Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 237: Ch235. Roots of the End, seeds of the Beginning

Chapter 237: Ch235. Roots of the End, seeds of the Beginning

The stars vanished with the mist.

There was a silence deeper than sleep around the plateau, thick as tar. No birds, no breath of wind.

Even Dee’s soft trill had gone quiet.

Sarissa was the first to wake up. She felt the change not as sound or sight, but pressure, like the moment just before a storm breaks or lightning strikes. A tension older than language that made her fingers curl around the haft of her broken spear.

The bark beneath her palm grew colder. Not hostile, but watchful.

"You feel that?" Miles stirred across from her.

"It’s coming back." She nodded once, slowly.

There weren’t footsteps. There wasn’t even a howl or crack of bone.

The thing that stalked them returned the way rot did. It seeped in, like gravity, like inevitability.

Its shape was still wrong, still a contradiction. Shadow without form, mass without flesh, hunger without purpose.

But this time, they did not run.

Dee stood first. The little drake’s tail lashed against the roots. The scales along its back flared, not with the broken biolight of System-spawned beasts, but with an earthy glow, green-veined, pulsing like sap in spring.

A tremor passed through the plateau, making the little tree at its center rustle.

Then, Miles rose. He did not summon the scythe, even though now he knew he could.

His hands were empty, but he did not need a weapon.

He had become one.

No grand declaration passed his lips. No [Skill] was activated, no [Classpect] roared within his soul. But the moment he stood, the world around him seemed to draw taut, like a breath being held.

A Story pressed outward from within him, in perfect stillness.

It wasn’t magic.

It was meaning.

Sarissa stepped beside him. Her leg still hurt, but the pain felt distant now. Part of the path that brought her here, not something that could hold her down.

And for the first time since she awakened to The Glitch, she wasn’t afraid of what came next.

She did not raise her spear. Instead, she looked down the broken steps that had led them here, and whispered.

"I choose this."

And the air cracked. Ever so slightly, like old bark splitting in spring.

The mist parted at the edge of the plateau, and the predator emerged.

It had not changed, or maybe it had.

It still wore fragments of their shape. Miles’ posture, Sarissa’s gait, hints of Dee’s silhouette in the curve of its jaws. But the illusion was worse now, jagged, pitiful.

It shuddered as if unsure how to hold the lie together.

It moved without letting out a single sound, and maybe that was the most frightening part about it.

And it was fast.

Dee met it first.

The little drake launched forward with a soundless scream, and the roots of the plateau answered.

Vines burst from the ground, but not to bind. To guide.

They curved like claws and funnelled the thing toward Dee’s jaws.

Dee was fury incarnate now. Primal, a shield for something sacred. Not themselves, but the life underfoot.

Not vengeance, but refusal.

Its teeth sank in, and the beast shrieked, seemingly confused for the very first time.

It was being denied.

Sarissa moved next. She stepped past Dee and the struggling tangle. With each step, the broken stone reshaped itself beneath her feet, aligning themselves as if they were being rebuilt anew.

The flame of her Beginning flickered. Not as light, but as certainty.

And the world, in its rawest form, responded.

Just like with Miles, there was no skill, no Classpect, just her.

She wasn’t a blade. She wasn’t a queen, even though she hadn’t been able to reclaim her own world.

She was a Beginning. The moment before the swing, the inhale before the leap.

The beast struck at her, but the blow never landed. The air rippled, and as if he had never and always been, Miles was there.

His hand closed around the beast’s wrist, the one that looked like his, but twisted. No tension in his grip, no effort.

Just inevitability.

"You don’t get to wear my Ending." Miles said, and then he let go.

For a moment, the creature stood frozen, paralyzed by the unspoken rule it had broken.

That it could not become him.

And then, Miles stepped forward, but he didn’t attack.

He simply passed through.

The creature screamed as Miles’ body cut it with the weight of refusal. The Story inside him lashed outward, not with edges, but with endings. And each step he took unraveled the falsehood around him.

The predator bled twisted, searching, misaligned light.

And then it tried one last time.

It surged, but not toward Miles. It charged towards Sarissa. Reaching, desperate, clawing at what she was becoming, lashing out with something that looked like her childhood. A memory it was trying to steal from her at that very moment.

A rooftop, a winter sky.

But Sarissa had already claimed it.

"You’re not me." She hushed, and the world agreed.

There was a ripple in the air again. Not with power, but with that same pattern she felt before.

The beast stumbled, and Dee struck again, tearing into it from behind.

The forest answered with a low hum from the little tree. The silver-green leaves shimmered, and the ground beneath the creature cracked, roots rising towards it.

And it didn’t look like they were there to bind the thing, no...

They were here to claim it.

The creature writhed, no longer fighting to win, but to merely exist. And it failed.

With one final shriek, too wide for sound, but too sharp for an echo, it collapsed inward, like a flame without fuel.

Gone, but not killed.

Refused.

Ended.

The silence returned, but it was not empty anymore. It felt earned.

Sarissa sank to her knees, the adrenaline leaving her like water from a cracked jar. Her leg ached again, and her hands shook.

But she smiled.

Miles stood a little longer, his head tilted back toward the stars he could no longer see. Then, he looked down at his palms, and let out a breath.

Dee limped over, bruised and scraped, but eyes still bright, its spiked tail wagging happily, but slowly, tired.

He curled again under the tree, and this time, it shimmered brighter. Not reacting to the fight, but answering it.

Miles and Sarissa sat beside him.

"You think that was it?" Her voice was hoarse.

"For this world?" Miles nodded. "Yeah. I think this story here is over."

"Then we’re really free?" Sarissa traced the scars on her palm.

"No." Cheshire purred, his voice coming from everywhere at once. "You’re not free."

And after a brief pause, he added.

"You’re chosen."

"By the forest?" Miles frowned.

"By yourselves, and by it. Tir’Serene doesn’t give blessings, I think I told you that once. It offers decisions, and you’ve made yours."

"So, what happens now?" Sarissa tilted her head.

"Now?" As Cheshire’s voice echoed, the mists beyond the plateau began to part. "Now you walk forward. Not back, not up. Forward."

That was when they saw it. A path winding downward.

Not back the way they came, but toward something different.

It was a forest still, but brighter, younger. Not the ancient part of Tir’Serene they knew until now, but something new.

A world without the System.

A world waiting for them.

"And the System?" Miles asked.

"That’s for you to decide. When, where, and if it comes back."

"You mean it didn’t exist yet, here. But it could." Sarissa’s eyes narrowed.

"It always could. But not until someone earns the right to choose what kind of world it grows in."

A long silence followed. Then, Miles stood again.

"So, we rest, then we go."

Sarissa looked at the path, then at Dee, then back at Miles. And she nodded.

"Let’s make it a good one this time."

They sat a little longer, letting the breath return to them. No System screens prompted them. No notifications echoed in their minds. There were no levels gained, no Classpects unlocked.

But something had changed.

A weight had lifted, a root had uncoiled.

A seed was planted.

And the forest watched as they rose again.

Not as Survivors, not as Players.

But as something entirely new now.

Witnesses, authors of their own Stories.

Beginnings...

And Endings...

"So, you’re an elemental-dragon-thingy, now?" Sarissa looked at Dee, scratching under its chin.

"Dee!" It chirped, opening its mouth and letting its tongue roll out. "Dee!"

Miles simply chuckled, shaking his head.

"So many layers..." His lips curled upwards, and after what felt like a lifetime, he truly smiled.