The setting was the same, but a good deal of time had certainly passed. If Hat Kid didn't already know how things looked in present-day Subcon, it would've taken her a few minutes to recognize the courtyard. Miasma covered the forest as far as the eye could see, just as usual. A thick layer of slush coated the muddy earth and dead undergrowth. The ice from Vanessa's storm was melting, leaving only its jagged crystals piercing up from the ground. And through walls. And into homes.

The beautiful town had been destroyed with clear purpose, although whether it was because of some craving for vengeance against the Prince or in mourning because of his escape, Hat Kid didn't know. Only a few, scattered towers and piles of rock remained of the once proud walls. Buildings were in shambles and the roads torn apart. Half of the castle managed to stay intact, due to its sheer size, but much of the upper levels had been either devastated or completely fallen away. The walkways that had surrounded the fountain laid in scattered heaps of rubble in the slowly melting snow. The damage would only get worse as the ice continued to thaw and this part of Subcon was left abandoned.

A single, green ghost levitated in the courtyard, just staring at the ruins with his back turned to her. Hat Kid didn't even have to walk around him to recognize the deer mask and know it was the boy from before. She didn't need to see his face to read the despair that emitted from him. Like so many others, he was a nameless casualty of events he didn't even play a true part in…

Another Dweller—this one with an azure blue body and bull mask—floated through the metal gates and over to his side. A masculine voice that she couldn't exactly place left the ghost in a quiet, sorry tone, "Come on, we shouldn't be here. Vanessa's minions are always hiding around the next corner, not to mention we have to deal with that monster. We need to meet up with the others while we've got a chance."

For a minute, the first Dweller didn't respond. He barely cast the other a glance and then looked back at the wreckage with his head hung low. When he did finally speak, the boyish, playful cheer he once carried was now absent in his voice. "Where were you when it happened?" he asked solemnly, "Since the village was struck first, they say that the people on this side of the forest had a little bit of warning. That some of them managed to get out in time…

"I was on my rounds," the boy continued, only this time as though he was speaking only to himself, "I didn't know what was happening until the cold swept over the trees. I wasn't anywhere near here. I don't know if my family made it out ok. I don't even know if she…"

Here he stopped before his voice could begin to quiver. Once more, he fell silent. The blue Dweller gave him a moment to recompose himself, looking away out of respect from his grief. In the silence that followed, it was possible that he inwardly mourned as well.

Unable to provide any comfort, Hat Kid bowed her head out of her own respect, folding her hands together in front of her. She stared at the ends of her boots, then looked back to the fallen castle. The laughter and music she'd heard—to what was, in her mind—only minutes ago, seemed so distant now. It was sad to think not just of the area's destruction, but how it had been left to rot as nothing more than a bad memory since.

Something strange caught her eye as she scanned over the ruins, mentally following the same path she'd taken previously. With a raised brow, the child walked along the palace's outer wall with a hand pressed against it, running her fingers over the cold stone. She stopped just as she reached the entrance to the narrow passage she'd followed the boy through earlier, only now it was blocked off. Not by stone or wooden beams, but by tight, interwoven cords of red thread that were so thickly pulled together that she could barely see through them.

She'd never seen it before… Curious, Hat Kid reached out to them and was surprised when it gave a little at her touch, dipping against the weight of her fingertips. It actually responds to me…? she thought with wonder. The young alien looked back over her shoulder to see if anything else had changed in the memory thanks to her interference, but nothing happened. The two Dwellers still didn't react to her presence and when she looked down at the snow, the tracks she'd normally leave behind were missing.

What exactly was this stuff? Her mouth drew into a firm, determined line. She pulled against the thread to try to clear it away only for a pained cry to leave her as she stumbled back and looked down at her hands. Streaks of red, like lashes, ran across her palms: It didn't cut her, but the skin heated like a bad rash.

After the initial horror had passed, the child quickly kneeled in the snow and pressed her hands against it for the cool feeling to sweep over her and ease the pain. This wasn't part of the memory… It was something else, an intrusion just like her. But why? What was it doing here? Granted, she was still young, but if it was an anomaly born from the Time Piece's destruction, it was nothing she'd ever heard of in her studies. If it was an anomaly, she'd have to find a way to correct it.

Before she could shuffle through her limited knowledge and the limitless possibilities that might've caused such a thing, the elder Dweller glided over to the young specter. "Come on," he repeated, only this time when he spoke, it was barely a whisper.

The other paused; released a deep, struggled sigh; and nodded. Then, the two turned away, disappearing back through the gate and down the crumbled remains of road still left intact. The second fragment of memory vanished with them, spilling Hat Kid yet again back where she left off.

Her hands still hurt. Before she continued to the third level, Hat Kid backtracked in order to look for a heart pon to heal her injury. The delay actually ended up being for the best, as she spotted a page she'd nearly missed her first way through—set on a distant wall away from the majority of structures. She left the path to grab it before going any further:

The memory seemed to continue where the previous one left off.

