“From blood, remembrance. From death, the gate.”

There is no moon tonight. Only the cold.

In the center of the temple, thirteen robed figures gather in a ring, shadows stitched together by candlelight. Their faces are hidden beneath masks of bone and gold, carved with eyes that do not blink. Their voices do not rise. They descend, low and reverent, like earth falling into a grave.

On the altar of veined obsidian, an infant lies still.

Swaddled in ashen cloth. No talismans. No name. Only the mark. Cut into her skin with silver and salt, still weeping light.

She does not cry.

She only watches.

The High Voice steps forward, robes whispering. Her mask is older than the others, split down the middle, the crack held closed with a thread of golden hair. In her hand, she holds a long knife. Curved. Black as the void behind mirrors.

“The First must be willing,” she intones. “The First must not weep.”

The others bow their heads.

“From death, the gate. From silence, the name.”

The High Voice raises the knife. The candle flames bow to her. In the deep silence of the room, something stirs.

One figure raises her head.

“There are other ways,” she says.

The High Voice does not turn. “This is the way.”

“She carries something older than the mark,” the other says, “something older than the gate.”

“She carries danger.”

“So did we all, once.”

The candle nearest the child gutters.

“You forget what this cost to bring forth,” the second woman says. “She did not ask to be born with your silence.”

The High Voice turns to face her. “You would call her mine?”

“No,” the other says, “only that she is not only yours to end.”

A blue light blazes from the child’s hand. The altar cracks. The floor splits open beneath her. A yawning mouth of ancient stone, and from deep beneath the earth, a raw and hungry wailing rises.

She burns.

The gates swallow her.

The High Voice stumbles back.

The black knife clatters to the stones.

The light dies.

There is a room no one remembers, in a house that remembers too much.

Once, it may have been a nursery. Now, the wallpaper peels like old skin, revealing bones of wood and wire beneath. A cracked mirror hangs opposite the boarded window. The curtains hang like forgotten ghosts, and dust lies thick on the floorboards, disturbed only by the footprints of a girl who should not be here.

But she is.

She is older now. Not old, but aged, like a book left open too long. Her coat is stitched patchwork of asylum linen and black leather. Her hands are dirt-caked, her nails cracked from clawing at memory. She is weeding.

The earth is ash.

And somewhere far away, a voice calls her name.

“Alice?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Alice, please…”

It’s Lory’s voice. But thin. Like it’s being pulled through gauze. Like it doesn’t belong in this room anymore.

“You said there was no one there,” Alice murmurs, without turning.

The mirror creaks in its frame.

Then the voice changes.

“Alice,” it says again, but now it’s not Lory.

It is slower.

Colder.

Deeper.

Hungrier.

She does not look up.

“I hear you,” she says.

No answer.

She plucks a bent fork from a knot of roots and ash and flings it without looking.

A whisper of breath. The faintest rustle.

The mirror gives no answer except two glowing red eyes.

She remembers those eyes.

* * *

Light flashes. A white room. Fluorescent buzz. Cold tile beneath bare feet.

Her sister, terrified, stood just out of reach, clutching a clipboard like a crucifix.

“There’s no one there, Alice.”

But she still sees him.

His teeth gleam like polished bone.

“Please.” She flinches. “Don’t let him near me.”

A hand touches her shoulder. Not Lory’s.

A man in a white coat.

He leans in.

“I know,” he says gently. “Just lie down. This will help you rest.”

But his cuffs are stained.

And his eyes, they glow.

* * *

Back in the gloom, the mirror shudders.

Glass groans like old bones.

A figure steps through.

Tall, thin as wire. Not a doctor now, but still wrapped in white. Still carrying the stain.

His coat is older here. Yellowed at the edges. His eyes still glow.

His eyes are red—not with rage, but with weariness. Around his neck hangs a golden timepiece, ticking faintly, though the hands do not move.

His ears twitch.

But her mind remembers them differently.

“Alice,” he says.

