“From blood, remembrance. From death, the gate.”

There is no moon tonight. Only cold.

I shouldn’t remember this. I was an infant, swaddled in ash, laid upon an altar of black stone. But I do. I remember everything.

Thirteen robed figures circle me. Shadows stitched by candlelight. Masks of bone and gold with eyes that never blink. Their voices don’t rise. They descend. Low. Reverent. Like earth falling into a grave.

The mark weeps light from my skin. Silver and salt carved into flesh too young to scar.

I don’t cry.

I only watch.

The High Voice steps forward. Her mask is older than the others—cracked down the center, held together by a thread of golden hair. In her hand, a knife. Curved. Black as the void behind mirrors.

“The First must be willing,” she intones. “The First must not weep.”

The others bow.

“From death, the gate. From silence, the name.”

She raises the blade. The candles bow with her. Something stirs in the deep silence. Something hungry. Something old.

One figure lifts her head.

“There are other ways.”

The High Voice doesn’t turn. “This is the way.”

“She carries something older than the mark. Older than the gate.”

“She carries danger.”

“So did we all, once.”

The candle nearest me gutters. Dies.

“You forget what this cost,” the second woman says. “She didn’t ask to be born with your silence.”

The High Voice turns. Cold fury radiates from behind the mask. “You would call her mine?”

“No. Only that she is not only yours to end.”

Blue light explodes from my hand.

The altar cracks. The floor splits. A yawning mouth of ancient stone opens beneath me, and from the deep, a wailing rises. Raw. Hungry. The voice of something that has waited eons to feed.

I burn.

The gates swallow me whole.

The High Voice stumbles back. The black knife clatters to the stones.

The light dies.

But I don’t.

Somehow, impossibly, I survive.

And I remember.

There is a room no one remembers, in a house that remembers too much.

I crouch in the ash. Weeding. Always weeding.

The wallpaper peels like old skin, showing bones of wood and wire beneath. A cracked mirror hangs opposite the boarded window. Curtains drift like forgotten ghosts. Dust lies thick on the floorboards, broken only by my footprints.

I shouldn’t be here.

But I am.

My coat is stitched patchwork—asylum linen and black leather. My hands are dirt-caked, nails cracked from clawing at memory. At earth. At the buried things that refuse to stay buried.

“Alice?”

I don’t answer.

“Alice, please…”

Lory’s voice. My sister. But it’s wrong. Thin. Pulled through gauze like it doesn’t belong here anymore.

“You said there was no one there,” I murmur.

The mirror creaks.

Then the voice changes.

“Alice.”

Not Lory now.

Slower. Colder. Deeper. Hungrier.

I don’t look up. “I hear you.”

Silence.

I pluck a bent fork from a knot of roots and ash and fling it without looking.

A whisper of breath. The faintest rustle.

The mirror gives nothing back except two glowing red eyes.

I remember those eyes.

* * *

Light flashes. White room. Fluorescent buzz. Cold tile under bare feet.

My sister stands just out of reach, clutching a clipboard like a crucifix. Terrified.

“There’s no one there, Alice.”

But I see him. I’ve always seen him. Teeth gleaming like polished bone. Eyes that glow.

“Please.” I flinch. “Don’t let him near me.”

A hand on my shoulder. Not Lory’s.

A man in a white coat. He leans in close.

“I know,” he says gently. “Just lie down. This will help you rest.”

But his cuffs are stained.

And his eyes—

They glow.

* * *

The mirror shudders.

Glass groans like old bones. The surface ripples. Something steps through.

Tall. Thin as wire. Wrapped in white, yellowed at the edges. He still carries the stain of those hospital nights. Around his neck hangs a golden timepiece. Ticking. But the hands don’t move.

His ears twitch. Long ears. Wrong ears.

“Alice,” he says.

I lift my head slowly. Keep my face still. “You’re late.”

He chuckles. Low and bitter. “Always.”

“What do you want?”

“You called me.”

“No.” I rise. Slow. Deliberate. Like someone climbing out of a grave. “I buried you.”

“You buried the child. But the one who followed me down the hole is still digging.”

My hand moves to my coat. Habit. Nothing there. No weapon. Just fabric.

“You’re not the Rabbit.”

“No. But I wore his face. Wore so many faces I lost track.”

“What are you now?”

“Closer to you than anyone has ever been.”

