Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 197: Ch195. Ain’t no rest for the wicked

Chapter 197: Ch195. Ain’t no rest for the wicked

"You were desperate, and when you learned that there was a door, you opened it. But I’m the one who walked through it." Sarissa whispered as she breathed in deeply. "It gave us everything... Time, strength, a way to be enough."

And after a moment of silence, in which she observed the field of wildflowers, dancing in the spring breeze, she added.

"But it also gave us a cage."

For a long moment, there was only silence, the wind, and the smell of flowers. And then, slowly, she opened her eyes.

She was back in the room.

The Professor’s study.

Miles sat before her, frozen mid-breath, a hand still half-raised toward her shoulder.

Cheshire perched between her crossed legs, his tail still, watching her with wide, waiting eyes.

She exhaled.

The knife was not in her lap, the Story was dead, and she was still alive.

She leaned forward, resting her head in her hands, and she felt the tears rolling down her face even before she noticed her vision becoming blurry.

"Are you okay?" Miles spoke first, softly.

"I will be." Sarissa looked forward, meeting his eyes.

"Is it gone?" Cheshire padded cookies in her thigh, blinking slowly, his wide grin soft.

"It’s gone."

"You severed the chain." He sounded solemn. "You unwrote the unwriting."

"Ironic, isn’t it?" Sarissa smiled, just barely.

"No." Miles said, his lips curling upwards ever so slightly. "It’s your nature."

She nodded, chuckling a bit between sobs she didn’t knew she was sobbing.

And then, finally, allowed herself to catch the cat in her arms, and hug him.

Because for the first time since she was a girl curled in a dark alley, Sarissa wasn’t running anymore.

She wasn’t alone anymore.

She was choosing to move forward.

"... Hurts-" Cheshire meowed.

"Sorry." She chuckled, and let go of Cheshire.

"No..." Cheshire raised his paws, reaching out to her. "It’s a good kind of hurt... It’s like you’re... Closer."

Sarissa wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands and leaned back, still feeling the echo of the hug in her chest. Cheshire stayed curled beside her like a warm weight, a tether to the now.

Miles didn’t press her with more questions. He just sat there, letting the silence breathe, only breaking it when it needed breaking.

"So," he said after a beat. "What does it feel like?"

"To be free." Sarissa blinked at him.

She didn’t answer right away, her hand drifted toward her chest, where the blade had once hovered, where the echoes of pain had once nested. The air there felt lighter. Not empty, but no longer burdened.

"Like I’ve finally stopped holding my breath." She said. "Like I can look forward without wondering what I’ll have to undo."

Miles nodded.

"That’s good." Then, as if remembering something, he added with a smirk, "You’re still a mess, though."

"I just faced down a homicidal ten-year-old version of myself, Miles." She rolled her eyes, smiling.

"Yeah, and you didn’t even bring me a souvenir."

"You two are hopeless." Cheshire snorted.

Sarissa stood slowly, wincing at the soreness in her limbs. There were no wounds now, but her body remembered the battle. It would take time to forget how many times she’d bled across her own history.

She looked to the side, and the field of wildflowers that had once stretched inside her Story was gone. Just the warm, familiar clutter of the Professor’s study surrounded them now. Scrolls, strange teapots, shimmering glyphs carved into corners for reasons she still didn’t understand.

"Should we tell him?" Sarissa asked.

"The Professor?" Cheshire asked, his tail flicking. "He already knows."

As if on cue, a note folded itself into the air with a rustle, drifting down from nowhere in particular, and landing in front of Miles.

He picked it up, turned it over once, and read aloud:

"She rewrote the ink. The Chronicle is hers now. Good. —P."

"I guess he’s always watching." Miles raised an eyebrow.

"That’s deeply unsettling." Sarissa muttered, and Cheshire chuckled approvingly.

"Come on, we should head back. Mara’s probably pacing holes in the floor by now, and the meeting with the guild masters must be over already." Miles stood and stretched.

"She does that?" Sarissa asked.

"She doesn’t pace." Miles said. "She smolders, quietly. While plotting seventeen contingencies."

"Ah. Perfect." Sarissa winced.

"You’re her friend, you should know. I just helped her become the leader they needed." Miles laughed.

They stepped together toward the door of the study. Sarissa’s Chronicle rested quietly inside her, closed, humming with possibility.

When they crossed the threshold, the rift shimmered into place without a word. Cheshire perched on Sarissa’s shoulder like a crown of mischievous wisdom, his grin lopsided and pleased.

The rift let them through gently, and then, they were back in Mara’s Forge.

The temperature change was immediate, cool metal, warm firelight, and the low thrum of enchantments that resonated through the floor. Somewhere above, hammers rang faintly, always at work without Mara’s immediate supervision.

Mara stood at the far end of the entryway hall, arms crossed, her long coat slightly scorched at the hem, as if she’d just walked out of a fire. She didn’t move right away, simply staring at Sarissa.

Then, with the barest twitch of her mouth, she said, tilting her head.

"Well."

"Hi." Sarissa straightened under the gaze.

"You look less like someone who’s been chewed through a dimensional meat grinder." Mara said. "And more like someone who crawled back from it. So... Progress?"

"That’s about right." Sarissa smirked.

"She died screaming, and came back crying. I give it a ten." Cheshire raised a paw lazily.

"Sounds like a Tuesday to me." Mara muttered, but there was a gentleness behind the dryness. She stepped forward, looking Sarissa over, not clinically, but like someone checking to make sure the stitches held.

"You really fixed whatever was haunting you?" She asked.

"Yeah, it’s a new beginning now." Sarissa nodded.

"Good." Mara nodded once, firmly. "Then you’ll be able to face what’s coming."

Miles stepped forward, catching Mara’s attention.

"Is that your ominous way of saying something just broke while we were gone?"

"No. Nothing broke." Mara glanced between them, and after a pause, she added. "But something is breaking."

Cheshire’s ears twitched, and Sarissa narrowed her eyes with a silent question that she knew would soon be answered.

Mara turned, her coat sweeping behind her as she led them into the council chamber.

A large map hovered in midair, rune-marked and shifting, with small red pulses scattered across its eastern edge. The colors had changed since they’d last seen it.

"It’s not just the monsters overflowing from some Dungeons anymore." Mara said. "New Dungeons are spawning, but there’s coordination now. It looks like the system just started to prepare the terrain for the [Dungeon War]."

"And this is happening everywhere?" Miles asked.

Mara didn’t answer right away.

She reached to the map and tapped the glowing eastern edge, where the [Dark Forest] lay, waiting for the Shooting Star guild to arrive. The flare pulsed brighter, then reshaped into a jagged mark, an emblem made of horns sided with spiked wings and a single, slashed-through eye in its center.

"I’m thankful that everything worked out," Mara said quietly, and then looked up, eyes hard as steel.

"Because we have a problem to deal with... A problem named Shinji."