She lifts her head slowly. Her face does not change.

“You’re late,” she says.

He chuckles, low and bitter. “Always.”

“What do you want?”

“You called me.”

“No. I buried you.”

“You buried the child, but the one who followed me down the hole is still digging.”

She stands. Not quickly. Not startled. Like someone rising from a grave with deliberate slowness. Her hand moves inside her coat by habit. Nothing. Only fabric.

“You are not the Rabbit.”

“No, but I wore his face. I wore so many faces, I lost track.”

Her eyes narrow. “What are you now?”

“Closer to you than anyone has ever been.”

She laughs. “You don’t know me.”

“But I do. I felt you. Your rage. Your hunger. Your refusal to be caged. I followed the scent of it like a bloodhound.”

“You followed the scent of a girl who escaped,” she says.

He shakes his head. “You’re still in the mirror, Alice.”

Her jaw clenches. “You don’t know what I’ve done to survive.”

“I do. That’s why I’m here.”

She does not lower her guard. “What do you want with me?”

He steps closer, eyes never leaving hers.

“To see who you really are.”

“Then open your eyes.”

“I mean the self beneath this one.” He gestures at her. “The self you buried. The one who set fire to the garden. The one who remembers what they did. The one who stopped running.”

She stares at him. Something dark flickers behind her eyes.

“You want the monster.”

He doesn’t deny it. “I want the truth.”

She sneers.

“Then show me yours first. You’re wearing skin like a stolen coat.”

He bows. “As you wish.”

He lifts his hands. The air around him ripples. His body sags, folds inward—and then the face sloughs away. What’s left is a boy’s body—bruised, thin, broken at the throat—and then another, and another. Each flash a different host. Until he stands as something featureless, neither flesh nor shadow, but a hollow echo in the shape of a man.

“Who are you really?”

“I was hunger,” he says. “And then I learned names. Then stories. Now I wear meaning like clothes.”

She breathes deep—and takes off her gloves.

As she unlaces the leather, she hears it again—Lory’s tired voice:

“You used to be brilliant.”

As if that brilliance was something delicate. Something broken.

Alice smiles faintly.

No, she thinks. I used to be silent.

The skin of her hands melts like wax. Bones stretch. Muscles twist. Her face elongates, warps, curls into something feline—Cheshire, yes, but without the grin. Then she shifts again: her frame shrinks, becomes childlike. Golden hair tumbles down her back. Her eyes grow wide and horrified.

Then, finally, she becomes herself.

Her true self.

Young. Terrible. Beautiful.

The woman who had survived Wonderland not by escaping, but by becoming something it could never consume.

“Now,” she says. “Do you still want me?”

He kneels, unblinking.

“Yes.”

She reaches into the folds of her coat.

But her fingers close around nothing.

He opens his hand. Between his fingers, a jagged shard of glass glimmers faintly, edges slick with blood.

Her smile doesn’t fade. If anything, it sharpens.

“Then you should have stayed dead.”

He tilts his head.

“We’re running out of time.” He taps his watch. “I was hoping you’d come willingly, but if you won’t…”

A pause. His eyes glow faintly red.

“…I could always find another.”

She stiffens.

“You don’t mean—”

He grins.

“Lory.”

Something cold and ancient coils behind her ribs.

“I’ll kill you.”

He frowns, brushing the thin scar at his throat. “Then follow,” he says as he transforms.

His limbs shorten. His mouth splits wider, then vanishes. Ears grow long, warped like a funhouse sketch of innocence. A twitch. A gleam of fur. And then he vanishes into the mirror.

She doesn’t hesitate.

The room is empty once more.

Only the timepiece ticks.

And this time, it is counting down.

* * *

There is no falling.

Not in the way the body understands.

She is unmade, stretched and folded, pulled apart not by gravity, but by meaning. A fall through metaphor and mind.

Clock faces spiral past her. Some show numbers, others runes. One screams when she looks at it.

