Chapter 13: Evergreena's Echoes Part One

The golden haze of the Wildlife Realm was starting to lose its warmth. The air, once buzzing with surreal flora and hyper-saturated color, now hummed with something subtler—expectation. Pecola stood at the edge of Antic's dorm grove, watching the way the twilight brushed the treetops with violet. Behind her, Dolly was muttering curses at her reflection in a shard of cursed glass she refused to leave behind.

Then came a rustle. A low, dry crunch of moss. Pecola turned—and there he was.

Grin emerged from the trees like a shadow slipping off its leash. His cloak still billowed like it had opinions, and his scythe glinted faintly under his arm, but something about him looked… lighter. Not soft, no—Grin wasn't the type—but unburdened, like he'd finally put something down he'd been carrying so long it had become part of his posture.

"I take it you didn't get swallowed by a death bog," Antic quipped, tossing a berry into his mouth.

Grin's expression was unreadable, which for him was actually kind of expressive.

"I had a meeting," he said flatly.

"With who? The Grim Knitting Circle?" Antic's grin sharpened. "Do they have name tags? Did you cry? Be honest."

"Only a little," Grin muttered, brushing past him with practiced indifference—but the faintest upward twitch played at the corner of his jawbone. Pecola caught it.

She stepped forward. "You're really coming with us."

It wasn't a question.

Grin looked at her, long and quiet. Then, he nodded once. "They told me to find the things that make the job worth doing. I found one."

Pecola blinked. She wasn't sure if he meant her. Or Dolly. Or Antic. Or the mission. Maybe it was all of it. Maybe it didn't matter.

"Great!" Dolly snapped her compact shut and strutted over, dramatically adjusting her oversized satchel. "The gang's all here, the map's been found, the hair is cooperating. I say we storm the tragedy dimension and fix a ghost love story. Before I chip."

Antic twirled his finger in the air. "To Evergreena we go! Cue the dramatic forest portal!"

The space around them shimmered. Leaves rustled not with wind, but with intent. The air peeled sideways—folded in on itself—and a pulsing shimmer spread through the mossy grove like breath on glass.

Grin tensed slightly.

Antic leaned closer to him, smirking. "Don't worry. It only hurts the first time."

Grin replied without missing a beat. "So you've said. Repeatedly. Loudly. In very public spaces."

Dolly let out a theatrical groan. "Gods, just kiss already or get in the portal!"

And with that, the portal expanded—casting them all in hues of moonlight and chlorophyll—and swallowed them whole.

The Wildlife Realm slipped away behind them like a half-remembered dream.

Evergreena awaited.

he air thrummed with anticipation as Pecola, Antic, Dolly, and Grin pushed deeper into the Perennial Forest. The moss underfoot was lush and deceptive—each step whispering secrets from centuries past. The canopy above stretched like a cathedral of tangled bone-white branches and luminous leaves, filtering golden light through layers of ancient sorrow.

Even the birdsong had a strange dissonance to it, like the forest itself was mourning.

Antic flicked a leaf from his hair and muttered, "Okay, this place is giving serious ex-girlfriend energy. Like... 'you thought you could move on without me?'"

Dolly smacked his shoulder, perched as she was in the crook of his scarf like a scolding parrot. "Focus, you hormonal tangleweed. There's a royal ghost woman ahead with feelings."

Grin trailed behind them, scythe still strapped but oddly silent. His eyes didn't move much, but he didn't miss a thing.

Suddenly, the mist before them peeled away like stage curtains, revealing a clearing lit in unnatural twilight. The heart of the forest held a stillness that wasn't peaceful—it was waiting. In the center stood a figure so radiant she looked sculpted from dusk itself.

Queen Sentient.

Her silver hair flowed in ripples, seemingly alive with the breath of the forest. Her gown shimmered like dew caught on spider silk, yet none of that compared to her eyes: twilight-colored and bottomless, like she'd seen the end of all things and didn't flinch.

