Note: This was in Starry Night Thoughts on my profile. It still is and probably won't get moved, but  I'm doing this for sanity's sake at this point. This is actually fairly recent (end of 2023) from when this collection was posted though so at least there's that. Still, if you read it over there it's literally the exact same thing.

This was written as kind of a 'prequel character' idea. I have a story idea that would end up involving someone from this and wrote it as a way of knowing the backstory. Whether that series of ideas ever gets written down is an *amazing* mystery though.

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The world didn't pause to look when the first traveler entered the town. Asked later the same day, no one would have been able to say when he showed, just that he did. The town was the Valley Between and as far as its inhabitants knew, the last place to rest before a farther descent through the mountains.

So when he entered, hair matted, clothes ripped and disheveled, with nothing more than a large stick and small, mud covered pack, no one questioned it. An ill-prepared traveler for a long journey or simply a man who had a hard time were the few whispers. Besides that, nothing. He ate, drank, and stayed at their inn. Nothing more to the majority.

He spoke to few, though Ella was one of those few. It was the advantage of handling sales in a market, she supposed. Each day, before the sun properly rose and night still gripped pieces of the sky, he would show. Initially, the two exchanged no words, only money and fruit from her stand. Then, after around a week, he started talking. Not much, at first. Just a few small words here and there about what he'd like, or maybe a greeting. He held a voice much like his looks-- gruff, somewhat gravely, and cracked on some occasions. The matted hair pulled out to dark frizzy twists, the beard became gathered in a band to keep out of the way. He was never loud and always difficult to understand, his accent drawing out strange syllables and pronouncing letters odd ways.

Ella learned his name was Chann after two weeks.

Kind as he was, and as frequent as he came -- only missing three mornings out of the first four weeks he was there-- there were times Ella felt the strangest way about the man. One morning she realized what it was.

His eyes.

She stared at his eyes a second too long, caged by an unending prison of light grey. Tiny blasts of bright yellow arched through the smoke and crawled to the center of his eyes, where the grey turned so dark it melted with the pupil and pulled the whole thing upward, made it stretch from the bottom of the prison to the top in a thin, narrow pathway.

The moment made every hair on the back of her neck bolt straight up, yet as soon as he left the anxiety vanished.

Four days after the incident, another traveler showed. This time, a woman. She arrived the same as Chann-- silently and with nothing except a small, leather pouch that hung off the side of her hip. Her hair was lighter, longer, yet still as tangled as his was before. Her skirts were torn and frayed at the end, her blouse ripped at the center and tied to the other side of itself so her skin couldn't show.

She too, stayed at the inn. She ate, she drank, she watched.

Valley Between again gave her no mind. She rarely left the sanctity of the inn, and as far as most knew, she left as quietly as she came.

Yet again, Ella knew different.

A few days after the woman arrived, Ella got to the market early. The sky still held the moon, its crescent shape still bright, though no stars peeked out from behind the tall trees surrounding her home.

Ella dragged her basket onto the small table she set up behind the stand. The night before, she'd gathered a new batch of fruits to sell, mostly apples and peaches, though a few pears made it into the batch. As she set them out she picked the rotted ones from the previous batch and tossed them into the now empty basket.

After she finished, she stepped back. A tiny nag of annoyance pulled her chest. Even with the older fruits, it wasn't nearly as much as a few months ago.

It was fine. It was fine. Likely, she missed some while she picked. Her mother and father told her time and time again not to gather the fruit in the night, yet she failed to do otherwise. If she'd be normal for a few days, the issue would fix itself.

Ella barely had a moment still before a familiar voice drew her attention.

"You're out early today."

Ella just shrugged, turning toward Chann before looking. "I can't stay as long today--" She stopped, gaze finally on him... and the new woman with him. Ella smiled at her. "Oh. Hello."

The woman nodded to her but said nothing, only scanning the fruits Ella placed moments before.

Chann shifted his weight, tugging his vest closer to the center of his chest. "This is Zella. My sister."

Sister. In the dim lantern light, Ella couldn't see it. The woman --Zella-- held a more angular face, cheekbones harsh, chin longer, nose sharp. Her hair, pulled away from her face, was a strange shade, not at all like Chann's, yet not dissimilar at the same time. Tens of tiny scars and scrapes wrapped around her hand that went over the fruit, one on the top circular with a straight diagonal line that morphed into a flat one.

Not a scar. A mark.

Ella tore her eyes from the woman's hand and held hers out. "We have very similar names, Zella. I'm Ella."

