Chapter 6: Cracks in the Mask
The deeper Mat wandered into the forest, the less it felt like Nevermore's curated gloom and more like something older. Wilder. The trees grew tighter here, gnarled like twisted limbs, and the air thickened with a cold that sank into his bones. The sun, still visible beyond the canopy, seemed reluctant to shine fully in this corner of the woods.
Mat paused by a moss-covered log, his hand resting on the haft of the ashandarei strapped to his back. He wasn't jumpy, not exactly—but the woods had changed. The silence wasn't the comforting kind. It was the kind that watched.
And then, the whispering started.
Soft. Scratching. Like parchment rustling just behind his ear.
He spun, gripping the ashandarei with one hand, the other instinctively brushing the dice pouch at his belt.
"Who's there?" he called out.
The forest didn't answer with words—but shapes began to emerge from the fog creeping between the trees. Figures too long, too thin, with skin stretched tight like wax paper over bone. Their eyes glowed faintly—not with life, but with memory. A hunger older than time.
Mat's breath caught. Wendigos. Not the kind from borderland ghost stories, but the real ones. He knew them—not from Randland, but from Poe's terrifying recollection of the morbid, and Doyle's rational yet horrified descriptions of "creatures beyond the veil of science."
He didn't remember learning this. But he knew. In the same way he knew how to command troops, or recite battle formations he never trained for. These weren't just stories anymore. These were warnings, etched into the memories he now carried.
The nearest Wendigo let out a breath that turned the air white. It lunged.
Mat moved.
His ashandarei swept low and fast, carving through the mist. The creature twisted unnaturally, dodging like a wisp of smoke. Mat didn't hesitate—he dropped low, spun, and stabbed upward. The blade caught it in the chest and burned. The creature shrieked, not from pain, but from recognition.
They knew the weapon.
Mat took a step back, eyes flicking between the others as they circled. His instincts screamed danger—but another part of him, the part molded by Byron's defiance, Poe's dread, and Doyle's cold logic, analyzed.
"They're trapped," he whispered. "Or bound. This place… it's a prison."
He could feel it—like the forest itself was a seal, not just a home. A cage made of roots and ritual, not iron bars.
The Wendigos came again, three at once this time.
Mat ducked under a clawed hand, stabbed one through the leg, and rolled across a root to gain distance. Another slashed at his coat, tearing the sleeve. He winced but kept moving.
He reached for the dice at his belt—his constant companion. His luck had always been strange, but here it felt louder, more alive. He cast the dice into the undergrowth without thinking, letting them rattle through the dead leaves.
He didn't see the result.
He didn't need to.
Something shifted.
A branch snapped. A root lifted just enough to trip one of the creatures mid-lunge. Another one—closing in behind Mat—screeched as a falling limb crashed down from above, slamming it into the dirt.
The Pattern provides, Mat thought grimly. Or maybe something else did.
The last Wendigo hissed, sensing the tide had turned. It slithered back into the fog, melting into the trees. The others followed, not defeated, but retreating. Waiting.
Mat stood, breathing hard, blade low at his side, listening as the whispers died out.
Then the silence returned.
Not peace. Pause.
He walked forward slowly, past the place where the creatures had emerged. The trees parted slightly, revealing a clearing—circular, unnatural, and wrong. At its center stood a stone monolith, covered in lichen and runes that shimmered faintly in the gloom.
One glance was enough.
Mat's stomach dropped.
This wasn't just an old monument. It was a warding—a lock.
And it was weakening.
He felt it in the pull of the air, in the hum beneath his boots, in the subtle vibration that shook his very bones.
The dice in his head rattled again, louder this time. Urgent. Not done.
"Something bigger's happening here," he said aloud, voice barely above a whisper. "Something old. Something trying to break through."
And just as that thought settled in, the wind shifted—and he felt eyes on him. Not the wendigos. Not beasts.
Something worse.
A presence.
A mind.
Watching.
He backed away, heart thudding. "Not ready," he muttered. "Not yet."
Mat turned and ran—out of the clearing, past the twisted trees, back toward the dim lights of Nevermore in the distance. As the shadows closed behind him, the stone monolith pulsed once with pale light.
Something had noticed him.
And it would not forget.
Mat was never one to admit when something rattled him.
