Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 224: Ch222. Silent goodbye

Chapter 224: Ch222. Silent goodbye

There was a sound.

Not thunder, not quite.

It was more like the echo of thunder after it had been devoured, swallowed by something too old for the sky. A flash of light, blinding white, hot and burning, and then an absence so complete it consumed thought, motion, even breath itself.

Then came the dark.

Miles landed first, or perhaps he simply hit the ground harder. His back struck root-knotted earth, and for a moment, he didn’t move.

He couldn’t. His breath had been knocked out of him, and his senses spun like a compass without a north. There was the smell of wet leaves, moss, and something old, like rotting parchment and petrichor, pouring into his nose.

He groaned and sat up slowly.

Trees towered around him. Colossal things. Their trunks were twisted, woven together as if the forest had once been alive and in an endless conversation with itself, and then simply stopped.

The canopy overhead was thick with black-green leaves, dappled here and there with pale, unnatural light that did not seem to come from the sun.

The air shimmered.

He looked down and saw Dee curled against his chest, faintly glowing. The tiny salamander stirred, slowly blinking its big, azure eyes.

"You okay?" Miles whispered.

Dee let out a soft trill.

Then, Miles heard a groan from behind.

"Sarissa?" He scrambled to his feet and rushed toward the sound.

She was on her side, coughing, with one hand pressed against her ribs.

"Still breathing..." She muttered, panting heavily as she tried to sit up. "Don’t know for how long, though."

He helped her to a sitting position. They were both scraped, bruised, and disoriented. Then, a noise broke the hush.

A crackle, a whisper of something burning.

They turned in unison.

Behind them, where the strange shimmer in the air had begun to fade, where the rift had just closed, they saw Mara.

She stood unsteadily, one hand outstretched, the other clutching at her side. Her back...

Miles froze.

"No..." He muttered under his breath.

The wound was impossible, a scorched chasm that ran diagonally across her back, carved deep into flesh and bone, blackened at the edges, radiating ruin and finality.

Smoke curled from her cloak, and her breathing came in shallow, rattling pulls.

"No, no, no, no! Mara, stay with me!" Sarissa ran first, skidding across moss and loam.

Mara turned her head slightly, her eyes were dull, but still focused. Still sharp in that way only Mara could be.

"Knew... You two... Would land first." She smiled, but blood coated her teeth. "Didn’t... Want you to see it happen."

Miles dropped beside her, his hands trembling.

"Dee," he said urgently. "Can you heal her? Please?"

The little salamander hissed low, its eyes turned down, sad, mournful. It stepped forward and jumped gently onto Mara’s chest, radiating a gentle light, full of warmth over her.

But nothing changed.

"Dee..." Miles begged. "Try again, please... Please, please, please..."

The tiny salamander wept, its small cry echoing through the silent forest. The damage was too deep, to vast to be contained, or even healed.

It was Lightning’s wrath incarnate in a single strike.

Inevitable.

Sarissa was crying now, openly, her face twisted in rage and helpless grief.

"Why did you... You should’ve gone through first!" She choked.

"Wasn’t... About order." Mara exhaled, slow. Her voice dropped lower. "You lead. I pull the strings... From behind... The curtains. That’s... Always been the deal."

Miles gritted his teeth, clenching his hands into fists.

"We can go back," he said. "We can still kill him. I have the Story. We-"

"No..." Mara said, and her dull eyes met his. Fierce, commanding, and final. "No going... Back."

The portal was gone. Not collapsed, not flickering.

It was gone. The air where it had been now held only silence and stillness, like a eulogy for a quiet soul.

She drew in a final breath, shallow as ash, and said.

"Forward, Miles." Then, her gaze drifted to Sarissa. "You still... Have to win the war."

And then, with one last exhale, Mara closed her eyes, and her body went completely still.

The forest did not mourn her. It simply watched as Miles and Sarissa fell to their knees, sinking their heads into their hands.

Miles felt his chest hollowed by a scream he couldn’t let loose. Sarissa collapsed beside him, gripping Mara’s cooling hand in silence.

For a long time, all they could do was cry.

***

Later – minutes, hours, time lost meaning – they stood.

Miles had not stopped crying, but the tears were dry now, carved into his cheeks like lines in wood.

He laid Mara’s body beneath the roots of a great tree, and the ground parted for him. Not through command, but through reverence.

And while Miles laid Mara’s body into the impossible grave, Dee sang softly, tears streaming down its big eyes as the earth closed over her.

He whispered something, but Sarissa did not ask what it was.

They walked, not because they knew where they were going. But because if they stayed, they would not leave, and they would break.

The forest was strange, familiar and alien all at once.

It curved inward on itself in places. Gravity felt wrong in others, birds did not sing.

Instead, flickers of glowing moths passed between branches, their wings illuminating the bark in ghostlight.

At some point, Sarissa spoke.

"Where are we?"

Miles didn’t answer for a long time.

"I don’t know fore sure..." He said finally. "But I saw it before. Not all of it, just... Glimpses. A memory, like an echo."

"It feels like a graveyard." Sarissa let out a tired, heavy sigh.

"It might be." He nodded.

They stopped at a small stream, the water running in reverse. Sarissa reached down, then thought better of it.

"What do we do now?"

Miles looked up at the trees. They towered over him, watching, listening. He breathed in deep, let the air settle into his lungs, the hurt wrap itself around him like armor.

"We find out where we are, and why we were sent here. And then, we tear down whatever is standing between us and Lightning... And kill him."

Dee chirped once, low and worried, looking at Miles with concern in its big, round eyes.

And in the pale light of the deep wood, they walked forward.

One step.

Then another.