The sound wasn't sound.
It cracked beneath my ribs like marrow splitting. It rose behind my eyes like a tide that didn't know how to stop. I wasn't singing anymore. The song was singing me.
My lips parted. My throat burned. But I didn't need to know the words. The words remembered themselves.
"Oh lost ones...
Let me carry you...
Let me remember you…"
Grin's hum deepened, slow and thunderous like tectonic plates shifting. Dolly's chime rose like heat off broken porcelain. They weren't just harmonizing anymore—they were scaffolding, holding me in place as something ancient pulled itself through me.
I didn't see. I felt.
A battlefield—mud swallowing boots, a soldier screaming a name no one remembered.
A pair of hands cradling a baby stillborn beneath a veil of stars.
A woman in red silk, dancing on splintered floors, waiting for someone who never came.
A man painting smiles on strangers just to see one returned.
Children in rooms too quiet.
Lovers torn open by time.
Villagers whispering names they forgot they once had.
It poured through me—fast, sharp, unfiltered.
Not memories. Regrets.
I gasped, almost drowned in them. I felt my knees buckle—but I wasn't falling. The Breaths held me.
I was inside them.
Each one a song cut off mid-note.
Each one a life left on pause.
Antic's voice rang faint in the distance—he was yelling something. My name, maybe. No. Not a name.
"No Eyes! No Eyes, can you—? Damn it, I told you not to—!"
The sound bent around the rhythm. I wasn't in the cavern anymore. I was in the music. In their lives.
The Breaths circled—streaks of color, echoes made flesh. They danced around my ribs, wove through my hair like wind. I should've felt terrified. Instead, I felt… still.
"Sing," one whispered—right into my ear, though I had none.
So I did.
I sang their names, though I didn't know them.
I sang their homes, their heartbreaks, the quiet prayers they left in their soup bowls.
I sang for the girl who thought her freckles were curses.
For the boy who died with paint under his fingernails.
For the mother who never got to say goodbye.
And they rose.
One by one, the Breaths bloomed like lanterns, flickering gold and rose and violet. Their bodies weren't bodies—but possibility.
They spun upward.
Their sorrow didn't vanish. It simply… softened.
Behind me, I felt Grin drop to one knee. Dolly's bells went sharp and high, then sweet and low.
The cavern pulsed.
And then—the crescendo.
All of it—every memory, every voice, every hurt and joy and breath they'd never finished—rushed through me.
I screamed.
It wasn't pain.
It was release.
A final harmony exploded through the chamber, brilliant and full. A sound that could split time in half and stitch it back up with gold thread.
And just like that… they were gone.
The Breaths. The echoes. The aching.
Gone.
And I was falling—back into my body, my skin, my senses.
The silence was so complete it rang.
Then—I felt arms.
Warm. Too warm.
Smelled like dirt and strange herbs and something metallic.
Antic.
His chest trembled against my cheek.
I couldn't see—but I felt the heat of his breath just above mine. The way his whole body was trying to pretend it hadn't just unraveled for me.
I tried to speak.
But the song hadn't left my mouth yet.
It had one last verse to finish.
______________________
Antics Pov:
She didn't move.
Not when the last echoes of the Breaths faded.
Not when Dolly muttered something too soft to catch.
Not when Grin exhaled the deepest, saddest breath I'd ever heard from a man who barely had lungs anymore.
No Eyes lay curled in my arms like something carved from bone and light.
"Hey," I whispered, brushing the back of her hand. "You in there, sweetheart? C'mon, don't ghost me. That's Grin's job."
Nothing.
Grin crouched near us, the whites of his eyes glinting in the crystal light. His voice, slow as always, dragged like riverstones. "She's breathing... but she's not here."
"She just sang the spirits out of time," Dolly said, floating low, her tulle skirts whispering against the cavern floor. "Let her rest. She earned it."
I didn't let go.
My hand hovered by her jaw, thumb brushing her cheekbone. Her skin was warm. Too warm. Like she'd caught fire on the inside and was cooling from the edges.
Her hair smelled like smoke and something unplaceable. Like the center of an old book no one's opened in decades. It made my heart thud like a faulty metronome.
