The winding corridor beneath the orchard had narrowed. The mural above had ended in a smear of blackened vines and fractured faces—silent, hollow-eyed things that still seemed to look. Lance didn't want to blink near them.
Now, the three of them stood at a fork in the chamber's skeletal spine. Two passageways veered out, crooked and wrong—one choked with creeping roots, the other flickering under a light source that didn't appear to exist.
Dani adjusted the strap across her back. The lunchbox of horrors swung gently, clinking with far too many moving parts for something that small. Her grenade launcher—unholstered, slung casual—rested against her hip like an extension of her body.
Lance's voice came out before he could stop it.
"Okay, no offense, but how the hell do you just have all this stuff? Like… the milk monster made sense in context. Somehow. But you have a grenade launcher that tearscauseandeffect, Dani. That's not something you buy at Hollow Depot."
She paused.
Kenton stopped too, mid-step, and didn't turn around.
That was the part that hit Lance the hardest—Kenton froze. The guy who barely even looked up from his brain-churn when eldritch nonsense happened was now stiff, mouth tightening. And not at Lance.
At Dani.
She looked at them both.
Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, she tilted her head and said, "Some tools don't need hands. Just recognition."
Lance squinted. "That's not a real answer."
Kenton glanced sideways at her—brief, sharp. A silent caution. Like a field operative watching a warhead wake up.
But Dani just gave a faint shrug and moved on, slipping into her rhythm again. Her footfalls were nearly silent now, even on warped stone.
Lance opened his mouth, but Kenton caught his eye and shook his head once. Not forcefully—gently. Like he was saying, not now. Not like this.
So Lance shut up.
But it settled in the back of his ribs like a thorn. She had too many weapons that weren't built for anyone. Yet they never resisted her.
She didn't carry them.
They followed her.
The fork split further than they realized. The path Dani took sloped upward, where faint lights pulsed in a rhythm that seemed almost biological. The other—the one Lance chose—curved low, descending toward a hum. Not a sound, exactly.
More like a presence, flexing.
"We'll loop back in five minutes," Dani said, eyes already scanning the angles, every gesture loaded with the casual confidence of someone who once outlived an ambush.
"Don't get milked," she added flatly.
Lance made a face. "That phrase is ruined forever."
Kenton lingered behind Dani for half a second. Then, as Lance turned to go, he murmured, "Don't touch anything that looks like it wants to remember you."
"What?" Lance called back.
But they were already gone.
And the hallway ahead of him pulsed again—just once. Like something not alive taking its first breath.
The stone under Lance's feet wasn't stone anymore. Not really.
It looked like stone, but it gave just slightly when he stepped—like old muscle. The deeper he went, the more it flexed, and the more he tried not to look down. Dario walked at his side, calm as ever. His paws made no sound at all.
The corridor sloped low and gentle, until even the memory of Dani and Kenton felt scraped away.No echoes.No footsteps.No one to see the way Lance's hands trembled, even as he tried to keep them at his sides.
His breath misted in the air—but there was no cold. Only pressure. Like a basement two miles below something you should never dig through.
Then—
A door.
It stood there, impossible and casual.
A white wood apartment door.
Chipped paint. Silver handle. A deadbolt that had always stuck unless you jiggled it first.
Lance froze. His breath hitched.
"…That's my door," he whispered.
Dario sat beside him and stared.
The hallway behind him vanished like breath on a mirror.
Lance didn't remember opening the door. He just blinked and—
He was inside.
Not the safehouse.
Not the corridor.
His old apartment.
Down to the cheap lamp with the crooked shade. The cracked mug he never threw out because it was from a convention he never really enjoyed. The scatter of wires from his last attempt to fix a keyboard he never actually planned to use again.
His computer was on. Monitors aglow. Background hum like a lullaby made of electricity and burnout.
Dario's nails clicked against the floor.
"None of this is real," Lance whispered.
But his voice didn't echo. It got absorbed.
There were no windows.
And the milk jug—the milk jug—was back on the counter.Still sealed.Still sweating from invisible cold.
He walked toward it, slow.
And then—behind him—
A chair scraped.
Lance turned so fast he almost lost balance.
Someone was sitting in his office chair.
Not quite a person.
The outline was him.But wrong.
Pale, reflective. Skin the tone of plastic packaging left too long in the sun. Hair matted, face too smooth—like someone drew it from memory but forgot where the mouth went.
The thing had his eyes.But they were hollow. Opaque and milky.
It didn't move. But the chair did—turning slowly on its own.
And then—words.
Not spoken. Played.Like audio clipped from moments he hadn't meant to be heard.
"I know I'm not important. I'm the background guy."
"No one would care if I left."
Lance took a step back.
The lights dimmed.
Dario growled, low and uneasy. But didn't bark.
The thing—the echo—tilted its head.
And its voice finally spoke on its own.
Glitching. Flickering. Like an old cassette caught in its own guilt.
"Why did you think the milk picked you?"
Lance's spine locked.
"I didn't—"
"You're not the main character. You never were."
"I know that."
"Then stop struggling."
The lights snapped to red.
The walls buckled like flesh.
And the other Lance stood up.
But the body wasn't his anymore.It lengthened.Swelled.Bones clicked in the wrong direction.
A dozen mouths opened across its chest—each one shaped from different versions of him. Younger. Sadder. More tired. More afraid.
And they all screamed at once.