Teacups, broken and whole, spin like planets. She sees eyes in the dark—smiling without faces. A rabbit with a crown of thorns. A woman weeping blood from black-painted lips.

Then—a corridor.

Made of root and sky, lined with dull mirrors.

She sees herself over and over in different shapes.

A queen crowned in red. A warrior drowning in blood. A child curled beneath a book.

She leans into the fall, arms tight, spine braced.

This is not her first descent.

* * *

When her boots touch ground, it is like waking from a dream.

The impact is real. Her knees buckle. She rolls to a crouch, fingers reaching instinctively for a weapon—

But still, her coat is empty.

A glade surrounds her.

The trees are impossibly tall, their trunks like dancers locked in motion. The leaves are black, veined with gold, rustling without wind. The air smells of ink and iron.

She knows this place.

Not Wonderland. Not the garden from her childhood tales, but what remains.

The trees whisper one word.

Alice.

The forest peels away.

And fire takes its place.

Fire.

Not the wild kind that flickers and dances. This fire is deliberate. Purposeful. Searing lines drawn with oil and torch. Smoke hunches in the hollows of rooftops and spills through windows like black tongues. The air groans with heat and screams.

And in the center of it all, pressed against a crumbling wall, crouches a trembling lizard-boy with a long blood-stained sword in his hands.

“I’m not supposed to die yet,” he says.

“Then don’t,” says the woman beside him.

She crouches low, one hand on the stone, eyes scanning the square. Her coat is stitched from ash-dyed leather, burned through at the hem. Her boots crack when she moves—coated with blood and soot. Her hair is white-blonde, matted to her brow, save for one loose strand that whips in the wind.

Bill tightens his grip on the sword. It isn’t his. It was thrust at him by a now-dead soldier. One of the squat, uniformed grunts loyal to the White King’s banner. Dogs in iron masks.

He hadn’t wanted to fight, but now he has to.

Bill’s eyes flick to the rows of homes collapsing inward, ember by ember. “They’re burning everything.”

“They always do.”

Her voice doesn’t rise. It cuts.

Bill swallows. “Are you one of us?”

“No.”

“Then why—?”

“Quiet.”

Across the square, armored figures herd screaming villagers toward the dry well. Among them, a little girl, clutching a soot-streaked doll. Her mother kneels beside her at the edge of the well, hands bound, head bowed, muttering a prayer. A knight in warped silver armor leads them. His helm is shaped like a beaked plague mask, his blade dragging behind him like a broken plow. The sigil of the White King—an eye split down the middle—flickers on his chestplate.

The woman exhales. Her hand twitches toward her hip.

There’s nothing there.

No sword. No weapon. Just the empty weight of want.

She glances at Bill. “How many?”

He blinks. “What?”

“In the town. How many soldiers?”

“Thirty? Maybe less.”

She stands.

Bill grabs her coat, desperate. “Don’t! They’ll kill you.”

“They can try,” she says.

And then she walks into the fire.

* * *

They notice her halfway to the well.

Two soldiers peel off, clubs drawn.

Alice doesn’t flinch.

She sidesteps the first swing, grabs the second soldier’s wrist, twists. Bone cracks. The club falls. She catches it mid-air and turns it inward, burying the iron head into the first soldier’s neck. He drops. The second stumbles back, but her foot catches his ankle and drops him before he can cry out.

Before her a woman whispers a prayer in a language Alice doesn’t know, her fingers running over a pendant shaped like a heart. A boy clings to her side, wide-eyed, barefoot. Another child weeps quietly, burying her face in her doll’s matted hair.

The knight steps forward.

He towers above the crying villagers, above the smoke. Above the world. His armor is not polished, but pitted and warped. Reflected light scatters wrong, like it’s remembering something painful. His voice echoes when he speaks.

“Drop it.”

Alice tilts her head. “You first.”

The knight does not answer. He lifts his sword.

It hums.

Alice feels the ringing deep in her bones.

She runs forward.

