharp, triangular contours of his teeth disappeared as he pulled his lips into a thin, flat line. He let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to drain the last bit of tension from his lanky frame. Without a single word, he spun on his heel and walked away, his oversized feet dragging slightly against the stark checkered tile as he vanished past the edge of the screen.
"Nevermind..." he whispered to himself. The words were so faint they were nearly swallowed by the vast, dead emptiness of the tent.
The camera pulled back, capturing the distance widening between them. Pomni stood frozen for a beat, her mismatched, pinwheel eyes tracking his retreating form until he was nothing more than a purple speck fading into the desaturated background. Slowly, she turned around. Her shoulders slung low under the weight of her jester collar, she began her own solitary walk back toward the others.
"I wish I'd pried a little more", Pomni’s voice echoed in the quiet spaces of her own mind, a detached, heavy narration over the shifting landscape. I somehow forgot how bad it can get.
The gray world seemed to press in closer around her with every step.
"When everything is constantly loud, and bright, and terrifying, you get used to the noise, her thoughts continued as the camera focused on her small, gloved hands twisting together. You start to think the screaming is the worst part. But it isn't. The worst part is when the screaming stops, and you're just left looking at what's broken."
Up ahead, the faint violet glow of the repaired floor patches cast long, distorted shadows against the canvas walls. Kinger was still patient, his blocky hands gesturing gently as he showed Ragatha how to stabilize a leaking seam of data. Gangle and Zooble sat nearby, their silhouettes huddled close for warmth in a world that no longer had a sun.
Pomni slowed her pace, watching them from the edge of the light. She had spent so long looking for an exit, looking for a way to escape the madness of the circus, that she hadn't realized the madness was the only thing keeping the walls standing. Now, the walls were peeling back, and the reality of who they used to be was bleeding through the cracks.
She took a deep breath, forcing her expression to smooth out, and stepped back into the circle.
The transition was violent, hacking away the quiet gray of the tent and throwing them onto the high balcony overlooking the player’s quarters.
Zooble, Pomni, and Ragatha stood gripped by the wrought-iron fence, their knuckles white against the metal. Their eyes were locked on the courtyard below, wide with a sudden, suffocating horror.
WHOOSH.
A static-laced nightmare blurs directly past the frame. It was a chaotic storm of black glitches and shifting, unblinking neon eyes. Down on the ground floor—where the jagged tears to the Void had only just been patched over with flat, black squares of code—the creature was running. It was pacing in erratic, frantic circles, its heavy limbs slamming against the tiles with a wet, heavy thudding sound.
The realization didn't hit like a lightning strike; it crept up on them like a cold draft. The neon-yellow eyes shifting through the static. The long, lanky proportions of the distorted limbs.
It was Jax.
"W-What do we do now...?" Ragatha’s voice was barely a squeak, her stitched-on face tight with distress.
Zooble’s eyes didn't drift from the monster below. "What can we do?" Their voice was terrifyingly hollow, stripped of its usual irritation, leaving only a dead, heavy exhaustion. "Of course he'd do this. Of course he'd wait until there's nothing we could do about it. That's just so..." Zooble’s jaw clenched, their mismatched shoulders shaking as they threw their head back. "...God damn it, Jax!"
Unable to look at the courtyard for another second, Zooble whirled around. They marched straight toward the blank gray wall behind them and slammed a heavy, blocky fist directly into the plaster. The crack echoed down the hall. Without looking back, they crossed the floor to where Gangle was huddled, her tragedy mask pressed flat against her drawn-up knees.
Zooble sank down onto the floor beside her, their joints clicking sharply in the silence.
"I'm sorry," Gangle whispered, her ribbon-arms tightening around herself.
"For what?" Zooble muttered, staring at the floor between their feet.
A long, heavy beat hung in the air. The sounds of the creature’s frantic pacing thudded from the courtyard below.
"Hey..." Zooble sighed, their tone softening just a fraction as they leaned their head back against the wall. "This isn't your fault."
Gangle’s ribbons trembled. She didn't lift her mask. "Why can't I cry for him?"
Back at the railing, Pomni and Ragatha remained anchored to the edge, watching the shifting mass of neon and black static stalk the corridors below.
