The forest was silent again.
Noemie's absence still hovered in the air like a phantom limb. Every breath felt heavier, and the trees, once merely witnesses, now looked like judges. Annelise stood with a broken stick in her hand, trembling. Lina, bathed in dusk light and stained with blood, watched her from a few paces away.
"Don't think about it," Lina said, not looking at her.
Annelise's grip on the stick tightened. "Why the fuck shouldn't I? If I don't kill you now, you'll do the same thing you did earlier."
Her voice shook, her teeth clenched as if holding back more than just anger. She stepped forward, and Lina turned.
"So then what?" Lina asked, her eyes cold, her voice detached.
"Then I survive." Annelise swallowed. The words barely escaped her lips.
Lina's expression didn't shift. She stepped forward. "Survive? Don't kid yourself. There is no way out from here. You'll die like a bitch. Can't you see? They're not just killing us. They're enjoying it. And people save their favorite dish for last."
Annelise's lower lip trembled. "Then I'll kill myself. It's better than... than whatever this is."
Lina smiled faintly. Not a cruel smile, but one born of realization.....and madness. "No need to go through that trouble. I know a way out. You just have to believe me."
Annelise narrowed her eyes, the stick now held between them like a barrier. "Why should I believe you?"
Lina stepped closer.
"Stop. Don't. If you come closer, I swear I'll stab you." Annelise backed up until her shoulders hit a tree.
Lina ignored her threat. She walked slowly, calmly, and stood just a breath away.
Then she leaned in and whispered something.
Annelise blinked. "That.....That's insane."
Lina bent down and pulled a pebble from the dirt. She clenched it tightly, and with a sudden jerk, stabbed her palm.
Blood welled up.....but instead of dripping, it rose, forming floating crimson orbs.
Annelise's mouth dropped open.
"This place doesn't follow rules," Lina said calmly. "Nothing falls here. Not even reason."
She held her hand near Annelise's mouth. The blood hovered, pulsating in the air. Lina didn't say anything more.
Annelise, pale, almost on instinct, opened her lips and let a drop of that floating blood touch her tongue.
It was sweet...yes. But more than that, a whisper entered her ears. Not just any whisper. Her thoughts.
But they came before she even had them.
She gasped, staggering back. "What the hell is this place....?"
"A dream, a game, a curse? Whatever it is, I've cracked it. We're not in reality, and that means there's a way to beat it."
Annelise dropped the stick. Her breath came in ragged pulls. "I don't believe it... but I also do."
Suddenly, a noise...a rustling of leaves.
The women.
They emerged from the woods, elegantly, cruelly, surrounding them. Their eyes gleamed with malice.
Lina and Annelise backed up, shoulder to shoulder.
"Trust me. Play along," Lina whispered.
One woman reached for Annelise.
Annelise flinched but then snarled. "Come closer, bitch. I dare you."
Lina's hand gripped hers behind their backs.
"Don't break," she muttered.
In a hidden space beyond the forest, where the ceiling bled symbols and the floor pulsed with veins like skin, Ladina sat cross-legged before a screen of living flesh...an ever-shifting wall that displayed the girls' movements like memories trapped in muscle.
Her fingers trembled.
Not from fear. From confusion.
"This isn't right…..."
She stared at the image of Lina and Annelise surrounded, yet speaking calmly in riddles that didn't belong to her dream.
"This is my world. My rules," she whispered.
But the more she spoke, the more cracks began forming in the fleshy monitor. The giggles of the women that once echoed joyfully now bent into something distorted—repetitive, mechanical, like a corrupted lullaby.
Ladina stood, her eyes darting between symbols drawn in her chambers.....the blood-marked scripts, the bones stacked in patterns, the pulse of the system she designed.
"Did she figure it out? No…... that's not possible. I wrote every fate."
She slammed her hand into the wall, but the image flickered again...Lina looking directly into the screen. Into her.
"....You see me?"
No answer.
But the screen pulsed, and for the first time, Ladina's voice cracked.
"If you're awake in my dream....… then whose mind is this really?"