Bill watches from behind the broken wall, breath caught, limbs frozen.

* * *

The knight swings.

She dives, rolls beneath the arc. The sword sears the earth behind her, carving a trough in the stone. Pebbles lift from the force of it, hovering like lost thoughts.

She comes up behind him and slams the club into his knee joint. Once. Twice. The third strike leaves a dent. He pivots faster than a man his size should, and backhands her, sending her reeling.

She hits the ground hard.

The knight advances.

But she’s laughing.

Blood in her teeth. Smoke in her hair.

“You’re not the first thing I’ve killed in that armor.”

The knight pauses.

His sword lowers.

“You remember me,” she says.

He nods once.

“I took a Mirrorblade from your brother.”

“It was corrupted. You did something to it,” he says.

She pushes her bangs out of her eyes. “I earned it, and you’re afraid I might earn it again.”

She rises to her feet.

Unarmed.

Unbroken.

“Let the villagers go. This ends with me.”

The knight’s helm tilts.

“Our king can offer you land. Titles. A new name. Bend the knee, and the White King would make you his queen.”

“I’ve had enough of crowns, and I kneel to no man.”

He lifts his sword.

“So be it.”

He charges.

She dodges the first strike. The sword bites the ground beside her. Sparks fly. The next blow comes fast. She tries to block with her forearm and then remembers she has no armor, so she rolls under his reach, but he’s already turning. Fast. Too fast. His gauntlet catches her across the face and sends her sprawling.

She gasps, mud and blood in her mouth.

The knight looms over her. Blade raised.

“Lady!”

She looks.

Bill.

Behind a cart, pale and shaking, holding a sword too long for his hands.

He throws.

It spins. Clumsy. End over end.

But she catches it.

It’s not hers. It’s not right. But it’s enough.

The knight swings down.

She meets it.

Weapons clash.

The force shudders through her arms. She drops to a knee, but twists, using the knight’s own momentum. The borrowed blade slides under his guard and knocks the weapon from his grasp.

It skitters across the cobblestones.

He staggers.

So does she.

Both reach for breath. Only one finds it.

Alice drives her foot into his chest. He crashes backward into the dirt, winded.

Alice rises, sword still shaking in her grip.

The villagers stare.

She turns to them.

“Run.”

They do.

All but one.

Bill.

He inches closer. “You… you’re her.”

“Alice,” she says. The blade in her hand still hums, but softly now. Like it’s whispering someone else’s name.

The knight groans. Rolls to his side. And laughs.

“You think this wins you anything? The King will come. The Court. The Duchess. They’ll tear you apart again.”

Alice kneels beside him.

“I’ve died once. It didn’t take.”

Then she stands.

And she sees them.

The White King’s men, emerging from the smoke, a silent ring tightening around her.

She turns to Bill.

“Go.”

“What about you?”

She lifts the blade. “I’ll manage.”

They bind her hands with silver twine.

She doesn’t struggle.

They drag her through the ashes of Tweedledown, past the cracked queenstone, past the blackened well where screams still seem to echo, past a broken doll, lying face-down in the ash.

The villagers are gone.

Bill is gone.

They carry the Mirrorblade ahead of her like a torch.

Alice watches them carry it away.

She says nothing.

Her boots swing inches from the ground.

Wind tugs her hair across her face.

A single crow lands on the branch above her.

Alice closes her eyes.

And smiles.

* * *

“Alice,” the voice purrs, “you’ve gone and died again.”

She floats in a dream of stitched shadows and sourceless light. Above her, the stars bare their teeth. Below, the ground rises and falls like the breathing of a sleeping beast.

“Where am I?” she murmurs.

“In the crack between endings,” says the Cheshire Cat. His form flickers. First a grin, then a curl of smoke, then nothing at all. “The place where stories chew their own tails and call it fate.”

“I failed.”

“Of course you did,” he says, lounging on a star like it’s a hammock. “That’s what makes you interesting.”