"Children," she said, and it felt like the trees leaned in to hear her. Her voice was velvet soaked in grief. "You've finally come."

Pecola stopped breathing. Not from fear—but reverence. Something in this woman felt familiar. Not the face, not the power, but the sorrow. It tugged at something buried deep in her own bones.

Antic dropped into a bow, low but loose, as if he were used to charming gods and skipping consequences. "Your Majesty," he said, voice velvet and surprisingly sincere. "We came for the Breaths of Evergreena. And maybe fashion advice. That too."

Dolly sighed dramatically. "We're also here to inject some color into the tragic undead aesthetic, but clearly, we're late."

Queen Sentient smiled, but it was thin—more memory than amusement. "You are not too late. But you will need more than courage and couture. The Breaths are trapped in a tale of heartbreak. And you must walk their pain."

Her gaze swept over them like a tide. Then she whispered, "It began with a forbidden love."

They stood motionless as she wove the story of Elara and Orion: a golden princess of the Sunstone Clan and the storm-eyed warrior prince of the Moonshadow bloodline. Two realms locked in hatred, two lovers reckless enough to defy it.

They met in moonlight, kissed between blades drawn in secret. Their romance was soft words beneath hard truths, stolen touches in shadowed gardens, promises whispered like sins. But secrets rot. And when their love was exposed, their punishment was swift.

Orion was exiled. Elara imprisoned. Their grief, unchecked and undying, tore a hole in the veil between realms. Their agony lingers still—its weight muffling the voices of the Breaths like a pillow pressed to a songbird's throat.

Pecola felt the ache of it echo through her. Forbidden love. Shame and longing and the cold silence of family turning their backs. Her fingers trembled at her sides.

Queen Sentient turned, gesturing to the mist now parting like lace torn at the seams. "To free the Breaths, you must enter their story. Not just witness it—change it. Rewrite the moment where love turned to ruin."

Antic stepped forward, eyes darker than usual. "So we go into their memories. Play god, fix heartbreak. No pressure."

Dolly sniffed. "Darling, we thrive under pressure. It's like Spanx for the soul."

A glimmer of approval touched the Queen's lips.

The mist thickened, curling around the base of a massive waterfall just beyond the clearing. Its roar was soft, like it didn't want to interrupt. The pool below shimmered not with light—but with memory. Layers of it. Lives caught mid-motion.

"That is the gateway," Queen Sentient said. "It will take you into the moment it all went wrong."

Antic reached for Pecola's hand before she could even think to flinch. He didn't look at her, but the squeeze was gentle and firm.

Dolly hovered at her other side, arms crossed, unusually still.

Grin gave a rare nod. "I'll hold the veil here. If anything comes out… I'll harvest it."

Pecola stepped forward. Her heart raced, her skin alight with the echo of stories not hers—but about to be. Antic's fingers didn't let go.

As they crossed into the falling water, the sound of the forest faded.

The waterfall's embrace was less a plunge and more a gentle, swirling descent. One moment, Pecola stood on the edge of the ethereal pool; the next, her boots touched down in a garden so saturated with color, it bordered on dream logic.

The sky above wasn't quite blue—more like liquified opal, colors shifting with every breath. A warm breeze carried the scent of honeysuckle, jasmine, something almost citrusy, and beneath it all, something older. Deeper. Like parchment and forgotten ink.

The garden unfurled before her like a stage. Towering hedges trimmed into celestial shapes, pathways paved with opaline stones, fountains that defied physics—water dancing upward before falling in slow, impossible spirals. But it wasn't the architecture that made her breath catch.

Floating at the garden's heart were two radiant beings—larger than houses, shaped like silhouettes made of silk and sunlight. The Breaths of Evergreena. Their light pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat. Pecola could feel their song inside her chest, not quite audible, more like pressure behind the ribs. But it was faint. Muffled. Like someone trying to sing underwater.

