Day 7.

Liz woke to breathing. Not hers.

The sound was slow and patient, as if the tree itself were alive, drawing air into lungs buried beneath its bark. Veins pulsed through the trunk, black and sluggish, as if some vast heart was buried just under the surface. She reached out without thinking, palm brushing the ridged bark, and the sound seemed to roll through her like a second heartbeat.

It was warm. Wet. Alive.

She recoiled as though burned and tried to push herself upright. Pain lanced her body in reply. Her legs screamed with stiffness, her back ached as if fire had stitched itself into her spine, and her shirt — what was left of it — clung damp and rank against her side. Blood had dried into flakes along her ribs while sweat glued the fabric in place.

She shifted her foot and cried out.

Her sole was shredded, heel raw, skin split into ragged ribbons. Her toes were blackened, oozing pus, each root and stone she had stepped on burned into her flesh like a brand. It felt like the forest had been carving her with every mile, etching the grooves of the earth into her body until she no longer belonged to herself.

How long had she been running?

She didn't know. She couldn't remember stopping.

The forest never changed. The trees always loomed — bare, skeletal, stretching into a skyless dark. The ground always twitched beneath her like muscle under skin. Every so often, the soil shivered, as if something buried there was dreaming of her. Waiting to wake.

Liz pressed her palm against her temple.

Her name.

What was her name?

"Li…" Her tongue was swollen, her throat scraped raw.

"Liz."

The word sounded wrong. Too small. Too far away from the ache dragging through her bones.

She looked down at her arm. Three long claw marks raked across her forearm, edges grey, the skin writhing faintly as if itched from the inside.

Liz gagged.

She turned her head and vomited. At first, it was dry heaves — then thick sludge forced its way out, black and red, steaming as it hit the dirt.

The tree beside her shuddered, bark rattling like laughter.

She spat, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her stomach was empty, her body hollow. She was trembling before she even found her knees.

Move.

The thought hit her with the weight of instinct, not choice.

Keep moving.

She didn't know why. Only that if she stopped, she might never move again.

Liz staggered upright, clutching the breathing tree for balance. Her legs shook beneath her, barely able to carry her weight.

Somewhere ahead, faint in the dark, she heard singing.

Not melody. Just a low stretch of syllables.

"I miss you… I miss you… I miss you…"

Her voice.

Liz's teeth clenched hard enough to ache. Her own voice, echoing ahead, baiting her deeper.

She whispered another name. Not hers. Not the forest's.

"Jack?"

Only the trees answered. Another slow exhale, damp and warm, carrying the smell of rot.

She dragged herself forward. Every step left blood behind, dark streaks painting the roots. The forest didn't part for her, but neither did it strike yet. It only watched.

Time stretched here, thin and warped — minutes felt like days, days like years. Each step carried the weight of eternity, and Liz couldn't shake the terror that she might already have spent a lifetime in this place.

She remembered the hospital.

Not the wards, not the fire drills — but a bathroom she had never actually seen. White tiles, yellow light, the tap still running. Jack slumped in the tub, wrists open, water turning pink as it spiralled down the drain. His eyes were glassy, mouth half-open like he'd been calling her name when the strength left him.

Liz staggered under the weight of it. She knew it hadn't happened. Couldn't have. But the maze pressed it into her skull like it was truth, and her body believed every detail — the copper sting in the air, the way his hoodie hung damp over the chair, the silence that followed.

Her chest locked. Her throat sealed. It was the same as now: her body breaking, the world pressing down, voices just out of reach.

The ground pulsed under her foot. She winced, swallowing a cry. The pain was etched into her now, a second heartbeat.

Far ahead, something glowed. A shape standing in the dark. Arms open, golden light spilling around its frame.

Liz limped toward it, every breath ragged.

Behind her, the forest began to sing again.

"Lizzy. You brought us back."

***

The trees parted.

Not slowly. Not with sound. One moment they pressed close like ribs, the next they peeled back in silence, opening into light.

