In the WildLife Realm
If the forest before was wild, alive, unpredictable—this place felt... rehearsed.
Every tree was placed like a courtroom pillar. Every vine, curled just enough to look elegant instead of chaotic. The ground didn't squish or groan underfoot; it waited.
Willow-whispers trailed behind us like gossip.
The path narrowed into a corridor of bark and shadow. At the end: a structure that looked like someone took a cathedral and forced it to mate with a wasp's nest. Spires twitched. The door was made of wings—hundreds, pressed together, shimmering with dust and memory.
Dolly hissed softly. "I hate politics."
Grin didn't speak. He had the look of someone trying not to be remembered by the past.
Antic… Antic slowed the closer we got. He didn't joke. Didn't swagger. His overalls clung to him like regret. He walked like a kid being marched into the principal's office after setting the auditorium on fire.
The doors opened with a sigh.
The chamber was circular—too big, too open. No corners to hide in. High above, insectile shadows shifted behind silky veils. Watching.
In the center: the Chief Elder. Seven feet of mantis nightmare. Carapace black as old obsidian. Blade arms folded like judgment.
"Antic."
Its voice buzzed through my bones.
"You abandoned your post. You violated the Breaths. You brought them here."
Me. Grin. Dolly.
Antic didn't answer right away.
I saw him flinch, just once. Then his voice came, low and tight.
"I didn't leave. I fell."
The Elder leaned forward. "Excuses are for beetles. You ran."
"I didn't run!" Antic snapped, louder than I think he meant to. "I tripped. Over fate. Over prophecy. Over myself."
There was a ripple of motion above us—insect silhouettes shifting like a hive preparing to sting.
Grin muttered, "They don't like poetry."
Antic inhaled through his nose. Slow. Then he straightened. "You called me a mistake of nature once. I remember."
The Elder didn't blink. Didn't deny it.
"I thought if I left," Antic said, "I could figure out if I was. Or if maybe… I was just different."
The silence that followed was somehow worse than any buzzing.
Then the Elder said: "Difference unbalanced the Realm."
Antic nodded, like he'd been waiting to be told that.
I stepped forward.
Grin's arm stopped me. Just lightly. "Let him do this."
The Elder's antennae twitched.
"You will reflect," it said.
"Okay," Antic said. "Cool. Deep personal time. Do I get a snack?"
"No."
Antic exhaled. "Course not."
He didn't look back as they led him away.
Not once.
I took a step toward the retreating figures—then stopped.
Grin was beside me now. Dolly too. Her face unreadable.
"You knew this was coming," I whispered.
Grin's mouth was a line. "He did too."
The doors shut behind Antic like a judgment passed.
And suddenly, the room felt very empty.
Like we were the loose threads.
And the scissors were watching.
_________
Antics Pov:
The walls were alive.
Not like alive alive, but like… humming. Breathing. Judging. It was the kind of place that made you want to apologize just for being born with teeth and opinions.
I sat on a root that grew straight from the floor and curled like a shamed parent. My knees bounced. My fingers twitched. My brain was breakdancing with every decision I'd ever made that got me thrown into bug prison.
Across from me, a mirror made of beetle shells gleamed. I didn't look at it. I already knew what I looked like—sweaty, dirt-streaked, overdressed for an existential reckoning. One overall strap was still loose, like it knew dignity was a lost cause.
I tried humming. It echoed back weird.
Tried lying flat. The ground shifted under me, like it didn't want me too comfortable.
"Cool. That's fine. I didn't want to emotionally spiral in peace or anything," I muttered to no one.
Something creaked above me. The ceiling blinked. Literal eyelids. Great.
This was fine. Totally fine.
The memory of No Eyes' head on my shoulder earlier wouldn't stop replaying, either. Which was not helpful. Especially not here. Especially not when the floor could probably smell hormones.
I stood up.
"I didn't mean to leave," I said aloud. "I wasn't trying to break the world or whatever. I just… didn't want to be nothing."
The walls didn't answer. Rude.
My throat felt tight.
"Why is that such a damn crime?" I said louder. "Wanting to matter?"