He'd walked away from battlefield explosions with a grin, taken tea with monarchs while armed men plotted behind curtains, and laughed off close calls with death like they were mild inconveniences. But this—the thing in the woods, the whispering stone, the Wendigos that knew him by weapon and name—this wasn't something he could shrug off.
And it showed.
The next morning, as students filed into Cryptobotany, Mat sat hunched at the back of the room, his hat pulled low, eyes scanning corners like they might sprout claws. The air was thick with the scent of mulch and something vaguely acidic—likely from a new breed of plant that hissed when misted.
Professor Greaves was rambling about shade-feeding spores when Mat muttered under his breath, "Ah, yes. The Hunger Spores of Blackmoor. Poe described them once as 'green mouths in the dark, longing to feed on the breath of the mad.'"
The student beside him—Enid—slowly turned to stare.
"Uh... Blackmoor isn't in the textbook."
Mat blinked, then quickly shook his head. "Did I say that out loud?"
"You did," Enid said, frowning. "And now I have a lot of questions."
He gave her a grin that was more forced than charming. "Must've read it somewhere. In a footnote. Of a cursed book. Possibly during a bet."
Enid kept watching him warily, her nose twitching like she could smell something off about him.
Later in fencing class, Mat was unusually stiff. He deflected blows too early, lunged too aggressively, as if his opponent wasn't a student but something with teeth and too many eyes. When he parried with a flourish that sent his opponent's sword flying, he muttered, "Subtlety is for the court—death prefers elegance," before realizing everyone had gone silent.
Even Professor Hargrove raised an eyebrow. "That's... not something I've taught."
Mat ran a hand down his face. "I need sleep. Or less haunted poetry."
By lunch, the whispers had begun.
"He's acting weird."
"Did you hear what he said in class?"
"Is he quoting cursed writers now?"
"He threatened half the dorm last night. What if he's cursed?"
And Wednesday heard every single one.
She stood outside the cafeteria window, watching him from a distance. He sat alone under the shade of a twisted tree, picking at his food, eyes distant, one leg bouncing in a rhythm she didn't recognize.
It wasn't like him.
Not the him she'd come to know—cocky, mouthy, reckless, and annoying. But not... haunted. Not like this.
And now, he was slipping up. Sayings that sounded like Byron, metaphors that sounded like Doyle. Lines that carried Poe's weight, Machiavelli's threat. Not just in content—but cadence. It was like listening to him speak in borrowed minds.
And worst of all: he knew things no one had taught him.
She'd confirmed he wasn't from their world. So where was he getting this knowledge? Why did his eyes carry the same haunted look she'd seen in her reflection after a vision?
She had to know.
She cornered him between classes, in the long, dim corridor near the observatory—one of the few places students avoided due to the lingering smell of burnt telescope grease and old astrology charts.
Mat was staring out a tall window, arms folded, his brow furrowed in thought. He didn't even notice her until she spoke.
"You're unraveling."
He flinched.
Wednesday stepped forward, her hands behind her back, posture deceptively relaxed. "You're quoting dead writers who shouldn't exist in your world. Making comments even I had to dig through library basements to understand."
Mat forced a smirk. "What can I say? I'm a fast learner."
"You're slipping, Mat," she said coolly. "And it's not just the words. It's the way you move. You're looking at shadows that don't exist. You flinched when Eugene said 'good night.' You threatened a vampire student with vengeance from beyond the grave."
He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly fascinated with the floor. "I had a weird night."
"You're having a weird week," she replied.
Mat met her gaze, and for a flicker of a second—just a blink—she saw it. The wariness. The calculation. The pain. The burden. Not of someone hiding a prank—but of someone hiding truth behind layers of charm, misdirection, and a tired smile.
She softened—barely. "I'm not trying to tear you apart."
"Could've fooled me."
"I'm trying to understand what you are."
Silence.
He looked away again, lips pressed into a line. His voice, when it came, was quiet. "I don't even know anymore."
The words felt raw. Not sarcastic. Not guarded. Real.
That hit harder than she expected.
Before she could press further, he sighed, brushing past her. "I'll tell you when I can. But right now if I say the wrong thing I think the world might unravel. Or maybe just me."
Wednesday stood alone in the hall, watching his back as he disappeared around the corner.
