Falling doesn't feel like falling when you've done it too many times.
There wasn't gravity, not really — just motion. Like being dragged through liquid glass. Words flashed past my face — single letters at first, then whole sentences, then voices made of ink. They clung to my skin, whispering things I couldn't hear, couldn't unhear either.
Then the world hit me back.
Cold mud.
A smell like rot and sugar.
And silence — the kind that waits for you to move first.
I groaned, wiped the sludge off my jacket, and sat up. My head felt like it was filled with bees. The floor wasn't concrete anymore — it was a path of old pages, damp and curling at the edges, stretching into the dark. Trees rose on both sides, their bark scribbled with words that shifted when I blinked.
Bill was there, of course. Sitting on a pile of paper, licking his paws like we hadn't just fallen through hell.
"Good landing," I muttered. "Where the hell are we, Bill?"
He squeaked once. It sounded almost like Home.
The air shimmered. The pages rustled. Then came a sound — slow footsteps, soft as rain on parchment. I turned, hand instinctively reaching for a weapon I didn't have.
A woman — or something wearing a woman's outline — stepped into the candlelight's echo. Her dress looked grown, not sewn, stitched together from petals and fragments of writing. Her face was pale as wax, eyes black as spilled ink.
"You fell through a page that wasn't yours," she said, voice calm and wrong. "That's a rude thing to do."
"Sorry," I said. "Didn't exactly have a parachute. Asshole"
She tilted her head. "You don't belong in stories anymore, Dread. You left the paper years ago."
"How do you—"
But she was gone. Just—gone. The trees creaked, and her words stayed behind, echoing off the pages beneath my boots.
You left the paper.
I started walking. Because that's what soldiers do when they don't understand. They move. Step after step, through a forest that whispered nursery rhymes under its breath. The trees leaned closer the deeper I went, their ink running like tears.
The first sign of civilization — if you could call it that — was a table. Long, rotting, covered in teacups that crawled with mold. Chairs overturned. Broken plates. A single playing card nailed to the trunk of a tree: THE QUEEN WILL SEE YOU NOW.
"Great," I muttered. "Royalty."
Bill scampered ahead, sniffing at a cracked teapot that breathed steam in the shape of faces.
One of them turned toward me and smiled.
That's when the laughter started — light, distant, echoing through the forest. It didn't sound human. It sounded remembered.
I grabbed the nearest object that looked remotely like a weapon — a bent silver fork the size of a dagger — and crouched low. My pulse hammered in my throat.
A figure swung into view upside-down, hanging from a branch like a broken puppet. A grin painted across his face like a wound.
"New arrival," he whispered. "Haven't had one of those since the last story burned."
"Who the hell are you?"
"The one who knows the way down. The rest of us only fall."
He grinned wider — mouth splitting ear to ear. His body twisted, spine cracking, and he landed on all fours, head still facing the wrong direction.
"Careful, soldier," he said, crawling toward me. "Wonderland remembers every sin. And it loves soldiers."
I stepped back, fork raised.
He chuckled again — low, throaty, animal. Then he was gone, leaving only a card fluttering down in his place.
THE CHESHIRE.
The forest went still.
Bill squeaked once, and I couldn't tell if it was fear or amusement.
I looked down at the card again, ink bleeding from the edges. The words began to rearrange themselves.
FIND THE QUEEN.
FOLLOW THE RABBIT.
OR BE ERASED.
"Right," I muttered. "Classic mission briefing."
The path ahead split in two — one side lit faintly by lanterns, the other leading into a darker hollow that smelled of damp fur and earth.
Bill was already scurrying toward the dark.
"Yeah," I said, picking up my bag. "Down the rat-hole it is."