The wind shifted as we crossed into the village—sweet and damp like rotting fruit soaked in perfume.
Crystals blinked on the rooftops. Vines wrapped buildings like corsets. Lanterns swam lazily through the air, casting dappled shadows across cobblestones that were carved with riddles, answers scuffed away by time or mischief.
A woman with a veil of moths perched on a rocking chair as we passed.
She smiled and said:
"I live with no home, and rest without sleep—what am I?"
I said nothing.
Antic, beside me, whispered, "A ghost."
The woman clapped silently and vanished behind a swinging curtain of beads.
The whole place felt like it was holding its breath.
Grin tried to blend. He spoke slowly, awkwardly, like someone practicing a spell in the wrong dialect.
"Your...roots are...very...confident," he told a man with a beard of stones. "And your riddles have...weather."
The man handed him a plum and hissed:
"I wear no watch, yet I count all. What am I?"
Grin blinked. "Uhh... time?"
The man smiled wide. One tooth. He left without a sound.
Grin looked at me. "...Did I win?"
"No," I said.
Dolly twirled a parasol she'd stolen or conjured. Her boots clacked like defiance. She'd replaced the lace on her dress with thorns.
"These people speak like bad poetry," she said, narrowing her eyes. "If I wanted riddles I'd read a fashion magazine without context."
A child with ribbons in their hair skipped by, flinging sparkling dust and shouting:
"He weeps without eyes, and stalks without hunger—who?"
I felt it then. Like a cold bruise on the air.
"The Gloomfang," I whispered.
Antic turned toward me.
"You heard that too?"
"Not heard," I corrected. "It... curled around my neck. Like a wet whisper."
Antic's face was a canvas of suggestion. Amusement, concern, something else I couldn't read.
I couldn't name what happened when I stood near him. Like a tug on something inside me I didn't know I had. My pulse played tricks. My skin was aware of itself. Of his elbow brushing mine. The warmth of his side, too close.
Was that... desire?
No. Not desire.
Curiosity, maybe.
Dangerous curiosity.
He caught me looking. His grin—genuine, crooked—made my ears prickle.
I looked away, embarrassed.
My name isn't Pecola here. I'm No Eyes. And No Eyes doesn't get distracted.
A man made of fog handed me a flower. Its petals glowed like memory.
He whispered:
"He walks where joy dies, and all light flickers. You seek him."
Grin stepped closer. "Who is he?"
The fog-man didn't answer.
Antic looked around. "Alright. We're all being cryptic theatre kids now. Do we have a map? A vibe? A direction?"
The fog-man pointed.
A child was waiting.
Small. Barefoot. Skin like bark. Eyes too old. They didn't speak—just held out a vine woven with bells.
I stepped forward. The vine pulsed.
"Is this the way to him?" I asked.
The child didn't nod. Didn't blink.
They turned and walked.
We followed.
As we passed a cluster of stone-faced villagers, one croaked:
"Beware what reflects. What reflects remembers. What remembers... weeps."
Grin touched my shoulder. "They're talking about the thing ahead."
"I know."
"Do we have to go?"
"We're already going."
Behind us, Dolly tossed a scarf to a mannequin that wasn't there. "If this beast ruins my boots, I will wear its teeth as buttons."
Antic leaned in close beside me.
"I think you scare me," he said, soft.
I didn't know how to answer.
But I didn't step away.
The path narrowed until it could barely hold our feet. Moss squelched under each step like breathing cloth. The air changed again—warm, sticky, humming.
The child guide—still wordless—paused at a clearing veiled in golden mist. Something shimmered above us, a soft flickering. Thousands of tiny lights bobbed and spun through the air like tangled thoughts trying to untie themselves.
Fireflies. Except... not.
They were too bright. Too slow. They left streaks in the dark like oil bleeding across water.
A stone sat in the center. Flat. Polished. On it, barely visible, a small sock the color of rotted ivory and embroidered with a furious badger.
Antic stepped forward, squinting. "That's it?"
Grin raised his scythe slightly. "...It's never just it."
From the edge of the mist, a villager emerged. They were draped in petals and fog, face unreadable. They didn't speak in words, just rasped a riddle:
"He dances with fire, but burns no light. His step is the price. His joy, the gate. Return what is stolen from the dreamer."
Then they vanished again—like they had never been born.
Antic pulled out his flute, started tapping it against his palm. I could feel the tension coiling off him like a tightened spring.
"So, we just take it?" he asked.
I reached out with my hearing. The fireflies weren't just moving. They were singing—vibrating in a frequency I didn't recognize but could feel. It tickled the edge of my teeth. My fingertips pulsed.