Zella paused her browsing and shake Ella's hand. The scars and rough outside stopped at her palm, where the skin was smoother than Ella's own.

"That we do," she said. The words held the same odd accent as Chann's, syllables drawn out at strange points and letters blended with others. As she leaned in, Ella caught a glimpse of her eyes.

The same grey cage as Chann's, with the yellow and dark pieces nearly identical.

The girl tried to keep her nerves out of her face and dropped Zella's hand after a moment. Any questions she held of the two being related left her mind. She knew people had grey eyes. That was never her question. Blue, green, deep brown like hers, hazel, and the occasional grey she was used to. They didn't send a shiver of fear down her spine.

Theirs though... Chann and Zella's weren't familiar. Weren't normal was what she hated to think, yet they weren't.

There was a few moments where not one of the three did anything but stand there. They all watched each other, looked to the other one to see who would move first.

But in a blink, Zella was handing Ella some coins while passing an apple off to Chann with the other hand. Nothing was wrong, nor was it ever.

A few of the coins fell to the table. As the two women reached for them, Ella's hair fell toward her face and caught the silver chain around her neck.

Zella pulled away as Ella gathered the rest of the coins.

"Sorry." With when free hand, Ella pulled her hair from her face. "I forgot the tie today and didn't want to go back to get it."

"It's alright." It was Chann who answered, stepping closer as his sister moved away. "Though careful not to break that chain."

Chain. Ella looked down, finally noticing the necklace and hair mess. She pulled some strands away from it. "Usually, it stays tucked well enough that doesn't happen." She unwrapped a lock of hair from the charm at the end-- a small, imperfect cross her father shaped from the excess metal at his shop. She held it a moment before dropping it back under her blouse. "Thank you for the warning though. I wouldn't have noticed it until it yanked my hair out."

Chann have her a tiny smile, his beard lifting as he did. "It's very well made. Where did you get it from?"

"My parents. It was a birthday present from a few years ago."

"That was kind of them."

"It was." She smiled, a faint little smile that barely turned her lips upward. "I haven't taken it off since."

"Are you religious much?" Zella stepped back up to the table, up from behind her brother. That close to Ella, and without the selling of food to keep her attention, she saw just how tall the woman truly was. Chann was nearly a head taller than the biggest man of Valley Between, and Zella came a finger's width shorter than he-- a full shoulders and head higher than Ella.

The girl gulped and nodded. The strange unease that came when she looked too long into their eyes was back, but this time it hovered more in her gut. "We've gone every seventh day for as long as I can remember."  She pointed across the town, to a tiny white church barely visible from the trees that swallowed it. "You're welcome to join us one morning if you wish."

The siblings exchanged quick glances before Chann spoke again. "Thank you, but I'm afraid our beliefs would clash a bit too harshly for my tastes. The Ver keep some strict guidelines and try as we might, they must be followed."

She didn't want to feel it, but a tiny breath of relief came flooding into her chest at his words. It was one less place to see them, one less place to see their eyes or their height.

She didn't press them-- out of some respect and out of some unearthly wish they would never step foot in that building. All she stated was "The invitation is open if you ever should change your mind."

Chann nodded, both out of acknowledgement and as a farewell.

Ella stayed at the market until a little before noon, then packed the remaining fruit into a basket and left. She was needed home earlier to watch her younger brother; Jacob, a boy hardly a toddler, while her parents gathered materials and outfits for his christening. It should have been done sooner, when he was only a few months old, yet Jacob had evidently decided they had little to no excitement in their lives and lived on death's door for the first year of his life-- due to illness was the only reason she ever heard. Whatever the reason, he was as healthy as he could be now, if not more so to make up for those first twelve months, and a menace to all those within a mile radius.

A seventeen year difference, yet if Ella loved him any more than she did, she felt as if her heart may burst.

As she walked past her garden, she paused. In them light, it was a beautiful little piece of land, with trees and bushes all holding varieties of fruits and colors. Yet, even from where she stood, she knew the reason she held less of those fruits now than a few months before.

The plants along the outside of the square, closest to the mountain, were mangled. Torn. Some leaves scattered over the rest of the garden, the sticks and branches broken with splitters around the plants nearest to them. The carnage destroyed only the outskirts, but the evidence of that destruction was scrawled over the rest of the garden, like whatever animal made it wanted to her to know it wasn't done and leave her wondering how she could have missed it, even in the night.

Her heart sank. She'd tell her father later, but if he could find no way for stopping it, her fruit stand would cease to be in a matter of weeks.