And then I was doing it.
I leaned in.
Not fast. Not reckless.
Slow.
Hesitant.
Like she was glass and I'd been cursed to shatter things I touched.
I kissed her.
Just once.
Just long enough to forget we were surrounded by ghost-dust and people who'd seen every part of me but this.
Her lips were still. Cool.
She didn't kiss back.
She didn't even know.
I pulled away like a thief. Like it was a sin I didn't believe in yet. My chest ached. My nose threatened to betray me again.
Grin didn't speak. But he looked. And I knew he saw something.
Dolly cocked her head. "She's going to wake up soon. You better decide whether that was brave... or stupid."
I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand and tried to laugh. It caught.
"She's not gonna remember that," I muttered.
"No," Grin said. "But you will."
I held her tighter. Just for a second. Just until the quiet became unbearable.
Then I let her go.
____________
Pecola's Pov:
I woke to warmth. Not fire. Not sunlight. Something slower. Like someone had left a memory burning in my chest and forgotten to blow it out.
Voices floated above me, hushed and too far away. I didn't open my eyes. Not yet. The stone beneath me thrummed—faint, distant. Satisfied.
The Breaths were gone. But their residue clung to my ribs like fog on a mirror.
"...think she's okay?" Antic's voice. Twitchy with worry. Always loud, now quiet like a stolen prayer.
"Her soul was singing for an army of ghosts," Dolly murmured. "She'll be tired, not dead."
"...Still," Grin said, voice dragging like tired smoke. "She didn't collapse 'cause she's lazy. She gave them everything."
"I'm always collapsing," Antic muttered. "No one calls me heroic."
"Because you collapse from horniness and low blood sugar," Dolly snapped.
I shifted slightly, breath catching. Antic's arm tightened instinctively behind me.
"She's moving," he breathed. Too fast. Too relieved.
I opened my eyes slowly. My tongue felt heavy. "Stop yelling."
The silence that followed was hilarious.
Then Antic barked a short, startled laugh. "That was a whisper, No Eyes. Try again when your voice box isn't haunted."
I blinked up at him. He looked... wrecked. Eyes shiny, nose pink. His curls were even messier than usual, like he'd run both hands through them repeatedly. His grip on my shoulder gentled when he saw me looking.
"You passed out," he said. "Not dramatic at all. Totally normal behavior. Had me pacing like a lost boyfriend."
"Are you... my boyfriend?" I asked, half-dazed.
He choked. Dolly snorted. Grin turned away with great, theatrical restraint.
Antic recovered quickly. "What? No. I mean. I could be. If you—uh—look, you were unconscious. Don't throw curveballs."
I let my head rest against his arm. Not thinking. Just tired. My body didn't want to move. It wanted warmth. Familiarity. Him.
"You didn't leave me," I murmured.
"Course not," he whispered.
Grin approached, crouching beside us. "You did it," he said. "The Breaths are gone."
"Gone?" I asked.
"Released," Dolly said. "They sang themselves away. Because you sang with them."
I sat up, and the cavern shimmered around us. The light was dimmer now—less sacred, more softened. The crystals looked less like graves and more like memories.
"They're free," I whispered.
Antic leaned back with a huff. "Wish I could say the same about my dignity."
"No one's keeping that hostage," Dolly muttered.
I looked around at all of them. Grin's shadowy eyes. Dolly's cracked porcelain frown. Antic's too-bright grin that didn't quite reach his ears.
We were all carrying something broken.
"Do you guys think we're... them?" I asked.
Grin tilted his head. "Who?"
"The ones left behind," I said. "Not the heroes. The pieces. The ones the world forgot."
No one answered for a long moment.
Then Dolly floated closer, her silhouette aglow in the quiet.
"We're not forgotten," she said. "We're the leftovers. And leftovers make the best soup."
Grin muttered, "What does that even mean?"
"I don't know," Dolly sighed. "I'm tired."
Antic reached for his flute. "We should rest. Then move."
I nodded.
But even as we curled near the soft moss, surrounded by the after-echo of a hundred freed souls, I felt it—
Something watching.
Waiting.
Like the forest was grateful.
And also... not done with us yet.