I laugh. Sharp. Bitter. “You don’t know me.”

“But I do.” He steps closer. “I felt you. Your rage. Your hunger. Your refusal to be caged. I followed the scent of it like a bloodhound.”

“You followed the scent of a girl who escaped.”

He shakes his head. “You’re still in the mirror, Alice. You never left. You only think you did.”

My jaw clenches. “You don’t know what I’ve done to survive.”

“I do. That’s why I’m here.”

“What do you want with me?”

He steps closer. Eyes locked on mine. “To see who you really are.”

“Then open your eyes.”

“I mean the self beneath this one.” He gestures at my patched coat, my cracked nails. “The one who set fire to the garden. The one who remembers what they did. The one who stopped running.”

Something dark flickers behind my eyes. Old. Terrible. Patient.

“You want the monster.”

He doesn’t deny it. “I want the truth.”

I sneer. “Then show me yours first. You’re wearing skin like a stolen coat.”

He bows. “As you wish.”

His hands rise. The air ripples. His body sags, folds inward—face sloughing away like old paint. What’s left is a boy’s body, bruised and broken at the throat. Then another. And another. Each flash a different host. Until he stands as something featureless. Neither flesh nor shadow. A hollow echo shaped like a man.

“Who are you really?”

“I was hunger. Then I learned names. Then stories. Now I wear meaning like clothes.”

I breathe deep. Then I unlace my gloves.

Lory’s voice echoes in my head: “You used to be brilliant.”

As if brilliance were something fragile. Something broken.

I smile.

No, sister. I used to be silent.

The skin of my hands melts like wax. Bones stretch. Muscles twist. My face elongates, warps, curls into something feline—Cheshire, but without the grin. Then I shift again. Childlike. Golden hair. Wide, horrified eyes.

Then, finally—myself.

My true self.

Young. Terrible. Beautiful.

The woman who survived Wonderland not by escaping but by becoming something it could never consume.

“Now,” I say. “Do you still want me?”

He kneels. “Yes.”

I reach into my coat for a blade that should be there.

My fingers close on nothing.

He opens his hand. Between his fingers—a jagged shard of glass, edges slick with blood.

My smile sharpens. “Then you should have stayed dead.”

He tilts his head. “We’re running out of time.” He taps his watch. “I was hoping you’d come willingly. But if you won’t…”

His eyes glow faintly red.

”…I could always find another.”

I go still. “You don’t mean—”

He grins. “Lory.”

Something cold and ancient uncoils behind my ribs.

“I’ll kill you.”

He brushes the thin scar at his throat. “Then follow.”

He transforms. Limbs shortening. Mouth splitting wide, then vanishing. Ears growing long and warped—a funhouse sketch of innocence. A twitch. A gleam of fur.

He vanishes into the mirror.

I don’t hesitate.

The room empties behind me.

Only the timepiece remains.

And this time, it’s counting down.

* * *

There is no falling. Not in the way the body understands.

I am unmade. Stretched and folded. Pulled apart not by gravity but by meaning. A fall through metaphor and mind.

Clock faces spiral past. Some show numbers. Others runes. One screams when I look at it.

Teacups spin like planets. Broken and whole. Eyes smile in the dark without faces. A rabbit wears a crown of thorns. A woman weeps blood from black-painted lips.

Then—a corridor.

Root and sky. Mirrors lining the walls.

I see myself in each one. Different versions. Different fates.

A queen crowned in red.

A warrior drowning in blood.

A child curled beneath a book.

I lean into the fall. Arms tight. Spine braced.

This isn’t my first descent.

* * *

My boots hit ground.

Real. Solid. The shock travels up through my bones. Knees buckle. I roll to a crouch, fingers reaching for a weapon—

Nothing. Empty coat.

A glade surrounds me. Trees impossibly tall, trunks twisted like dancers frozen mid-step. Leaves black and veined with gold, rustling without wind.

The air smells of ink and iron.

I know this place.

Not Wonderland. Not the garden from the stories. This is what remains. The ruin. The aftermath.

The trees whisper my name.

Alice.

They know me. They’ve been waiting.

The forest peels away.

And fire takes its place.

Fire.

Not the wild kind that dances. This fire is deliberate. Purposeful. Lines drawn with oil and torch. Smoke spills through windows like black tongues. The air groans with heat and screams.

