Lay rolled over in the bed, waiting for rays of sunshine to blind him, but instead was met with even darkness. For some reason, he thought that being home in Revelle meant his mornings would be full of sunshine just as before. The Red Force had even taken that luxury from him.

The four white walls surrounding him had been dulled from dirt and thick, black clouds blotting out the sun from beyond the windows. Revelle used to be a haven, a sanctuary and a home for monks devoting their lives to the spirit of the Tree and the nature that it breathed into their world. Lay remembered how everything here, especially the air, felt so fresh it was like being reborn with every breath, and now the fog in the air was like a thick, cancerous smog that the life out of everything.

He sat up, letting his already cold feet meet with the icy floorboards, a sensation he wasn’t used to in this place. He sighed. Lay had never had such a hard time pulling himself out of bed. If it hadn’t been for all the nightmares, maybe he wouldn’t be feeling so battered right now.

It was as though a dense slime was clinging to his flesh, holding him down and suffocating him. He felt more comfortable alone out at the marshes, fog floating around his head and ice clumping up on the tips of his hair. Xiumin knew he should have been being more productive, but there was a part of him that now felt so detached from reality. He’d become trapped in his own thoughts, in that invisible slime.

Suho made his way over to the Ice Force, arms pulled up over his chest as the air became cooler. Xiumin wasn’t facing him, but he didn’t need to see his face to know it was blank, someplace faraway.

He stopped just a few feet from the elder boy, eyes squinted against the breeze and the cold. Without realizing it, he was already shivering. “I know you’re not okay.”

Suho waited, but no response came.

“I know she meant a lot to you, I do. And I get that it hurts and maybe you need time to grieve and everything but—”

“It’s not just that.” His voice was barely above a whisper, phlegm caught in his throat and making it hard to speak. “Chanyeol died too… and Jessica’s sister.” There was a horror in his eyes building, though Suho couldn’t see it. Instead, the frost in the air only grew thicker. “I can’t stop hearing their screams, or thinking about how painful it must have been to burn to death. I can’t stop thinking about the last things I said to her.”

He stopped for a moment, biting down on his bottom lip. Then a struggled breath.

“Xiumin…”

“For some reason, I don’t think… Tree of Life, I don’t even think it’s all hit me until now. Taemin said the Tree dies. Taemin was never wrong, Suho.” His breathing became rougher, his chest rising and falling more quickly as he tried to hold the sobs back. Ice was built up on his knuckles now.

The heavy breathing and swallowing continued for a moment, Suho wondering if he should respond or continue to wait.

Xiumin finally composed himself, not allowing a single tear to fall. Now completely blank-faced just as he was before. Like he was empty inside.

“I think… Sulli made me forget about all that. She made me forget about all the inevitable because there was hope in her smile and the way she looked at me. I forgot about the world, and the world reminded me about it all over again.”

Silence again. Suho’s teeth were chattering now. He wracked his brain for a response, but then Xiumin began to speak again.

“Is it… is it my fault? Did she die because of me?” His voice was broken, his heart trembling deep inside his chest.

Suho shook his head, even if Xiumin wouldn’t see. “No, of course not.”

A weak cry finally broke from the elder of the two, lips quivering. Suho couldn’t think of the proper words, and instead offering a warm hand to Xiumin’s icy shoulder. It was the first time Suho had ever seen the Frost Force blanketed in ice.

He sat huddled up in the corner of the room, black cloak pulled over his head. Today was a bad day, the symptoms really taking their toll on him. While he seemed like a lifeless corpse, Chen on the other side of the room was shaky and paranoid. Normally Kai stayed near Chen, but since the happenings in Suju, Sehun had taken somewhat of an interest in the Lightning Force. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, if there was any appropriate way to do it, but he wanted to ask him about her.

Chen held his cloak tight around his body, a chill in the room sending a shiver down his spine. Every little shift in the air made him jumpy, waiting to see that ghostly face looking back at him. Horrified and in pain. His worst nightmare. His only hope.

“Hey, Chen,” Sehun called from the other corner of the hotel room, causing the Lightning Force to jump.

“Yeah?” he replied, voice weak. He wasn’t the same Chen at all.

Sehun sat and thought carefully before speaking again. “Isn’t this… didn’t… Lully grow up here? Her and Lay?”

There was a slight shift in Chen’s body language, a distance in his eyes only slightly different than the distance that usually held them. His brows furrowed, his gaze now at his feet as he realized just why he was even more uncomfortable and paranoid than he had ever been before.

“Yeah, she did,” he nodded slightly, as if he was convincing himself it were true.

The Wind Force remembered Suju. Remembered what he found there, the bittersweet of it all. Almost casually, like it were the only logical course of action, he said, “Do you want me to walk around with you. Look around?”

It was exactly what Chen wanted to do, but something held him to the floor. Some sort of fear. A strange feeling, like something was warning him. Despite the paranoia flooding his body, he wanted to test it. As much trauma as it brought, there was comfort to match. Like a strange addiction.

Chen looked directly over to Sehun and then slowly nodded. “Yeah. Please.”

“You’re not yourself.”

“Hm? Oh… yeah,” Lay muttered, thoughts still consuming him.

Concern welled up in his youthful face. “The more I think about it, the more I realize I don’t know anything about your past, Lay. What happened here?”

“I don’t… I don’t really wanna talk about it, Luhan.”

A little disappointed, Luhan looked to the ground and nodded. “Fair enough.”

Luhan wasn’t totally sure, but he could have sworn that Lay had become much more on edge since they entered the hospital. He was tense, spacey, and almost seemed irritable. He couldn’t remember a time when Lay was ever like this.

