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trigger warning- self-harm, gore, mental health

His hands felt like kindling; dry, brittle, cold. Pockets offered no relief as he stomped through wet snow, wondering why he’d ventured out so unprepared for winter’s bite. Hadn’t it been spring just minutes ago? The crunch beneath his boots echoed through what was once his childhood playground, these woods behind his family home, where he’d climbed felled trees and hunted imaginary treasures.

He stopped. A soft giggle floated through the trees, followed by a joyful scream. There, just ahead, stood a girl no older than ten, bundled in winter clothes with a matching fluffy hat and gloves soaked with snow. Her smile transformed the dark forest, warming everything around her.

She shook her head from side to side, sending snow flying from her curls. “You cheated!” Her accusation dissolved into a shriek as icy meltwater trickled down her spine. A boy landed with a soft crunch beside her, having dropped from his perch among the pine branches. His grin stretched across his face, eyes gleaming with mischief.

“Kings make the rules,” he declared, puffing out his chest and planting his hands on his hips. “And I rule these woods.” His victory pose lasted only seconds before a perfectly aimed snowball exploded against his smug expression.

The joy and laughter vanished in an instant. He wasn’t sure if he was hallucinating, but whatever it was, it was gone. The two happy children had disappeared, leaving him alone, cold, wet, and furious. He stood rooted in that spot for who knew how long, fists clenched.

“Okay, very funny,” he muttered to the ground, squeezing his eyes shut until they ached. “Whoever’s doing this ... get me out of here!” he yelled, tilting his head to the gray sky. Only his echo answered, and it fueled his rage as he stomped through the woods. “MOM! JACKSON! Anybody! Let me out!” His voice cracked, cheeks burning. He no longer felt the cold; he barely felt anything but fury… until a faint metallic clink under his boot made him freeze.

He spotted a golden locket at his feet. Stumbling back, he fought the urge to pick it up while a harsher voice insisted it meant nothing. The lump in his throat argued otherwise. Unable to decide between tears or rage, he retreated, plunging deeper into the woods. Minutes later, he halted, somehow facing that locket again. He knew these woods; he should be home by now.

After circling the trinket several times, each loop returning him to the same spot, he snatched it up and hurled it away. It glinted once, then disappeared.

“That wasn’t very nice.”

The voice froze him mid-breath. It started sweet as spun sugar—the ten-year-old girl from before—then shifted mid-sentence into something older, familiar, haunting. Eighteen years old. The same voice that had teased him, challenged him, made him laugh despite himself.

“You know that was a gift, right?”

Snow crunched behind him in deliberate steps, drawing closer. He locked his gaze on the trees ahead, jaw clenched. If he didn’t look, maybe she’d dissolve like morning mist. Maybe this nightmare will end.

“Look at me, Elijah.”

His shoulders tensed. Wrong. All wrong. Her voice had never cut like this, even in their worst arguments. She’d never sounded this hollow, this sharp, this... dead.

Her voice shredded the air. “Look at me!” He turned, ready to fight, but froze. She stood solid in the winter light, amber eyes now glassy as a mounted deer’s. Windshield fragments protruded from her scalp where blood had congealed into rusty clumps. Her neck bent at an impossible angle, vertebrae visible through torn skin. Across her exposed collarbone, bruises bloomed in violent purples and greens. A shard of bone pierced through her shoulder, white against the crimson pulp of muscle.

His memory supplied the soundtrack: metal tearing, her skull hitting dashboard, then silence. His insides lurched upward as if trying to escape through his throat.

“Not a pretty sight, am I?” she said as he looked away.

The world tilted. His lungs seized. Her twisted form burned into his vision even with his eyes shut.

“You did this,” her voice whispered, hollow as a grave. “Couldn’t even attend my funeral. Look at me.”

He shook his head, stumbling backward until his spine hit rough bark. His fingers dug into the tree’s surface, something real, something solid, as he kept his gaze fixed on the snow-covered ground.

“I—I didn’t mean—“ The words died in his throat.

He collapsed, clutching his head with tangled fingers, as if he could tear the image from his mind. A sob-scream escaped him. She remained standing broken, wrong while his breathing turned ragged.