She wasn't sure what concerned her more:
That he might be cursed.
Or that he might be telling the truth.
Mat's heart thundered as he marched through the trees, every step faster, more desperate than the last. He didn't even notice the way the forest seemed to lean in around him, the shadows darker, more oppressive. His thoughts were moving too fast, colliding in his head like dice rattling in a shaken cup.
A monolith… a seal… a prison.
A stone door.
What if it was a ter'angreal? Not like the red stone doorway in Tear—but this world's version of it?
The idea had struck him like lightning while he'd been sitting in class, half-listening to a lecture on geomancy. The professor had described the "ancient energy sites" found in the forests surrounding Nevermore—monoliths, ley lines, resonance stones—and something had clicked in his fractured, overworked mind.
Maybe this was how he got here. Maybe this was how he got back.
Mat burst through the last of the brambles and skidded into the clearing. The monolith loomed before him, still, silent, untouched since last night. The runes along its surface shimmered faintly in the shadows.
"It has to be," he breathed, eyes wild. "This is the way out. The way back."
Unbeknownst to him, Wednesday stood just beyond the tree line, completely still, her body half-shadowed by a low-hanging branch. She'd followed him. Of course she had. He was unraveling in plain sight, and something inside her—a part not sharp, not scientific—needed to understand why.
She watched as Mat slowly circled the stone, whispering to himself. She couldn't hear the words, but she could see the desperation in the way he moved. Like he was trying to puzzle out a door with no keyhole.
Then he ran at it.
Full speed. No hesitation.
And slammed into it with a painful thud.
He crumpled instantly, curling on the mossy ground at the base of the monolith.
Wednesday stepped forward, her instinct to remain hidden battling with something unfamiliar clawing at her chest. Concern. Urgency.
She took one more step. Then another. And when she heard his voice—raw and broken—that was the end of her distance.
"I just want to go home," Mat whispered into the crook of his arm. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't want this. All these morbid lives in my head… I'm not built for this. I'm going mad. Bloody mad."
His body trembled. His hat had fallen off. He looked nothing like the man who'd strolled into Nevermore cracking jokes and sparring like a hero in a story. He looked like someone lost at sea in a storm made of memory.
"I want to go home," he whispered again. "Light, please, just let me go home…"
Wednesday didn't think. She didn't question. She just moved.
She knelt beside him, her knees sinking into the damp ground, and reached out.
Mat flinched at the touch—but when he looked up and saw her face, something in him cracked wide open. Without a word, he reached for her and wrapped his arms around her like a lifeline.
"I can't do this alone," he whispered, voice hoarse. "I don't know who I am anymore. Just… help me. Please."
Wednesday froze.
Her brain told her to recoil. To analyze. To step back and begin deconstructing the moment piece by piece.
But her body stayed still.
His arms were tight around her. His face buried into her shoulder. His desperation clung to her like fog. And instead of pushing him away, she let it happen. She found it strange that he could be this vulnerable in front of somebody.
Even stranger—she didn't mind it.
In fact… she minded how much she didn't mind it.
Mat Cauthon—rogue, outsider, wildcard—was clutching her like a man trying not to drown. And Wednesday Addams, the girl who prized solitude, who had never once sought comfort in another's touch, found herself with one thought looping in her mind:
He needs putting back together. And I want to be the one to do it.
She pressed her hand lightly against his back. "I'm going to help you," she said quietly, her voice flat but full of certainty. "Whatever this is—whatever broke you—we'll find it. And we'll fix it."
Mat pulled back just enough to look at her, his eyes red but searching hers like she was the last stable thing in a world of spinning madness.
"You mean that?"
"I do," she said.
He managed a weak grin, his lips twitching with what might've been the start of a joke, but didn't quite make it. "You must be going soft."
Wednesday didn't smile. But her voice was gentler than it had ever been when she replied, "Perhaps."
And for once, Mat didn't have a comeback.
Wednesday's arm stayed around Mat's waist as she guided him, half-stumbling, out of the forest and back to the gothic sprawl of Nevermore. The sun was dipping beneath the horizon, casting long, skeletal shadows across the campus. Mat looked pale, unsteady—like he was one memory away from unraveling completely.
She didn't take him to the infirmary. She didn't call a teacher. She didn't even hesitate.
She took him to her dorm.
