"What happened? Where's Mr Mnemon?" Heiwa asked as she loaded the crate into the carriage.
The air had finally returned to the forest, full and breathable again—but hell still lay stitched into the earth.
"Dead," Miss Li Hua said softly, absentmindedly stroking the head of a small bird perched on her finger.
"Dead?" I echoed, my eyes drifting back to the burnt corpses scattered around the clearing.
I forced myself to inhale. To calm down.
Then I noticed something.
"They're missing… an arm?" I said slowly.
One of the bodies lay twisted on its side. It still had one hand, but the other shoulder ended in something wrong—no clean burn, just ash and dirt clinging to empty space, as if the arm had been removed from reality itself.
I stood up and walked closer.
The closer I got, the worse it became.
Some of the corpses looked half-frozen, their skin pale and cracked, as though they had been locked in ice before being burned alive. And above them—
"Are they… releasing vapour?"
It wasn't smoke. It was colder. Thinner. Like mist bleeding out of the wounds.
"We have to hurry back," Miss Li Hua said quietly.
I crouched beside the body with the missing arm, my heartbeat drowning out all sound. I reached out—
Cold steel pressed against my neck.
"So," a voice said behind me, calm and amused, "it seems they weren't able to talk you into seeing things my way."
My entire body locked.
I couldn't turn my head. I couldn't see his face. I couldn't even feel his breath—just the blade, weightless and freezing against my throat.
"Who are you?" Heiwa demanded, her voice sharp, already shifting. "I didn't sense you."
"I see no point in introductions," the voice replied. "We'll be taking the flowers. And turning the gardener into compost."
Garden.
Miss Hazel.
My mind raced. My eyes flicked sideways. I could see the blade, but the hand holding it—
There was no hand.
"What— I can feel an arm, but I can't see it…" I thought, panic creeping in.
The presence behind me was wrong. Not invisible—absent. Like a shape that refused to exist properly.
Everyone was silent. Even Miss Li Hua.
"Why are you doing this?" Heiwa asked, her voice cracking just slightly.
The blade dropped to the ground.
As I exhaled in shock, something cold slid through my chest.
An arm emerged from inside me.
Not blood. Not pain at first.
Just… pressure. Like my ribs had opened themselves for something that didn't belong.
"No—!" Heiwa moved, but the man raised his other arm and she froze mid-step, ice forming around her limbs, stopping her in place.
"I wasn't dead," I realised dimly. "Not yet."
He guided me—gently—back onto a log. His arm was still inside my ribcage, resting disturbingly close to my heart.
"Hope," he said calmly, "only has meaning when something opposes it. Wouldn't you agree?"
No one answered.
"So if suffering were constant," he continued, almost pleasantly, "wouldn't hope become… priceless?"
"What kind of twisted logic is that?" Heiwa snapped, her arm fully coated in ice now.
Miss Li Hua simply watched.
Not afraid.
Not angry.
Thinking.
"Is this nihilism?" I wondered weakly. No. It wasn't. It was worse.
He wasn't denying meaning.
He was engineering it.
"Think of it this way," he said. "If I place this girl into an unconscious state—"
He pressed slightly closer to my heart.
"—you would all hope for her recovery. And when she wakes… hope becomes even more valuable."
My breathing turned ragged.
His presence felt colder. My vision blurred at the edges.
"Am I really going to die for someone else's philosophy?" I thought.
The sun rose higher.
Its light burned into my eyes.
I shut them.
Then—
"Aah!"
He screamed.
Not me.
Him.
Something pulled.
Not physically—cosmically.
Like gravity suddenly remembered me.
I felt heat surge through my chest, ripping outward, violently, blindingly.
A light exploded between us.
Not fire.
Not magic.
A star.
For one impossible moment, something radiant tore its way out of my body and through his.
Then I was thrown backward.
Pain hit after.
My back slammed into the ground, burning, screaming, alive.
Miss Li Hua was suddenly there, her hand pressed to my spine.
Cold.
So cold it hurt.
Ice spread over the burn instantly, numbing everything.
I gasped and looked up.
The man was gone.
No body.
No blood.
Just scorched air and warped space.
"That wasn't fire?" Heiwa whispered, stunned.
Miss Li Hua stared at the forest for a long time.
Then she turned.
"Come on," she said quietly. "We should leave."
Heiwa helped me into the carriage, her hands shaking.
Before we could depart—
Miss Hazel stood at the edge of the clearing.
Beside her, her daughter. Still in night clothes. Butterflies floating lazily around her head.
"We'll be joining you," Miss Hazel said calmly. "This is now your responsibility."
No one argued.
I sat in silence as the carriage moved.
The girl dipped a biscuit into chocolate.
"How are you feeling?" Heiwa asked softly.
"Better," I said and the word felt fictional.
Then I looked back.
The bodies were gone.
Not burned.
Not buried.
Erased.
As if they had never existed at all.