She couldn't feel her hands.

Not pain. Not numbness. Just... absence.

Hana looked down – and saw nothing. No limbs. No body. No outline to anchor her. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. The world twisted – not spinning but slipping sideways. Like reality had stepped back and slammed the door behind it.

It got out.

The thought pierced her like a scream underwater. The Devourer – that sick, smiling thing that had coiled itself around Liz's soul – had vanished. Escaped. And she'd chased too far, fallen too deep. Now she was unmoored.

No body. No tether. No ground beneath her.

Just memory. Just thought.

Just her.

Panic rose sharp and fast. She tried to scream, to pull back – but there was nothing to pull from. Her soul was drifting, weightless, slipping through cracks that weren't cracks – they were fractures in someone else's mind. No surface to grab. No axis to spin around.

Only memory. Only heat. Only––

––Glass.

She slammed into it. Cold. Sudden. Jarring. Her face pressed against a mirror. Except she was on the wrong side.

Hana blinked. She wasn't in the void anymore.

She was in a hallway. Narrow. Familiar. Photographs lined the wall – family portraits in soft afternoon light. Liz's home. Her childhood home.

But something was off. The light was too still. The colours slightly wrong. Too quiet.

She looked around – and realised she wasn't really in the hallway. She was behind it. Trapped in the reflections. The window glass. The photo frames. Even the polished surface of a kitchen counter. She could see everything but couldn't touch. Couldn't move.

Then she saw her.

Liz. Seventeen. Sitting on the floor in the living room, hugging her knees. Silent. Her hair was longer than it should've been. Her eyes darker. She wasn't moving.

Hana reached out – or tried to. Her hands slid across the mirror-world's surface like oil on water. The walls were bleeding into each other. Time unravelling. The image broke – shuddered – and warped into something colder.

The hospital.

Not real. Not the one outside. But a memory of it, reassembled wrong.

Walls stretched too long. Ceiling tiles flickered. The lights buzzed with that migraine-white hum only hospitals could produce. Hana stumbled forward – no longer behind the glass, but inside again. Her body reformed slowly. Like it was remembering what it meant to have weight.

Her breath caught in her throat.

The smell hit her – antiseptic over rot. Flowers trying to mask a burn ward.

This wasn't Liz's memory. It wasn't Hana's either. It was a reconstruction. A half-remembered purgatory, stitched together from fear.

Then the hospital dissolved.

One blink – sterile white walls. The next – smoke curling through an open sky, cracked red like a dried wound. Heat hit her first, not just on her skin but inside her chest, like her lungs were breathing fire. She staggered, boots crunching down into blackened soil. The ground was scorched, dry as bone, yet it pulsed faintly beneath her. Like it had a heartbeat. Like it was alive.

She turned in slow, quiet horror.

A field stretched around her, wide and lifeless. Trees, or what remained of them, jutted from the earth like snapped ribs. Ash coated everything. In the centre, half-swallowed by creeping fire, stood a swing set – rusted, one chain broken, the seat dangling at a sharp angle. A teddy bear lay beneath it, burnt to one side. Its glass eyes caught the light just long enough to glint like something watching.

This wasn't her memory. It wasn't Max's either. It was Liz's.

But it felt wrong. Too decayed. Too hollowed out. Hana narrowed her eyes. This wasn't a place where something bad had happened. This was a place where something kept happening, over and over, until it rotted the soul.

The sky rumbled.

Hana looked up. Smoke churned in slow, spiralling shapes. Thunder cracked – but there was no lightning. Just heat. And dread.

A breeze swept through the field. Not cold. Not hot. It smelled like singed hair and old flowers.

Then she heard it. A child's voice. Not a cry – a hum. Off-key. Wandering.

Hana turned toward the sound.

There. Near the smouldering swing set, half-hidden in the smoke. A small figure. Standing still. Watching her.

Liz…?

Hana took a step forward – and the ground shifted. Not physically, not really. But her balance tilted as if something underneath the surface had breathed in. She froze, eyes scanning the soil. Cracks spiderwebbed out beneath her feet, pulsing faintly with red light. The roots here weren't dead – they were feeding on something.

On someone.

A tremor ran through the field – not seismic. Mental. Like the memory itself had been jostled.

And then the sky screamed.

A memory quake.

Reality spasmed. For half a breath, she stood in a burning hospital, then an empty room, then a place without name or light. Her vision blurred. Her grip on herself wavered.

But she held.

Barely.

And when it settled, the girl was still there – watching her. Unmoving. Silent.

