When Will slid through the barrier between worlds, Danny could feel his protection snap, like a threat pulled too tight. But- He'd protected them. He'd saved them. They were safe.
Glass shattered, wood groaning. He helped shove Barb out as well, hands lighting up with green when he realized it was trying to heal itself closed. He reached to burn it open.
Reached, and stopped.
His heel wouldn't leave the ground.
Black vines crawled and shuddered up his leg, flinching away with tiny screams when he shot an ectoblast down at them. The obsession in his chest pulsed fiercely, satisfied he'd fulfilled it, and lent liquid energy through his veins. Danny freed his foot with another blast and floated, white creeping up the roots of his dark hair, green eyes illuminating the room.
In the corner of his eye, the wall healed shut.
Monsters crawled in through the window - creeping in through the kitchen.
He flickered intangible, invisible, darting sideways through the wall and into the misty night beyond.
Huge vines had lashed down over the house, creaking the supports and digging up shingles with bone-white roots. Danny ignored it, racing toward the forest and toward the safe haven of his apartment.
The mist thickened before him, and Danny stopped abruptly, straining his ears. Every exhale tickled cold and blue with his ghost sense, the heaviness of the air crushing down on his shoulders.
He looked up.
A great cloud loomed above him, denser and darker than any sky he'd seen in this world before.
Sweeping branches of dark mist reached down, caging around him. He couldn't - couldn't move. Something (fear?) had seized his limbs, weighing them with molasses and dampening the frantic energy of his core.
A flash of lightning forked across the sky, catching and jumping in circles within what could only be two dark eyes.
He lifted a hand, took a breath, every movement a struggle, and tried to form a shield.
Before the wavering energy even extended past his palm, he felt himself snagged around the waist - around the throat. Felt himself pulled down to the ground, vines and roots spreading and branching to lock his limbs in place.
He felt a prick in the back of his neck, heard the steady lope of monsters approaching through the leaves, and everything went white.
