Day 1744.

The Wretch lay where it had fallen, nothing more than a scaffold of ruin sunk into the ash. Its body sagged inward on itself like a tent with the poles removed, bones jutting through thin parchment skin, the chest collapsed into the curve of the earth. What had once been hair was a patchwork of scabs and bare scalp, crusted to the skull. Its mouth hung open in a silent snarl, lips split so many times that the torn edges had hardened into a fixed rictus. The stench clung to it: meat left in the sun, sulphur, the sour wetness of blood long spoiled. Even the forest seemed to recoil.

For a long time, it did not move. The forest had almost claimed it completely, folding silence over its husk as if preparing to bury it. Then, beneath the shattered ribs, something stirred.

At first it was faint — no more than a warmth pressed behind the sternum, fragile as a coal hidden in damp wood. The Wretch convulsed. A twitch ran through its hand, the curled stump of fingers flexing once, then falling limp again. But the warmth did not fade. It pulsed, once. Then again.

Light gathered beneath the bone. It was dim, weak, a smear of colour fighting to escape the ruin of flesh. Slowly, it spread — a dull glow bleeding through paper-thin skin, outlining shattered ribs in red. The chest convulsed. A wet, sucking sound tore loose as lungs that had forgotten breath dragged air in too sharply, ripping scar tissue with the effort. The cough that followed sounded like stone breaking under water. Black sludge poured from its mouth, thick and tar-like, steaming where it struck the ash. It writhed for a moment as if alive before shrivelling to dust.

The body arched against the ground, vertebrae grinding into alignment one by one. Each pop was sharp enough to echo. Collarbones shifted, splitting and re-knitting, new marrow forcing old shards back into place. The hip twisted, then snapped forward with a sound like green wood breaking. Flesh bubbled around the wound, boiling until toes re-formed from the bloody pulp.

It gasped, not with relief but with pain so sharp it seemed to tear the forest itself. Blood and old rot spilled from the throat. Then, for the first time in months, the mouth closed. The jaw creaked as tendons regrew. The swollen tongue shrank into place. The split lips bled, sealed, then split again, skin forcing itself into shape until a semblance of a mouth returned.

One eye fluttered. The crust binding it cracked, flakes of dried blood scattering down the cheek. Beneath, the socket was hollow. Now an empty hole. Then a shimmer of light grew inside — a spinning ember, red and black, fragile but alive. It widened into an iris, a pupil, a whole eye that rolled upward until it caught the pale sky.

The Wretch blinked, an almost forgotten sensation. It was not sight as it had once known it, but it was sight again.

From the chest the glow spread faster now, rippling along ruined veins like a slow fire through frozen streams. Muscles clenched and unclenched as fibres re-knit. Splintered stubs of fingers cracked open, white bone jutting outward until new sinew wrapped around them. Nails burst through as if sprouting from soil. Arms flexed, trembling, clenching at the dirt in pain.

A sound slipped out — a moan, ragged and wet, but not the groan of a corpse. It was alive.

The red glow drifted beyond the body, wrapping it like smoke, veiling the naked ruin in silk and heat. It clung to her ribs, wound across her thighs, curled over her spine. Not clothing, not armour. Not yet. But a promise.

And in that cocoon of heat and ruin, the Wretch began to change.

The thing that had crawled for one thousand, seven hundred, and forty-three days was no longer the Wretch.

The name itself felt brittle now, like a husk sloughing from her skin. The crawling, the silence, the endless scratching—it had been survival, not self. The ember burning in her chest reminded her of that, burning away the word it and forcing her to remember I.

For so long she had been nothing but a vessel of rot and ritual. Now, with every pulse of the red line, something old pressed back through the cracks: the memory of breath that belonged to a girl, the whisper of a name that was hers before the forest stole it.

Liz.

And though her body still trembled, scarred and blood-soaked, the word lived again.

***

The air stilled. Not peace, but a pause — the kind that comes when something vast has drawn in a breath.

Liz raised her head from the ash, body trembling under the glow that now clung to her ribs. Her hair fell in matted clumps across her face, strands burned blonde and brittle yet shimmering faintly red in the aura's light. She blinked through the haze, vision raw but clear enough to see the horizon shifting.

The Devourer was no longer distant.

It loomed at the edge of the plain, its enormity blotting out thought. Its legs were ridged monoliths stitched from bone-bound corpses, joints flexing with the crack of timber splitting. Its torso yawned open with every step, a cathedral of mouths chanting in voices she half-recognized — April's lullabies stretched thin, Jack's sobs bent into mockery, her own younger screams warped into a choir of hunger.

Dozens of limbs sprouted from its body, not in symmetry but in frenzy. Some were too long, dragging like ropes across the ash. Others bent insect-tight, folded into knives. A few ended in hands. Others in infant mouths, black teeth gnashing as they dripped saliva that hissed when it struck the ground.

The Titan did not roar. It reached.