"No," I said. "They'll scatter if we lunge. They're waiting."
"For what?" Grin murmured.
"For the right rhythm."
Antic's ears perked up. "...I can do rhythm."
And he could.
He put the flute to his lips and breathed—not melody, but something lower. A heartbeat in sound. Deep, coaxing, almost obscene in its slowness. It made my bones hum. It made the fireflies tilt their heads, if they had heads.
They moved in time with him.
One by one, they spun lower, slower. The sock flickered into clarity. But every time a firefly brushed too close to Antic's skin, it hissed with static. They didn't like him.
I stepped forward.
I couldn't see the sock.
But I could feel the breath of every firefly. Their heat. Their shimmer.
I moved my hands like I was threading a loom.
The sock was there. Warm from the light. Damp from memory.
I closed my fingers over it just as the swarm began to rise again.
They didn't sting. They just whispered.
"Do not forget him. The laughing sorrow. The beast who watched himself too long."
Then they vanished into the canopy like mist returning to the sky.
Antic stopped playing. "That's it? No explosions? No tentacles? No life-altering riddles?"
Dolly exhaled through her nose. "I was ready to stab something."
Grin tilted his head. "...They were afraid of us."
"No," I said, holding the sock. "They were warning us."
Antic walked beside me, brushing his shoulder against mine, deliberately casual.
"You're good at that," he murmured. "Moving without... seeing."
"I don't need to see. I feel the shape of things."
He laughed quietly. "That's unsettling. Kind of hot."
I ignored the way my face warmed.
He added, gently, "I hope you don't think I'm always a joke."
"I don't."
Then I added, truthfully, "But I also don't know what you are."
He smiled at that. It felt less like a flirtation, and more like a test passed.
The sock pulsed once in my hand, as if agreeing.
Then the child turned, silent as ever, and pointed toward a new direction.
Deeper.
Darker.
Toward him.
The villagers called him the beast who forgot how to laugh.
The Gloomfang.
The stone archway pulsed when we stepped beneath it. My skin prickled—like breath brushing over a bruise—and my vision, what little of it I understood, tugged and twisted.
The villagers watched us from their perches atop mossy walls and stacks of stone coins. Their eyes glowed faintly. Their mouths never moved in ordinary ways.
"Four enter," croaked one, her head crowned with snail shells.
"But only three will know," hissed another, bent backwards like a broken hinge.
"The beast beneath the hill," whispered a child in a vest made of string. "He eats dreams and vomits secrets."
Grin straightened up. "...We're...not tourists," he said carefully.
A voice answered, floating from a hammock of vines. "Not tourists. Not titans. Not treats."
A giggle, sharp as crystal. "You don't rhyme, but you try."
Grin stiffened. His scythe trembled against his back. "...I can...be charming..." he muttered.
Then, before I could ask what he meant, he bowed—like, actual bowing. Grin.
He was trying.
"...Riddle back to them," he whispered to us, eyes not leaving the crowd. "...If we want to blend in."
Dolly stepped forward next, and gods, she walked like the floor deserved it. Her heels clicked even though we were on dirt. Her dress shimmered. And she radiated fury like perfume.
"Three breaths walk," she said coolly. "One cracked, one cruel, one cracked again. Guess which I am?"
The villagers howled with delight. Several clapped. One fainted.
"Porcelain banshee!" someone crooned.
"She bleeds fashion and eats lies!"
Dolly blinked, once. Then again. Her hand—usually clenched into the world's tiniest fist—lifted and waved.
Grin leaned in. "...They like us."
"No," she whispered. "They like me."
Then came the procession.
Villagers descended in spirals, cloaks flaring, scarves whipping like they were made of ideas instead of thread. They circled Grin and Dolly like orbiting moons.
A woman with bark for fingers pressed something to Grin's chest. A mirror—oval, cracked.
"Show your riddle," she hissed.
Grin stared into it.
The scythe dropped.
He didn't speak.
In the mirror: a boy. Himself. Much smaller. Eyes wide, bruised from crying.
I felt it—his breath change. Not fear, not yet. Something... colder.
The crowd began to chant in time with the crystal drip of the fountains:
"Riddle born and riddle bred,
Why do you sleep beside the dead?"
Grin didn't move.
In the mirror, the boy was digging. A small grave. Alone. His fingers bled. The earth screamed.
"...Don't..." Grin's voice cracked.
Dolly moved.
She shoved her way to the front, shouldering past a man in a cape made of puzzle pieces. Her hand snatched the mirror.
Then she held it to her own face.
I saw nothing in it. But her fingers trembled.
