Mae followed the apparition she somehow knew was really Casey away from the projection of the Hartley household, her gaze glued to his back in spite of her apprehension from being closely watched in turn by the Deep Hollow Hollerers as they left. She wanted to turn back, to question them for what they were doing, to force answers out of them, but she couldn't let Casey leave her sight for even a moment for fear of losing him again. This same fear made her tentative and nervous when she finally began to question Casey about what was actually even happening.

"So," she started, fidgeting her fingers and biting her lower lip. "These aren't just dreams, are they?"

"I know the appropriate cliché for this," Casey replied with a smile in his voice. "I'm supposed to say that even if this was a dream then I'd say it wasn't, or that everyone in your dream would say that, but here in the real world dreams don't work that way."

"I mean, I mostly asked on behalf of all of our mutual friends. You know, since they all think I'm crazy."

"Well you aren't crazy. You never have been. Most people just aren't smart enough to understand you." Mae's smile grew, even though she didn't quite agree with him. It felt nice to be defended, especially since everyone else, including her parents, just accepted that she was mentally ill as a fact.

"Even if that's true I definitely am at least a little crazy." Casey waved a paw dismissively as he led her onward, climbing over what looked like a pile of cables and tube television sets. Mae flexed her retractable claws before quickly climbing after him. Neither of them had ever had much trouble with vertical travel, getting up to places they really weren't supposed to be throughout their youth. "So like, if these aren't really dreams, then what exactly is this place?"

"The belly of the beast." They passed the shadow figure of an old wolf smoking a pipe, something about his figure vaguely familiar to Mae. "I'm not even being cute, that's literally what this is. We're here to be digested."

"By 'we' I assume you mean all these ghosts." Casey nodded forlornly, his steps noticeably slowing as he took in more of their surroundings. There were flashes of light ahead that carried a slight reverberation on the wind and through the ground, and the ghostly apparitions were becoming less common further along.

"They try to drift away from where we're going. It frightens them." Mae huffed, clearly unphased as she swiftly redirected the conversation.

"My point is that you don't look like them at all: you're still whole and moving around properly. Don't you think that means we could, like, I don't know, get you out of here?" Casey turned around and put a hand on Mae's shoulder, staring directly into her eyes with an intensity she had only seen from him once before.

"Don't go in that hole, Mae. You'll end up here again, only this time you won't be able to leave." She nodded, dumbfounded until he smiled at her and turned around again. She put her hands in her pockets and shut up, not sure what to say after that. She refused to just leave him to die, but if he wouldn't let her risk her own neck in the process he probably wouldn't be much help.

"I see Hell." She just said it without thinking, the distant explosions rushing closer with memories that weren't hers.

"Mae?" They weren't walking forward anymore. The landscape was shaping itself around them, rushing by to place them somewhere else, somewhere with trenches, falling mortar shells, corpses, and fire. "What the eff? Mae, are you doing this?"

"It's Hell, we're in Hell." Casey was holding her again, but her shaky paws tried to push him out of the way. There was something she had to do and there wasn't much time left.

Anselm was dragging another cat through the trenches, over the corpses of their fellow soldiers, but he knew not where his destination was. His eyes were flitting from one horror to the next as he searched for something, anything he could use to save Hartley's life. "You'll see your son again, sir."

"Anselm."

"Th-there has to be something for burns like that. Cl-cleaner bandages somewhere f-for the holes."

"Anselm," Hartley started again, his voice weak, "what are you doing?"

"I'm trying to save your life, you asshole!"

"Anselm. Drop me. We're out of medical supplies." Something in Anselm broke in that moment. Somehow he'd managed to cope with the horrors of war in spite of his inexperience, but that part of him couldn't outlive his entire unit and everyone else they'd fought with in those trenches. His grip shook as he slowly lowered Hartley to the ground, his claws stuck in the fabric of his blackened shirt. "Scavenge for more ammo... and keep going."

"No, don't leave me, please." Hartley weakly raised a paw, but he couldn't quite reach anything on his own, so Anselm let go of his shoulders and held it.

"Don't let them through, the bastards. Don't." Anselm nodded hastily, but it wasn't fast enough for them to have another moment. The sergeant breathed his last and lay still.

"Get up." Anselm sniffed and looked up, confused by that rough but clearly female voice, his eyes landing on a glowing apparition of a cat with a symbol he didn't recognize on her shirt. "You can't let them win without a fight."

"Why not? What is there left to fight for?"