Later. She'd tell him later.

It was fine.

That night, a new traveler came into the town, much like the two before.

***

It happened like that, for months on end. A new person would enter toward the end of each month, without much note, and stay at the inn. These though, these people were different. The same as Chann and Zella is appearance, arrival, accent, even in clothes. Yet, two very important details were off.

First, their stay. They always came by the fruit stand with Chann or Zella, sometimes both, and introduced themselves. There was a Due, Louve, Seff, Geri, and Valko, all with Chann and Zella, and all staying no more than a month. It was nearly clockwork-- they would quietly arrive close to the beginning of a new month, and silently leave at some point during that same month. They came to her stand every day, only missing a few days in sequence and back the rest.

The second, their eyes. While they shared some features with the siblings, like their height or accent, or even the marks on their hands matching those on Zella's, not a single one of the five had the same unnerving eyes.

Then, the month after Valko left Valley Between, something different happened-- nothing.

No new visitor.

Ella kept watching the inn, waiting for Zella and Chann to bring a new mystery person to her stand in the morning, yet after two weeks too late, she knew. She knew as well as the siblings seemed to know, with their sharp looks and draining pleasantries. Their conversations in the mornings made it seem as if they expected one more, or someone from Valley Between was to be joining them, but there never was a soul.

No one new was coming. No more Ver, as they called themselves.

She couldn't help but be glad.

Perhaps the luck was going up. Her garden, that somehow survived the harsher winter, held less damage than ever. Whatever creature that stamped her plants withdrew for the first time in seven months, still damaging but not nearly as horribly as before. At one point, she'd wandered into the garden to find almost all of her fruits ripped apart. It had trampled the bushes against their house as well, with leaves blown to the wind and harsh scratches against the wall.

It was around that same time she'd awoken from a nightmare in pitch of night and seen, still while in her half-awake state, a shadowed form at the edge of her bed, its body humanoid but taller, longer. Pieces of its spine shot from its back; the ribs protruded to the side with the skin that covered them so thin she could nearly see through the space on the outside of the ridges. Hands long. Gnarled, with fingers that grew at disproportionate sizes to the rest of it.

Staring.

By the time she found it in her to scream, the form was nothing more than an imprint in her mind and a panicked story to tell her parents as they came running.

She only gardened in the light after that.

The loss of her nighttime picking felt like a slap in the face but it worked out for the best, she told herself. Valley Between always held frigid winters, and with those winters came an influx of wolves. The years before her father and other hunters of the town would go and clear as many as they could to stop them from entering. This year they'd done the same, but the animals were more determined than before. They came ever closer to the town, leaving bloodied carcasses near the edges of the trees and entrails spilled over the perfectly white snow some mornings. It was so bad her mother only wished for Ella to sell at the market in the heat of the day and would only allow Jacob outside if someone never tore their eyes from him.

Ella didn't fight against the market times as much as she could have. It was far too cold to be there in the early morning, as she held no desire to find a wolf by herself. Still, after a warm drink and food each morning, she was there, selling what hadn't been ripped or frozen.

With the early springtime came a lesser number of the dogs and a greater desire to sell at the crack of dawn. She missed her mornings as they had been, missed watching the sun glide over the mountain peak and erupt into thousands of colors and shades.

That was why she could barely contain her excitement when she was tasked with caring for Jacob the next afternoon. Her parents both needed to work -- what they were working on she'd tuned out as the joy hit her -- so she had to keep her younger brother for nearly the entire day.

Daytime watching of that boy meant an earlier market time.

She realized afterward it also meant a night harvesting. She hadn't been able to the day before, having run errands and entertaining the nearly three-year-old for the entirety of the afternoon.

It was like before.

She hardly closed her eyes, it felt, before they flew open again. Her basket and gloves lay on the bottom of her bed, packed and at the ready with her clothes next to them, having been set out the night before.

So she went out to her garden, no more than twenty feet from the backdoor at the closest point and thirty at the furthest.

What time it was she couldn't tell. From the bright twinkling of the stars and half-hidden full moon, she gathered it was earlier-- or later, depending on the viewpoint-- than she'd been before.

No matter. If she finished and the sky still held night, she'd fall back to sleep and wake when the sun came in through the window. For some reason, the light always pulled her awake, no matter how dim it was.

She was there in silence for a bit, with just her thoughts to occupy her as she pulled fruit away from the branches.

Then, a sound.

Ella darted upright, head swiveled toward the noise. What the noise was she couldn't tell, a crunch, a branch snapping, or the sound of walking she didn't know.