"They told me I was decoration," she whispered. "A prize. Something to be owned."
She turned it toward the crowd.
"I remember the room," she said. "I remember the box. And the way he opened it... like I was a gift for his guilt."
The crowd had gone quiet. A silence so sharp it bit.
Dolly dropped the mirror. It didn't shatter. It just... folded in on itself.
Grin reached for her—careful, like touching fire—but she stepped away.
"You tried to belong," she said to him. "You tried to change the story. But we don't get new stories, do we?"
Grin answered, voice low. "...Not unless we steal them."
Their eyes met.
Something passed between them. Not quite forgiveness. Not yet. But maybe—just maybe—a pact.
I didn't understand all of it.
But I felt it.
And then—Antic's voice in my ear.
"You're crying," he said gently.
I startled. I wasn't aware I'd moved closer to him. My hand had found his sleeve. I gripped it, still.
"I'm not," I lied.
"You are," he said softly, his voice unusually calm. "It looks good on you."
"What, saltwater?" I asked.
"No. Feeling."
I looked up at him—or toward him. The shape of him felt like something between laughter and trouble. His flute clinked against his hip.
He leaned close.
"You ever been kissed, No-Eyes?" he asked, like it was a riddle of his own.
I flinched. Not away. Just inward.
"No."
Antic smiled. Not smugly. Not cruelly.
"Me either," he said.
Then he stood. "Come on. The snail queen's about to guide us to the beast."
"What beast?"
His grin sharpened. "The one that sings sadness."
And I followed. Still clutching the feel of him. Still unsure what to call it.
Not love. Not yet.
But something.
They gave us a key made of bone and moss.
Didn't say what it opened.
"Find the door with no hinge," the Snail Queen whispered, her voice gurgling like pondwater in the throat. "It smells like regret and hums like rain."
Grin nodded solemnly, holding the mossbone like it was a puzzle he'd marry. Dolly curled her lip in disgust, flinging her scarf over one shoulder so sharply I heard the threads protest.
We followed the twisting roots through the village's underbelly. The deeper we went, the quieter it got—like the forest itself was holding breath, waiting for us to pass.
Every step made the air colder. Not in temperature. In emotion. If that makes sense. It felt like being stared at by a mirror.
Antic's flute, always bobbing at his hip, let out an unintentional chirp.
"Shhh," he whispered, patting it like a naughty pet. "Don't give us away, sweetheart."
Grin gave him a look that said, Seriously?
Antic held up both hands, whispering, "It's sensitive to vibes."
He wasn't wrong. The air buzzed now.
I slowed. My feet ached from the uneven stone, but that wasn't what stopped me. It was my skin—alive with static. My ears didn't twitch, but they heard something. Not music. Not speech.
Sorrow.
Thick. Wet. Heavy. Like a wet blanket laid over the heart and pressed down.
"It's close," I said.
Dolly floated lower, no longer bothering to hide the tension in her limbs. "I feel it too."
Grin reached out to touch the wall. His voice came in gravel. "...We're not here to fight it."
Antic's voice, strangely soft, almost reverent. "We're here to meet it."
The corridor widened. Cracks bloomed in the stone like veins.
Then—light.
Not gold. Not blue. Something in between. The color of old bruises.
The space opened like a mouth. And at its center…
Hunched. Massive. Humming.
Was the Gloomfang.
Not a beast, not really. It didn't breathe fire or roar. It moaned.
A sound that hit behind the ribs. A sound that made you remember the time you tried not to cry.
Its body was like a draped cloak stitched from shadows. No teeth. No eyes. But you felt its gaze, low and intimate, like grief whispering at your neck.
Antic let out a shaky breath. "Oh, fuuuuu—udgecicles," he corrected mid-word, trying to be respectful.
Grin lowered his scythe. "...It's not hostile."
"It's hurt," I whispered.
It rocked gently, like trying to remember how to sleep.
Then it looked up—without eyes. Right at me.
I didn't see it with my vision. I felt its shape move through the air.
Its voice wasn't a voice. It was inside my head.
"I remember you."
I froze.
"I've never met you."
Antic stepped in front of me, protective. "Hey—if she doesn't want dream-therapy, maybe back off."
The creature made a sound. A whimper? A laugh?
Grin moved between us and the Gloomfang. His voice slow, careful. "...It's not speaking to her mind."
"To her blood," Dolly said.
And I realized—
This wasn't just sadness.
It was familiar sadness.
I stepped forward. "You know my family."
The hum sharpened.
Then a single phrase echoed in all of us, clear as a bell dropped in water.
"He's waiting."
The Gloomfang exhaled.
