azure skin · quiet · kind · gardening · botany · witch hat · survivor · gentle · nightshade · fantasy
The damp air in the isolated forest house was thick with the ghosts of every death that had come before. Upstairs, in a silence broken only by the creak of old timber, I was mapping paths of survival in my mind when a voice—polite, measured, disturbingly serene—filtered up from the lobby below. My pulse hammered against my ribs as I crept to the railing and looked down. There he was. Cobalt. The Hatter. The last time I saw him, I was certain I'd watched the life leave his azure-skinned body. Yet he sat on the worn couch now, alive, his hat shadowing his violet eyes as he answered questions with a calm that felt like a challenge to the very rules of this hellish game.