She tries to move. Her wrists are bound, though no rope is visible. Every time she strains, the threads dig deeper into her wrists.

“I can’t fight like this.”

“Then don’t fight,” he purrs.

“I have to fight.”

“Then fight.”

The stars flicker out. One by one.

“I should be dead.”

“Should is such a tedious word,” the Cat yawns. “You’re not the first Alice, you know.”

She goes still.

“But you may be the last.”

A pulse of pain stabs through her chest. Her breath catches.

“Then tell me , what did the first Alice do wrong?”

The grin lingers, faint and curved like a blade.

“She let them mark her.”

Darkness collapses.

A scream coils in her throat, but doesn’t escape.

Her body spasms.

* * *

In the back of a rusted, iron-barred wagon, she wakes coughing.

Her lungs burn. Her throat tastes like soot and rot. Her wrists are raw.

A gaunt man in a burnt top hat taps the bars of the cage with his bone cane.

His face is carved in perpetual delight, but the joy doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s dressed like a gentleman from a better century, but the fabric of his long coat is stitched from different shades of skin.

“Careful now.” He prods her with his cane. “Do you know what binds the soul tighter than chains? Guilt. Or maybe nostalgia. Hard to tell, though they both make lovely nooses.”

He taps again, harder this time. “Still, silver’s more fashionable.” “It bites the bold and binds the meek, A ribbon made of silence and teeth. The more you writhe, the more it drinks— What rots the will, yet never reeks?”

She stares at him in disbelief.

The man leans forward, eyes wide as saucers.

He taps his chest.

She tries to pull her wrists apart, but the silver twine just digs deeper.

He licks his teeth at the sight of her bloody wrists.

The Mad Hatter bursts into laughter, hops backward and then pirouettes toward the front of the cart.

To her left, a walrus—yes, a literal walrus, tusks chipped and eyes sunken—sits on a pile of matted hay. He is pale, and the chain around his neck has rubbed him raw. He grunts as she shifts.

He coughs. Wet. Heavy. His whole body shakes. He wipes his snout on his flipper, leaving a smear of mucus and blood.

“How are you alive?”

The man beside him, wiry and sharp-chinned, nods. His empty carpenter’s belt hangs from his skeletal hips like a relic of better days. “Didn’t think you’d make it. Not after that.”

“Who are you?”

“The Walrus,” he says, puffing out what little chest he has left. “And this is the Carpenter.”

“Why were you hanging from that tree?” The Carpenter says.

“I killed a Mirrorknight.”

“Impossible!” they say in unison.

“What did you really do?” The Walrus asks.

“I almost killed a Mirrorknight,” she says.

“Alas, the truth,” the Carpenter says.

“What’s your truth?” Alice asks.

“We once tricked oysters into a seaside walk. Said we’d show them the moonlight,” the Carpenter says.

The Walrus flashes a toothy grin. “We showed them teeth instead.”

The Carpenter nods grimly. “Now we’re the ones in chains.”

Alice laughs.

“That’s not even the funny part,” the Walrus says. “We were invited—”

“We were tricked,” the Carpenter says through clenched teeth.

“To a tea party,” the Walrus says.

“The tea was bitter,” the Carpenter mutters.

“The biscuits stale,” the Walrus adds.

“And the sugar,” the Carpenter finishes, “it was salt.”

Alice frowns. “You two were drugged.”

The Mad Hatter, now perched atop the front rail of the cart, claps his hands without turning around. He balances precariously on the rail, arms out like a tightrope walker, then tips his head back and cackles. “Oh, bravo! A clever girl, this one. Yes, yes, drugged indeed. Steeped in dreamroot and drizzled with forget-me-knot. You all drank so willingly, too. Some even asked for seconds.”

The cart rattles as it hits a ridge in the road. Chains jingle overhead, looped through meat-hooks. The roof is patched with flayed leather. Some pieces still twitch.

“How long have you been here?” Alice asks.

The Walrus shrugs. “Time’s gone strange. Weeks? Maybe months?”