In the center of it all, a lizard-boy crouches against a crumbling wall. Trembling. Blood-stained sword shaking in his hands.

“I’m not supposed to die yet,” he says.

“Then don’t,” I tell him.

I crouch low. One hand on the stone. Eyes scanning the square.

My coat is ash-dyed leather, burned through at the hem. My boots crack when I move—coated with blood and soot. My hair is white-blonde, matted to my brow. One loose strand whips in the wind.

Bill—that’s his name, I’ll learn—tightens his grip on the sword. It isn’t his. I can tell by the way he holds it. By the fear radiating off every scaled inch of him.

He didn’t want to fight.

Now he has to.

“They’re burning everything,” he says.

“They always do.”

“Are you one of us?”

“No.”

“Then why—?”

“Quiet.”

Across the square, armored figures herd screaming villagers toward a dry well. A little girl clutches a soot-streaked doll. Her mother kneels beside her, hands bound, lips moving in prayer.

A knight leads them. Helm shaped like a plague mask. Blade dragging behind him like a broken plow. The sigil of the White King flickers on his chest—an eye split down the middle.

My hand twitches toward my hip.

Nothing there.

No sword. No weapon. Just the empty weight of want.

“How many?” I ask.

Bill blinks. “What?”

“Soldiers. How many?”

“Thirty? Maybe less.”

I stand.

Bill grabs my coat. Desperate. “Don’t! They’ll kill you.”

“They can try.”

I walk into the fire.

* * *

They notice me halfway to the well.

Two soldiers peel off. Clubs drawn.

I don’t flinch.

The first swing comes. I sidestep. Grab the second soldier’s wrist. Twist. Bone cracks. The club falls. I catch it mid-air and bury the iron head in the first soldier’s neck.

He drops.

The second stumbles back. My foot catches his ankle. He falls before he can scream.

The knight steps forward.

He towers above the smoke. Above the world. His armor is pitted and warped. Light scatters wrong off its surface, like it’s remembering something painful.

“Drop it,” he says.

I tilt my head. “You first.”

He lifts his sword.

It hums. I feel it in my bones.

I run.

* * *

He swings.

I dive. Roll beneath the arc. The sword bites the earth behind me, carving a trough in stone. Pebbles lift from the force. Hovering. Lost.

I come up behind him. Slam the club into his knee joint. Once. Twice. Third strike leaves a dent.

He pivots. Faster than a man his size should.

His gauntlet catches me across the face.

I hit the ground hard.

Blood in my teeth. Smoke in my hair. My body screams.

But I’m laughing.

“You’re not the first thing I’ve killed in that armor.”

The knight pauses. Sword lowering.

“You remember me,” I say.

He nods once.

“I took a Mirrorblade from your brother.”

“It was corrupted,” he says. “You did something to it.”

I push hair from my eyes. Smear blood across my forehead. “I earned it. And you’re afraid I might earn it again.”

I rise.

Unarmed.

Unbroken.

“Let the villagers go. This ends with me.”

His helm tilts. “Our king can offer you land. Titles. A new name. Bend the knee, and the White King would make you his queen.”

“I’ve had enough of crowns.” My voice is iron. “And I kneel to no man.”

He lifts his sword.

“So be it.”

He charges.

I dodge the first strike. Sparks fly. The next blow comes fast—too fast. I try to block with my forearm, then remember I have no armor.

Roll under his reach. But he’s already turning. His gauntlet catches me again. I sprawl across the stones.

The knight looms. Blade raised.

“Lady!”

Bill.

Behind a cart. Pale. Shaking. Holding a sword too long for his hands.

He throws.

Clumsy. End over end.

I catch it.

Not my blade. Wrong balance. Wrong weight.

But enough.

The knight swings down.

I meet it.

Steel clashes. The force shudders through my arms. I drop to one knee but twist, using his momentum. The borrowed blade slides under his guard.

I knock the weapon from his grasp.

It skitters across the cobblestones.

He staggers.

So do I.

Both reach for breath. Only one finds it.

I drive my foot into his chest. He crashes backward. Winded. Defeated.

I rise. Sword shaking in my grip.

The villagers stare.

“Run.”

They do.

All but Bill.

He inches closer. “You… you’re her.”

“Alice.”

The blade still hums. Softly now. Whispering someone else’s name.

The knight groans. Rolls to his side. And laughs.