Liz stumbled forward, blinking hard against the sudden brightness.

The forest was gone.

She stood in the quad of her high school. Benches sat under shade sails, concrete paths cracked from heat and time. Gum clung beneath tables, graffiti sprawled across the stair rail. The air carried the smell of sun-warmed pavement and sweet rot from orange peels left too long in the bin.

Blue sky stretched overhead, wide and impossibly open. After the endless dark, the sight of it struck her like a blow — so perfect it made her chest ache.

She froze, afraid to breathe. The silence was… right. No whispers. No blood. Birds chattered faintly above. From a hallway came the sound of laughter, warm and distant, and her heart lurched — not in fear, but recognition.

Am I back?

"Liz?"

Her head snapped around.

Jack.

He leaned against one of the benches, hands shoved deep into his hoodie pockets, hair sticking out from under his cap in shaggy tufts. That stupid lopsided grin tugged at his face — so familiar it almost hurt to look at. His school uniform was still creased, shoes scuffed the way they always had been.

Liz's throat cracked open. "Jack."

She ran to him. The pain in her feet didn't matter. She threw her arms around his chest, burying her face against him as sobs tore free.

He didn't flinch. Didn't fade. His arms wrapped around her and held her fast, chin settling gently against her temple. He was solid, warm, everything she had begged for in the dark.

"Finally," he whispered. "Took you long enough."

Liz shook against him, tears soaking his hoodie. For a moment the forest, the blood, the screaming pain all fell away.

"I thought you were gone," she managed.

Jack leaned back just enough to look at her, smirk tugging wider. "Pfft. I'm not that easy to get rid of."

She laughed through her tears, a wet hiccup. "I dreamed about this. I kept thinking… if I could just get back here, just one second, maybe everything would be okay."

Jack's hand squeezed her shoulder. "And now you have it."

Her eyes blurred. "Do I?"

Footsteps echoed across the quad.

"Liz!"

Chloe jogged toward her, sketchbook tucked under one arm. Alyssa followed with her easy swagger, rolling her eyes like she always did, ponytail swinging.

Chloe's smile was calm, soft. "We found you."

Alyssa tilted her head, mock-annoyed. "Crying again? God, Liz, you're so dramatic."

Liz blinked, startled. The tone was wrong — too sharp, too cruel.

Chloe put a hand on her arm, fingers light. "It's okay. We've all been through a lot."

"Yeah," Alyssa said, leaning against the rail, voice dripping. "Some of us just didn't fold like a paper doll."

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Jack chuckled behind her. "They're not wrong. You kinda do cry a lot."

Liz turned, confusion knotting in her chest. "What?"

His grin hadn't changed. But his eyes… darker, hollow.

"C'mon," he said. "You're always the victim. Poor Liz. 'Oh no, I'm haunted by my decisions.'"

Her stomach tightened.

"Chloe?" she whispered.

Chloe's gaze lifted. Her smile was gone. "You summoned a demon to raise your mother. That's not sad. That's pathetic."

Liz flinched as though struck. "No—no, I—"

"Did you think it made you brave?" Alyssa circled closer, voice brittle as glass. "Made you special?"

Liz shook her head. "This isn't real."

But her body didn't move. Her feet locked against the concrete, as though the ground had claimed her.

Because she wanted it to be real.

So badly it hurt.

Jack stepped in again, grin softening back into something gentle. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, thumb grazing her cheek. "You're safe now. Don't fight it."

Her throat burned. Tears welled again.

For one fragile second she let herself believe.

Maybe this was real. Maybe she had escaped.

Maybe she was safe.

Jack's smile widened. "You are," he whispered.

And for a heartbeat — just one — she believed him.

***

Something in the air shifted.

Liz still clung to Jack, but the warmth of his embrace was wrong now, like water cooling around her skin. His hand slid down from her shoulder and lingered at her waist. Too long. Too deliberate. When it left, the absence was worse than the touch.