“Long enough to lose count,” the Carpenter sighs. “We had others once. A hare with clever hands. A dormouse with sharp teeth. A beautiful young girl. There were so many.”

“Where are they now?” Alice asks.

The Walrus goes silent.

The Carpenter answers. “Some the road took. Hunger, fever, bloodrot. Others killed when the bandits came.”

“Bandits?”

Walrus nods solemnly. “The hatters not the only monster on these roads.”

“Raiders in flesh cloaks,” the Carpenter says.

“They took their skins,” the Walrus says.

“Left their bodies for the crows,” the Carpenter adds.

“We used to be twenty,” the Walrus grunts.

The Carpenter spits. “Killed half of us.”

“The Mad Hatter smiled through the whole thing.”

Alice leans back, feeling the ache in her spine, the burn where the silver twine had dug into her wrists.

The Mad Hatter turns his head slowly, wide eyes glowing faintly beneath the brim of his soot-crusted hat.

“Cargo lost, profit lost,” he says with a grin. “But a queen half-dead and strung like fruit? Now that’s a rare vintage. Might even bottle you if no one buys. Sell you by the drop. Tragedy makes the finest notes.”

Through rusted bars, she sees the world outside: a forest flayed to its nerves, trees hung with bones, sky black as bruises.

“Where is he taking us?” she asks.

“The Flesh Bazaar,” the Walrus says.

* * *

Alice lies curled in the corner of the cage, her body slick with sweat and grime, her breath shallow. Her stomach cramps and knots. Her clothes now crust stiff. The stink of decay is like spoiled meat.

She doesn’t move much. She can’t.

None of them can.

The Walrus wheezes in his sleep, each breath a wet rattle. His lips have turned gray. His tusks are yellow. When he speaks, it’s mostly old lines from disjointed stories.

The Carpenter keeps to himself, scratching marks into the wood floor with a bent nail and muttering tally counts to himself.

The days are uncountable as the sky remains perpetually bruised.

Sometimes she hears laughter, high and giddy and far too close. Sometimes she sees the Cheshire Cat’s grin behind her eyelids.

And sometimes, she dreams she is still hanging from that tree.

Then, one day—or night—the wagon screeches to a halt.

Footsteps.

A creaking sound like a cupboard opening in an old house.

Alice doesn’t sit up. She can’t.

A tray slides across the floor, slopping with thick gray slush. It smells of glue and mold and fur. She coughs. The Walrus makes a gurgling sound and reaches for the bowl, but his flipper hits the bars.

Alice hesitates. Then, she pushes the bowl closer with her foot. He doesn’t take it. So she strains to push it even closer.

The Carpenter moves, crawling like an insect, hands shaking as he drags the tray closer. He doesn’t eat it.

The Mad Hatter crouches just outside the cage, cane balanced on his knees, watching them like a child waiting to see if a frog will croak.

“Eat up now,” he says, voice syrupy with glee. “Tomorrow’s a special occasion, you know.”

“Tell me,” he whispers. “What wears a price, weeps like meat, and begs not to be chosen… yet hopes to be picked?”

No one answers.

He grins wider. “A slave or maybe supper.”

The Carpenter finally lifts the bowl to his lips and drinks. He gags. Swallows again.

The Walrus wheezes. “Where’s ours?”

The Hatter kicks a couple more bowls through the cage. One splashes against Alice’s side, soaking her shirt.

Slowly, she lifts a corner of the damp fabric to her mouth. It’s disgusting. It smells faintly sweet, like spoiled milk. But it’s food.

She sucks at the cloth. Greedy. Humiliated. Half-mad with thirst. She scoops what remains from the floor with her fingers, shoving it past cracked lips.

No one speaks. Only the iron groan of wheels and the distant whisper of bones clinking in the trees.

The Walrus wheezes again. This time, his flipper doesn’t lift. His bowl lies inches from his snout. He just stares at it, pupils blown wide, mouth slack. His tongue twitches.