The first strike was a blur — a tendril spearing across the ash like a harpoon. Liz lifted her arm instinctively, too slow, and pain ripped through her shoulder as the limb punched clean through flesh. Blood sprayed hot across her chest. The tendril writhed inside her body, jerking her forward like a hooked fish. She screamed, voice raw but alive, a sound the forest had not heard in years.

Another limb lashed from the side, thick and wormlike, spiraled with mouths that bit into her thigh. It yanked, tearing her from her knees, slamming her onto her back. Ash scattered in a storm around her, pain lighting every nerve she had only just regrown.

The Titan surged closer. Limbs converged, dozens of them, all snapping toward her throat, her chest, her stomach.

She didn't think. She raised a hand.

And the air cracked.

A shimmer burst into being before her palm — curved, translucent, glowing red. The first tendril struck the barrier with a sound like bone colliding with a gong. The recoil sent a screech ripping across the field, ichor splattering the shield before sliding down its curve.

Liz gasped. Her arm shook with the effort, but the strike had not pierced. For the first time since the forest had swallowed her, an attack had stopped before it broke her.

The psychic aura had answered.

Another limb darted in, the shield flaring and spitting it back with a scream of ichor. A second slammed against the dome and rebounded. The blows rang like hammer on anvil, her teeth clenching with every strike. Her body shook, wounds bleeding freely, but the barrier still held.

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The Titan's mouths screamed, dozens at once, the sound like iron rails splitting. Limbs launched in a frenzy, hammering against the shield in a storm of fury. Liz braced both arms now, palms forward, eyes wide as the aura tightened and curved into a dome around her body. The red light shimmered with each strike, rippling like glass about to shatter.

She screamed back, not in terror but in defiance.

"Not again," she rasped, the words breaking with blood. "Never again."

The words cracked her lips, blood streaking down her chin. But the sound was hers.

And the shield grew brighter.

***

The Titan's assault did not relent. Its limbs fell like a storm, hammering against the shield in endless succession, each blow forcing Liz's heels deeper into the ash until her calves trembled with strain. The barrier pulsed with every strike, its light thinning, fissures branching outward like cracks in old glass. One tendril forced its way through, slashing across her ribs and spilling hot blood down her side, and though her body staggered under the impact her arm rose again without thought, patching the gap in the shield with another flare of red light before the next blow could land.

She knew it would not hold. She could feel the pressure of the Titan's hunger pressing through, patient and unstoppable, a tide that would break her defenses no matter how tightly she clenched her fists. Her lungs burned, each breath shallow and raw, and her legs wanted nothing more than to collapse. But her hand moved of its own accord, curling into that familiar gesture — the scrape, the claw, the motion her body had repeated for years in the dark at the base of the cliff.

It was the same rhythm she had carved into steel with bone and blood. The same stroke she had used to inscribe her father's name until her hands were nothing but ruin. That had been defiance too. And this was no different.

Her fingers clenched, and the aura obeyed.

The air split with a shriek like bone tearing from bone, and from her palm a lash of red fire cracked outward — wild, jagged, uncontrolled. It struck one of the Titan's limbs, and the cut was absolute, flesh parting in a spray of black ichor that hissed where it struck the ash. Flesh and mouths parted cleanly in two, the severed end writhing like a gutted eel before it dissolved into black ichor that hissed and steamed into the dirt.

Liz stood frozen, her hand still raised, the afterimage of the strike burning across her vision. Smoke curled from her fingertips, the faint shimmer of the whip flickering as though it lingered just beneath her skin, waiting to be summoned again. For a heartbeat she could only stare, trembling, at the space where the limb had been.

Her whole body shook, waiting for the recoil, for the punishment, for the forest to laugh at her. None came. The silence that followed was worse — because it meant the strike was real. Her strike.

She had struck back. For the first time in one thousand, seven hundred and forty-four days, she was not only resisting — she was wounding.

The Devourer did not roar, it did not lunge. It simply stilled. Its cathedral of mouths fell silent, and across its body the faces blinked in eerie unison. Some were her own, some Jack's, some April's, others unrecognizable, but all of them turned their gaze upon her, as though the Titan itself was recalculating. And then, impossibly, it shifted its weight backward. Not in fear, but in recognition — as though it had felt, perhaps for the first time, the faint outline of something it could not entirely own.

Liz's knees threatened to give way, her ribs burned, and blood ran freely down her side, but she forced herself upright. The red light clung to her hands, pulsing in rhythm with her breath, no longer passive but alive, and she felt the ember inside her spine blaze hotter with each inhale.

Her lips cracked into something almost like a smile. Her voice came raw and broken, each word catching in her throat.

"Does it hurt?" she rasped, blood thick in her throat. "Good. You never stopped making me bleed."

