#medium multiverse

The afternoon in the Lunar Woods Park was a languid, heavy thing. Sunlight, filtered through the dense canopy of ancient birch and oak, dappled the clearing in shifting patterns of gold and deep green. It was the kind of day that felt suspended in amber, thick with the scent of damp earth and wild honeysuckle. The usual spectral activities - Killer’s petty theft of shoelaces from joggers, Cross practicing orb-form dashes between trees, Horror’s quiet ‘tending’ to a patch of blackberries he couldn’t touch, let alone eat - had all been abandoned in favour of a collective, bone-deep inertia.

They were arrayed in their usual spots. Nightmare sat on a moss-covered stone plinth that might have once been part of a fountain, his purple tunic a dark splash against the grey-green stone, one hand absently tracing the charred cracks on his radius. His single socket was half-lidded, watching dust motes dance in a sunbeam. Cross lay on his back in the grass nearby, chain mail glinting, fingers laced behind his skull as he stared at the clouds, the arrows protruding from his ribs pointing skyward like bizarre antennae. Horror was perched on a low-hanging branch, the javelin through his head casting a long, grim shadow. He was meticulously cleaning non-existent dirt from under his phalanges, a habit born from a life of baking.

And Dust… Dust was a silent, hunched figure curled at the base of the great willow tree, drowning in Killer’s oversized grey hoodie. He had his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, his face hidden in the fabric. The frayed, blood-red remnant of the noose was a stark collar against his cervical vertebrae. He’d been like that for hours, which wasn’t unusual. His presence casting a subtle, melancholic pall over the immediate area, a psychic fog of regret that made the flowers seem to droop.

Killer was the one who shattered the silence. He’d been pacing, a restless energy coiling in him that the peaceful afternoon couldn’t diffuse. He stopped suddenly, snapping his fingers.

“Hey. Hey, Dust.”

Dust didn’t move. Cross cracked an eyesocket open. Horror paused his cleaning. Nightmare’s smokey tendrils, which had been idly weaving through the air, stilled.

“I overheard something the other day,” Killer continued, his voice a bright, conversational slash through the quiet. He plopped down cross-legged in the grass, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, a wicked, curious grin spreading across his face. “Some living guys talking by the old gallows replica near the town museum. Morbid fuckers. Anyway, they were saying something, and it got me thinking.”

A bad feeling, cold and slick, began to coil in Horror’s non-existent stomach. Cross slowly sat up. Nightmare’s eyelight sharpened, focusing on Killer with dawning alarm.

“Is it true,” Killer asked, his tone dripping with faux-innocent curiosity, “that hanging gives you an erection?”

The clearing didn’t just go quiet; the silence became a physical entity, a suffocating blanket that smothered the birdsong and the rustle of leaves. Horror’s hand slipped, and he almost fell off the branch. Cross’s jaw went slack, the arrows in his face quivering with his shock. Nightmare straightened on his plinth, smoke tendrils lashing in agitated swipes, his expression shifting from serene to utterly appalled.

“Killer!” Nightmare’s voice was a whip-crack, colder than the grave he’d never gotten. “What in the name of every forsaken god do you think you are doing?”

“You can’t just *ask* that!” Cross hissed, scrambling to his feet, his armour clinking. “Have you lost whatever remained of your damned mind?!”

Horror just stared, his shattered socket seeming to widen further around the javelin shaft. “Killz… why?” he rasped, the word heavy with disbelief.

They were braced for an explosion. For Dust to finally shatter, for the fragile, mostly-silent peace he clung to to be obliterated by this callous, brutal question about the most traumatic moment of his existence. They expected him to vanish, to retreat into the forest depths for weeks. They expected tears, or rage, or the terrifying, blank catatonia that sometimes took him. Nightmare was already rising, preparing to intervene, to shield Dust, to verbally flay Killer alive for his insensitivity.

But Dust… shifted.

Slowly, with a stiffness that spoke of long stillness, he lifted his head from the hoodie. His eyelights were there, small and dim but present, not the hollow voids of a dissociative episode. He blinked, once, twice. He looked not at his horrified friends, but at Killer, who was watching him with unabashed, analytical interest.

The reaction they’d steeled themselves for didn’t come. There was no fury. No crumbling. Just a slow, considering tilt of his head. The frayed rope shifted against his cervical vertebrae with a soft, dry sound.

When he spoke, his voice was its usual ruined scrape, but it was calm. Detached. Clinical, even.

“…Not really sure,” Dust said, the words leaving his throat with effort. “Wasn’t… thinking about it.”

The others froze, their outrage stuck in their throats. Killer’s grin didn’t falter; it just gained a layer of genuine intrigue. “No? Huh.”

Dust uncurled slightly, pulling one hand from the hoodie pocket to gesture vaguely at his own neck. “Hanging for monsters… different to humans. ‘Specially with that rope. Wasn’t… for breaking necks.”

He paused, gathering the words, stitching the explanation together from the fractured memories. “It’s like… a tourniquet. For magic. Not breath.” He tapped two phalanges against his sternum, where his soul would be. “The loop… cinches tight. Cuts off the magic flow from the soul to the body. Soul keeps trying… body starts… starving. Starts dusting from the extremities, in.”

He let his hand fall back into his lap. “Everything… goes wrong. Magic systems… freak out. Try anything to… preserve. To shield.” His dim eyelights flickered up to meet Killer’s. “So… yeah. Maybe. There’s a chance. Body panicking, might summon ecto… try to create a barrier. Unconsciously. Doesn’t know the danger’s… inescapable.”

A heavy, thick silence followed. Cross looked ill. Horror had brought a hand up to cover his mouth. Nightmare had sunk back onto the plinth, his anger replaced by a profound, aching sorrow.

Dust gave a tiny, one-shouldered shrug, the motion so slight. “But I was… a little busy. Dying. Y’know?”

The sheer, devastating understatement of it hung in the air, more palpable than any ghostly presence. A little busy dying.

Killer, after a moment, nodded slowly. The morbid curiosity on his face had softened into something else - something like understanding, or perhaps just the satisfaction of a puzzle solved. No judgment. No pity. Just… data. “Makes sense,” he said simply. “Magic’s a bitch when it’s scared. Thanks, Dusty.”

He then leaned back on his hands, looking up at the canopy as if they’d just discussed the weather. “Always wondered.”

The tension in the clearing didn’t dissipate, but it changed. The horror of the other three was now mixed with a bewildered, reluctant awe at Dust’s composure. At the fact that he could dissect his own execution with the detached air of a historian.

Nightmare finally found his voice, but it was quiet, drained. “Killer… you will never ask a question like that again. To anyone. Am I understood?”

“Sure, boss,” Killer said, waving a dismissive hand, though his eyes held a glint that said he’d file the information away forever.

Cross sat back down heavily, running a hand over his face. “Stars, Killer…”

Horror just shook his head, the javelin wobbling. He looked at Dust, who had already tucked his head back into the hoodie, the conversation clearly over for him. The melancholy aura around him seemed unchanged, perhaps even a fraction lighter, as if speaking the mechanics of it had bled off a tiny bit of the poison.

The afternoon settled back over them, the sunlight continuing its slow crawl across the grass. But the dynamic had shifted, just a little. They had seen a new facet of Dust’s trauma - not the explosive grief they feared, but a chilling, precise dissection. And they had seen, yet again, that Killer’s moral compass wasn’t broken; it had simply never been installed. He’d asked the question not to be cruel, but because he genuinely wanted to know. And somehow, against all reason and decency, Dust had been the only one not offended by it.