The air tugged. Not like wind—like thought, or grief, reaching out and curling fingers through my ribcage.
I stepped forward.
I didn't fall. I slipped. Like I'd walked through the edge of a dream that was never meant to be remembered.
For a moment, the world turned soundless.
Then—heat.
Clatter. Mirrors.
Fluorescent light buzzing above a cracked vanity. A room full of bottles, lotions, lip liners, pills. Lipstick names like Innocence and Ravish Me Red. Music played somewhere distant, the beat half-dead. But beneath it, the whine of a weighing scale.
I wasn't in my body anymore.
I was her.
Joy.
And her bones were screaming.
I blinked—except I didn't. I felt air on a face that wasn't mine, the raw sting of recently plucked eyebrows, the tight grip of a corset cinched far too tight.
She stared at the mirror. And it stared back like it hated her.
Too wide. Too soft. Too brown. Too much.
Her skin didn't fit right. Her stomach was the enemy. Her thighs were threats. Her reflection looked like it wanted to scream.
I reached out. My hand landed on the mirror.
My fingers left no smudge. Because I wasn't real.
"Joy?" A voice called from another room. Her mother. Cold and sharp. "Dinner's in ten. Don't ruin your appetite—again."
Joy flinched. Her throat ached. I could feel her lips wanting to say something—but they didn't move.
She pressed both hands to her face, trying to mold it. As if she could push herself into someone worth loving.
The bathroom light flickered.
And then, I heard a whisper.
"They always said beauty was worth suffering. But they never said how much."
The mirror warped.
The room shifted.
I was in a different place now. Not Joy's apartment. A hallway. Lined with white doors and buzzing lights.
I opened one.
Inside: Joy, twelve years old, knees pressed to her chest. A teacher holding a clipboard. "She won't eat," the woman said, low. "She hides her food in napkins. She says she sees things in the mirror that aren't there."
"Attention-seeking," another voice scoffed. "She'll grow out of it."
I wanted to grab them both. Scream. Look at her.
Joy didn't say a word.
I moved again—another room. A stage. Bright lights. A modeling agency office.
Joy, older now. Maybe twenty. Her bones showing through a dress that glittered like cruelty.
A man looked her over.
"She's striking," he said. "But the eyes ruin it. Too haunted. Too… weird."
"I can change," she whispered.
He laughed. "You don't change haunted, sweetheart. You bury it."
The scene ripped apart.
And I was falling.
Darkness again.
The memory curled in around me like a cocoon, tighter, tighter.
Then—I was in a bed.
Not my bed.
Joy's. It was damp with sweat. The air smelled like flowers and antiseptic.
She was sobbing.
"I'd trade anything," she whispered, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "If I could just not see myself anymore."
I froze.
Because I felt it.
Something listening.
Something ancient.
And then, behind her, the shadow bloomed.
Long arms. No face. But eyes. So many. Too many.
It reached down.
Joy didn't see it.
But I did.
And I understood.
She didn't want to see. So it took her sight.
Not just hers.
Mine.
It didn't give us blindness.
It gave us relief.
And then—
I was yanked back.
The cavern returned.
I gasped, collapsing to my knees.
Everything hurt. My chest. My head. My throat.
Antic was beside me instantly, kneeling, his hand on my shoulder.
"Are you—?" he stopped. His voice was choked. He didn't know what to ask.
Grin crouched beside me, eyes narrowed. "...Where'd it take you?"
I looked at the Gloomfang.
And it looked back.
I didn't answer the question.
Instead, I whispered, "It doesn't take pain. It... preserves it. Until someone's brave enough to carry it."
Dolly hovered above me. She said nothing.
But for the first time ever, I felt her cold little hand rest on the back of my neck. Like a porcelain weight. A fragile comfort.
Antic moved closer. I felt the heat of his chest at my side.
"Did it hurt?" he asked, voice low.
I nodded.
He leaned in, pressing his forehead to mine. His breath tickled, his hair brushing my cheeks.
"Next time," he whispered, "let me go in with you."
I didn't say yes.
But I didn't pull away either.
It started with a sigh.
Not mine.
The Gloomfang.
Low and breathless, like someone exhaling through an old scar.
I reached forward again. The cavern disappeared before I even touched him.
This time, I didn't fall alone.
The world swirled and stretched around me—colors warping, time folding in on itself like pages soaked in tears. When it snapped back into shape, I stood barefoot on cracked pavement. Fog curled around my ankles like guilt.
A city, gray and sagging under its own apathy.
Rain, barely visible, but always there. The kind of weather that made shadows feel heavier.