It was just a sound.

She told herself that a few seconds more, forcing her body to act as she did. Continue like she hadn't heard.

Every ounce of her soul wanted to run.

She fought it. Why, she'd never know, but she stayed as she was until the need could no longer be contained.

Every hair on her back and arms stood straight and the basket she held fell from her hand. The fruit in it rolled onto the dirt, not to be gathered back. Her feet flew across the grass, hand outreached for the door to escape the unending chasm of dread in her gut. 

She found only empty air.

Something caught her leg, sent a sharp rake of pain through her body. The moment it happened she lurched forward and felt only dirt beneath her chest. An odd, numbing heat came from the leg that was hit, still painful to move, to think about. But she couldn't think about it. She had to go. To run.

Get. Away.

Ella pushed herself away from the ground, thoughts still on the door. If she could be in. Get in. There she'd be safe.

She had to be.

A taste of iron tinged the corners of her lips as she flung herself forwarding more time. The door was only feet away, only seconds.

Something large blocked her way. Tall, skinny. It planted itself in front of her, in front of her home. Its body was covered in shadows and night, places where the moonlight touched a stark, unnatural white with dark pockets that seemed to bore down into the guts of the thing itself. The hands were too large for the spindly arms, the fingers too long, uneven, and bony for the hands, and the nails pointed, starting a the middle of each fingers, some holding bits of torn flesh and blood and meat and--

It was in her room.

The thing that night, the dream she convinced herself of-- was there.

Long lines in its face-- its nearly human face, thin lips that drew out to its ears and came narrower as they went, a nose so sharp it could cut but with each breath it took the top of it would flare-- split open from the top of the nose to the mouth. Skin stretched so tight --too tight-- it pulled marks across the cheekbones ripped apart to let the mouth widen, elongate, so the jaw came apart from the head and uneven, rotted, dagger teeth bared in her direction. Each line, the ones from the lips that let the mouth open and the ones from the nose, tugged away from itself, left sinew and muscle stretched thin over the areas for the face to become something no longer human. No longer creature.

The face was just a hole. Just a mouth.

A sound came out of the mouth, no roar, no growl, no cry. Just a strangled choking noise, a rattle, like a last breath before death.

Ella found it in her to scream, yet the scream never entered the air. Her mouth opened and, like an arrow, the monster's finger shot down her throat, stopping all that would come out.

All air.

All sound.

It moved closer to her, the finger unmoving in her body while she gagged. The other four from its hand snaked closer to her, pulled around her throat, the other entire hand around her ribs.

Her eyes traveled up the thing, to the hair that wrapped around the body in strings, the bloody skull torn so bone peered through.

To the eyes.

Grey eyes. Bold yellow veins.

And black that turned the center longer.

It pulled her in closer and together, they went toward the woods.

***

Ella awoke with the world around her in red. 

Her head pounded, the sound like her pulse slamming --

 fighting 

-- maybe that's what it was. 

She tried to move, away from the red. The burning. It came closer, bored into her eyes, brighter. Harsher. 

Until, it backed away to a flame. Small. Close. The world around it, dark.

Ella pulled away from wherever she was, tugged her arms closer to her chest, only to be met with resistance. They moved, elbows down, but wouldn't -- what was she stuck to? 

Her legs sprawled out in front of her, straight, the right one wrapped in a cloth near the top, tied so tight she felt nothing but that same pulse in her head. Her sight, blurry before, focused on a darker area near her leg, an area that pulled to center itself on her skin and split to a deep, uneven gash that fell from her hip to midway down her calf. Dried blood caked her clothes, her  limbs, the grass and dirt beneath her to what was a pool. 

She pulled her arms again, her upper body with it. Rope burned at her exposed skin, tied her tight to a tree against her back.

Her surroundings started to focus. There was the fire and around it drawing, like a stick had been used to carve the dirt in certain places. The trees opened over her, let way for a full moon not quite directly overhead. Smoke of the fire seeped back down as it neared the light and sank into the marks on the earth below, each area where it and the moonlight hit turning a deep, fiery red.

Ella's breath sped up, stomach dropped, muscled twitched to get away to run to scream--

"Make a sound and I will gag you again."

The scream died. The voice... known. Familiar, for the past six months.

Zella.

The woman peered around the flames, the fire pulled toward her like embracing sparks. Her hair was down, long and tangled, in strands --

the strands of the monster

-- that reached below her hips. She moved closer to the tied girl, her slender frame clothed only by that same long hair, until she reached her prisoner and knelt beside her. Zella brushed her fingers against Ella's forehead, her nails sharp, dirtied by blood and tiny pieces of something else.