Still nothing.
Then something flickered in the beetle-mirror.
Not me.
Her.
No Eyes.
Standing behind me. Still. Watching. Wearing a look that saw right through every mask I'd ever learned to wear.
I blinked—and it was gone. Just me again. Just tired, bleeding Antic in a room made of bugs and disappointment.
"Real cool," I muttered. "Emotionally compromised and hallucinating. Love that for me."
The wall pulsed once—like a laugh that didn't have a mouth.
And far off, I could hear Grin's voice.
Not speaking.
Humming.
A warning.
_________
Pecola's Pov:
I don't remember walking.
The last thing I remembered was the moss warming under my fingers, the way the photograph hummed like it had a pulse. Then nothing. A lullaby made of silence and static.
Now: cold stone. Bitter air. A ceiling of vines that blinked like bored eyes.
I sat up slow. My skull ached in that you-just-fell-through-some-spiritual-truth-hole kind of way. My body was sore in places I didn't even know had muscles.
Grin sat in the corner, cross-legged, his scythe resting across his lap like it was sleeping. He gave me a look like finally.
Dolly, of course, hovered midair with her ankles daintily crossed and her voice at full shade.
"Oh good, she's alive. I was beginning to worry we'd have to drag her corpse into the next dimension. Again."
I groaned, pressing my palms to my face. "What… happened?"
"You fainted," Grin said, which sounded clinical and mostly true.
"You keeled over like a drunk goose," Dolly corrected. "That makes four times. I'm keeping score now. Five and you owe me an apology cake."
"A cake?" I croaked.
"With extra ghost frosting."
Grin leaned forward slightly. "You touched something you shouldn't have. Again."
"There was a… woman." I rubbed at my temples. "She knew me. Or… she knew my name."
Dolly's voice dropped. "Pecola."
My breath caught.
That word—my name—echoed strangely in the chamber. Like it had been waiting.
Grin's stare sharpened. "You remembered it?"
"No," I said slowly. "She did. She said it like she was giving it back to me."
A silence bloomed.
Then Dolly, too casual:
"Names are tricky things. Sometimes they get stolen. Sometimes we give them away. Sometimes they rot and come back different."
Grin nodded once. "Sometimes a name's a cage. Sometimes it's a blade."
Antic wasn't there.
And that suddenly felt like a problem.
"Where is he?" I asked.
Grin stood. "With the Elders."
Dolly sighed dramatically and began floating toward the sealed doorway, skirt flaring like fog. "Which means he's probably either confessing a crime he didn't commit or flirting with a mantis queen. Either way, we should probably go."
Grin offered me a hand. His fingers were too long, too sharp, but the gesture was solid.
"Ready?" he asked.
I didn't know if I was.
But I stood anyway.
The walls pulsed in approval.
The Council chamber felt like a mouth.
Not metaphorically. It felt like we'd been swallowed—like the air was a tongue pressed too close, like the ceiling had fangs, like the walls were made to chew.
Antic stood at the center, chest heaving, arms tight against his sides like he was trying not to punch reality.
The Elders didn't sit. They loomed. Towering shapes that wore skin like borrowed cloaks—beetle-slick and mantis-thin, horned, limbed, coiled in ways that defied polite biology. They didn't glow. They absorbed glow, like it offended them.
Dolly and Grin flanked me as we stepped into view.
One of the Elders tilted their head—clicking, reptilian. "The child wakes."
I wanted to run. But my legs didn't move. My feet had decided we were brave today, which was rude of them.
Antic didn't turn. "She shouldn't be here."
"Too late," Dolly said, folding her arms and floating down beside him. "We're a package deal, remember? Dysfunctional bargain bin."
Grin stepped forward, slow and deliberate, like one wrong move would cost him more than bones. "She saw something. A name. A woman. The Breaths did something deeper."
The tallest Elder's voice vibrated my spine. "The girl was touched by Elara."
That name again.
A door in my brain creaked.
"She… said I had to forget," I whispered. "She said remembering would be dangerous."