And now Hana was sure. That wasn't just Liz. It was a fragment – something twisted. A sliver of who she used to be, trapped here for too long.

And Hana had just stepped into her fire.

…………………

The fire didn't go out.

It simply... changed.

One blink and the scorched earth rippled, folding in on itself like burnt paper. The red sky dimmed to a flat, choking grey. The heat died down – but not the wrongness. The world rearranged with a child's dream logic. The swing set collapsed into rust. The trees shrank into warped jungle gym scaffolds. Metal groaned in the wind.

A playground emerged.

But it wasn't any playground Hana had ever seen.

The slide was cracked down the middle, smeared with something dark that hadn't dried. The monkey bars were twisted into something almost skeletal. Plastic animals – a duck, a dolphin, a pig – lay scattered and broken across the blacktop like roadkill.

And at the centre of it all, near the scorched teddy bear, stood the girl.

Barefoot. Hair tangled. Wearing a faded white dress smeared with soot and dried blood at the hem. Maybe nine years old.

Hana stopped.

Liz.

Not the teenager. Not the psychic warrior fighting off a demon from within. This was a younger fragment. A memory calcified and angry.

The girl's eyes met hers. Wide. Green. Unblinking.

"You're not supposed to be here," the girl said. Her voice was steady. Too steady.

Hana raised her hands slowly. "Neither are you."

Something cracked. Not in the air. In the girl's face.

"LIAR!" The scream tore through the fog. "I never left!"

She stomped toward Hana, tiny fists clenched. Her eyes were wet, but she didn't cry. Her whole body shook, but she didn't look away.

"You left," she snarled. "They left. Everyone left. But I stayed. I remembered."

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Hana knelt, careful not to get too close. "I'm not here to hurt you."

"Yes, you are!"

The girl sniffed, then recoiled – as if something repulsed her.

"You smell like Hell."

Hana blinked. "What?"

"Like fire and dead things and screaming. Like you made a deal."

She hesitated. "No, I didn't. My family did. But not with the thing hurting you."

The girl didn't answer. She turned away, folding her arms, trembling.

"Go back. You don't belong here."

"I'm not leaving without you."

"You can't take me. I'm not even me anymore."

Hana inched forward, hand outstretched. "Let me help—"

The girl flinched as if Hana's voice burned. She twisted sharply, fury flashing through her.

"Don't touch me." Her voice was paper-thin, trembling with rage. "You're not clean. You let things in."

Hana's breath caught. The words weren't the girl's. Not really. She was parroting something. Repeating what something had told her.

And then the wind changed.

It came through the playground like a whispering tide. Hot and sharp, like glass dragged across skin.

Hana froze.

The voices rode it – faint and layered, stacking on top of one another like ash on firewood.

"–she's gone–"

"–it's your fault–"

"–burnt alive–"

"–daddy doesn't come back–"

"–he doesn't want to see you–"

"–they left because you're weak–"

"–you called the demon, didn't you–"

Hana flinched. The words weren't spoken to her, but they pierced through anyway. Each one felt like a knife twisting in a different direction.

She turned slowly, eyes wide.

That wasn't the wind.

It was Liz. All of Liz. The fragments. The broken timelines. The buried screams. A constant hum of despair rattling through the air like static.

And the girl – the fragment in front of her – had gone silent.

Hana looked back. The child was no longer glaring.

She was listening.

Then her head turned – past Hana, toward the far end of the playground.

Her shoulders stiffened. Her jaw clenched.

Something was coming.

Something familiar.

Hana followed her gaze.

But there was nothing there. Not yet. Only grey mist and rust and the sound of distant footsteps scraping through memory.

…………………

The rusted playground folded in on itself like paper soaked in ink.

Metal twisted. Sky collapsed. The world cracked in half – and reassembled as something else.

Hana blinked and found herself standing in a classroom.

Rows of desks stretched before her, but nothing about them was right. Each seat was covered in pale green vines, like veins pulled from a corpse. The walls throbbed faintly. The ceiling lights flickered, bleeding faintly from the seams. And at the front of the room, a chalkboard of twitching bone loomed, etched with scribbles that pulsed and healed.

Behind the desk stood a man.

He was tall. Pale. His face was thin but gentle, with soft brown eyes and silver spectacles that didn't quite reflect the light. He wore a beige cardigan. A red pen clipped neatly into his front pocket.

He smiled when he saw her.

"Hana-chan," he said warmly, folding his hands in front of him. "You made it."

The name snapped across her mind like a slap.

She'd never told Liz her full name. Not in that way. Not with that intonation.

Her fists clenched. "You're not a teacher."