"His son! Your family! Everyone who doesn't have a place in a Nazi's world! It's not over yet, Anselm. I know you're stronger than this." The soldier shook his head, staring at her and wondering why he was having such a vivid hallucination.

"Who even are you?"

"I'm here to help." She seemed to stall for a moment, as if trying to come up with something better to add. "I'm the part of you that still wants to fight, I'm the anger that burns beneath your sadness, and I'm the embodiment of Hartley's last wish. Don't let them through, Borowski!" Anselm blinked, shaking his head in confusion. He thought he saw Hartley a few feet behind her, smiling proudly and giving that barely noticeable nod of approval he'd seen so many times before. Maybe he was going crazy, but it worked. He wiped away his tears, affixed a bayonet to his rifle, and flicked his ears up until he heard German speech. He'd found his next target. He would fight them until his body was broken, because they couldn't break his resolve first.

"That was amazing." In spite of how confident she'd appeared in front of Anselm, Mae was staring with wide eyes at the carnage around her even as it began to shift away, the weird geometry of wherever they were moving them further along.

"Did that really happen, Casey? I can't have really been in the past, before I was even, like, I mean, time doesn't work that way, does it?" He gave her a pat on the shoulder and kept moving, looking over his shoulder to answer her.

"This place has its own rules. His rules. You'll get used to it if you're here long enough. Come on, you just got us a lot closer to the Heart." Casey seemed anxious about something, and it hurried his steps, Mae jogging to keep up until they finally beheld a vortex of light and blackness, a twisting horror of impossible geometry in more dimensions than any typical person could understand, much less perceive. Yet, they were both fine. Their minds didn't cave in on themselves, even with the whispers of the damned being stretched into an eternal whistling chorus. There were no insectoid monstrosities nor ethereal fish anywhere to be seen, and the surrounding landscape seemed to fade gradually into a field of empty space. The space between stars.

"I know what you said now," Mae said suddenly, wanting him to turn away from that thing and talk to her again. "I lived it again. I heard what you and Gregg were arguing about."

"Hmm..." He finally did turn to her again, tears on his cheeks glistening like the stars they could no longer see. "Did you ever love me back?"

"I could have, if you'd just told me how you felt. Now I just want you back."

"Mmm, I guess I can afterlive with that answer." While he said it he reached his hand into the Heart, and Mae was surprised when nothing significant seemed to happen. He was just flexing his fingers in the vortex, like a kid putting his hand out of a car window.

"Are we doing ghost puns now? Is that what this is?"

"There's one more thing you have to see before you leave. The blackness is tricky so follow my footsteps exactly as I make them." She nodded, even though he was dodging around a topic she'd rather discuss in more detail. "Things will shift around out there, but you can always get to a focal point from the Heart if you know the steps."

As a new vision of the world came into focus Mae found herself regretting her words, because she did love Casey, and she always had. Maybe not in the way he loved her, but if he really did feel that way why shouldn't she take the opportunity to see what it would feel like to be with him, to just hold him close and not pretend she could stand to have him leave her at the end of the day. She just had to save him from whatever was happening and then they could try again.

That's when she saw someone she never expected to see in person. She saw Adina Astra, sitting at the edge of the frozen lake, talking to the ghost from the story her grandfather told her so long ago. She didn't die, she just went somewhere else. Somehow she couldn't bring herself to disturb the two of them, and Casey led her to the far off edge of the lake and sat down. "It feels like you don't have much time left, but now that I've shown you the path you can probably come back here later if you want."

"Casey, I do love you, and I'm sorry." She sat next to him, turned to face him, and spoke without thinking too much about what she was saying. "It's cool that Adina is still around somehow and that you found her for me in this mess, but I just want to spend all of my time here with you, and not just now but the next time too. And if you wanted to, like, do stuff with me, I would be okay with that. I don't know if you technically count as a ghost yet or not but I don't care either way."

"You don't sound like you really want to."

"I'd do it for you! I'd do anything for you, just don't leave again!"

"Mae." She stopped. She was breathing too fast. She felt like they were running out of time and she didn't know what to do. She hadn't had the time to process her emotions, or find out if she could return his feelings. He was supposed to be dead already and nothing made sense, least of all how their relationship had changed just because of one reclaimed memory. "Kiss me, Mae. Please."