Antic landed beside her with a gentle splash of glowing mist, shaking droplets from his fur. "Okay," he murmured. "This is... aggressively pretty."

Dolly materialized mid-spin, arms flung wide, voice dramatic as ever. "Darlings, I feel like I've stepped into a perfume ad for emotionally repressed demigods."

Grin stumbled in next, glancing around with narrowed sockets. "I feel underdressed."

They weren't. Not for long.

Dolly immediately yanked open a lacquered box from her bag, like it had been waiting for this very narrative beat. "Right, you glamless peasants, assume your disguises. We're rewriting a tragedy, and looking fabulous is step one."

She handed Antic a vial of gold so bright it hurt to look at. "Charming minstrel. Think less jester, more seductive bard."

Antic arched a brow. "If I start strumming and some noble swoons, I'm blaming you."

He downed the vial. Light wrapped around him like molten syrup, transforming his usual scruffy charm into something polished. His fur deepened to rich chestnut, his horns now elegantly twisted like art nouveau sculpture, and his clothes morphed into tight, dark trousers, a half-unbuttoned poet shirt, and a leather strap across his chest holding a lute.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Pecola was trying not to stare. Badly.

Grin was next. Dolly offered him a swirling silver vial. "Wise sage. Mysterious. Slightly tragic."

He raised it in mock salute, muttering, "On brand."

The transformation cloaked him in navy robes etched with starlight patterns. His reaper bones took on a shimmer like old silver. He looked like he belonged in a prophecy.

Then Dolly turned to Pecola. Her voice softened. "And you, my dear, are the forest's keeper. A woman who can hear the whisper of roots."

The emerald vial warmed in Pecola's hand. She drank. Magic unraveled around her like fog catching sunlight. Her clothes became a flowing gown of mossy green, its hem embroidered with glimmering silver leaves. She didn't need sight to feel the power humming through her. Her hands could now feel stories in stones. Her ears could hear petals sighing open. It didn't scare her.

It thrilled her.

Dolly's own transformation was, of course, a riot of color and flair. She shimmered with rainbow threads, her hair styled in gravity-defying waves, lips blood red. The perfect noble gossip. Weaponized elegance.

Then, silence.

The Breaths hovered closer, not threatening—curious. Their attention was... focused. Pecola felt a tingling crawl up her spine as one of the beings drifted within arm's reach, its form wavering like heat mirage. She reached out, almost without thinking.

Contact.

But it wasn't touch. Not exactly. More like falling inward.

The world shifted. The garden blurred, dissolved—and reformed.

A new scene.

Not a memory. A moment.

A moonlit balcony. Marble white and trembling under a silver wind. Below, a vast palace garden, silent and waiting.

And then—

A girl.

Golden hair like poured sunlight. A gown too fine for comfort. Eyes the color of melted amber and just as sad.

Elara.

She leaned on the railing, her shoulders pulled tight like armor. Far below, a cloaked figure crept through the hedges, moving like a ghost between shadows.

Antic—now the bard—exhaled slowly beside Pecola. "We're inside it. The memory. This is the real story."

Grin's voice was low. "We can't interfere yet. Just watch. Learn what went wrong."

Elara turned. Her gaze passed through them. Not seeing. Just remembering.

Pecola didn't breathe. The air felt sacred. Fragile.

And then—the figure in the garden whistled.

Three notes.

Elara froze.

Turned.

Smiled.

And whispered, to no one, "Orion."

A single word that cracked the night open.

The memory moved forward like a play, but the stakes were real. Every second counted. And they had just stepped into the first act.

The shimmering portal dissolved, leaving them in a garden unlike any they had ever seen. It wasn't the wild, untamed beauty of the Perennial Forest; this was a cultivated paradise, a testament to meticulous artistry and ancient elegance. Towering hedges, sculpted into fantastical shapes, enclosed vibrant flowerbeds bursting with blooms unknown to any earthly realm. A fountain, carved from a single, luminous pearl, cascaded water that shimmered like captured starlight. The air hummed with a palpable energy, a blend of sweetness and sorrow, of passion and pain. This was Evergreena, the heart of Elara and Orion's forbidden love, a place where the echoes of their tragic tale still lingered.

