Chapter 11. stepping into the Script

The door creaked open like an old throat cleared of silence.

Ydoc stepped outside, coat fluttering slightly at the hem as the chill welcomed him—not cold, not warm, but damp, like walking through breath.

The world around him was drained of hue.
Not grayscale. Not washed-out.
But intentionally absent—as if the world had been inked in by a left hand, hesitant and unsure.

The front yard sprawled before him, but not in lush, familiar ways. The grass was white—not snowy, not pale, but paper white, like parchment waiting to be ruined.

It crunched not beneath his feet, but somewhere within his perception. Like memory stepping over memory. Like dreams stepping on glass.

The trees—those gnarled, cruel towers—clawed at the sky. Each branch was a cracked finger, reaching and curling like the dying hands of gods who once wrote poetry but now only begged.

Their bark shimmered with thin slivers of oil—slick black and wrong—and from the ground beneath them, slow, thick droplets of darkness slipped upward.

Yes—upward. Black rain in reverse.

The ink weeps toward the sky here.

It left stains in the air, smudges of what could have been color, now just shades of grief.

Ydoc’s boots hit the wooden planks of the front porch. The sound echoed in a place that should not echo.

Behind him stood the house.

A three-story monolith of sharp-angled lumber and sorrow.

No color, only wood—gray as ash, peeling in places like skin.

The windows were glassy eyes, unmoving. Not a single curtain swayed. The structure leaned inward at the middle like a tired man with too many secrets. Was it two floors and an attic? Or three? It changed every time he blinked.

It had a front porch. A back porch.
A swing that never moved.
And a roofline that seemed far taller than it was wide, a lopsided smile of a house drawn by a child too afraid to finish it.

If there were color, it might have been beautiful.

And oh… the lights.

Strings of fairy bulbs hung like spiderwebs across the eaves, between porch pillars, stretched from the trees to the rails.

Each bulb pulsed faintly—dim shades of gray that remembered once being warm pink, festive blue, soft lemon yellow.

Now?

They blinked in quiet mourning.

Yet still they blinked.

Somewhere inside Ydoc’s chest, a strange fondness stirred.

He touched the brim of his hat—his beautiful chupalla, the only emerald in a world of smoke—and took one full breath.

The air here was thick and full of taste. A hint of ink, of burnt sugar, of wilted lilacs long past their prime.

It wasn’t safe.

But it was real.

And he was leaving it behind.
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The rain had stopped sometime the morning before, but the land had yet to notice.

It still clung to its posture—drooping, quiet, heavy with water that didn’t drip.
The sky above was a pale ash-gray sheet, without storm or sun, like a stage light set to dim.

The house, though?
It sat like a memory that refused to finish loading.

There were rugs on the front porch.
Old ones—some thick and patterned, some flat and stitched with scenes long faded.
One was set right at the door: red and gold, though the red had lost all heat. The gold had turned to a tired tea-brown.
Another rug lay under the twisted, leafless trees nearby, where a couple of chairs faced each other across nothing. One chair had tipped sideways long ago and no one had righted it.

And beneath one of those black-branched trees, there was a mini-garden.

Rectangular. Fenced in with string and mismatched wire.
Tomatoes, bulbous and strange, hung heavy on their vines, refusing to ripen or rot.
Beside them, lilies stood tall—translucent as frosted glass.
Neither grew.
Neither died.
They simply were.

Stuck in a moment. Caught in stasis. As if someone had paused time halfway through a photograph.

Even the dirt refused to smudge. It had no smell.

If not for the fairy lights—their blinking pulses of muted memory—this place could have been mistaken for a grave site. A place where life once almost happened.

Behind the house, there was another porch. The black porch.

It was quieter there, somehow. Larger. With enough room for three to sit on a swinging bench that never creaked but did sway now and then, like a sleeping breath.

From this back porch, the Divide opened up—still monotone, still draped in shadows and fog—but just beyond the trees, you could almost see it.
The change.

A few spots of pale ochre. A glimmer of green behind the far branches.
The beginning of color.

Ydoc didn’t see it—not yet.
He only stood there, gaze tracing the shapes of the trees, feeling something shift but not knowing why.
But others—the scientists, the map-makers, the quiet men who wrote words they feared would be true—they had a name for this zone.

