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The forest says wake up, and he does.
There’s a certain... peculiarity, to being something you aren’t anymore.
He knows this better than anyone, because the Prince woke up in chains without a heartbeat in his chest or breath in his lungs, and was suddenly very, very certain that he wasn’t the Prince anymore. Couldn’t be.
Because the Prince was left to wither and scream and fall to pieces. Because the Prince was left alone for days and an eternity and it was cold and it was cold and it was cold and it was so cold that it burned, and then he burned until he couldn’t anymore.
Because the Prince felt something wrench in his chest and it sounded like screaming cut short. Because the Prince was left with ice creeping up his veins from the chains on his wrists and in darkness now inseparable from his shadow.
(His shadow had always been too much, but no one ever noticed until it was too late.)
And then the forest said wake up, and he did.
He falls through the chains onto his knees. The awful, ice-encrusted things clatter against the wall behind him, now empty.
It is peculiar to be something you aren’t anymore, and perhaps even stranger to become something you never should have been.
It’s lot easier when you have more important things to worry about, though.
He can hear her.
My Prince, my Prince, my Prince, my—
(Her fingers leave trails of crystalline ice under his eyes, and he makes himself smile at her, even as his hands tremble.)
He can’t be here anymore. It’s too cold and it’s too much and too little at the same time, his heartbeat is gone from his chest but his hands are still shaking, he could never get them to stop—
So he forces himself outside, and he’s assaulted by just how wrong it is.
(Something is wrong, and something is gone.)
He stumbles away from the manor and its glacier. He leaves no trace in the snow.
The snow keeps going.
He reaches the bridge to West Subcon. It’s too quiet. It’s far too quiet.
The snow doesn’t stop.
He can feel the cold cutting into his wrists and chest even as the wind blows the snow straight through him, whistling like it’s lonely.
There’s nothing.
(It’s all wrong, and it’s all gone.)
The trees are dead, and their roots are locked in permafrost. He traces a hand across one. It’s still dead.
No no no no, this is wrong.
There’s an emptiness where something should be, where something used to be—something that was forced from him, scraped and clawed out of his chest.
The forest says, I’m sorry.
There’s nothing, and the wind echoes wasteland.
He keeps going until he sees the children, and suddenly he can’t keep going anymore.
Because they’re—
They’re all—
It’s cold it’s cold it’s cold it’s cold and it’s in his bones and his veins and it’s crystallizing on his hair and eyelashes and tracing lovely patterns on his skin until he can’t breathe and he can do nothing but burn and be consumed—
He falls.
The darkness overcomes as it was always meant to do and the forest says wake up and the forest says I’m sorry and shadows claw through his skin where he burned away to frozen ashes and something wrenches in his chest and the chains bite into his wrists and—
Something nudges against his head, and it doesn’t fall through him.
Another presses into his hand.
He lets himself look up, lets himself see the masks and the colorful transparency, and something overtakes him. It feels like grief but maybe more like rage, and it’s also something like apathy.
And the forest says wake up, so he does.
Something breaks.
The ice cracks and fractures and shatters and maybe he does too, just a little bit.
(He burned and he burned and he burned so he keeps burning. The forest keeps burning, and it doesn’t mind.)
He shifts and he fluctuates, because he is something like the Prince and his people need him, and he is the forest come alive and resplendent and indignant, and he is fire and ashes encompassing, and he is darkness.
He flickers and oscillates until he has no form at all, and you know what? That’s fine, actually. Who needs a form? Unless it’s one to sign, of course. HA!
The not-children press into him and follow him, as the forest burns in one place and darkens in another, as the sky breaks and the old kingdom decays.
They build a new village, and the for the ones that are willing, he builds them new selves.
He flickers and fluctuates, brittle and unsteady. The trees don’t brighten at his touch but they lean towards him, creaking.
(He visits the ruins only once. The stones sing him a lullaby that she drowned out with her screaming, and he wants it gone. He takes what books have survived and leaves, too-familiar notes ringing in his head and phantom instruments in his hands.)
He is shadow and bramble and darkness congealed, and West Subcon is no longer a refuge of any kind.
It warps him into something cruel and unforgiving, and he lets it.
(Trespasser, the forest mutters. Intruder.)
Souls are near-blinding and so terribly alive that it hurts. He takes them for his own, for the forest, for the village. He sets traps and borders and plans. The little ones cheerfully follow, jeering and giggling and playfully dancing around idiotic victims.
They name him Snatcher, and yeah, sure, whatever. It’s not wrong.
(They should know better than to come here. The lost stay lost in Subcon, now. There’s no refuge to be found, not if you’re still breathing.)
And then—
And then the wind—
The wind, it’s cold—
It bites at his wrists and in their veins and it claws at his chest and it cracks their masks and steals the breath from lungs they don’t have—
The little ones jump and hide, and without thinking he tells them to stay back, moves in front of them.
The bridge.
She’s there, she’s at the bridge.
HOW DARE SHE?
(She steps closer, and the forest recoils.)
Where have you gone?
She sounds lonely and forlorn and absolutely horrifying. He holds himself steady. Forces his hands to still.
Leave.
The stone cracks underneath her feet. She steps back, and it feels like a victory. (He could never get her to back down, not once since he’d met her—)
My Prince!
The bridge begins to tremble.
I’m not your Prince, he snarls. You killed him. I am only what remains.
She is forced off of the bridge entirely as it crumbles and falls away.
My—
Leave.
My Pr—
LEAVE.
And then she does.
It’s not quite so cold anymore. She left tracks in the snow when she left, and he doesn’t wonder what it means.
Let’s go home, he says, even though his hands aren’t quite done shaking.
The little ones stay close to him, and he doesn’t complain. They press against his side, against his hands. He lets them.
Let’s go home.