"Not yours, no." The man stepped aside and gestured toward the bone-chalkboard. "But Liz has been such a good student. You'd be amazed how quickly she learns."

He turned back to the board and began to draw – neat lines, deliberate curves. A diagram formed: a human outline, a soul field, layers around it. Redacted. Burnt.

"Pain," he said gently, "is a distraction. Unreliable. A flawed evolutionary vestige. But if you know how to trim the unnecessary branches..."

He tapped the outline's head with the chalk. The skull cracked open in the diagram. A black root began to grow from it.

"You can prune it. Shape it. Erase what hurts."

Hana stepped forward. The room resisted – the air thick, like syrup. "Where's Liz?"

"Oh, she's here," the man said. He smiled again. Not cruelly. Not maliciously. But gently, like an old priest offering absolution.

"She invited me."

Hana stopped mid-step.

"What?"

"She brought me in. Not consciously, of course. But even now, in the deepest parts of her mind, she wants to forget. The pain is too loud. The world too cruel. She needed someone who could help her… tidy up."

"You're the Devourer."

"That's such an ugly word." He sighed, tapping the chalk lightly against the board. A little dust flaked off. "I'm a teacher, Hana-chan. That's all I've ever been."

"You're infecting her. Manipulating her."

"I'm showing her peace."

"You're killing her."

He didn't flinch. Didn't raise his voice.

"I'm setting her free."

A desk creaked. Hana turned.

One of the seats was now occupied.

The younger Liz. Same white dress. Same small frame. But something had changed. Her posture was relaxed now. Too relaxed. She wasn't glaring anymore – she was smiling.

But her eyes weren't green.

They were black. Endless. A void with no edge.

"Hi, Hana," the girl said sweetly. "You don't have to worry anymore."

Something twisted behind Hana's ribs. "That's not you."

"It's better this way." Liz folded her hands neatly on her desk. "He showed me how to make the sad parts quiet."

"Liz, listen to me—"

Hana lunged forward, flaring her psychic will – blue flame igniting in both palms. She threw it at the man – at Mr. Evans – with all the force of her fear.

It passed through him.

Like smoke.

The chalk never stopped moving.

He turned back to her. Unruffled. Smiling still.

"You can't hurt me here. Not in her classroom."

Hana staggered, breath catching.

"You don't belong here," she hissed. "I'm going to rip you out of her, root by root."

"If you want to save her, Hana-chan..." He set the chalk down and turned to face her fully now.

"...you'll have to become part of the lesson."

And then the floor began to collapse.

Not violently. Not explosively. Just... quietly disintegrating. Like pages being unbound. Reality unbuckling.

Desks tipped. Walls peeled open. The chalkboard folded inward like wet cloth. Gravity warped sideways.

Liz just sat there. Smiling.

And Hana fell, again, into the dark.

…………………

She fell through pages of her own mind.

Each second hit like a decade – burning fields, flickering classrooms, hospital hallways stacked on top of playgrounds. The world twisted around her, layering one false memory on top of another. Nothing held still.

Until it did.

She landed hard – somewhere.

The classroom was back, but so was the fire. The chalkboard crackled, a skeletal grin etched into its surface. Vines writhed across the desks, but now they were on fire – burning with no source, no sound. And behind the flames, trees grew sideways into the walls. Roots reached through the ceiling. Smoke bled up from the carpet tiles, and ash drifted over textbooks filled with teeth.

A fusion of scenes – Liz's memories layered on top of Hana's.

A trap trying to make sense of itself.

Hana staggered to her feet. The golden light was already building inside her. Not Hellfire – something older. Raw psychic force, searing and golden, traced with symbols she didn't remember learning but had always known.

Her nose bled. Her hands shook. But she reached inward, past her fear – past the instinct to flee – and found the root of her own soul.

Then she ripped it open.

A scream burst from her throat as the power tore through her spine. Her aura flared, golden and cracked like molten glass. Symbols shimmered across her arms – ancestral bindings, half-forgotten oaths. Her eyes burned white.

And so did her memories.

She saw herself as a child – barefoot in a shrine, blood drying on her palms. Her brother, shaking, hiding behind their grandmother. The old demon they called sensei – all smiles and teeth – kneeling to offer her power in exchange for silence.

"You will be the next vessel, Hana-sama. That is your role."

She had said yes. She had always said yes.

She bled that memory – offered it to the fire, and it took. Halo lighting up, her aura exploded outward.

The dream tore at the seams. The floor ruptured inward, folding like scorched silk, revealing what the memory had tried to bury.