She took a few calming breathes, slow and measured, and then she said, "Okay." She straddled him, which he wasn't expecting, and she licked her lips with nervous anticipation. She hadn't expected him to take her up on her offer so soon, nor for something as benign as a kiss, but his expression was so anxious and desperate that she couldn't deny him, not after everything he must have gone through. She didn't ask him what they did to him, or how they forced him into the hole. He didn't need to relive that now, even if knowing would help her later. Instead she settled herself more comfortably in his lap and slowly leaned forward.

The cushion of his legs brought them to a more matched height, so she only had to look up slightly when she reached him, and she pressed her wet lips to his. Something immediately changed in him, and he stopped being anxious or reserved. One of his hands held the back of her head while he deepened the kiss, his other arm wrapped around her back and pulling her closer, pressing their bodies together as he groped her curves and ran his tongue over hers.

A wave of pleasure washed through Mae, like a particularly satisfying bite of pizza but much more flavorful, which wasn't at all what she was expecting a kiss to feel like. She gasped and pulled back, Casey sighing contently and placing his hands in the snow. "That felt.. great! But I don't – Casey?" Every time she took a breath she felt the pleasure hit her again, but Casey seemed to be struggling to hide a wince every time. "Are you okay?"

"He sang to me, Mae."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I was so scared when they brought me to that hole, but they didn't just throw me in. They made me jump at gunpoint. Said I had to choose to do it myself. Either way I was dead, so I listened to the song." She was starting to breath faster, shaking her head in denial, but with every breath he became less vivid, weaker, and it felt amazing for her, which just made it so much worse. Already she couldn't touch him anymore, falling through his legs like they were made of smoke. He was struggling to speak. "I just wanted to see you one last time, but then He told me what you are. He showed me that I could be with you forever if I jumped. Well, augh! In a s-sense, anyway."

"No. This can't be happening."

"He told me. He has to feed his children."

"This is bullshit! Stop it!"

"I can't. You're the one eating me, remember?"

"I don't know how to stop! Please, help. Stay. D-don't do this to me! Nnnn..." The pleasure assaulted her senses in stark contrast to her tumultuous emotions, her claws digging into the snow and her eyes trained on what was left of Casey. His projected clothes were gone, and threads of light seemed to be draining from his figure into her mouth and nose. His fiery orange fur and his brilliant emerald eyes were fading away. "Don't leave me, please."

"I'd rather you have me than him. The Heart stirred me up so you could take me more easily. He warned it'd be hard for you since you're so young. I did a good job pretending it didn't hurt, didn't I?"

"You can't die again. It's not fair." It got worse. Casey couldn't speak anymore. Mae was reminded of the voices in the heart when he groaned in pain. It was unbearable, but he couldn't let himself scream; he couldn't burden her with that sound. Eventually he wasn't whole enough to remember why, and his final wail was a pathetic whimper that resonated in Mae's mind relentlessly.

It was over. He was nothing but a shadowy figure like all the others. The jolt of energy made her feel invigorated and energized, and the knowledge of why made her feel sick and disoriented. She stretched a paw toward the vague shape of his face, her padded fingers slipping through the smoke where his cheek used to be.

"No." She refused it. She fought it. She shook her head, her entire body trembling. "No." But it still happened. He was inside her. She ate him. She didn't even know how she did it, and she couldn't get him back out. "No! Nononono!" Her claws raked at her flesh, ripping open her own belly as quickly as she could, but the wounds refused to stay open, her glowing fur and skin reforming with increasing rapidity as it kept pace with her mounting hysteria. "No! Come back! No!"

She needed help. She ran across the lake toward Adina and her ghostly companion, waving her arms in a panic. When Adina turned toward her she was holding the same sort of lamp as the constellation representing her, and when the light hit her eyes she stumbled, sliding on the ice. "Stay away from her!" Adina was standing between Mae and the ghost. "I didn't fight my way here for you to take her from me, reaper!" The light burned.

Suddenly she was on the floor of her bedroom, having rolled off her futon violently in her sleep. Her paw reached to her cheek, feeling the three claw marks that Eide left there. It was still there. Her blanket was ripped up by her own claws where it got between her and her stomach, but that didn't account for the clean cuts on her face. It was real. It was all real.

"And despite nature's intentions, God came through and blessed us with you! You were a miracle baby."

Mae crawled away, but she didn't know how to get away from her own thoughts. Which God? Which God? She was on her hands and knees in the middle of the room, nowhere left to retreat to. No escape. No escape.

"After all the miscarriages, we'd given up hope."

"God blessed us with you."

"Miracle Baby."

There was no acceptance. There was no understanding. There was only terror at one stark realization.

She screamed.