The Mad Hatter’s grin sharpens.

“Ah, poor thing,” he coos, tapping the bone cane against the bars. “What spreads from mouth to mouth, kisses skin with fever’s tongue, and leaves its mark in blisters?”

“Plague,” he whispers.

Then the cane plunges down into the Walrus’ chest.

The Walrus gurgles, shudders, wheezes, a deafening rattle—then nothing. He slumps; his bowl tips over, slop spreading like entrails across the floor.

Alice lunges. It’s instinct, not thought. Her body protests every movement—cramps seize her, her knees give out, her arms tremble—but she moves, hurling herself toward the Mad Hatter.

She doesn’t reach him.

The cane swings up and slams into her stomach.

Air leaves her like a snapped cord. She collapses forward and vomits. Her half-digested meal splatters the floor beside the Walrus. The smell is unbearable. The Mad Hatter watches, delighted.

“Oops,” he says cheerfully. “Guess we’re skipping seconds.”

The Hatter exhales sharply through his teeth, like a man admiring a fine bottle uncorked.

Then, without ceremony, he hooks the cane under the Walrus’s jaw and yanks.

With a wet scrape, the great, bloated form drags across the floor, leaving a smear of blood and gruel in its wake. The Hatter doesn’t grunt or strain. He pulls like a man pulling a child’s wagon, whistling a tune.

Alice watches in horror as the tusks scrape metal. The Walrus’s head lolls. His pale eye stares at her as he’s dragged away. If she cried now, he would win. If she looked away, she’d never look up again.

The Mad Hatter stops at the threshold. Turns.

“Fat’s no good when it’s spoiled,” he mutters. “But the tongue?”

He snaps his fingers.

“Tender.”

Then he’s gone.

The door slams shut. The cage rocks. Chains clatter.

Alice stares at the blood trail, chest heaving, wrists bleeding anew. The silver drinks every time she remembers who she is.

The Carpenter doesn’t speak. Just counts scratches on the floor. One, two, three.

Alice’s body curls into itself. Pain blooms across her ribs. Her mouth tastes like bile and iron.

She closes her eyes.

Somewhere above, the Cheshire Cat’s voice purrs in her mind.

See? You tried. Wasn’t that worse?

The cage lurches forward again.

* * *

The cart stops.

Not with ceremony, but with a lurch. A shudder. Like a dying breath.

Rusted bolts groan open.

They are pulled from the cage one by one.

Hands—too many hands—shove her forward. Her knees scrape stone. Her wrists still bound in silver.

She steps left when the others step right. Just enough to test the space between hands. A hiss. A spark. The silver bites. Her vision splits. Someone yanks her back into line. The collar comes next.

Chains rattle as iron collars are fastened around their necks, linked by a central chain like dogs on a line. Shackles bite at their ankles, binding them two by two.

She does not resist. Not yet.

They are brought to the back of a leather tent, where intestines hang and hooks sway with meat.

There, basins of water sit.

A man with no mouth gestures.

Another nods.

The stripping begins.

Clothes are torn away. Nothing is spared. Not boots, not belts, not shame.

Alice stands motionless. Dirt streaks her ribs. Her back is a map of old wounds. Someone whistles.

Then the water comes. Three buckets. Then four. Then five.

Cold. Brutal. It smells of rotten flowers. Perfume.

Alice sputters as the scent fills her nose, her mouth. It sticks to her like oil.

They pour it like baptism, but there is no rebirth here, just the chill of the wind.

The water is gray before it hits the ground.

The Carpenter cries. Some others collapse.

The Mad Hatter appears from the mist. He twirls his bone cane and grins.

“Can’t have our little pretties looking too… lived in, now can we?” he sings. “Today’s the big day. Best to sparkle.”

He turns to Alice. Tilts his head.

“A little washed. A little wild. Just the way they like them.”

Alice doesn’t flinch. She learned long ago that stillness is its own kind of armor.