Antic, his minstrel guise still clinging to him, cautiously plucked a single, iridescent petal from a nearby blossom. "This place…it feels…heavy," he murmured, his voice losing its usual playful lilt. The weight of the past pressed down on them, a suffocating blanket woven from centuries of resentment and heartbreak.

Grin, his scholarly robes flowing around him, nodded gravely. He opened his ancient tome, its pages filled with faded script and intricate diagrams. "The chronicles speak of this garden as a sanctuary, a place where Elara and Orion met in secret, a haven from the unrelenting conflict of their families."

Before he could continue, the air shimmered again—and the garden shifted.

A flicker of memory—not theirs—rippled over reality.

The hedge maze behind them darkened, as if twilight had suddenly descended. And there they were.

A young woman stepped into view from the shadows—Elara, unmistakably radiant. Her gown shimmered like molten sun, her golden hair braided with white blossoms. She walked like she was trying not to be seen, her eyes scanning every corner. In her hands, she clutched a silken ribbon.

"He said he'd be here by now," she whispered, though her voice echoed oddly, as if they were hearing it through a dream.

Then came Orion, emerging from the other side of the garden, barefoot and disheveled, a sword strapped to his back and moonlight in his eyes. His cloak—ripped, weather-worn, deep gray—trailed behind him like shadow.

"Elara," he breathed.

She ran to him. They met in the center of the stone path, not with a kiss but with a breathless laugh—soft, private, the kind that only happens after surviving something terrifying.

"I thought they caught you," she said, pressing a hand to his chest.

"They tried." He smirked. "Turns out Moonshadow boys can scale a wall faster than they can recite battle poetry."

Elara's smile faltered, her hands trembling. "They'll come for me next. My father... he says you poisoned me with witchcraft. That your kind can't feel love."

Orion's jaw clenched. "Then let's prove them wrong. Let's leave this place. Tonight."

But Elara hesitated. The memory trembled.

Dolly whispered beside Pecola, "We're seeing the truth. Their final days. Not the legend. The real pain."

The image shifted again. Elara and Orion now sat in the hidden grotto—the same one Pecola had led them to. Elara leaned into his side, her head on his shoulder.

"I can't abandon my people," she said. "Even if I choose you."

"I don't want you to abandon anyone," Orion said. "I want them to see what we are. That we don't have to be the curse they made."

Her lips brushed his cheek. "Then let's change it. Together."

As the image flickered, it began to rot.

Flames licked the horizon. The hedges twisted into thorny spires. They were separated—guards dragging Elara by her arms, Orion chained and bleeding on the ground. Shouts. Accusations. Screams.

A spectral voice cut through the chaos.

"This is the pain we were built from," a new voice said—not Elara, not Orion. One of the Breaths. It vibrated through Pecola's bones. "It is not a story. It is a wound."

The illusion crumbled—but not entirely. Petals rained gently from the trees, and their colors bled gold and silver. The cursed oak pulsed once in the distance.

Pecola placed a hand over her chest.

"We have to give them what they never got," she said. "An ending."

Antic stood beside her, lute slung across his back now, no longer playing. "Then we start at the root."

They turned toward the tree—the nexus of all that had gone wrong—and walked. The story wasn't finished. They were inside it now.

And now it was theirs to rewrite.

The whispers intensified as they circled the gnarled oak, each rustle of leaves seeming to carry a fragment of a forgotten conversation. The garden around them shimmered as if breathing, the air thick with grief and old magic.

Dolly, disguised as a court lady from Elara's family, moved with an unsettling grace, her glassy doll eyes reflecting the pulsing shimmer from the oak's bark. Her steps made no sound, like a ghost in silk. She reached out and laid her porcelain fingers against the tree. The bark throbbed like a slow heartbeat under her touch. She flinched, breath catching. "This thing's alive," she murmured.

