Chapter 54... Our last Song

He steps out into the rain,
smoke still coiling from his coat like ghosts that refuse to leave him.
Inside the booth the bulb flickers once, twice—then dies.
No proof left that anyone ever called.
Only the faint shape of a man burned into the glass.

Ydoc breathes.
Or tries to.
It feels wrong, like pulling air through broken ribs.

He walks.
Or maybe wanders.
There is no difference anymore.

The Divide has gone silent.
Even the frogs stop their music,
even the wind holds its tongue,
as if the whole world is holding its breath
to watch a soul come undone.

His eyes are cloudy things,
storm‑glass that no longer see color.
Each step is a stumble through memory—
a rock, a root, a snapped branch that remembers when it was a tree.

Somewhere, a piano plays.
Low notes first—
one, two, three—
and then a hesitant climb,
like a child trying to reach the next stair.
It doesn’t finish the melody.
It never does.
It just skips,
a broken heart learning the wrong rhythm.

He shuts his eyes tight enough to see stars in the dark.
Tighter still, until they ache,
until something behind them breaks open.

The tears come slow.
Not clear—no, never clear—
but the color of dusk‑blue ink,
running down his face like holy scripture written for no god at all.

Each drop lands with a whisper.
Each whisper says the same word:

“Gone.”

Gone—the voice.
Gone—the love.
Gone—the world that once knew how to forgive.

He kneels in the ash‑wet dirt,
hands pressed into the ground as if to beg it to remember him.
And the Divide listens.
The forest bends toward him,
black‑limbed and trembling,
not in pity but in mourning.

Because even here,
in a place that has seen gods die and stars rot,
there is nothing sadder
than a man who cries for the dead
and expects no one to hear.

His body was unraveling.

Feathers, the color of bruised lilac, unfurled from his arms—
not wings, no, nothing that graceful—
but something growing out, something escaping.

His claws curled.
His mouth opened at last.
And with it, came drool and dread and the ugly, silent truth:

He was real.
He was still here.
And gods, he hated that.

But even still—
he stumbled.
Stumbled forward, blindly, like a wounded bird crawling back to the nest it burned down itself.
His vision was fog, heat on his skin like the warning of fire—

—no.
No, not fire.

It was light.
It was laughter.

It was… a voice.

A voice that knew him.

“YDOC!?”

A shrill cry, full of surprise, like someone seeing a ghost and realizing they still love it.
Something massive moved—
not rushed, not attacked, but gathered.
A long, warm slither around his shoulders.
Fingers so gentle wiping tears from a face that forgot how to be touched.

“You made it…”
“Hey hey hey now—hey—easy, feathers, you’re okay…”

He was okay?

He was.

Because here, cradling him like the softest damn pillow of the gods,
was a Holokon.

Massive, earthy brown, his body smooth and muscled like tree bark soaked in molasses.
Brown hair so absurdly long it flowed behind him like a cape made of spun caramel.
A grin stretched so wide it looked hand-drawn.
And two sleepy eyes full of nothing but love.

This was RoKoKo.

And RoKoKo hugged him.
Hugged all the burn and the pain and the ash and the feathers and the ache.
He wrapped him up like a brother who refused to let the world eat him.

Ydoc collapsed, finally.

Not in defeat.

But into his arms.

And maybe…
just maybe…
a smile bloomed.
So small.
So tender.
It only lived for a second.

But it was real.

Ydoc wiped his eyes.

At first, his vision blurred with tears still clinging to lashes—
then light.
Soft and flickering.
Amber and gold.

And then—something in his palm.

A piece of candy.

Wrapped in old-fashioned cellophane, twisted like a gift from another time.
The type you’d find in the bottom of your grandmother’s purse.
A butterscotch.
Warm already in his hand.

He blinked.

“I knew you needed that!”

RoKoKo beamed, his grin too big for his soft, handsome face.
His giant, winged arms flailed out with such excitement that he nearly spun in place—
his hair flying like a banner caught in summer wind.
If joy could become a person, it would be him.

His tail? Wagging like a giddy Labrador.

“EVERYBODY!!” he shouted, wings puffed out proudly.
“GUESS WHO I FOUND OUT IN THE DARK LOOKIN’ LIKE A BURNT MARSHMALLOW!”

A cheer. A real one.

A ripple of claps, hoots, delighted gasps, and spinning ribbons.

They were everywhere.
Creatures of all kinds and sizes.

Some were tall and elegant with stitched button-eyes,
others round and pudgy with legs like soft rugs.
Some crawled, some bounced.
Many shimmered with odd patches—like quilted children’s toys come alive.

Their eyes were mismatched.
Their limbs—sewn.
Some were missing ears, others had wings that sparkled like crayon drawings.
But all of them smiled.

Goofy smiles. Warm smiles.
Kind smiles made for mending broken dreams.

They wore cloaks of velvet and gowns of tattered silk.
Dresses like waterfalls of star-dust, capes with moons embroidered on the hems.
As if each one was born from a bedtime story no one finished reading.