Lay aside, Luhan didn’t feel like this place was a hospital. It was too quaint, too small. It was almost more like a large cabin. Even growing up in Ruk, a land known for its countryside, Luhan was far too used to seeing hospitals in large buildings, cold and sanitary. All white and lonely. This place could be called home.

“We’ve traveled too far away to get more of the Glow Root… I don’t even know if they would have kept any in stock here,” Lay said aloud, though not to anyone in particular. He was flipping through texts, searching through cupboards. But it was obvious that his mind was perhaps somewhere else.

Luhan found a stack of papers on the desk in the far room to sort through, glancing Lay’s way. “What exactly should I be looking for?”

Lay shook his head. “I’m not sure, honestly. A pain-reliever? Antibiotics? Anything, really. Anything that will at least let him be comfortable.”

“Lay.”

“Yeah?”

“Is my brother going to die?”

The Healer froze in place, distress in his eyes. “Luhan…”

“Tell me, honestly. Is he gonna die? How long does he have Lay?” Luhan’s gaze was set, stern, bold. Unwavering. But beyond all that, it was holding back fear.

Lay shook his head, struggling with words. “L-Luhan, I don’t know any of that. I can’t say.”

The Telekinetic rolled his eyes, but less in annoyance and more in an attempt to fight the tears that threatened to break him. “Damn it, Lay, I need to know.”

Neither of them spoke for a minute, both assessing each other. Trying to see beyond the walls they’d both built up.

Finally, out of the silence, voice quiet and cautious, “If we don’t find a way to cure it, Sehun might only have a few weeks left, if that…”

Luhan stood there, blank at first. But then in a moment, the corners of his lips curled back, quivering, fingers trembling. He fought it hard, but a few breathy sobs escaped him, head now downturned, and Lay unable to speak.

Sehun held an arm around Chen’s shoulder, leading him through the stone paths of Revelle. The early morning fog had finally dissipated, the village much clearer, though the marshes beneath the streets were still mucky as the night before.

“This definitely looks like the place Lully and Lay would’ve come from, huh? It’s really dreamy and calm, even after everything that’s happened…” Sehun said, looking around them and encouraging Chen to do so as well.

Chen nodded, eyes traveling around the little village houses as they went.

He felt wrong for doing it—so wrong. But so far only Chen had seen the ghostly figures. Maybe he was the only one capable. Even if it only brought Lully out, Sehun wanted to see it happen with his own eyes. He wanted to know what it was like. If he could bring Sydney out. See her just one last time.

“Did Lully ever tell you where she grew up? Mention an address or anything?” Sehun pressed innocently, though he knew very well what he was trying to do. He hated himself for it, but he couldn’t hold back now. He’d gone too far, pressed too far.

The Lightning Force shook his head a bit, thinking. “I don’t think so. She told me once her mom wanted to meet me, but I don’t… I don’t remember her mentioning a house. She had lots of pictures in her room, but I… I haven’t seen anything like what was in the pictures yet.”

“We’ll find it, don’t worry,” Sehun assured, his arm still around Chen’s shoulder. It was almost moreso for himself than for the elder boy by his side. Paranoia was creeping up on him like a breath on his neck.

The two of them continued on down the path until the houses began to grow farther and farther apart. They must have walked two miles until they were on the outskirts of the woods, a few weeping willows draped over the road and a house left at the end of the road. They both stopped about five feet away from the entrance, Chen’s stomach sinking. Sehun found his gaze wandering beyond the road and the house, someplace near the woods. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was fixated on this one place.

And then finally, he was sure he saw it. Her face.

His heart began to race. He wanted to run to her, but his feet were stuck in place.

Breaking him from his hypnosis was the sound of a crash from inside the house, and as much as he wanted to go to the girl in the woods, he knew he had to go after Chen.

He barely had to go further than past the mudroom, Chen hunched over a table he’d somehow knocked over, tripped on, whatever. What was the most chilling were the two faces staring Chen down from further inside the home.

It was like he’d looked into a future where the tragedy never happened. He wanted so badly to believe it was her, their features were nearly identical. But he knew better.

The woman’s brows furrowed as she stood upright, her young, pre-teen daughter huddled behind. She stared at Chen long and hard, and then finally. “What’s your name?”

Chen struggled to find his voice, still so confused by who he was looking at. The more he looked, the more he was sure who she was. “Chen.” His voice was broken and scared. Sehun could only watch the scene unfold.

“I was right. Tree of Life, I knew it was you. What’s the world done to you, in the pictures you were… Forces align.” She held her heart to her chest, breathing heavily. A realization hit her. “Is Lully with you? Where’s my daughter? If you’re here she has to be close, right?”

The younger girl poked out from behind Lully’s mother. She looked like a younger, more long-faced version of Lully. Her brown eyes looked directly at Chen, almost forcing an answer out of him.

He stood there, mouth agape, trying to find the words.

The woman stepped closer to him. “Where’s my daughter? Chen, where’s Lully?”

Chen’s face began to contort in grief, breath leaving him.

The younger girl shook her head, already crying. But her mother was still in disbelief. Asking over and over again.

His voice cracked, hoarse, fighting with him. “She’s gone.”

The boys watched as they both fell to their knees, sobbing loudly. It was probably the first news they’d heard about their daughter in months, even before the Red Force. This was worse than watching Jessica cry for Krystal. This was watching a mother cry for her baby. The cries echoed through the house, and they broke him. They completely and totally broke him.

“I’m so sorry,” he could barely get the words out between sobs. “I’m so sorry! Tree of Life, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” Chen had fallen to his knees, crying with them now.

The boys were overcome with grief and guilt. Sehun was bawling now. He wasn’t sure who must have been feeling more guilty; Chen or himself.