During the night, the monster returns, despite all the precautions the villagers have taken. Normally, all that means for Aradia is that she has to stay inside at night, safe within the little shack they call home. But this time it's different. This time, when she wakes up in the morning, she goes outside to see that it has killed her sheep.

Aradia Megido looks down the remains of Ram-mom and bites her lip. She loved the sheep. She had given her the name "Ram-mom" when she was a little child, due to how it seemed to fuss over her when she played in the fields, like a second mother. Now she was dead. Eaten, judging by how little of her is left.

She picks her whip up off the ground and turns to go.

Her real mother is waiting at the door of their home, looking concerned. She reminds Aradia of a sheep, just like Ram-mom reminded her of a mother. Her black hair, soft like wool and still messy from sleep, hangs down over her shoulders and reaches to her waist. Aradia twists her own hair around her finger.

"Daughter," her mother says. Aradia walks right past her.

"Daughter," she says again while Aradia grabs her hat and a small rucksack. "Aradia. You're about to do something dangerous, I know you are. You have that look about you. What are you planning?"

"I'm going to kill the monster," Aradia says.

Her mother inhales sharply. "I didn't think it would be that dangerous. Dear, don't do something as foolish as that. At best, you'll get yourself lost in the woods, and at worst..." She trails off, unable to bring herself to say what the worst would be.

"Mom," Aradia says, "it's killing everyone's animals, and it's just going keep killing them if someone doesn't go to stop it. Someone needs to go. I can fight."

"So could Dirk," her mother says sharply. "He never came back. You can fight? I've never seen you fight. The most I've seen you do is hunt rabbits!"

Aradia pulls her hair back into a ponytail. Her mother never found out about the games she used to play with Tavros, Terezi and Vriska. They had to cover it up well, after the accident that left Tavros unable to walk, Terezi blind, and lost Vriska an eye and an arm. Aradia was injured, too, but not as badly as the others. She recovered fully. If she could live through that, she could kill the monster.

She doesn't say this. "I've hunted bigger things than rabbits," she says.

"Not a monster! Nobody even knows what it looks like, how can you hope to fight it? Aradia, don't do this to me. Not after Damara."

Aradia realizes that her mother has started to cry. It's pointless to continue talking; after what happened to her first daughter, who disappeared when she was just a baby, she would never allow Aradia to go off on her own, and especially not in search of a monster.

So Aradia hugs her and says she's sorry, she won't do anything to worry her. Her mother weeps and clutches her tightly and they hold each other for a while. Then it's time for the daily chores, and as she works, all Aradia can think of is how the monster could kill any one of them the next night, just like it did to Ram-mom. Maybe next time it would kill Mother.

That night, she takes her whip, some food, and a sword she stole from Vriska, and leaves.

The next morning, she's dead.

The sky. Clouds. The bare branches of trees, waving in the breeze. Aradia is lying on the ground, and she feels very strange.

Something is wrong.

The ground feels like it's not really there, almost like how a spider web feels against her face when she stumbles into them in the middle of the night. That thought brings back a sudden flood of memories, and she remembers: the monster.

She went out to kill the monster, but she failed. The monster killed her instead. She remembers the piercing pain through her belly, and the feeling of her guts spilling out of onto her hands. The monster had torn a hole right through her. She wonders what kind of monster it was, to have done that.

After that, she remembers nothing. All she knows is that she must be dead.

Somehow, this fails to invoke any strong emotion in her. In fact, she doesn't feel much emotion at all. She's not calm, no, just... gone. She feels gone, and she knows enough to know that this is wrong.

Aradia does the only thing that makes sense to her; she stands up and walks back through the forest to go home.

Animals don't see her. She walked right up to a deer and it didn't even notice. It was only when she touched it that it jumped up and ran. She wonders what it felt.

She's a ghost now, Aradia knows that, but she can't walk through things, not like all the ghosts of the horror stories her mother told her. Though everything feels like it would give beneath her hand with a single push, she doesn't have the strength to move anything, and a single leaf is enough to block her way. Walking hurts, too. The twigs and leaves press into her bare feet like knives against her skin, but she refuses to stop. Something is wrong with her. Why hasn't she gone to heaven? Why doesn't she feel any emotion? These are all questions that need answering, and she won't be able to answer them in the forest.

Maybe she has unfinished business. Maybe she needs to say goodbye to her mother. But she didn't appear anywhere near her body lay, and this area the forest is unfamiliar to her. It might not even be the same forest.

She finds a creek, and discovers that she can walk on water. The water is cold to touch, but it feels smooth compared to the harsh ground of the forest, if a little wobbly to walk on. Most of the stones in the creek are smooth, but sometimes, a jagged stone pokes up beneath the running water, and when she steps on one, she winces. She leave ripples, she notices; faint ones, but ripples nonetheless. She doesn't know how she should feel about that. Good, maybe?

She has to fix this. That's the only thing that keeps her going; there is something wrong with her, and it needs to be fixed. She's remembers a time when she could feel happy, angry, sad – when she could feel at all, and she wants to go back to that time.

Eventually, the creek brings her out of the forest and into a meadow. Off in the distance, she sees a stone building with tall towers, the likes of which she's never seen before. She thinks it's called a "castle".

"A castle," Aradia says out loud. She can't hear her own voice.

"Castle," she says again, louder. Still nothing. She yells, just to see if she can make any sound at all, and it comes out as a whisper. At least she can make a sound, she thinks.

There isn't any reason for her to go there. If animals can't see her, then how could people see her? But if she can talk, then other people can hear her. Maybe she can find help.

Aradia leaves the creek behind and walks out onto the meadow.