"Correct," said another Elder, this one with a ribcage made of spines and a voice like breaking trees. "The bloodline was severed to protect the realms. To remember is to unravel."
Antic finally turned toward me. His mouth opened like he wanted to say Don't listen to them, but no sound came out.
I took a step closer to him. My voice came out rough. "But it's my unraveling, isn't it?"
"More than yours," the tall one hissed. "His, too."
Antic flinched.
They all looked at him now.
"He was not meant to leave," one murmured.
"He meddled with the Breaths."
"He touched fate without permission."
"He is a breach."
He didn't argue.
Didn't protest.
Just stood there—small, quiet, shaking, but still standing.
Dolly let out a breath through her teeth. "Okay, well, I vote we stop speaking in riddles and actually explain what you all want from us."
The Elders ignored her.
They all looked at me again.
"You opened the box," said the one with a thousand mirrored eyes. "You must choose what comes next."
"Choose what?"
"Truth," they said in one voice.
I stepped forward, the moss crunching underfoot.
"What happens if I choose it?"
They smiled.
None of them had mouths.
The ground shifted when I stepped into the center.
Not trembled—shifted. Like it was adjusting for me, or maybe trying to decide whether to eat me whole or hear me out.
The Elders didn't speak.
They just waited.
I hated that.
Antic took a step after me—too fast, too loud. "She doesn't have to do this."
The one with mirror-eyes turned its head.
It didn't look at him, not exactly. It just reflected him. Fractured. Multiplied. Made him look like a thousand desperate boys stacked on top of each other.
"She already has," it said.
Antic looked at me then, and his face—usually sharp and lopsided and smug—was cracked wide open.
Like if I reached out, he might split down the middle.
But I didn't reach.
I faced the Elders.
"Fine," I said. "What's the test?"
They didn't answer. Of course.
Instead, the stone under my feet breathed.
And a bloom of light opened between the cracks.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't holy. It felt like a scream someone had trained to sound like a lullaby.
A shape rose from the moss.
A face.
Mine.
No eyes. Just smooth skin where they should've been. But I knew it was mine. The same cheekbones, same curls, same furrowed brow like I was already annoyed at the world.
The copy tilted its head.
Dolly whispered beside me, "Oh good. An identity crisis made of light. How original."
The copy stepped forward.
It didn't speak.
It just raised its hand—palm up.
A flicker of something hovered above it.
A memory.
My memory.
But not one I remembered.
A girl—me—laughing in a garden. Eyes bright. Whole. A woman—tall, wild-haired, laughing beside her. Elara.
Then—shadows. Screaming. The girl running. A hand clamping over her mouth.
Static.
Gone.
I gasped.
The copy turned its hand over.
A second memory bloomed.
A house burning.
The woman—Elara—standing in the flames, holding something wrapped in cloth. Me.
She didn't run.
She smiled.
Then disappeared.
I blinked. My throat tightened.
The copy turned again.
A third image.
Mary.
Her voice in my head: "You were lucky I took you in. Lucky anyone did."
She slapped the air.
I flinched anyway.
The copy faded.
And now the Elders spoke.
"You may keep the truth," they said together. "But it will cost you."
"What does that mean?" Antic asked sharply. "She passed. She saw. Isn't that the test?"
"No," said the mirror-eyed one. "The test is not to see. The test is to hold."
I stepped back. My knees wanted to give.
Antic caught me.
"Okay, no," he said. "She's done. You've had your fun with the trauma projector. She's not your plaything."
The moss shifted again.
A fourth memory rose.
Not mine.
His.
Antic, small. Covered in mud and scratches. Alone in the forest, bleeding from his nose, gripping a broken flute.
"No—hey—stop—" he barked.
The memory didn't.
A towering shadow loomed behind the child-version of him. A voice: "You were never supposed to survive."
Antic's hands shook.
"Enough," he whispered.
The memory vanished.
The chamber fell silent.
I turned to him.
He didn't meet my face.
His jaw was tight. His freckles had gone pale.
And I finally understood—
This wasn't about just me remembering.
The truth always came with collateral.