Ella flinched at her touch, only for the woman to pause and repeat the motion. She neared her lips to Ella's ear and whispered, her breath hot against the girl's skin.

"Don't be afraid. The Ver are lucky to have you-- and you lucky to have us."

The Ver.

Ella's gaze fell to the symbol carved on the woman's hand, the circle with two lines, the same symbol she'd seen on the travelers that entered and vanished each month.

"You should feel loved." Zella stood and moved away toward the fire once more, carefully placed between the flames and the moonlight. "All seem to want you. Us. Your town." She smiled, and as the light hit her, her teeth seemed to point and rot away. "They've searched all day for you. Your father still is."

All day.

She was supposed to play with Jacob.

"Please," Ella whispered. The word was no more than a breath. Salty tears slid into her mouth while she spoke. "Why?"

Why her? Why then? Why ever.

Zella just smiled and turned toward the moon.

Ella was going to die.

It wasn't just the situation. She knew it, in her gut. She was about to die in whatever insane ritual Zella would do. Whatever she had done to the people before.

She found herself holding the necklace her father made for her. The silver cross.

"Take the necklace off, Ella. It will do you more harm than good."

A different voice. Behind her.

Chann.

He rounded the corner, back toward her. Unlike his sister, he had the same blouse and loose pants she'd seen him in every day at the market except this time, his sleeves were rolled closer to his elbows.

"Zella, honestly." A hint of exasperation tinged his voice. "Must you always undress for this?"

His sister did not move from behind the flames. "I don't wish to rip the material."

Ella felt nothing but cold. No need to scream-- it wouldn't be heard, no point in begging-- it would do nothing.

Chann turned toward her and the last flicker of hope she held, the last fantasy that she could be free, vanished. Up on his arm at the elbow, carved into the skin, was the same marking Zella had. The same the others did.

The mark of the Ver.

He bent beside her, as Zella had done moments before. With him there the moon seemed to pull closer, pushing Zella toward them so she stayed in the night.

The world around glowed in the red the ground made as the moonlight touched the marks at the fire.

"Take the necklace off, Ella." His eyes were more daunting than before. Stronger. Stern. "It will only hurt you."

Could they not?

She let go of it and put her hands at her side. "You do it."

Chann frowned. "We can't touch that like you can't touch flame. Leave it on if you wish, but know we told you so."

"Brother." Zella's voice came like a quick slap. "Either now or we kill her."

Ella didn't have time to wonder what before Chann reached his hand into the moonlight behind them, pulling back gnarled fingers and sharp nails. His other hand-- still human -- pressed against her throat, careful to go around the chain, so she felt no breath once more.

And his fingers plunged into the gash in her thigh.

Ella's mouth opened in a scream but all that came out was a strangled squeak, the white hot fire taking over her entire body. The pounding came faster, droned out by only faint sounds of Zella's voice making unrecognizable words. Chann's nails pushed past muscle and veins to brush the bone and

drag

his nails over it. Again. And again.

Connecting unseen lines to others, curves to the lines.

Drawing.

Marking.

The agony lasted for an eternity.

Chann withdrew his claws from the wound by yanking it out, hitting more ripped skin as he did, and holding his bloodied hand over her. Her blood.

"Now," he breathed, "Now, you're one of us."

Sounds faded back into existence, noises clearer, Zella loosening the ropes from her, Chann not tearing his gaze from her face.

"Why?" Ella gasped. "Why? What did I do?"

Chann tilted his head. Gave her a gentle grin, the nails that held pieces of her muscle nearing his mouth. "That's the beauty of this, Ella." He licked the blood away, all air of humanity turned to stone cold emptiness. "You've done nothing."

He sat, legs crossed in front of her. "All you humans believe is that we have to have a reason for these things. Targeted purpose. The simple truth is, we want to."

Flames encircled his turned hand and for a moment he held them, unfazed. "We multiply. Take your soul and replace it with our own, for what good is power if a conscience accompanies it?"

Ella stared at the fire, knowing what it was. Knowing what they were. Yet still, needing to hear it.

Asking.

Zella said it this time. "We are Versipellis. We shift. You trust. We take. You are part of us now."

Chann seized Ella's arms and pulled her upright, then thrust her toward the fire. She crumpled beside it, only dimly aware that the glowing red around her formed the symbol on the siblings. Moonlight held her, embraced her, wanted her.

