Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 133: Ch131. The war that was (3) - Bloodstained

Chapter 133: Ch131. The war that was (3) - Bloodstained

The world twisted, shifting like a deck of cards shuffled by unseen hands. The Hatter-Miles gasped, his vision spiraling, and when it settled, he was no longer in the Spire.

He was on a battlefield.

The sky above was split apart by streaks of fire. The ground beneath his feet was drenched in red, bodies strewn across it like broken dolls. The banners of the Queen’s army lay tattered, trampled into the mud, their once-proud insignias defiled by the carnage. And there, at the heart of it all, was the Hatter.

He stood atop a mountain of corpses, his silhouette outlined by the flickering light of burning towers. His coat was torn and soaked with blood. Some of it was his own, but most of it was not. In his grasp, the [Harbinger’s Scythe] gleamed, its dark metal rippling with something almost alive, drinking in the slaughter like a beast never sated.

Alice stood beside the Hatter-Miles, watching, her expression unreadable.

"This is what you became."

The Hatter-Miles’ throat was dry. He could not speak. All he could do was watch as the past unfolded before him.

The Hatter moved without hesitation, without mercy. He cut through soldiers, nobles, servants, [Card Soldiers]. Any who stood in his way.

The Queen’s forces, routed and broken, screamed for surrender. Some dropped their weapons, falling to their knees in supplication. But it did not matter.

The Hatter never stopped.

A knight, his armor cracked and helmet lost, clutched his sword with shaking hands.

"Please," he gasped, eyes wide with terror. "Please, we surrender! The war is over!"

"War is never over." The Hatter tilted his head, his stitched grin widening.

The scythe sang through the air, and the knight’s head tumbled to the ground.

The Hatter-Miles recoiled, but the memory would not let him turn away.

He saw the madness, the carnage, the relentless, unstoppable force that the Hatter had become. He was not merely ending the Queen’s reign, he was ensuring that no one who had followed her would remain to remember it, to speak of it.

To even think of rebuilding it.

A woman, draped in the robes of the court, sobbed as she shielded a child with her body.

"The Queen is dead! Alice has forgiven us! Please, have mercy!"

The Hatter paused. For a moment, something flickered in his golden eyes, something almost human.

Then, as quickly as the light gleamed, it faded, and he raised his weapon.

The woman screamed.

The Hatter-Miles staggered back, nausea twisting his gut.

"No," he whispered. "No, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t-"

"And yet you did." Alice’s gaze never wavered from him.

The memory shifted again, faster now, dragging Miles through scene after scene of horror.

The Queen’s decapitated body, her crown rolling in the blood at the Hatter’s feet. The gates of the Queen’s last stronghold thrown open, not by force, but by surrendering hands. Only for the Hatter’s forces to storm in and butcher them all.

Alice, standing atop her newly claimed throne, issuing her decree.

"The war is over. lay down your arms, surrender. You’ll be spared and forgiven."

And the Hatter, standing amidst the bodies of those who had obeyed her command, his mask stained red.

The Hatter-Miles clutched his head, the weight of it all pressing down on him like a vice.

"Why? Why didn’t I stop?"

"Because you did not know how." Alice turned to him, her eyes gleaming like fractured moonlight.

The world twisted again, pulling Miles into the final moment.

The Queen’s palace, now Alice’s. The last of her loyalists kneeling in chains before Alice, before Wonderland’s new ruler. Mercy had been granted. The war had ended. And yet, the Hatter stood before them, his fingers twitching around the scythe’s hilt.

"They have surrendered. I have pardoned them." Alice spoke, her voice gentle shaking ever so slightly.

But the Hatter did not move.

Alice stepped closer, placing a hand on his bloodstained coat.

"Hatter," she said softly. "It’s over."

A tremor ran through him. The scythe wavered in his grip. His head tilted, as if listening to something only he could hear.

The whispers. The hunger of the weapon. The bloodthirst that had become his very being.

Slowly, he turned to Alice, his golden eyes wild, searching. And then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he asked:

"If the war is over... Then why am I still here?"

Alice’s lips parted, but she had no answer.

And the Hatter laughed. A broken, hollow sound.

The vision shattered.

The Hatter-Miles gasped as he was hurled back into the present, his knees hitting the cold floor of the Spire. His hands trembled, his mind reeled.

The truth settled over him like a noose tightening around his throat.

He had not been a hero. He had not a savior.

He had been death itself.

And when the war had ended, he had not known how to be anything else.

"Do you see now?" Alice knelt beside him, tilting her head.

He clenched his fists, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His own reflection stared back at him from the polished floor. His own face, and yet, in the shadowed edges of his vision, he swore he still saw the mask.

The [Ender’s Mask].

"I..." He swallowed hard. "I don’t remember... I don’t remember being that person."

"But that person remembers being you." Alice smiled, but there was no comfort in it.

The Hatter-Miles’ blood ran cold.

The Spire groaned around them, the air thick with something unseen, something waiting. The weight of the past pressing in from all sides. The [Harbinger’s Scythe], the [Ender’s Mask], the war that had ended, and the war that had not.

They had seen the truth. They had witnessed the memories hidden from them.

But the question remained.

What would they do with them?

Alice stood, offering them her hand.

"The story is not finished." She murmured, as they stared at her hand, their mind a storm of emotions.

"You can still make one last choice, my dear Hatter." She said, a hint of compassion in her voice.