At the centre of the classroom, suspended above the flame and rot, was Liz.

No longer a child. Not a memory. The real one. Her body curled in on itself inside a cage of thorned glass, shards pressing in against her skin. Her mouth moved in a silent scream. Her fists bled as she beat against the prison, her eyes wide – but unfocused. Unseeing.

"She's trapped in her own protection," Hana whispered.

Another step forward – but the light in her soul faltered.

Too much. She was slipping. Her thoughts were unravelling – memories burned for fuel were gone. Not buried. Erased.

Her name – the one only her brother used – gone. The face of the shrine elder – gone. The smell of incense from the last New Year's prayer – gone.

She was running out of self.

The Devourer stepped through the crumbling chalkboard like a curtain.

Still wearing Mr. Evans' skin.

Still smiling.

Unburnt. Unbothered.

"You're breaking the rules, Hana-chan."

She raised a shaking hand. "Let her go."

He tilted his head. "You don't belong in here."

"Neither do you."

He stepped closer, folding his hands behind his back. His cardigan was spotless.

"She doesn't want you," he said kindly. "She asked for peace. You bring her pain."

"I'm trying to save her."

"No. You're trying to own her grief. Like it's yours to fix."

Behind him, the glass cage began to sink – slow, deliberate – into the burning floor.

Hana moved to follow.

Then Liz's voice stopped her.

A whisper. Barely audible.

"Go."

One word. No anger. No sorrow. Just rejection – like closing a door on someone no longer wanted.

Cold.

And final.

The world stilled.

Then shuddered, hard.

The vines lashed upward. The fire reversed direction – rising from the floor, trying to pull her out. Her feet slid. The classroom peeled away, the trees collapsing, the sky falling in.

She tried to anchor herself, but her aura wouldn't hold. Her thoughts scattered like leaves in a storm.

She screamed, "Liz, I'm not giving up on you!"

But the voice was gone.

Only the Devourer remained, watching as she was ripped backward through the crumbling memory. Still smiling.

"Class dismissed," he whispered.

And Hana was ejected.

…………………

The void wasn't black.

It was white.

Blinding. Endless. A featureless, sterile nothing that echoed with no sound, because there was nothing to echo off of. No walls. No ground. No air.

Just absence.

Hana floated in it, limbs slack. Her body shimmered at the edges, flickering like a bad projection. Every breath was an effort. Every thought dragged behind her like chains through snow.

Blood trickled from her nose. Her eyes. Even her ears. She tasted copper. She felt nothing.

No time passed here. Or maybe it all did.

The world had rejected her. Liz had rejected her. And the Devourer… it hadn't even needed to fight. Just smile. Just wait. Like the parasite it was.

She should've been flung back to her body by now. To the shrine. To Max. But she wasn't.

She was still here. Somehow.

Floating between someone else's memories and her own.

Barely a soul at all.

No. She clenched her teeth. Not yet. I'm not done.

Her fingers twitched. Her skin flickered again – not pain, but instability. The structure of her being was coming apart. Thought by thought. Thread by thread.

This was soulcraft at its ugliest – memory bled for power, truth traded for presence. A path only demons walked. And now her.

The only way forward was the same as before.

She had to pay.

Hana reached inside herself – the way she'd been taught never to do. Not in here. Not this deep. She pressed past her fear, her name, her pain. Past duty. Past honour.

And found the one thing she had never touched.

A memory.

Soft. Fragile.

Her brother. Five years old. Messy hair, snotty nose. Laughing on the temple steps with a toy fox mask hanging crooked off one ear. The last time she ever heard his voice.

He'd died the next day.

And she'd never let herself forget that sound.

Until now.

Her lips parted. A whisper that wasn't words slipped out.

The memory ignited.

No flame. Just erasure. It vanished. Gone. The shape of it. The feel. The sound. Even the ache it left behind.

And power flooded in.

Golden cracks lanced through the void. Symbols burned along her skin, stabilising her flickering body. The void buckled – not with rejection, but with acceptance.

She had paid the toll.

"If I forget him," Hana whispered, trembling, "Liz better be worth it."

The white void began to fold inward. Edges formed where none had existed. The nothingness shivered – and a door emerged.

Wooden. Rotten. Covered in moss and nail scratches. Its hinges bled. The wood pulsed like muscle – wet, rhythmic.

Symbols she didn't recognise were carved into the frame – not letters, but the shapes of things lost: a book, a child's sandal, a shrine bell with no chime.

It waited.

And Hana, blinking back the last of her tears, stepped toward it.

She stepped through it, not knowing what she'd lost.

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