A faint shimmer rippled through the trunk, and the world around them shuddered like it had taken a breath. Then—the garden shifted.

They were no longer alone.

The past played out around them—not as ghosts, not as shadows, but fully formed, vivid as the real thing. As if the memory of the garden had peeled back a layer and the story beneath was waiting to be seen.

Elara stood in the center, radiant in a gown of golden silk, her hair falling in soft coils down her back. Her face—too poised, too perfect—cracked only when she turned and Orion was there.

He stood taller than any of them, broad shoulders cloaked in the dark indigo of the Sapphire Clan. His eyes, storm-colored and too knowing, softened when he looked at her. He moved toward her like a man starved.

"Elara," he breathed.

"You shouldn't be here," she whispered, though she stepped closer anyway.

Their hands met between them, trembling fingers brushing, then gripping.

"I had to see you," he said. "The Council—"

"Has eyes everywhere," she finished. "I know."

Antic's lute let out a low harmonic hum like it had picked up the tension in the air and was reacting on its own. He stood silent, watching.

The lovers' conversation unfolded in aching detail. Elara spoke of intercepted letters, of a father who watched her dreams rot one by one. Orion told her of ambushes blamed on his name, of uncles whispering that she was bait, not beloved.

"They're trying to unravel us," she said, voice catching.

"They don't have to," Orion murmured. "We're unraveling ourselves."

The silence that followed was thunderous. Even the birds in the garden stopped.

Pecola felt a tremor under her feet—not physical, but emotional. The sorrow of two people stretched so thin they were ready to break. Her throat closed. She could feel it. The weight of a love cracking at the seams. Her hands curled into fists.

"They were so close," she whispered.

Grin flipped open his tome, frantic now. "There's something... here. A prophecy." His voice dropped. "The union of the gold and the indigo would usher in an age of harmony. But the Veridians twisted it. They feared peace more than war."

Dolly—her disguise now flickering between Veridian and Sapphire courtwear—nodded grimly. "Because peace would mean power shared. No more dynasties."

The vision changed again.

Elara was alone this time, locked in a gilded room, sunlight filtered through lattice, creating prison bars on the floor. She wept quietly, a letter in her lap—torn, bloodstained.

Orion stood in a rain-soaked forest, surrounded by his war council. His face was stone. In his hand, a ring of spun-gold metal. He closed his fingers around it.

"They were broken," Pecola whispered.

Antic's music turned sharp, discordant. He turned away, jaw clenched. His usual sarcasm was gone—burned away by the rawness of what they were seeing.

"The worst part?" Grin said softly. "They didn't die hating each other. They died believing they had been betrayed."

The garden shuddered again. The vision flickered and faded.

Dolly pressed her palm to the oak. "This tree... it's not cursed because of a spell. It is the curse. The hate fed it. The lies watered it. The tree remembers all of it."

Antic looked up at it. "So what? We chop it down?"

"No," Pecola said. "We show it the truth."

The group stood in a tight circle. The oak pulsed again, louder now, as if aware.

Dolly exhaled slowly. "Time to play rewrite-the-tragedy."

Antic strummed his lute again, this time not with sorrow, but with defiance. A wild, seductive melody that seemed to pierce the air like heat lightning.

Pecola stepped forward, her voice steady. "We make them remember what they really were. Not pawns. Not victims. Just... people. In love."

Grin closed his book. "Then let's give the story a different ending."

The whispers faded, leaving behind a silence heavy with the weight of centuries of sorrow. Pecola—No Eyes, as Antic affectionately called her—stood still before the ancient oak, her breath caught between awe and ache. There was no wind, yet the leaves above shivered like they, too, remembered. Her body thrummed—not from fear, but from resonance. The grief wasn't her own, but she felt it anyway. It curled around her spine, laced her throat, and sank into her stomach like stone.