"You're shaking," he said. His grin was still there, gentle, almost tender, but his voice curled around the words like it wanted to own them. "It's kind of cute."

Liz's body went rigid. The warmth in her chest guttered like a candle in wind.

Jack's eyes travelled lower, following the shape of her ribs, her waist, her bare legs. She saw his tongue move inside his mouth, pressing against his teeth as though he was tasting something.

"Jack?" Her voice cracked.

"Relax," he murmured, smile widening. "You were always sexiest when you were scared."

The air seemed to thin around her.

She spun toward Chloe, desperate. "Did you hear that?"

Chloe laughed, but it wasn't her laugh. The sound was fragile, like glass straining under weight. "You do look good, though," she said, stepping closer. "All roughed up. Like one of those tragic heroines in a sketchbook." Her eyes flicked down, studying Liz like she was shading lines instead of seeing a friend.

Alyssa came up from the other side, hands tucked in her jacket pockets, grin slanted wide. "Honestly, if you were going to beg a demon to raise your mum, you should've at least asked for a makeover. Tragic and boring? That's a heavy combo, Liz."

Liz's stomach dropped. "Stop."

Chloe tilted her head, smile sharpening. "Your ribs are showing. Boys like that, you know."

Liz shook her head fast, as if she could physically deny the words. "Stop—"

Jack leaned in again, brushing her hair back from her cheek. His thumb lingered there, slow, like he was tracing her face for himself. His breath warmed her ear. "I missed this. You always smelled like sugar. Even after gym class."

Her chest seized. She shoved his hand away, but he only laughed softly.

"Playing hard to get?"

A hand touched her wrist. Chloe's, feather-light but cold. Alyssa stepped in behind her, the warmth of her breath sliding against Liz's neck. Their circle closed without her noticing, voices overlapping, too calm, too certain.

"Don't fight it," Chloe whispered.

"You made us this way," Alyssa added.

Jack's hands came back to her waist. He pressed his forehead against hers, voice dropping into something almost reverent. "You wanted us back."

The world flickered.

For a heartbeat the faces around her shifted, blurred by heat and light. Jack was gone. Chloe and Alyssa too.

In their place stood Ethan — not the uncle she knew, but younger, shoulders broad in his old firefighter's jacket. April was beside him. His hand rested on her shoulder, casual at first glance… but his eyes lingered too long, not protective, not brotherly or friendly. Hunger threaded the look. Liz felt her child-self again, small, watching, knowing something was wrong but not understanding.

The memory stabbed at her, half-recognition, half-nightmare. Had she really seen him look at Mum that way once, years ago? Or was the maze stitching rot into her head until she couldn't tell which pieces were hers? The doubt clung like oil, and even as the vision burned away, the sickness of it stayed.

The vision burned away as quickly as it came. Jack stood there once more, smiling like nothing had changed.

"You saw it," the voices layered, no longer Jack or Chloe or Alyssa but something deeper, older. "You always knew what he wanted. You just looked away."

Liz staggered back. "No—"

The illusion blinked. Ethan gone. Jack back in his place, face clean, grin wide, eyes dark.

"You're safe with me," Jack whispered. His hands tightened around her waist, fingers digging into skin that wasn't his to touch. "Always were."

Chloe's nails pinched at her wrist. Alyssa leaned in close, her voice brushing Liz's ear. "You can't fight us. You don't want to."

Their voices merged, a chorus pressing down on her, each one borrowing from her own thoughts.

"You wanted this." "You made this." "You are this."

Liz's breath sawed in her chest. Her body refused to move. Her scream stayed locked in her throat.

Jack kissed her.

Not rough. Not violent. Tender. His lips pressed against hers as though he owned the memory, sliding soft and sure like he'd done it a hundred times. Like he had every right.

Liz's stomach twisted. Panic surged hot and cold through her body. She wrenched her arm free and raked her nails across his face.