“You think this wins you anything? The King will come. The Court. The Duchess. They’ll tear you apart again.”

I kneel beside him.

“I’ve died once,” I say. “It didn’t take.”

Then I stand.

And I see them.

White King’s men. Emerging from smoke. A silent ring tightening around me.

I turn to Bill.

“Go.”

“What about you?”

I lift the blade.

“I’ll manage.”

They bind my hands with silver twine.

I don’t struggle.

They drag me through the ashes of Tweedledown. Past the cracked queenstone. Past the blackened well where screams still echo. Past a broken doll lying face-down in the ash.

The villagers are gone.

Bill is gone.

They carry the Mirrorblade ahead of me like a torch. I watch them take it.

Say nothing.

My boots swing inches from the ground. Wind tugs hair across my face. A crow lands on the branch above me.

I close my eyes.

And smile.

* * *

“Alice,” the voice purrs. “You’ve gone and died again.”

I float in a dream of stitched shadows and sourceless light. Stars bare their teeth above me. Below, the ground breathes like a sleeping beast.

“Where am I?”

“In the crack between endings,” says the Cheshire Cat. His form flickers. Grin. Smoke. Nothing. Grin again. “The place where stories chew their own tails and call it fate.”

“I failed.”

“Of course you did. That’s what makes you interesting.”

I try to move. Can’t. Invisible ropes dig deeper with every strain.

“I can’t fight like this.”

“Then don’t fight.”

“I have to fight.”

“Then fight.”

The stars flicker out. One by one.

“I should be dead.”

“Should is such a tedious word.” He yawns. “You’re not the first Alice, you know.”

I go still.

“But you may be the last.”

Pain stabs through my chest. Sharp. Real.

“Then tell me—what did the first Alice do wrong?”

The grin lingers. Faint. Curved like a blade.

“She let them mark her.”

Darkness collapses.

A scream coils in my throat. I don’t let it out.

My body spasms.

* * *

I wake coughing in the back of a rusted, iron-barred wagon.

Lungs burning. Throat tasting of soot and rot. Wrists raw.

A gaunt man in a burnt top hat taps the bars with a bone cane. His face is carved in perpetual delight, but the joy doesn’t reach his eyes. His coat is stitched from different shades of skin.

“Careful now.” He prods me. “Do you know what binds the soul tighter than chains? Guilt. Or maybe nostalgia. Hard to tell. Both make lovely nooses.”

He taps harder.

“Still, silver’s more fashionable.” He grins. “It bites the bold and binds the meek, a ribbon made of silence and teeth. The more you writhe, the more it drinks—what rots the will, yet never reeks?”

I stare at him.

He taps his chest.

I try to pull my wrists apart. The silver digs deeper. Fresh blood.

He licks his teeth.

The Mad Hatter bursts into laughter, hops backward, and pirouettes toward the front of the cart.

To my left—a walrus. Actual walrus. Tusks chipped. Eyes sunken. Chain around his neck rubbed raw. He grunts when I shift.

Coughs. Wet. Heavy. Wipes his snout on his flipper. Blood and mucus.

“How are you alive?” I ask.

The man beside him—wiry, sharp-chinned, empty carpenter’s belt hanging from skeletal hips—nods. “Didn’t think you’d make it. Not after that.”

“Who are you?”

“The Walrus,” the pale creature says. “And this is the Carpenter.”

“Why were you hanging from that tree?” the Carpenter asks.

“I killed a Mirrorknight.”

“Impossible!” they say together.

“What did you really do?”

“I almost killed a Mirrorknight.”

“Alas, the truth,” the Carpenter says.

“What’s your truth?”

“We once tricked oysters into a seaside walk,” the Carpenter says. “Said we’d show them the moonlight.”

The Walrus grins. “We showed them teeth instead.”

“Now we’re the ones in chains.”

I laugh. Can’t help it.

“That’s not even the funny part,” the Walrus says. “We were invited—”

“We were tricked,” the Carpenter corrects.

“To a tea party.”

“The tea was bitter.”

“The biscuits stale.”

“And the sugar,” the Carpenter finishes, “it was salt.”

“You were drugged.”

The Mad Hatter claps from the front rail. “Oh, bravo! Steeped in dreamroot and drizzled with forget-me-knot. You all drank so willingly. Some asked for seconds.”

The cart rattles. Chains jingle overhead. Meat-hooks line the ceiling. The roof is patched with leather that still twitches.