She didn't see in the traditional sense, but she didn't need to. The forest, still enchanted from the Perennial bloom, gifted her with something deeper—empathic sight. Echoes. Specters. And here, in the shadow of this tree, she saw them: Elara and Orion.

Two flickers of ghostlight in human form, pressed together in a clandestine embrace beneath the very branches Pecola stood under now. Elara's fingers brushed Orion's cheek, trembling. His forehead leaned against hers, as if praying. A whispered promise echoed—timeless, broken.

"I'll find a way," Orion said. "Even if it kills me."

Pecola's lips parted, dry. The forest wasn't just memory. It was alive with mourning.

A hand gently closed around her arm. Antic. She didn't need to see him either. She could smell the storm on his skin, feel the calluses on his fingers, hear the steady beat of his not-so-steady heart. His usual jokes, the sharp jabs and cocky winks, were gone.

He wasn't playing anymore.

"They loved each other like idiots," he said, his voice low, almost reverent. "Like it'd work out if they just… wanted it enough."

Pecola didn't answer. Her mouth wouldn't move. The ache in her chest was unbearable.

Antic's thumb brushed the inside of her wrist, tender. "Feels familiar, doesn't it?" he asked. "Like we're standing in someone else's ruins hoping we don't end up buried, too."

Her heart thudded. She tilted her face toward him. "Are you scared of that?"

He hesitated. Just for a breath. Then he leaned in, his forehead touching hers the same way Orion had done to Elara. "Terrified. But not enough to stop."

Their moment might have deepened, might have shifted into something more—if Dolly hadn't spun around like a dramatic exclamation point.

"Love," she declared, sweeping a hand over the scene like she was narrating a tragic opera, "is war. And this? This was battlefield couture."

Grin grunted from behind his enormous tome. "Poetic," he muttered, "and statistically correct. Most revolutions start with two people willing to die for a kiss."

Dolly flicked her fan open with a snap. "Oh, darling. You say that like it's a bad thing."

Pecola exhaled. Slowly. The moment, sacred and raw, hadn't shattered—it had changed shape.

Then the air shifted.

Grin's head snapped up from his book. Antic's hand dropped from her wrist to the hilt of his curved dagger. Pecola could hear it—a new whisper, sharper. Urgent. Not memory. Not history.

"Something's here," she whispered.

Dolly froze. Her expression sharpened, the doll-like serenity vanishing. "Someone's pulling strings. And I don't like being part of someone else's puppet show."

Grin slammed his book shut. Dust puffed up. "There's another player," he said. "The one who twisted the prophecy. He didn't just interfere—he set it up. Nightshade."

Antic scowled. "Of course it's some bastard named Nightshade."

Grin flipped the tome open again, faster now, finding a diagram of sigils arranged like teeth around a crown. "He orchestrated everything. Fueled the war. Weaponized the prophecy. If Orion and Elara united the clans, peace would've cost him his influence."

"So he made sure it ended in blood," Pecola murmured. Her jaw clenched. Her voice dropped lower. "And he's still doing it. Still here."

They fell into a tight huddle beneath the cursed oak.

"We're not just healing a love story," Dolly said, fangs just visible beneath her grin. "We're about to burn down a centuries-old manipulation machine."

Antic cracked his knuckles. "If Nightshade thinks he can screw with us like he did them, he's about to get a serenade to the face."

Grin grinned. For once, it wasn't sad.

Pecola let the fire rise in her chest. "No one's rewriting our ending."

They stood, all four. A broken musician, a blind girl who saw too much, a reaper dressed like a librarian, and a porcelain demon with lipstick too red to be legal. And they walked deeper into the forest, toward the origin of the lie.

Not because they thought they'd win.

But because the alternative—repeating someone else's tragedy—wasn't an option.

And in the trees behind them, two ghostly figures held hands one last time and vanished into starlight.