Ren looked deeply at Eva, blackened tears dried along her cheeks. She was scraped up from the fall, and her body trembled too, barely holding herself up straight.
"You came back..." Ren said softly.
Eva exhaled shakily, her breath hitching at the edges. "Of course I did."
Ren gave a faint, exhausted smile. "Didn't think you would. You ran so fast."
She didn't return the smile.
Ren's expression fell into something more neutral, softer. "You did the right thing."
Eva's fists clenched at her sides. "No. I didn't."
Ren tilted his head. "Eva—"
"I should've never left," She interrupted, her soft voice cracking with guilt. "I left you here, with that thing."
Ren's demeanor dampened to something softer.
"It's okay...I was the one who told you to."
"No..." Her voice was sharp now, like she needed to hear herself say it. "That doesn't change anything...I felt it, Ren—I felt your fear. The second I turned my back, it hit me like I'd stepped into cold water. You were screaming in your head, weren't you?"
Ren looked away. He didn't deny it.
"You thought you were going to die. And I just…ran."
Ren looked at her for a long moment.
"It's okay...really." His voice was soothing. "You came back. That's all that matters."
Ren took a slow breath and stepped forward, just enough to close the distance between them. "…Can you really feel what I feel?"
Eva was stunned by the question.
"I mean it," Ren said, quieter now. "You said you felt my fear. But…can you feel what I'm feeling now? Do you feel any resentment?"
Eva's hand dropped to her side. Her lip quivered slightly, but she bit it and didn't cry.
"There's nothing...Why isn't he angry? Why doesn't he hate me? Why doesn't he blame me?" Eva thought to herself, the questions pulsing in her mind. "Why is he comforting me? If our places were reversed, would I be able to forgive him? Would I smile at him after clawing my way back from death's hold, after hearing my own bones shatter?"
Eva's gaze drifted lower, drawn to the grotesque sight of Ren's left arm.
"Does it…hurt?"
Ren followed her gaze.
The bones were no longer exposed. A raw layer of muscle had begun knitting itself over the skeletal frame. "Only when I think about it."
"Then...please, don't try to think about it too much," Eva replied, an innocent comfort to Ren.
"Yeah, I'll try not to."
And then—
The floor rumbled, a deep, grinding tremor beneath their feet.
Behind them, the massive, pale tree—once looming and mystical, now broken and dying—let out a slow, groaning creak. Long vertical cracks had begun crawling up its trunk like fractures in glass. Its bark, once smooth and ghostly white, was splintering open to reveal veins of utter darkness. Sap wept from the wounds, thick and dark like coagulated blood.
"Get down!" Ren shouted, grabbing Eva's arm and pulling her down just as a massive root snapped free and slammed into the floor nearby, sending shards of stone flying.
It had collapsed in on itself, crashing down through the center of the chamber.
From the impact point, a hole opened—a great black void yawning in the center of the chamber. It looked almost bottomless, stretching down for what seemed like eternity. The ground around it curled inward, crumbling away like paper. The roots fell into it, vanishing from sight.
Everything near the edge was drawn toward it. Chunks of pale bark, blackened roots, fragments of stone—all falling into the hole.
Eva stumbled back, bracing herself against Ren.
They both stared at the abyss in front of them.
And neither of them noticed her until it was too late.
Floating high in the air above them—her cloaked silhouette, darkened even in the light—was the Mother.
Then, she moved.
But not in the slow, methodical way she did before.
No.
She descended so fast, her figure began to elongate from the velocity, stretching into a column of black smoke.
In the blink of an eye, she snapped into focus just inches in front of Ren.
There was no time to react.
A single hand stretched out at him, that hand became solid, corporeal enough to touch.
His eyes went wide; panic flared as Mother's hand clamped over his mouth like a mask. She lifted him upward in a fraction of a second, his heels scraping lines against the stone floor.
His sword slipped from his fingers.
Clang
Ren tried to shout—anything—but her fingers smothered his mouth. His right arm lashed out, swiping at her wrist—his palm going right through it. He clawed at her again—and again—but his fingers just phased through.
His limbs flailed as the ghostlike figure hauled him high into the air.
And without breaking pace, Mother fell. Straight into the abyss at the chamber's center, dragging Ren along with her. Ren's stomach lurched from the force. He clawed desperately at her arm, at her face—anything to break free—but his hands passed through her form.
The world inverted around him as they plummeted, like the world above was folding in.
The last thing Eva saw was his eyes—wide and burning with fear—before the dark swallowed him whole.
Inside the abyss, Ren had continued to descend.
Everything was weightless and wrong, like falling through a dream stitched together by silence. His body kept plummeting, but there was no end.
"How long...how long have I been falling for?"
He blinked.
Once
Twice
He held his breath.
Nothing changed.
There was no temperature. No pressure. No sound beyond his own thoughts. His senses reached outward and found nothing. Not even his own heartbeat echoed in his ears anymore.
"Am I even still falling? What if this is it? I'm just going to fall like this forever?"
A flicker of panic surged through his gut. He wanted to scream—to demand an end, to rage against whatever force had decided this was his fate—but there was no voice left to do it.
Then, like cracks through dark glass, memories returned.
First, as whispers.
Then, as bursts of color in the black.
He was six again, looking into a mirror with sleepy eyes.
"If I disappear, will anyone even notice?" The young boy questioned to himself.
"No, don't do that...mother would be upset." Ren thought, as if his thoughts could reach the sad little boy. "And father would get angry again..."
Then, another memory came to him.
Tucked tightly into bed, and a woman—his mother—kneeling beside him. Her hand was warm against his cheek.
"Sleep now," She whispered. "The monsters won't get you tonight."
"You always say that." Ren stared up at her, the fear still burning behind his eyes. "They...they come when you're not here..."
Her other hand rose and cupped the side of his face, gentle but firm.
"Then I'll stay a little longer," She said, as if it were that simple. "Until they get tired of waiting."
He stared at her in the low light—at the strands of black hair falling across her face, at the lines beneath her eyes, at the sadness she thought she hid. He didn't understand it then. But even as a boy, he knew she was tired.
"Will you still be here when I wake up?" he asked.
Her fingers paused, curling just a little tighter around his face.
There was no answer at first.
Then she spoke softly.
"I will."
The candle crackled on the nightstand, its flame shrinking as the wax puddled. Young Ren closed his eyes. But before sleep could take him, he whispered.
"If they come… I'll protect you."
His mother's breath caught, just for a second. And she smiled, quiet and broken.
"My brave little boy," She said, leaning down to kiss his forehead.
Then another memory emerged, colder than the last.
Sterile white.
Faint beeping.
The hum of a fluorescent light struggling to stay alive overhead.
Ren sat upright in a hospital bed, thin and pale, barely more than bones under skin.
Tubes ran down his arms.
A monitor beside him kept perfect time with his shallow breaths.
He was fifteen.
Old enough to understand.
Too young to know how to survive it.
There was no one in the room. Visiting hours had ended, though he had no one to come see him anymore. The nurse had wheeled his dinner in two hours ago and forgotten to take it out. It was still there on the table, untouched and cold.
He stared at the tangle of wires at his side.
The heart monitor.
The oxygen line.
All of it—keeping him tethered to this slow, dragging kind of dying.
And he just didn't want it anymore.
"I just...want it to stop."
He reached with shaking hands toward the plug on the machine.
There were warning stickers on the side. Things written in red. Little diagrams of what not to touch. But he knew where it was.
He'd looked at it a hundred times.
His fingers hovered.
There was no one coming. No one to say stop.
He swallowed and pulled the cord.
Beep
A sharp, flatline then screamed out.