“I never—“ His words failed. “I never meant—“

The memory struck: the crunch of metal and bone. He curled inward like a wounded animal, shaking his head against what was already etched into his soul. Then, slicing through his panic like a cold blade…

“You should be nicer to yourself, Eli.”

Something in those words stopped his breath. That voice was wrong.

No. Worse.

It was right.

His muscles locked.

He lifted his head with the care of someone handling shattered glass, afraid the slightest wrong move might cut him open.

Two Cassandras stood before him.

The first remained a nightmare made flesh. Her broken form, unmoved, with windshield fragments, her twisted posture preserving the moment of impact in grotesque detail.

But beside her

There was her.

Same clothes. Same face. Unharmed. Whole.

Breathing.

Her eyes met his steady, no pity or blame, but warm in that familiar way. Her voice had lost its hollow emptiness.

“Hey,” she said, the normalcy jarring. “You tried. That’s all anyone could’ve done.”

He blinked rapidly, pressure building behind his eyes. His gaze darted between the two Cassandras, reality fracturing.

“I can’t—” A weak laugh escaped him, thin as paper. “This isn’t—“

The word ‘insane’ caught somewhere between his mind and mouth.

He dragged his palm down his face, trying to erase the sight of her standing there in duplicate. His laugh broke like glass.

“ You can summon magic,” she said, eyebrow raised in that familiar challenge, “but seeing me is your limit?”

Eli’s breath caught. “I could barely handle one of you,” he said, eyes darting between identical faces, afraid to linger. “The universe never needed a second, Cass.”

He expected anger or mockery. Instead, both versions of her tilted their heads in unison, shifted their weight identically. His stomach clenched as their expressions merged perfectly. The real Cass and the one haunting his conscience become indistinguishable.

One Cassandra tilted her head. “Your thoughts are spinning out of control.”

“Classic Eli,” said the other, her voice either identical or completely different, his fractured mind couldn’t tell anymore.

“Why come back after all this time? To pick apart my brain?” The words burst from him like shrapnel. “Six years, Cass. Six years and now there’s two of you standing here, and I can’t—“

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

“I need you to face what happened.”

Their voices crashed together in perfect harmony.

“You’re responsible for my death.”

“You couldn’t have saved me.”

Eli’s lungs seized. His eyes darted between them as they seemed to blur into one, with opposing truths.

“My blood is on your hands.”

“My death was never your fault.”

Each contradiction hit him like physical blows, piling weight upon his chest until he could barely breathe.

One of them moved closer, her shadow falling across him. “Eli, listen. Your family summoned me through the wind ritual. To help you.”

“Help?” The other’s laugh was as brittle as frozen leaves. “You think he can’t tell which one of us is real and which is just some... fabrication?”

“I’m showing him the truth.”

“You’re burying him in delusions!”

Their voices ricocheted off the trees, each word sharper than the last, building like storm clouds.

“She’s a projection—”

“She’s a delusion—”

“—of your own making"

“—of your desperate need”

“You need to forgive yourself.”

“—before it destroys you—“

“—before you waste your whole life—“

Pain exploded behind Eli’s eyes. He clutched his temples, doubling over as their voices merged into a deafening roar.

Guilt. Innocence.

Presence. Absence.

Contradictions tore through him.

“Please,” he gasped, voice drowning beneath the noise. “I failed you!” he choked out. “I wasn’t there when….”

“ENOUGH.”

Her command split the air. Precise. Silence fell.

The weight lifted. Pain vanished. Eli swayed, gulping air like a drowning man surfacing.

His trembling hands fell away from his temples as he raised his gaze.

There stood Cassandra. The whole one. Her breathing steady, her eyes never leaving his face.

And behind her.

The other Cassandra had become a statue. A photograph of horror, preserved in perfect, terrible stillness.

In the sudden quiet, only one voice remained.

Hers.

Cass’s voice sliced through the quiet forest. “Tell me about that night.”

The warmth had vanished from her tone, leaving only hard edges and the demand for truth. Eli’s throat worked as he swallowed. “I took your keys. I drove us—“

“No.”