The heavy wooden door creaked open as she pushed him inside. It was cool and dimly lit, just the way she liked it. The air held the faint scent of wax, dust, and ink. Her typewriter sat on the desk, a raven skull perched beside it like a paperweight. Old books were stacked in artistic chaos, pages dog-eared and marked in fine pen. The black curtains were drawn, and in the corner, her violin stood like a sentinel in mourning.
Mat swayed and sat down hard on her fainting couch, breathing heavily, clutching his head.
That's when they both heard the sound of upbeat pop music and an unmistakable chipper hum.
"Don't you dare," Wednesday muttered, already gritting her teeth.
The door to the adjoining half of the dorm creaked open, and Enid poked her head in, all fuzzy slippers and neon smile. "Oh hey, you're back! I just reorganized the bookshelf—hope you don't mind, but your Edgar Allan Poe section was really sad-looking and—" She stopped mid-sentence, blinking at the scene.
Her eyes locked on Mat, clearly out of it, looking like a war refugee on the edge of collapse.
"Uh… is he okay?"
"He's not," Wednesday replied. "And I don't have time to explain."
Enid narrowed her eyes. "Wait—what is he doing in your room?"
"Recovering."
"You brought him here? Mat Cauthon? The guy who literally threatened to haunt people with poetic vengeance yesterday?"
"We need privacy," Wednesday said evenly. "And quiet."
Enid folded her arms. "Oh. I see. I'm just in the way again, huh?"
Wednesday didn't answer.
"Fine," Enid snapped, voice sharp with a rarely-seen edge. "Have your creepy little breakdown together."
She stormed out with surprising force, slamming her door behind her hard enough to rattle the raven skull on Wednesday's desk.
Mat mumbled, half-delirious: "Was that the angry rainbow?"
Before Wednesday could answer, a soft skitter-skitter-skitter echoed across the floorboards.
Then came the thud-thump of tiny fingers climbing onto the armrest beside Mat.
Mat turned.
Saw the severed hand crawling toward him.
And screamed.
Loudly.
He scrambled backwards off the couch like he was under Trolloc attack.
"It's a bloody hand! Just a hand! It's alive! It's crawling! LIGHT, WHY IS IT WAVING AT ME!?"
Thing waved a little more enthusiastically, clearly offended.
Wednesday sighed. "That's Thing. He's harmless. Mostly."
Mat pointed, jaw slack. "That is not harmless! That's not natural! It's a hand with no body and it's saluting me!"
"Get over it," Wednesday said, sitting beside him and patting the couch. "You've seen worse."
Mat pressed a hand over his chest, still breathing hard. "Actually, that's debatable."
Thing sulked away toward the bookshelf, flipping Mat off with an exaggerated flair.
But the jokes faded fast.
Mat's head tilted again, eyes scanning the corners of her room. He stared at the walls like they were bleeding. His hand gripped the edge of the couch like he was preparing to fall into another world.
"Do you see them?" he whispered.
Wednesday looked at him carefully. "See what?"
"Ghosts. Monsters. Not real. I mean—they were real. But not here. They're in here now." He tapped his temple. "From my world… from yours. They're blending. I don't know which ones are mine anymore."
His eyes darted to the corner, where a tall, faceless figure loomed for just a blink—gone in the next.
Wednesday's frown deepened.
He looked at her then, his voice barely holding together. "I think I'm slipping. I can't tell if I'm me or just a museum of everyone else."
And something in her—snapped. Quietly. But definitively.
Wednesday Addams, who dissected mysteries like corpses and analyzed people like puzzles, did something she usually tried to avoid doing.
She reached out, brushed his hair back gently, and pressed her palm to his forehead.
FLASH
She didn't expect a vision. She certainly didn't expect this.
It wasn't like her usual psychic flickers. This was a torrent. A chaotic plunge into Mat's mind.
She saw battlefields soaked in fire and blood—Tarmon Gai'don, the Last Battle. Thousands dying around a laughing, limping man with a quarterstaff in one hand and death following behind him.
She saw his world: a tapestry of swords and shadows, of ta'veren and the Pattern, of fate twisting like a serpent. Of memories given by the Aelfinn—strategies, languages, names of ancient heroes, all stitched into his soul without consent.
But that was only half of it.