The Elders loomed again. "You may forget. If you choose."
They said it like it was a kindness.
I straightened.
"No."
Antic turned, startled.
"I'm not forgetting again," I said. "If I do... they win."
Dolly actually let out a low whistle. "She's got bite now."
Grin said nothing. Just smiled like a man who saw a house on fire and knew it was finally his turn to burn it down.
The Elders bowed.
A single voice whispered: "Then the gate opens."
The floor split with a sound like laughter cracking.
A new path revealed itself. Black stone. Twisting roots. Light that pulsed in time with my heart.
I swallowed.
Antic moved beside me.
He didn't speak.
He just reached for my hand.
This time, I let him hold it.
We stepped toward the truth.
Together.
The path was narrow.
Not tight—narrow. As if space itself was pulling back, reluctant to let us through. The moss curled away from our feet. The stone beneath had veins like petrified vines, black and glassy, pulsing with a rhythm I didn't recognize but somehow still understood.
Truth has its own heartbeat, I guess.
Antic didn't let go of my hand.
He didn't squeeze, didn't fidget, didn't crack a joke. Just held it, warm and quiet, like he wasn't sure if he was grounding me or himself.
Grin followed behind. Dolly floated, drifting low enough that her tulle skirt dragged on the stone like cobwebs. She was humming again. Something slow. A lullaby she probably learned from a knife.
We didn't speak until the path opened.
It led into a chamber—not grand, not grotesque, just... there. Walls of root and bark bent inward, like we'd stepped inside the belly of an old tree. Hanging from the ceiling were orbs. Each glowed faintly, flickering. They looked like fruit. They smelled like memory.
Antic stared up at them, eyes wide. "You think those are edible?"
Grin said, "You lick one and it starts screaming, I'm not saving you."
"I wasn't asking you to save me."
"Wouldn't anyway."
I stepped forward. The air shifted again.
A whisper. Not sound—scent. Cinnamon. Smoke. Soap. The kind my old house used. Mary's soap.
The orb nearest me flashed.
A voice, low and croaking, filled the space.
"Pecola. Don't lie. If you lie, the monsters come back."
I froze.
Dolly muttered, "Oh, this again."
Grin tilted his head. "You know the rules here."
I looked at them.
"I didn't lie."
Antic's thumb brushed my hand. "Doesn't matter. She thinks you did."
Another orb lit up.
This time it was a child's voice.
Not mine.
Someone younger.
"He hit her," the voice whispered. "She didn't scream. She just smiled and bled."
A third orb flickered to life. A soft sobbing. Wet. Muffled.
My mouth went dry.
"What is this place?" I asked.
Dolly floated higher, inspecting a cluster of the glowing fruits. "Memory hive," she said, casually. "Saps off the regrets of the dead. Or dying. Depends on how honest you are."
"And we're here... why?" Antic asked, raising a brow.
Grin ran a hand along the bark wall. "Because someone in this room has a root still bleeding."
He didn't look at me.
He didn't have to.
Another orb blinked awake above my head.
A vision poured down like rain—
The girl again.
Me. But younger. Eyes sewn shut with thread. A woman with too many rings stroking her cheek.
"You'll thank me someday," the woman said. "This world's too ugly to look at."
The vision snapped out.
I staggered.
Antic caught me. Again.
He didn't joke this time.
His voice was low. "You don't have to keep watching these."
"I do," I said.
Dolly raised an eyebrow. "Stubborn and bleeding. How poetic."
A final orb cracked—loud. It burst above us, raining glowing petals that didn't land, just dissolved.
Inside it: the castle. Not a vision. A place. Its shape flickered—stone and bone and something like... ash turned inside out.
I gasped.
"That's where she is," I whispered. "The woman from the box. My—"
I stopped.
No one pushed me.
Antic just whispered, "Say it."
I clenched my jaw.
"My mother."
Dolly folded her arms. "Took you long enough."
Grin exhaled like he'd been holding it for centuries.
The root wall cracked open.
Another path.
And somewhere beyond it—
The next truth.
The worst one.
I took a step.
And didn't look back.