Zella's voice floated. "The moon is only truly full for an instant. That instant will make you new. Us, we merely touch the light. You bathe in it."

Ella heard the words but didn't take them in. Instead, she heard the moon. The craters. The warmth of a light she'd only felt in the sun, only this time stronger. Harder. It held her, hugged her,

Suffocated

In her throat

An outpouring of light, harsh, rough, sinking into her flesh, boring holes to her skin until it broke through the other side except it couldn't but it wanted out how could it not get out needs through--

Into her.

Her chest, it pressed everything away because it was dark in there. The bone. Her ribs snapped and crushed themselves into another, splinters lodging into her thin skin, fragile skin, through the paper to out in the open air, pieces of her own organs stuck to it, still held together by sheer force. Sheer need. Her hands, longer, detached from joints and stretched until they nearly came apart, a wind could undo her, stronger than before. Nails that grew faster than they could, so fast they went their own way and out of knuckles and joints, leaving space for the light to escape there.

All of her, broke. Shattered. Bone.

Pieces of spine ripped out of the paper skin to curl in on itself, muscles pushed away from each other to get out and closer toward their moon.

She screamed, but again there was no sound. Only her mouth. Wider. Larger than it ever was, so larger it pulled away to her ear and split at the top to four openings. Her skull pushed away from her and through the scalp, moved hair away.

Someone said something. Her breath rattled in her chest--

"They're looking for you."

Who.

Valley Between.

Ella's chest burned. Her mind-- still her, grasping on for all she was worth-- felt it around her neck. Sinking in. Swallowed.

"Kill the souls and you are ours."

Echoing.

Souls.

Kill.

There was blood. Hers. And pain. All she was, was pain.

Wasn't her father looking?

Kill.

Chann. Zella. Their words. Their commands.

Kill.

It bounced. Consumed. That and the light.

Kill.

Chann and Zella. The names. Faces. Eyes. A hate for who who they were, what they made her.

Grey eyes.

Kill.

Ella's grasp slipped.

***

Kill.

Unending, insatiable, need to kill.

Then pain. The same as before.

Only this time, pushing the moon away.

***

Bare. All of her.

All of her.

Her skin, pressed against the dirt. Her body, burning, sore. Her mind.

Her mind.

Ella.

Ella pulled her arms in closer, breath shattering at the movement. Early sunbeams touched her face, soft.

Soft.

She could have been in her bed. Asleep, with a nightmare the proof of the night before.

Except...

She tasted blood.

Hers?

No.

Something stirred in Ella's gut. Fear. Anger.

Blood.

She was on all fours, knees and elbows, head bowed. Bile pushed out of her throat, to vomit beneath her.

Something squished in her hand. She opened it, shaking.

Pieces. Bits. Parts of clothing.

Chann's clothing.

Around her-- on her-- was blood. Not hers. How she knew was a mystery but she did. Not hers.

Her hand went to her leg, where the mark was carved into her bone. A long, thin, jagged scar went from hip to calf, and an indent sunken into her skin, like it was carved out, hovered over where the thing was.

She twisted, cold. A slight breeze blew against her bare body, caught her hair in the chain around her neck--

It didn't burn.

Ella grasped at the silver chain, clenched it in the palm of her hand so tightly her knuckles went white. It didn't burn. Didn't hurt.

Her fingers brushed her collarbone and found a puckering of skin, darker, shaped to what the necklace was and had been before. Seared into flesh.

She moved back and touched water-- a small stream she'd not noticed in her daze. It washed the gore from her hands, the bits of dried blood from her face.

She was herself. Ella.

Her mind flashed back to what Chann said. Or, maybe Zella.

Did it matter?

She -- they-- needed souls. They needed her to kill the souls.

She stared at a mass of flesh near the trees. She killed something, just not what they needed.

"I think I killed them," she breathed.

Did they have no soul? Is that what they wanted her to become-- soulless, empty, like them?

Yet, here she was. Ella, and fairly certain her soul stayed intact.

Something in the water's reflection caught her eye. Some wrong color, in a strange place.

Ella stared deeper to the tiny waves. She was still the same, albeit pale and bloodied. Her skin was hers and hers alone, her hair scraggly and full of mess but lighter brown. Her eyes tired, through the same brown as her hair--

That's what caught her. Make her heart hammer in her throat.

Because they weren't.

Her right eye was still the same, but the left...

Grey. Tiny flecks of a softer yellow.

At the center, like it had always been there, was a black so deep and long it threatened to consume her.