She saw the new ones. Darker still. Visions of madness and obsession—Poe, writing through grief in an opium haze. Byron, drowning in beauty and despair. Machiavelli, surrounded by treachery, scribbling cold truths about power. Doyle, logical to a fault, tormented by the mystical he couldn't prove.
All of them inside Mat. Echoing, overlapping. Some shouting. Some whispering. All fighting for space.
And in the center of it all—Mat, curled like a child beneath a storm, screaming soundlessly into the void.
The vision shattered.
Wednesday gasped, stumbling back, eyes wide. Her breath caught in her throat.
Mat blinked, noticing her expression. "You saw it, didn't you?"
She nodded, speechless for once.
"Then you know why I can't tell anyone," he said quietly. "Why I need to find that stone again. Why I have to go home. Before it swallows me."
Wednesday looked at him.
Really looked.
And for the first time in her life, she didn't want to study the pain.
She wanted to stop it.
Wednesday sat at the edge of her fainting couch, the room shrouded in shadows and silence, save for the gentle rustling of paper as Thing flipped through one of her books in the corner. Her fingers drummed against her knee with mechanical precision, the only sign of the storm brewing beneath her usually composed exterior.
Mat was asleep—finally. His head rested on her pillow, one arm tucked under it like a rogue curled up after a tavern brawl. Even in sleep, his brow was furrowed, jaw tense. He twitched every so often, as though even dreams couldn't untangle the threads of war, ghosts, and poetry running through his mind.
And yet… he looked peaceful in her room. Her room.
That shouldn't have meant anything.
It shouldn't.
But it did.
Her eyes lingered on him as thoughts spun wildly behind her cold exterior.
He wants to leave.
The words clanged in her mind like a funeral bell.
He had said it so simply. Not even to her—just to the monolith. To the forest. To the night.
"I just want to go home."
The words had struck her like a knife to the ribs. And that was illogical, because Wednesday Addams had never been one to fear abandonment. She reveled in solitude. She preferred silence to company, walls to bridges, grim monologues to soft embraces.
So why—why—did she feel that lurching, unfamiliar ache when she thought of him gone?
She crossed her arms tightly. Watched him shift slightly, muttering something unintelligible in his sleep. Possibly in another language. Or another life.
He's the most interesting person she'd ever met. A haunted gambler, a cursed prince, a soldier with stolen memories and a flair for drama. With a raven aesthetic. He's like a character from one of her favorite novels… only real. Too real.
She leaned forward, hands clasped.
If he thinks he's leaving her grasp, he has another thing coming.
Her eyes flicked toward the iron latch on the inside of her door.
Just a thought.
She could keep him here. Not forever. Just long enough. Long enough for him to see this world isn't so terrible. Not with her in it. Long enough for him to realize he doesn't want to go back. Maybe a little Stockholm syndrome. Light brainwashing. Polite imprisonment.
It's worked before. In fiction.
She blinked.
What the hell was she thinking?
She stood abruptly, her long black skirts whispering around her ankles. She stared out the window into the dim night, forcing herself to breathe evenly.
She was starting to obsess.
And that was the most unsettling thing of all.
Obsession was mother's domain. Morticia, with her garden of toxic devotion, her gaze like honeyed knives. Wednesday had always vowed never to become that. And yet here she was—staring at a boy like he was a locked cabinet full of secrets and relics and cursed potential.
Snap out of it, Addams.
Still, she glanced back at Mat again. He sighed in his sleep and muttered something that sounded like "bloody dice," before curling tighter into the blanket she'd wordlessly thrown over him.
He's fractured, she reminded herself. He needs stability. Control. Anchor points to help him compartmentalize the different memories.
She paced slowly, already planning.
Create environmental consistencies. Establish memory triggers. Find commonalities between the borrowed lives. Focus his identity around what's uniquely him. Ground him in the present.
Her hand hovered over her journal.
He needs help. Her help. Not because she's sentimental, far from it. But because she's the only one with the tenacity and intellect to untangle him.
And if, in the process, he came to see her not as a keeper but as a companion... well, that was a secondary result.
A bonus.
She sat down again, beside the couch, watching him.
"Sleep while you can, Mat Cauthon," she whispered softly. "Because when you wake up… the real therapy begins."
And for once, she didn't mean psychological torture.