“I did,” he insisted, the response immediate, rehearsed.

Her gaze pinned him in place. “That’s not what happened, and you know it.” She leaned forward slightly. “The real story, Eli. From the start.”

He began to shake his head, retreating into the narrative he’d constructed.

“Stop hiding,” she said, her voice gaining an edge like steel. “Your mind built this wall to protect you, but it’s time to tear it down. Tell me what actually happened that night.”

“You showed up at my place,” he said. “Our standing Friday tradition. Movie marathon. But something was off… you’d been fighting with your mom again.”

The words caught in his throat.

“Go on,” Cass urged, her voice gentling.

Eli’s palm scraped down his face as if trying to wipe away the memory. “Those films. Just shapes and colors in the dark.” His voice cracked. “During the third one, I got up for... something. Snacks? Water? I don’t remember.”

Cass remained silent, waiting.

“In the kitchen,” he continued, each syllable dragging as if weighted, “I heard it. The front door.”

His insides knotted violently.

“The sound of it opening. Then closing.” His throat worked. “Just like that, you’d vanished.”

The memory crystallized with brutal clarity.

“Your headlights...” His voice hollowed. “They swept across the living room wall. A flash of white, then darkness.”

Cass remained stone-faced.

“I—“ Eli’s chest heaved. “Everything blurred after that. I tore through my bedroom drawers, upended laundry baskets, patted down jacket pockets, my keys, where were my keys?” He pressed his palms against his eyes. “When I finally found them, I was already running to my car.”

His knuckles whitened.

“I had no destination,” he said. “Just the direction your taillights had disappeared. I drove and drove, following some invisible thread between us, minutes bleeding into hours—“

Something fractured in his throat.

“Until—“

The sentence died.

This was where truth pivoted into fiction.

The moment his mind had rewritten countless times, reshaping reality into something bearable, something where guilt had purpose.

But.

He remembered.

Eli’s lungs seized. His head jerked side to side, trying to scatter the memories.

The truth was simpler than his story.

He never reached her in time. Never saw the crash.

“And then what happened, Eli?”

Cass settled beside him on the forest floor, her movements measured.

“Tell me.” The words weren’t gentle or harsh. Just real.

Eli stared at the dirt between his shoes, heartbeat threatening to crack his ribs. Something in him fought the confession rising like bile.

“I couldn’t—“ The whisper barely escaped.

His fingers spasmed against his knees.

“I never made it to you,” he managed, voice breaking.

Eli’s voice dropped to a rasp. “I arrived too late. The wreckage was.” A violent tremor passed through him. “Already cordoned off. Bystanders gathered. Emergency lights pulsing….I failed you completely.”

The confession spilled from him like blood from a wound.

His voice broke. “I drove past the accident. Saw the lights, the wreckage. But I kept going, looking for you ahead.” Tears tracked down his face. “Next morning, your mom called. That’s when I knew—the twisted metal I’d passed was your car.”

When she finally spoke, her voice rang clear as a bell.

“Then why didn’t you come to my funeral?”

Eli flinched.

“Why rewrite everything?” she continued, watching him. “Make yourself the driver? The reason I died?”

He shook his head. “I don’t—“

“Six years pushing everyone away,” she pressed. Her voice cracked on “family, friends,” but she didn’t stop. “Telling yourself you’re horrible when you weren’t even there?”

Each question burned.

Eli’s hands trembled. “Because you weren’t supposed to die,” he said, quiet but firm.

Eli shook his head, the muscles in his jaw working. “It should have been me. Not you.” He pressed his palm against his sternum. “You had that five-year plan taped above your desk. Pre-med. Doctors Without Borders. That apartment in Chicago you wanted.” His voice cracked. “I’m the one who drove too fast. Who stayed out too late? Who never checked the weather before hiking.”

He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing.

“I’m the cautionary tale waiting to happen.” A laugh escaped him, dry as dead leaves. “That’s the story that makes sense.”

His gaze finally lifted to meet hers.

“But you?” The word came out barely audible. “The universe doesn’t just... erase someone like you without reason.”

The forest seemed to hold its breath around them.