They called it The Cold.

Not for its temperature.
But for the stillness.
For the way every object, every shadow, every movement felt like a still-frame. Like a book that had been illustrated, not lived.
A place where breath was optional, and love felt too warm to belong.

The Cold.

And the only strange thing within it, the only thing that moved like firelight in fog… was Edwards.

He stood a few yards ahead of Ydoc now, waiting by the old metal gate that led to the footpath into the woods.

His fur, his clothes, his golden features—none of it dulled.

If anything, he glowed.

Not in brightness, but in distortion.

A shimmer surrounded him, the way light bends around a flame in mist.
Like a mirage. Like oil on water. A halo of impossible heat in a world where nothing should burn.

The only color in a colorless world.

Ydoc blinked, eyes dragging across the pale yard again.

The rain had passed.
But its sadness had stayed.

And so had this house.
Like a secret that never told itself.
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They walked.

Ydoc followed behind at first, but quickly caught pace with Edwards.
Their steps whispered over white grass, the blades stiff and brittle like dry paper in winter.

Ahead, the forest grew denser—not thicker, not wilder, just… heavier. The way dreams do, when you walk too far into them.

Before long, the path led them to an old formation of standing stones. A circle, broken in half, forming a kind of archway. Each stone leaned inward slightly, as though they’d once been pushed and never quite stood back up.
They were massive—seven feet tall or more—and each was carved with deep, crude glyphs.

Ydoc paused.

The carvings were vicious.

Wolves, hunched and snarling, teeth like blades.
And ravens—whole flocks of them—being ripped apart, beaks shattering, wings torn into ribbons.
Blood, stylized but unmistakable, poured like rivers between the images.

His breath caught.

“…what is this?” he murmured.

Edwards didn’t stop walking.
He simply said, “It’s protection. That’s all.”

“Protection from what?” Ydoc asked, eyes still locked on the stone.

Edwards gave a shrug. “From the thing that used to live here. Everyone thought it was dead.”

He smiled without humor. “Still do.”

And with that, he stepped through the arch.

Ydoc lingered, just for a second.

There was something about the way those glyphs moved.
Or maybe it was just the wind, curling through the stone.
Or maybe—just maybe—it wasn’t wind at all.

It was a breath.
A slow, deliberate inhale.
From something.

Ydoc stepped through.

And behind him, The Cold remained exactly as it was.
Still.
Pale.
Unmoving.

But in the old myths, they never agreed on whether the creature was slain.
Only sealed.
And myth has a way of rotting in the soil.
Of seeping back up through the roots.
When no one is looking.

They called it The Cold…
Because it made even fire forget how to dance.

But it remembers.

And it’s still here. But..

While Ydoc passed through the stone arch with a reluctant step, heart tight in his chest.

He could feel the stones watching him—no, not watching—remembering him.
And what they remembered… was not kind.

But the moment his heel crossed the threshold—

Everything changed.

It was subtle at first.

A stir in the air.
Not just movement, but motive. Like the wind wanted to touch his skin. To curl around his coat, lift his black hair, and hum through the strings of fairy lights swaying behind them.

Then—
A scent.

Sweet.
Warm.
Unmistakably alive.

Candied strawberries… and cookies.
The smell of festival carts in bloom.
Sugar melting over coalfire.
Butter wafting from half-baked pastries and cream puffs too soft to hold.

Ydoc blinked.

The world was no longer monochrome.

The grass, once paper-white, now shimmered with shy pastels—peach, lemon, honeydew.
The sky bled with pale lavender clouds, drifting over a canvas not quite blue, but not quite grey either.
And the trees…

Oh, the trees.

What were once black claws reaching from dying gods now breathed again—
Soft bark of tarnished bronze. Leaves like stained-glass mosaics. Red-orange, sun-gold, moonstruck teal.
And deeper in the Divide, past the winding paths and secret stones, something moved—something welcomed.

Color danced at the edge of every leaf.
And for the first time in what felt like years…

Ydoc smiled.

He felt ridiculous. Still wearing his too-fancy coat, still sore from bruises, still wary of Edwards ahead.
But he smiled anyway.

Because the forest had changed.
And he had crossed through.

The Cold was behind him.

And the Festival of the Stars…

Had already begun to bloom.