The skin tore like paper.

Black blood sprayed across her cheek, warm and stinking of rot. Jack reeled back with a snarl, half his smile hanging in tatters.

"Bitch—"

Alyssa lunged for Liz's shoulder, but Liz swung wild, fist crunching into her jaw. Bone gave way. Alyssa dropped, teeth scattered across the pavement like chalk.

Chloe's eyes widened. For a moment — just a moment — her face flickered, the quad behind her cracking like glass under strain.

Jack straightened, lips curled back from his teeth, voice flat. "You never loved me."

Liz wiped the blood from her cheek, breathing hard, fire seething in her chest. Her words came steady, cut from something stronger than fear.

"You're not him. Jack never looked at me like I was broken. And he sure as hell never touched me without asking."

She bared her teeth. "You're nothing."

And she ran.

The quad peeled away, sky folding inward like burning paper. The forest swallowed her again.

And the laughter followed.

***

The forest snapped back around her like a ribcage closing.

Liz staggered through the sudden dark, lungs burning, the taste of black blood still sour on her tongue. Branches scraped her arms as she pushed forward, and every step tore fresh pain through her ruined feet. She wanted to stop, to curl into the dirt and disappear, but the sound behind her kept her moving.

Laughter.

Not Jack's. Not Chloe's. Not Alyssa's. All of them, layered together, warped until it sounded like a single vast mouth grinning through the trees.

"Still running, Lizzy?" "You're so stubborn." "Is this all you are now? A body in motion until it breaks?"

She clenched her fists and forced her legs to move faster. Her breath came in ragged bursts. The ground shifted beneath her, roots curling like fingers trying to catch her ankles. Trees leaned together, branches knitting overhead until the sky vanished completely. The path narrowed, then split, then looped back on itself. Every direction was the same.

She wasn't escaping. She was feeding it.

Liz stumbled on a jut of rock and nearly went down, catching herself against the trunk of a tree slick with some pulsing fluid. Her stomach lurched. She vomited hard, but nothing came out at first—only bile and strings of red. Then something thicker forced itself up, a clot of rage that steamed as it hit the dirt.

The forest shuddered around her. The laughter swelled.

"You taste of anger." "You taste of regret." "You taste of us."

Liz wiped her mouth with the back of her shaking hand. She tried to scream at them, but her throat was raw, voice nothing but a rasp. So she ran harder.

The ground began to rise. At first it was only a slope, then a climb, then a steep, endless ascent that dragged at her legs like lead. Her bare feet slipped on moss-slick roots. Blood streaked behind her, marking every step in a stuttering pattern.

Time fractured.

She passed the same crooked tree three times. The same boulder split in half, bleeding a trickle of dark water. The same bird carcass with its beak torn away, staring at her with one milky eye.

Was it minutes? Hours? Years?

The forest bent all of it, stretching seconds into eternities until she felt she had lived and died here a dozen times already.

"You're a fighter, Liz," the voices purred from the dark. "A real good girl." "But you're not fighting me. You're fighting you."

Her legs buckled. She dropped to her knees, skin splitting on the rocks, but she forced herself up again with a sob. Her body moved out of spite now, not strength.

The path tightened. Trees closed in until the branches raked her face. She clawed through them, skin tearing, hair catching, one branch slicing a line across her cheek. She didn't even feel it.

The air grew hotter with every step, clinging to her like someone else's breath.

Her stomach clenched again. She vomited once more, but this time it wasn't bile or blood. It was a stream of red that glowed faintly as it hit the ground — not substance but fury made flesh.

The forest roared with laughter, shaking so hard she thought the trunks might snap.

"You see? We don't take from you, Lizzy. You give." "Every mile, every scream, every thought you won't let go." "All of it feeds us."

"No!" The word tore out of her throat, cracked and broken.

She lurched forward, clawing at the earth, dragging herself up the slope. The ground pulsed beneath her palms, warm and wet, as though she was crawling over muscle.

