In the wet hush of the woods, beneath the soil where the sun forgot to reach, there was a room made of nothing but silence and breath.
This was the Womb.
A place stitched together by Marque's will—where love became obsession, and grief learned how to shape flesh.
There were no walls, only roots. No floor, only pulsating red veins, twitching with every heartbeat that didn't belong to her. The air was warm and wet, humming lullabies that died halfway through their melody. Crib songs drowned in static.
And in the center—
Marque.
She hovered above a cradle of bone, her body glowing like a negative photograph, inverted from light and warmth. Her arms, long and graceful, wove patterns into the air—threading together strands of memory, sorrow, and bits of the world that had forgotten Lukas.
She was mother again.
But now, she would birth grief.
The first child began with a laugh—a shrill echo of Lukas's playground giggle, warped by years of loneliness. Marque caught it in her fingers and molded it like clay, thickening it with the sound of locker doors slamming and muffled sobs in empty bathrooms.
She reached into the crib and laid the sound down like a skeleton.
Then came the skin—stitched from yearbook photos. Torn smiles, taped back together. Fragments of faces that called themselves friends but turned their backs.
She peeled open her wrist and poured in black ichor—grief made liquid, whispering the same names over and over like a cursed prayer.
The First Child rose with a head too large for its neck, eyes made from scratched lenses of forgotten birthday cameras, and a jaw that clicked with every apology it would never speak. It giggled. Then sobbed. Then disappeared into the roots.
The second child came from footsteps. The kind that ran away instead of toward. She captured those sounds, reversed them, and wrapped them in denim sleeves—old jackets Lukas once wore. Inside, she placed chewed pencils and snapped rulers, the detritus of a school that swallowed him whole.
She breathed into its mouth.
It choked. Coughed. Then crawled out with limbs too long, dragging a backpack that whispered answers to questions no one asked.
The Second Child had no eyes. Only a screen on its face that played Lukas's worst moments on loop.
The third one… was different.
For this one, Marque reached deeper—into the scream Lukas never got to finish the day he died. That final moment, the betrayal, the confusion, the snap of a spine against pavement. She turned that scream into marrow, packed it into a small, twitching form.
She gave this one no voice.
Only teeth.
The Third Child chewed its way out of the earth, dragging bits of wood and tongue behind it. It didn't cry. It just waited—for someone to hurt it, so it could show them what pain really meant.
Each child was baptized in blood scraped from Marque's own veins.
Not for love.
But for vengeance.
They carried Lukas's final memories like parasites—each one twisted, misunderstood, but sacred in her eyes. She kissed their hollow heads and named them after the sins of the living:
Mockery.
Neglect.
Silence.
Three names. Three sins. Three monsters.
The Womb pulsed, hungry for more. And Marque—floating, humming, hair trailing into infinity—opened her arms wide.
"There will be more," she whispered. "Until the world is as empty as I am."
Above her, the trees wept black sap.
Below her, the forest began to stir.
And in every shadow, something small and broken began to crawl.
The sky was painted in bruises—indigo clouds trembling above like wounded flesh, thunder humming through the bones of the world. In the aftermath of Bee's and Enzo's slaughter, Marco and Dina had fled into the deeper woods, away from the attic, away from the blood. But you can't outrun grief when it walks on legs longer than shadows.
They had taken shelter in a derelict cabin near the lake—barely standing, half-eaten by rot, its walls whimpering with every breeze. Inside, Dina crouched by a shattered window, clutching a hunting knife with blistered fingers. Marco sat on the floor with an old flare gun across his lap, eyes bloodshot, whispering to himself over and over.
"We should've helped him. We should've said something."
Outside, the forest wasn't silent—it never truly was. There were voices, soft and slow, whispering in a tongue that didn't belong to this world. Words laced with guilt, with rage, with a thousand "why didn't yous."
A crooked silhouette passed between trees.
"They're here," Dina hissed.
Marco looked up. "Do you see them?"
"No. But I feel them."
Something laughed outside, not quite human. A laugh stretched too long, layered like it was spoken by multiple mouths. Then the sound of dragging—wet, sloppy, like something pulling its skin behind it.
A knock.
Not on the door. On the ceiling.
Dina screamed. Marco raised the flare gun and fired straight upward.
The red flame tore a hole in the rotted ceiling—illuminating a face peeking down at them. No, not a face. A mask. A child's plastic mask twisted into a permanent scream. Sewn into it was a tattered note: I'm sorry, Lukas.
The figure above dropped through the rafters.
They scattered.
The creature landed with a wet crack, its limbs bending wrong, folding like paper. It giggled. Then it snapped back upright—head tilted, mask crooked.
Marco and Dina slammed through the back door and ran into the woods, breath white against the cold night.
"WHERE DO WE GO?" Dina cried.
"There's a bunker," Marco said, panting. "My uncle's. It's a mile out, near the quarry. It's locked but I know the code."
Behind them, the forest groaned. Trees bent out of shape, roots uncoiled like serpents. The ground itself seemed to whisper. One of Marque's children gave chase.
This one wore Lukas's old backpack—its limbs covered in school photos, cut up and stitched across its arms like a patchwork of memory. It didn't run. It glided. And wherever it passed, the trees wept.
Marco tripped. The creature was nearly on him.
Dina turned and screamed, swinging her knife—and something divine or dumb intervened. The blade hit the thing's eye. Not blood, but ink poured out, thick and alive.
It shrieked like glass breaking in your head, then vanished into smoke. Marco crawled up, panting. "That's not the last one. She's sending them." They moved again.
The bunker was close now, hidden under moss and branches. Dina helped him clear the entrance and Marco slammed the code into the keypad. Click. They dropped into darkness and sealed the door.
Inside: musty air, canned food, an old radio crackling static. They sat in silence, heartbeats finally slowing. Then… a whisper from the radio:
"You left him there."
Dina crushed it under her boot. But in the silence that followed, they could still hear it. Not from the radio.
But from beneath the floor.