“How long have you been here?”

The Walrus shrugs. “Weeks? Months?”

“Long enough to lose count,” the Carpenter sighs. “We had others. A hare. A dormouse. A girl. So many.”

“Where are they now?”

Silence.

“Some the road took,” the Carpenter says. “Hunger. Fever. Bloodrot. Others killed when the bandits came.”

“Bandits?”

“Raiders in flesh cloaks,” the Walrus says. “They took their skins. Left their bodies for the crows.”

“We used to be twenty.”

“The Mad Hatter smiled through the whole thing.”

I lean back. Catalog. Plan. Search for weakness.

The Hatter turns. Eyes glowing beneath his soot-crusted hat.

“Cargo lost, profit lost. But a queen half-dead and strung like fruit? That’s a rare vintage. Might bottle you if no one buys. Tragedy makes the finest notes.”

Through the bars—a forest flayed to its nerves. Trees hung with bones. Sky black as bruises.

“Where is he taking us?”

“The Flesh Bazaar,” the Walrus says.

* * *

Days pass. Or nights. Can’t tell anymore.

I lie curled in the corner. Body slick with sweat and grime. Breath shallow. Stomach cramping. Clothes crusted stiff. The stink of decay rises from my own skin.

Can’t move much. None of us can.

The Walrus wheezes in his sleep. Wet rattle. Lips gray. Tusks yellow. When he speaks, it’s fragments of old stories.

The Carpenter scratches marks into the floor with a bent nail. Counting something.

Sometimes I hear laughter. High and giddy.

Sometimes I see the Cat’s grin behind my eyelids.

Sometimes I dream I’m still hanging from that tree.

Then—the wagon stops.

Footsteps. Creaking.

A tray slides across the floor. Gray slush. Smells of glue and mold.

I can’t sit up.

The Walrus reaches for his bowl. Flipper hits the bars. I push it closer with my foot. He doesn’t take it. I push again.

The Carpenter drags the tray closer. Doesn’t eat. Just stares.

The Mad Hatter crouches outside the cage. Watching.

“Eat up. Tomorrow’s a special occasion.”

He leans in. Breath sweet and rotten.

“Tell me—what wears a price, weeps like meat, and begs not to be chosen… yet hopes to be picked?”

No one answers.

“A slave. Or maybe supper.”

The Carpenter drinks. Gags. Swallows again.

The Walrus wheezes. “Where’s ours?”

The Hatter kicks bowls through the bars. One splashes against my side.

I lift the damp fabric to my mouth. Disgusting. Faintly sweet. Spoiled.

But it’s food.

I suck at the cloth. Greedy. Humiliated. Scoop what remains from the floor with my fingers.

The Walrus wheezes again. Flipper doesn’t lift. Bowl inches from his snout. He just stares. Pupils blown. Mouth slack.

The Hatter’s grin sharpens.

“Ah, poor thing. What spreads from mouth to mouth, kisses skin with fever’s tongue, and leaves its mark in blisters?”

He waits.

“Plague.”

The cane plunges into the Walrus’s chest.

He gurgles. Shudders. One final rattle.

Still.

I lunge. Instinct. Body screaming. Cramps seizing. Knees giving out.

I don’t reach him.

The cane slams into my stomach.

Air leaves me. I collapse. Vomit. Half-digested slush splatters the floor beside the Walrus.

The Hatter watches. Delighted.

“Oops. Guess we’re skipping seconds.”

He hooks the cane under the Walrus’s jaw and drags. Wet scrape. Blood trail. Tusks scraping metal.

The pale eye stares at me as he’s pulled away.

I don’t cry. Can’t let him win. Can’t look away or I’ll never look up again.

The Hatter stops at the threshold.

“Fat’s no good when it’s spoiled. But the tongue?” He snaps his fingers. “Tender.”

Gone.

The door slams. Cage rocks. Chains clatter.

I stare at the blood trail. Chest heaving. Wrists bleeding fresh.

The Carpenter counts scratches. One, two, three.

I curl into myself. Pain blooming. Bile and iron on my tongue.

Close my eyes.

The Cat’s voice purrs in my mind.

See? You tried. Wasn’t that worse?

The cage lurches forward.

* * *

The cart stops with a death rattle.

Bolts groan open.

They pull us out one by one. Hands everywhere. Knees scraping stone.