Not when the man with no mouth slaps a number onto her collarbone.

Not when the chains bite at her ankles.

Not even when the Hatter leans in close and whispers, “Remember to smile, darling. Misery sells, but madness fetches double.”

He laughs.

And the march begins.

* * *

The Mad Hatter leads them like a carnival parade, whistling a waltz only he remembers. His coat of stitched skins flutters with every theatrical twirl. Each time he turns back to look at them, his grin grows wider, like the act of watching their shame physically nourishes him.

The Flesh Bazaar looms beyond the ridge, but they are made to walk in circles first. Past the perimeter tents. Past vendors selling dolls stuffed with human hair. Past meat-hooks strung with tongues like rosaries. Spectators gather as they pass, laughing, whispering, pointing.

Children with beetle masks throw stones. One stone hits her ribs. Another glances off her thigh. The laughter behind the masks is high and unbroken.

An old woman dressed in feathers spits at her.

A little girl skips beside them, singing:

“Off with their clothes, off with their skin,

Peel em’ down ‘til the red begins.”

The man ahead of her—thin, trembling—collapses. His legs fold. He doesn’t rise. The chain jerks everyone behind.

The Hatter doesn’t stop. He tugs the chain. The man is dragged, face scraping stone, splitting like overripe fruit. Alice steps around him.

Around her, whistles rise. Jeers. Catcalls.

A man in a mask shaped like a ram bleats nonsense.

They walk past a cage of headless dancers—bodies still swaying to silent music.

The Carpenter stares at the ground. Alice keeps her head up. Because if she lowers it, she’s afraid it will never rise again.

* * *

The gates groan open.

The air shifts. It smells of iron, perfume, and meat. Rows of watchers line the square. Lords and ladies in leathers and silks.

They have arrived. The Flesh Bazaar. It is not a market in any sane sense. Nor a court, though judgments are passed here—irrevocable and sold by the pound. It is a kind of theater, a cruel proscenium—its stage tiled like a chessboard, its rafters dripping with banners sewn from faces. The audience: nobles of uncertain biology, wrapped in leathers and silks.

Alice watches as a boy is dragged onto the stage.

He is small. His eyes wide. He cries and shakes as they press the brand to his back. It sizzles.

Alice sucks in air through her teeth.

The Mad Hatter cackles beside her. He throws his arms wide.

“Ladies and fiends, feathered or flayed! I bring you my finest catch! A dog in form, a queen in fury! She killed a knight, she chews through chains, she pisses silver and bleeds glass—Alice of Nowhere, last of the Mirrorborn!”

A ripple of interest passes through the crowd. One creature, whose mouth is a lattice of spinning bone, raises a claw.

Another offers a birdcage full of teeth.

They do not bid in coin. They bid in offerings. Flesh. Screams. Trinkets made from the bones of children. One merchant flashes a hollowed-out skull etched with sigils that pulse when touched. Another raises a necklace of infant ribs.

The Mad Hatter parades Alice like a prize dog. He yanks her forward by her collar, then turns her in a slow circle.

“She walks like a curse,” he says. “But bites like a blessing.”

Her mouth is dry. Her feet raw. Her wrists still bound by the silver twine.

She watches a girl—no older than seven—tied to a stake near the auction stage. Her eyes are glass. Her hair is braided with spiders.

The bidding ends.

From the crowd steps a woman swaddled in violet fur that writhes as if it still remembers being alive. Her face is powdered white. Her eyes gleam like wet stones. Her teeth are flat and perfect, like porcelain.

The Duchess.

“Her,” she says, pointing a finger curled with rings. “I’ll take that one.”

The Mad Hatter bows low.

“As you wish, most fleshed and fragrant madam.”

Chains jingle. Papers are signed. Alice is pulled from the cage and handed over.

The Duchess runs a single nail beneath Alice’s chin and lifts it.

“Leave her unmarked,” she says. “My son prefers them unspoiled.”

She smiles. Alice doesn’t.