"I suppose we should try coming up with a plan to keep him contained," Pomni said, her voice small but steady, trying to force a logic onto the nightmare that she didn't actually feel.
Ragatha didn't answer right away. She gripped the metal bars, her wooden head dipping low. "You know... I always thought i-it should have been me."
Pomni’s head snapped toward her, her pinwheel pupils shrinking. "Don't say that."
"We were friends once," Ragatha murmured, her eyes distant, staring through the courtyard floor to a time before the color ran out. "I mean... sort of friends? As much as friends as anybody could have been with Jax. We could talk to each other, at least... But then... what was it? Something like... The Snowy Summit. I-I can't really remember... Something happened between him and... her."
Ragatha stopped. She took a sharp, shaking breath, her chest heaving as the tears finally spilled over her stitched cheeks. "Ribbit. Her name... was Ribbit."
Pomni’s expression softened, a flicker of recognition crossing her face. "Yeah. I-I think I remember you mentioning her before."
"I wasn't supposed to," Ragatha sobbed, her hands slipping from the railing to cover her face. "After Ribbit was gone, I... I tried to comfort him. He told me to never mention Ribbit's name again. He made me promise... and I did. I think that's where our friendship really... finally ended."
She let out a weak, broken laugh, dropping her hands to look back at the creature pacing below. "I wonder if things would have been different if I had said no. It was... it was so hard for me. I still don't know why I did it. I... I just wanted him to know he wasn't alone. That I was there for him. And I guess I just... didn't wanna lose any more friends." Ragatha’s shoulders slumped, a bitter, tragic smile touching her lips. "Shows what I know, huh?"
Pomni didn't hesitate. She stepped closer, her small frame standing rigid against the bleak backdrop of the hallway. "Ragatha... You were the first real friend I made here. And despite all that's happened... I still consider you my closest friend."
Ragatha’s head turned slowly. The heavy, hopeless lines of her face shifted, a fragile, trembling smile breaking through the tear tracks. She let out a weak, watery laugh.
A soft, sentimental melody began to rise from the silence, the gentle strings weaving through the cold air of the balcony.
"I'm glad we're still frie—"
Before Ragatha could finish the word, Pomni lunged forward, throwing her arms tightly around the doll’s patchwork frame. Ragatha gasped softly in shock, her eyes widening for a fraction of a second before the warmth of the embrace broke through her defenses. She let out a choked, weeping sob, wrapping her wooden arms around Pomni’s back, holding onto her like an anchor in a storm.
They held each other there on the high walkway, the desaturated world around them briefly tinting with a faint, warm reddish hue as the music swelled. Their hands shifted against each other's backs, gripping the fabric of their clothes as if trying to prove the other was still real, still solid, still sane.
"What are we gonna do?" Ragatha whispered into Pomni’s shoulder.
Pomni’s voice broke, a fresh wave of tears hitting her as she squeezed tighter. "Make sure Gangle, Zooble, and Kinger are okay. They need someone like you right now."
Slowly, reluctantly, they let go. They stepped back, their hands lingering for a second before dropping to their sides.
Ragatha wiped her face, her eyes clear and full of a quiet, renewed strength. "Pomni... You've been... one of the best things to happen to me since I got here. I trust you."
Pomni gave a firm, solemn nod. They offered each other one last, small smile before turning in opposite directions, their footsteps fading as the sentimental music drew to a quiet, lingering close.
The silence returned, thick and suffocating.
Down in the residential sector, the abstracted mass that used to be Jax rounded a corner, the shifting glitch-matter of his body scraping against the wall before he disappeared down the long hallway lined with the players' rooms.
High up on a flight of stairs, Pomni stood frozen, watching the tail end of his dark, static silhouette vanish into the corridor. Her face was set, the panic gone, replaced by a rigid, terrifying focus.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, her small jester shoes making no sound against the tile. She stepped up to the mouth of the hallway, peering cautiously around the edge of the desaturated wallpaper. The corridor stretched out ahead of her, empty and dark, the doors to their rooms looking like silent tombstones.
Pomni pulled her hand out from behind her back.
The cold, heavy weight of a revolver glinted darkly in her small, gloved grip. She held it low, her fingers tightening around the handle. Taking one slow, stabilizing breath, she stepped past the threshold and slipped quietly into the dark hallway, tracking the monster into the ruins of their home.