***

The Devourer did not hesitate long. Whatever calculation had stilled it, the answer it found was not retreat but escalation. Its cathedral-body convulsed, and dozens of tendrils erupted outward at once, coiling and uncoiling with insect speed, their tips splitting into hooks, blades, and gnashing mouths. They lashed toward her in a wide net, not simply to strike but to engulf, to wrap and crush her as they had done a thousand times before.

Liz did not step back. She no longer remembered what it felt like to run. Instead she drew the ember deeper into her chest and raised both arms, her blood-slick hands trembling as the aura rushed to meet the motion. Red light poured across her body, not as a veil this time but as armor: plates of translucent fire curving over her ribs, bands of molten glass sheathing her forearms, sigils curling down her thighs like veins turned outward. It was not clothing, not a disguise for her nakedness, but something truer — protection shaped directly from her defiance.

The first wave struck, and the air cracked like thunder. Her shield buckled, red arcs sparking across the ash as limbs slammed into it again and again, each blow heavier than the last. Liz's muscles screamed with the strain, her wounds reopening beneath the pressure, but her stance held. Each time her heels slid backward she forced them into the ground again, teeth grinding as though she could pin herself to reality through sheer will.

The Titan bellowed, its many voices layered into one cavernous sound that shook the field. Mouths on its torso opened wider, chanting in guttural tones, and the limbs surged forward in a final rush, collapsing on her like a tidal wave of flesh.

Liz screamed, not in despair but in fury, and thrust her arms forward. The shield flared outward, no longer a wall but an explosion. A shockwave of red fire erupted from her chest, racing across the ash in a wide arc. The nearest tendrils shattered into clouds of black dust, their severed ends shrivelling as if burned from the inside out. Others recoiled, writhing back toward the Titan, their mouths shrieking as the aura seared their flesh.

For the first time since she had entered this place, Liz was not being torn apart. She was standing, bleeding, battered, but she was the one pushing back.

Her body shook from the exertion, her legs trembling, but the ember inside her pulsed brighter with every heartbeat. Her hair, filthy and matted, lifted in the heat, strands glowing faintly red in the aura's shimmer. Her eyes blazed, no longer dull and hollow but burning with a new light, sharp enough to pierce through the haze of ash and smoke.

The Titan reeled, limbs folding inward, its thousand mouths shrieking in discordant fury. But beneath the rage there was something else — hesitation, the faintest fracture in its relentless hunger.

Liz raised her hand again, the aura coiling into her palm, not as a shield this time but as a weapon waiting to be shaped. The memory of scratching steel pulsed in her bones, the same rhythm that had carried her through endless days of despair. Only now, when her fingers clenched, the motion carried not just the weight of resistance but the power to wound.

She dragged a breath through her raw throat, and when she spoke, the words were cracked but steady.

"No… I'm still here… you hear me? I'm still here!"

The aura flared, waiting for her command.

And for the first time, the Titan did not move. It only watched.

***

The air hung still, heavy as if the entire maze were holding its breath.

The Devourer Titan loomed at the far edge of the ash field, its mass folding in on itself, limbs curling close like a predator deciding whether to strike again. Dozens of eyes blinked open and shut across its torso and skulls, some in Jack's shape, some in April's, some wearing her own face. All of them fixed on her, watching, calculating.

Liz stood in the centre of that emptiness, trembling, her aura still sparking in faint red strips that clung to her ribs and spine. Her arms ached. Her blood still leaked down her side in slow, sticky rivulets. But she was upright. She had stood against it. And for the first time, the Titan hadn't swallowed her whole.

Her left hand twitched faintly, the ghost of the whip still alive in her bones. Every nerve in her body screamed for rest, but the ember in her chest pulsed steady, reminding her that she was not empty anymore. That she could strike back.

The Devourer Titan didn't move. Its mouths hung open, teeth slick and waiting, but no sound came. The voices that had filled her bones went quiet. The laughter stopped. Even the forest hushed, as though something vast was holding its breath. It didn't retreat. It only watched, shrinking not in size but in presence — the silence itself more terrifying than its screams.

Her breath came ragged, but no longer frantic. Her knees buckled once, twice, before she sank into the ash. Not collapsed. Lowered. Choosing to sit. Choosing not to run. The red glow still simmered beneath her ribs, faint as dying coals, but real.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, pressing her forehead against them. The silence pressed close. But for the first time, she wasn't afraid of it. She wasn't waiting for the hallucinations, for the crawling things under her skin, for the thousand voices mocking her. She wasn't begging. She wasn't scratching.

She had struck back. And the thing that had shaped her torment had faltered.

That was enough, at least for now.

Her aura flickered once more, curling across her shoulders like a blanket before fading to smoke. The forest did not roar. The sky did not fall. The Titan did not advance.

And Liz, for the first time in what felt like centuries, closed her eyes. Not in surrender, nor despair. But for rest.

The maze did not contest it.

No voices. No screaming teeth in the dark. Only the slow rhythm of her breath in the ash.

Not safe, not in here. But no longer prey.

Not anymore.

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