And oh—
the lights.

Fairy lights hung like vines in the trees, lazily swinging.
Floating flames danced above tables, with no candles to cage them.
They flickered with a warmth that smelled like sugar and pine needles.

The air was thick with the glow of yesterday.
Nostalgia in color.
Still lifes come alive.

Dreams, handmade.
And everyone here had come to keep dreaming.

There were tables covered in cloth that shimmered like spilled syrup.
And food piled high—towering cakes, sweet breads, mysterious glowing fruits, and—

“CANDIED APPLES!” RoKoKo gasped, grabbing two with one clawed hand.
“THEY GOT YOUR FAVORITE, I KNOW IT!”

He didn’t know.

But he believed.

Ydoc blinked again, the blue-ink tears now dry on his cheeks.
He didn’t know how he had gotten here.
But suddenly, the cold didn’t matter.

There were candles that weren’t candles.
Smiles that weren’t fake.

And people—no, friends—who didn’t know him…
but loved him anyway.

And the music?

A soft waltz, played on violins made of spider-silk and bells.

For the first time in a very long time,
Ydoc did not feel like a ghost.

He felt like a guest.

The party was waiting.
And the candy was warm in his palm.
                                               The Last Dance of the Party 

They loved him.
They really did.

The cries rose all around, soft laughter turning wild with joy.
“Stella Crona!” they called, the name of myth—of heart, of home, of him.
Every smiling face was a moon turned toward him.
Every light a tiny heartbeat in the dark.

He felt it.
He wanted to believe it.

The fragile heart of the Divide, held up by monsters that refused to let him fall.

Felinkin came first—
purple and slithery, always too affectionate for his own good.
He coiled in with a grin so wide it could outshine dawn.
Then came the sound—
“Mwah!”—
and the wrong angle of a kiss that landed half on Ydoc’s cheek, half on his lip.

A shock, warm and wet and ridiculous.

Ydoc’s head jerked.
He laughed— a real, living laugh that escaped like something long buried in his ribs.

RokoKo wagged his tail so hard the table trembled.
“Felinkin! Not on the mouth!”
“Oh hush,” the purple menace purred, “he’s family, isn’t he?”

Laughter burst like firecrackers.
Applause. Cheering.

Too much joy, too fast.
Too bright.

Arms gathered him up again, large and eager—
a dozen hands, wings, paws.
Lifting him high, tossing him gently at first—
but oh, his body remembered a fall.

The music twirled.
The lights spun.
And the world tilted.

A flash.
A sound, like static in his skull.
And suddenly he wasn’t there anymore.

He was everywhere.

The crowd’s joy twisted, blurred, stretched into shadow.
He saw faces he had lost—
Lucy.
Edwards.
The catfolk duchess with the emerald ring.
The child in the rose.
A thousand memories flooding in, drowning his fragile heart.

“Not now—please—”
“Let him breathe—”

But the ink was already running.
Down his nose, across his lips.
Black, alive, shimmering with stars.

He felt Froosta’s absence like frost in the bones.
His small hands weren’t here to wipe it clean.
No one could stop it now.

The party dimmed.
Every flame bent toward him, bowing as if to the end of a song.

Ydoc smiled— or maybe he just remembered how.

“It’s… beautiful,” he whispered.

And then the ink fell.
Drop by drop.
Like the rain that started it all.

The music slowed—
violins fading into a heartbeat,
the last candle trembling in the dark.
.....
............

Laughter still echoed when it happened.
The kind that feels too big for the room—
that shakes the walls and fills the air with light.

And then—
it stopped.

A sound like a stone dropped into water.
A gasp.
Felinkin’s wide, terrified eyes.

“Ydoc?”

He’d slipped.
No—he was sinking.

His legs—then his hips—then his chest—
melting into the floor, the amber light around him warping,
the laughter curdling into screams.

“No no no—pull him up!”
“RokoKo—help him!”
“He’s sinking again!”

RokoKo’s wings flared wide as he shoved others aside,
his face carved in panic, his voice breaking—

“Get his medicine! GO! NOW!”

The word medicine echoed like a ghost in the Divide.
It had happened before.
It was happening again.

Felinkin was crying.
Button-eyed poppets were pulling,
stitching threads snapping as they tried to hold on.
But their hands slipped through him like through ink and rain.

“YDOC! STAY WITH US!”

No answer.
No sound.
Only the soft thrum beneath the soil—
a rhythm older than sorrow.

And in the chaos,
a whisper brushed his ear,
gentle as a prayer.

“I love you.”

And then—
he sank.
All of him.
Through light, through warmth, through memory.

Into black.

Into the deepest sea
where no dream, no music, no love could reach him.

Silence.

It was so quiet that the quiet itself began to sing.

A single line, curling like smoke through the nothing:

“The play is about to begin.”

A spotlight flickered on in the dark.