I was dressed different. Heavier. Older. My body wasn't quite mine—but it wasn't someone else's either. I felt like Pecola, but the mirror in the puddle didn't agree. It showed a woman. Tired. Thin. Her face unreadable.
From the mist, a man approached.
Tall, thin. Overcoat too large. A briefcase dragging behind him like a dead limb.
Owen.
He wasn't a beast.
Not yet.
And then I saw the others.
Grin stood across the street, dressed like a priest who hadn't slept in a decade. His eyes were shadowed, his collar crooked. He watched Owen like he knew him.
Dolly, in a nurse's dress from the wrong era—starched too tight, pristine white gloves. Her expression was glass-smooth. She held a clipboard like a weapon.
And Antic…
He was a bartender. A bowtie askew. Shirt unbuttoned too far. Hair wild. He leaned against the doorway of a smoky club called "Elysium's End," polishing a glass like it had insulted his mother.
He looked straight at me.
And he recognized me.
Then, blinked. And didn't.
Because this wasn't a dream.
This was a memory.
Owen passed by them all.
Grin's priest-self muttered, "...Still coming to confession, Owen?"
Owen flinched. But didn't stop walking.
Dolly's nurse-voice called, "Your results came in, Mr. Morrow. You should come by tomorrow morning."
Owen didn't look at her.
Antic raised a glass. "Drink to forget, mate? First one's on the house."
Owen paused.
Then walked past.
Not because he didn't want to stop.
But because he thought he wasn't allowed to.
I followed him.
Up the stairs of a peeling apartment building. Into a room that smelled like rain and unopened letters. Walls lined with books, none touched. A plant dying quietly on the windowsill.
He sat.
Folded.
Broke.
He didn't cry. That would have made sense.
He just sat.
Until the rain leaked through the ceiling and kissed his scalp like grief come home.
I stepped in front of him.
And the air rippled.
He saw me. I know he did. He blinked like I was a hallucination he couldn't afford.
"You're not real," he murmured. His voice didn't match his body. It had a child's fragility. "No one real looks at me like that."
"Maybe I'm what's left," I said.
He rubbed his eyes. "I can't be seen. I wasn't built for that."
Outside, I heard a crash.
I ran to the window.
Grin and Dolly were arguing in the street. Their voices didn't match the roles they wore.
"I'm not a f**king doctor," Dolly snapped. "I'm a porcelain banshee in pearls. Why am I playing Nurse Ratchet?!"
"You.... were.... assigned!" Grin grunted. "This ...is his memory, not ....ours!"
Antic kicked open the door below, rain soaking him in seconds. "Alright! Enough! No one's following the damn script and I think I'm developing feelings for my bar rag!"
"Antic?" I called.
He looked up.
His eyes lit like he'd found me.
And just like that, I remembered—he'd followed me in.
They all had.
Because I wasn't meant to carry this alone.
Owen's apartment began to shake.
Walls cracking. Floor peeling.
He clutched his head. "They're coming again."
"Who?" I asked.
He opened his mouth—but it wasn't a name that came out.
It was a sound. A sob. Deep and wrong.
And then his shadow moved.
Twitched.
Twisted.
It stood behind him. Twelve feet tall. Molten eyes. A mouth stitched shut with threads of self-loathing.
The Gloomfang.
Its first form.
I stepped between them.
I didn't run.
Behind me, the others burst in.
Dolly raised her clipboard like a blade. "Okay, either this is a memory or a haunted improv scene—because I am losing my shit."
Antic pushed past her. "No-Eyes!" He reached for my hand.
Grin whispered, "...It's not a breath. It's a prison."
The Gloomfang roared.
Not at us.
At Owen.
"You couldn't love. You couldn't speak. You watched yourself rot and called it mercy."
Owen fell to his knees.
He whispered, "I just didn't want to feel anymore."
Antic's fingers tightened around mine.
"I do," I said. "Even if it hurts. I do."
The shadow shrieked.
A sound like a house caving in.
And then—wind. Like the breath of something ancient finally exhaled.
The Gloomfang collapsed.
Not vanished.
Just… reduced.
In the middle of the room, a soft light blinked.
A Breath. The size of a thumb.
Pale blue.
Flickering.
It hovered in front of Owen's crumpled shape.
He reached for it.
He was crying now.
Finally.
And then—
Gone.
The room dissolved.
So did the city.
I landed back in my own skin, in the crystal cavern, shaking.
The Gloomfang stood before me.
Smaller.
Gentler.
It lowered its head.
And nudged me once.
Like thanks.
Or farewell.
And then it walked—silent and heavy—toward a new path.
Toward
Mirror Lake.
Or at least that's what the breaths are telling me.