“If I wasn’t responsible...” His fingers trembled. “Then it was just... chance. Random cruelty.” His breathing hitched. “And I couldn’t stop it.”

He dug his nails into his palms.

“Which means you’re really gone,” he whispered, exhaled shakily. “So I changed the story. Made myself the villain.” His voice dropped lower. “Because villains can be punished. And punishments can be earned. And if I earned it enough. Maybe I could trade places with you.”

His voice dropped .“Being angry kept me moving. If I stopped, I’d have to face that you’re not coming back.”

His eyes burned. “I stayed busy. Pushed everyone away. Made sure I only felt this.” He gestured vaguely at his chest. “Because really grieving means accepting you’re gone.”

His voice broke. “And I can’t.”

The confession hung between them, raw and human.

Eli exhaled shakily. “I know it doesn’t make sense.”

For a moment, Cass just looked at him.

“I understand,” she said quietly. “You built a world where I didn’t just disappear for no reason. Where you had some control, even if it hurt you.” She held his gaze. “That makes sense, Eli.”

And somehow, that made his chest ache even more. For the first time since she appeared, he truly saw her.

Eli’s voice came out barely above a whisper. “Is this real? Are you?” His throat worked. “Or just another hallucination?”

Cass met his eyes without flinching.

Her gaze drifted past his shoulder. “I’m real. They made this happen. Your parents, mine, all of them.” When she looked back, her eyes darkened. “So you could finally stop running.”

A tremor ran through Eli’s chest.

“But it won’t last,” she added, her voice gentle despite the finality of her words. “You understand that, right?”

The truth sank into him like cold water.

“No ritual or bargain will change that,” Cass said, no trace of self-pity in her tone. “It’s unfair. It defies logic. But here we are.”

Tears welled in his eyes.

“Stop putting me on this pedestal,” she continued with a soft exhale that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I was a mess, Eli. Headstrong. Zero patience. Made terrible decisions when emotions ran high. And tired,” She arched an eyebrow. “Sound familiar?”

A sound escaped him—half laugh, half sob.

“We complemented each other,” she said. “Always did. You think I was the careful one? You pulled me back from the edge a hundred times. You were the thinker. The steady one. The friend who stayed when I was at my worst.”

“That fire inside you, that compassion, those dreams you had.” She tilted her head. “What happened to them?”

Eli turned his face away.

“Your dreams matter,” she said, her voice hardening. “Living for both of us isn’t the answer.”

Something constricted inside his ribcage.

“That last night,” Cass continued, her words precise as a scalpel, “you were there for me. I was furious. Irrational. But you stayed anyway. You never abandoned me…. I just couldn’t hear you,” she whispered. “That’s my burden to carry. I made the choice. One with consequences. Not just for me, but for everyone who loved me.” Her eyes captured his, refusing to let go.

“Don’t repeat my mistake.” His body went still.

“One moment of pain shouldn’t become a lifetime of pushing away the people who care about you,” she said. “That’s what you’ve done for six years, Eli.” A sharp intake of breath caught in his throat. “They’ve suffered enough without losing you, too,” she added, gentle but unyielding. “None of you deserve this purgatory.”

And then—

Eli got up, stepped forward, cautious as approaching a wild animal.

“…Can I—?” His voice cracked.

Cass stood with a nod. “Yeah.”

He pulled her against him, his arms like anchors. She held him back. His face pressed into her shoulder as years of unshed tears finally broke free.

“I miss you,” he choked.

“Me too.”

As they embraced, the forest seemed to breathe with memory—phantom laughter, sneakers on dirt paths, breathless giggles from before. Eli’s grip tightened once, desperately.

And then.

She was gone.

—

He woke with a gasp, jerking upright.

Voices surrounded him. Real ones. Familiar ones. His vision cleared faces he’d avoided for years. Friends. Family. Her family.

All watching him.

His chest hitched, tears spilling as everything crashed into him at once.

“Mom“

She rushed forward, pulling him into her arms. Eli collapsed against her, clutching her like she might vanish, six years of buried pain pouring out at once.“I’ve got you, baby,” she whispered, cradling his head. “We’ve got you.”