I step left when others step right. Testing. The silver hisses. Sparks. Bites deeper. Vision splits. Someone yanks me back.

Collar comes next. Iron around the neck. Chains linking us like dogs.

I don’t resist. Not yet.

They bring us to a leather tent. Intestines hanging from hooks. Meat swaying.

Basins of water.

A man with no mouth gestures.

Another nods.

The stripping begins.

Clothes torn away. Nothing spared. Not boots. Not belts. Not shame.

I stand motionless. Dirt streaking my ribs. Back a map of old wounds. Someone whistles.

I file the sound away. Another debt to be paid.

Then the water.

Three buckets. Four. Five.

Cold. Brutal. Smells of rotten flowers. Perfume.

I sputter. It clings like oil.

They pour it like baptism. But there’s no rebirth here.

The Carpenter cries. Others collapse.

The Mad Hatter appears. Twirling his cane.

“Can’t have our pretties looking too lived in. Today’s the big day. Best to sparkle.”

He turns to me.

“A little washed. A little wild. Just the way they like them.”

The man with no mouth slaps a number on my collarbone.

Chains bite my ankles.

The Hatter leans close.

“Remember to smile, darling. Misery sells, but madness fetches double.”

He laughs.

The march begins.

* * *

He leads us like a carnival parade. Whistling a waltz. Coat of stitched skins fluttering. Each time he turns back, his grin grows wider.

The Flesh Bazaar looms ahead. But first—circles. Past perimeter tents. Vendors selling dolls stuffed with human hair. Meat-hooks strung with tongues.

Spectators gather. Laughing. Pointing.

Children in beetle masks throw stones. One hits my ribs. Another my thigh. High laughter behind the masks.

An old woman in feathers spits at me.

A little girl skips beside us, singing:

“Off with their clothes, off with their skin, Peel ‘em down ‘til the red begins.”

The man ahead of me collapses. Doesn’t rise. The chain jerks everyone behind. The Hatter tugs. The man drags. Face scraping stone. Splitting.

I step around him.

Whistles. Jeers. Catcalls.

A man in a ram mask bleats nonsense.

We pass a cage of headless dancers. Bodies swaying to silent music.

The Carpenter stares at the ground.

I keep my head up.

If I lower it, I’ll never raise it again.

* * *

The gates groan open.

Air shifts. Iron. Perfume. Meat.

The Flesh Bazaar.

Not a market. Not a court. A theater of cruelty. Stage tiled like a chessboard. Rafters dripping with banners sewn from faces. Audience: nobles in leather and silk, bodies marking them as things that abandoned humanity long ago.

I watch a boy dragged to the stage. Small. Wide-eyed. Crying.

They press the brand to his back. It sizzles.

I suck air through my teeth.

The Mad Hatter throws his arms wide.

“Ladies and fiends, feathered or flayed! I bring you my finest catch! A dog in form, a queen in fury! She killed a knight, she chews through chains, she pisses silver and bleeds glass—Alice of Nowhere, last of the Mirrorborn!”

Interest ripples through the crowd.

One creature with a mouth of spinning bone raises a claw.

Another offers a birdcage full of teeth.

They don’t bid in coin. They bid in flesh. Screams. Trinkets made from children’s bones.

The Hatter parades me. Yanks my collar. Turns me in a circle.

“She walks like a curse. But bites like a blessing.”

My mouth is dry. Feet raw. Wrists bound by silver that drinks my defiance.

A girl—no older than seven—tied to a stake nearby. Glass eyes. Hair braided with spiders.

The bidding ends.

From the crowd steps a woman swaddled in violet fur that writhes like it remembers being alive. Face powdered white. Eyes like wet stones. Teeth flat and perfect. Porcelain.

The Duchess.

“Her,” she says. Pointing at me. “I’ll take that one.”

The Hatter bows low.

“As you wish, most fleshed and fragrant madam.”

Chains jingle. Papers signed. I’m handed over like cargo.

The Duchess runs a nail beneath my chin. Lifts it.

“Leave her unmarked,” she says. “My son prefers them unspoiled.”

She smiles.

I don’t.

But behind my stillness, something wakes.

Something old.

Something angry.

Something that remembers what the first Alice did wrong.

They’ve marked me as property.

But I am no one’s possession.

And before this is over, they’ll learn exactly what that means.