At the crest, she collapsed against something that wasn't a tree at all. A ribcage, massive and half-buried, hollowed out and black like it had been carved from coal. She scrambled back in shock, but behind her the path had closed, trees folding tight until there was no retreat.

Forward. Always forward.

Liz forced herself through another thicket, branches tearing her clothes, one root catching her ankle hard enough to tear skin. She ripped herself free, leaving blood behind, and stumbled onward until her body finally gave out.

She hit the ground beside a rotting stump, chest heaving, vision swimming with black spots. The laughter quieted, but only because it no longer needed to chase.

"You were never escaping," the voice whispered through the dark. "You've been running deeper and deeper into me."

***

She didn't remember the moment her body gave out. Only the stillness that followed.

Liz lay curled beneath a tangle of roots that arched overhead like a crown of thorns. The earth beneath her was soft and spongy, soaked through with moisture that pulsed as if something alive was pushing heat up from below. Every breath she drew tasted of rot and mould.

Her chest rose in shallow gasps. Her lips were split, her tongue too dry to form words. Dirt and blood crusted her hands where they trembled weakly against her ribs, and her legs no longer seemed to belong to her at all. They were still there, she knew they were, but the forest had numbed them until they felt stolen.

She tried to summon her name. Nothing came.

What was I before this?

The thought drifted through her like smoke. She reached for it, but it dissolved, as though her mind itself had grown porous. She remembered saying it once — Liz — but the sound no longer fit her. Layer by layer the forest had stripped her down: her voice, her body, her memories. What remained hardly felt like a person. More like a hollow shell filled with ache.

Something moved beside her.

Not sudden. Not violent. Just a slow adjustment, like weight settling deeper into soil. The roots around her creaked, and the ground pressed against her ear as though it wanted to listen.

Liz didn't lift her head. She couldn't.

"You stopped running," said a voice. It was low, calm, intimate — not cruel, which somehow made it worse. "Good girl."

A dry sound caught in her throat, half sob, half laugh.

"You see it now, don't you?" the voice continued. "You were never in a maze."

The roots above her flexed with a groan, heavy as bones.

"You are the maze."

Her eyelids fluttered open, and she pressed her cheek deeper into the soil. Her broken laugh cracked again, too weak to be real sound.

The presence didn't move closer. It didn't need to.

"Every scream you carried. Every memory you clung to. Every heartbeat you wasted on ghosts… all of it fed me. You thought you were escaping, but every step was another stitch in my skin."

Her mind scrambled through faces.

Dad. Chloe. Alyssa. Jack.

Mum.

Memory cut into her like glass: the circle chalked in candlelight, her palm bleeding into the floor, her own voice breaking as she whispered the bargain. Give me anything. Just bring her back.

She had done it. She had brought her mother back. And she had lost her again in fire.

Now there was nothing left. Just a whisper trapped inside her own bones.

Her lips moved. No sound escaped.

Not her mother's name. Not even her own.

"Dad…"

The air pulsed in answer. Once. Then again. A faint warmth brushed against her skin, fragile as the glow of a coal. For an instant she thought she felt him, distant but reaching.

But the voice pressed closer, curling through her like smoke.

"Don't waste yourself on shadows. Your father can't reach you here. No one can. Not Max. Not Dan. Not anyone." The warmth faltered. The roots above her quivered. The voice leaned closer, curling through her skull. "Let me in, Lizzy. I'll wear your mother's voice forever, so you'll never lose her again. I'll whisper as your father too, if that's what it takes. You'll never be alone again — because I'll be everyone you've ever loved."

The warmth faltered. The roots above her quivered.

Her body curled tighter, arms wrapped around herself as if she could guard what little remained inside. Her mouth worked, but no words formed — only the sound of her own ragged breath.

In the end she gave nothing back.

Only silence.

And silence was the only defiance she had left.

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