She followed the two ghosts only a short distance from some of the ruins, in the heart of mass of briars. There, a small group of other Dwellers was already waiting. She recognized one of them: The teenage girl who'd carried her into the Horizon. The rest seemed to be an odd assortment, with varying masks, sizes, and colorations. There was a near dozen of them total, clustered together in a tight circle. Hat Kid crawled inside to sit among them and listen in on their conversation.

"Is this really everyone?" questioned an emerald Dweller with a demonic-looking mask.

"Should be," answered another, who didn't wear a mask at all, instead appearing as the snake-like manifestation the Dwellers always seemed to take the shape of without them. "Anyone else that stuck around is either a kid, already locked up, or too afraid to fight back."

A third one with a teal body shuddered at that, "A-are we sure it's safe here…?"

"Yeah. We looked around before everyone showed up. The good news is that thing seems to be keeping most of the spirits back. The closest one we saw was around the fire spirits' borders."

It slowly began to dawn on her that the 'thing' they were referring to had to be Snatcher. He was the only ghost in Subcon Forest powerful enough to keep the more malicious spirits at bay, the ones that would go after any soul like the giant skeleton that had attacked her. Even the fire spirits—while often good intentioned—could be dangerous. She remembered being told how Subcon's miasma attracted a lot of strong, negative forces to the land. It must've been hard immediately after Vanessa's storm, a cloud of mass death and destruction still fresh over the forest, with every evil spirit drooling through their fangs to claim Subcon for their own. It must've been hard for Snatcher to stand against them all…

Apparently though, not hard enough for him to drop his façade for anyone. The group of Dwellers talked about him as though he were the devil incarnate. "How are we going to beat him?" another one asked, "Even if he wasn't stronger than us, even if he didn't have spells, he's got some of our children now! There's got to be a way to destroy their contracts!"

"You don't think he really eats souls, do you…?" someone voiced anxiously, "He… he wouldn't eat them… right?"

A moment of horrified silence fell over the group before another Dweller answered, although not very confidently, "I don't think so… For whatever reason, he wants slaves. Maybe because of Vanessa, or maybe because it's his idea of some sick game. I don't know. Either way, I don't think we have to worry about them right now: He wouldn't have made bodies for them otherwise."

The demon-masked Dweller exhaled grimly, "The ones he's got caged in that old tower, however…"

Silence hung over them yet again. Hat Kid bit her lower lip. The Dwellers she knew in present-day Subcon were at least civil toward Snatcher and his minions, even if many were nervous around them. They seemed to trust Snatcher enough to know that he wouldn't go out of his way to hurt them and some of them even lived with the doll-like servants. However, these Dwellers didn't know that. The only Snatcher they knew was the one who had suddenly appeared in the forest and claimed it for himself.

And he did lock up other ghosts, be it rogue Dwellers; servants of Vanessa's; or other lost souls that had wandered into Subcon and landed in his grasp. She envisioned the birdcage-shaped cells that hung suspended in the ruins that Snatcher had claimed as a kind of duel prison and lab. To be honest, the more time she'd spent around him, the less she believed he really ate souls: It was likely just another lie he kept up in order to scare others into obedience and deter any outsiders from entering the forest. If he did, he probably would've devoured her own soul instead of fighting her, or tried to take Mustache Girl's when she'd snuck into the forest after her. Nevertheless, it didn't change the fact that he was imprisoning people or how his former subjects viewed him as a result.

Maybe he wanted them to think he was that awful, but at times she was still confused as to why. Maybe he didn't want to be their prince anymore, maybe he felt guilty for everything that happened, but why take on the identity he had now as this terrible, overpowering spirit?

"Freeing the others should be our first goal," explained the second Dweller, "We can try to sneak them out when he's busy dealing with some of the spirits. If enough of us band together, we should be strong enough to wear him down."

"You must be joking!"

"We'll get stronger!" the former insisted, "He might have his contracts and the miasma on his side, but there's only one of him! We've just got to get used to…" he waved at his own, see-through body with the tip of his tail, "this, first."

"Could we trick him into fighting the queen?" the azure Dweller offered, "maybe we could at least get rid of one of them that way."

"I don't even want to imagine it," said another ghost nervously, "It'd be a clash of monsters: The devil contractor vs. the ice witch."

"Sam!"

"What?! We're all thinking it! Look what she did to the woods—to us! Did you know Elliot went to the manor to find her, to figure out what happened?! He hasn't come back yet! It's been two weeks! She might've been queen, but I'll sign my soul over to that Snatcher before I ever call her—!"

There was a dull thud as something fell in the distance. The entire group went mute. For a few seconds, they just listened for any other sounds. Only the faint call of the wind covered over the softs shuffling of objects somewhere back in the direction of the ruins. A few of the Dwellers looked to each other, nodded, and slowly crept out of their hiding place.

One of them was the teal ghost, who the teenage girl Hat Kid had befriended quickly stopped in a panicked motion, "No, Mother!"

The young alien paused. She'd only met her twice, but she knew for a fact that the mother's soul was red. Despite this, the ghost responded in turn, grazing her tail in a consoling way across the girl's mask. "Stay here," she instructed, "Watch over the others. We'll be back."

With that, they split off, about a third of the group leaving in search of the noise and others remaining behind.