Chapter 1: Wish it wasn't mandatory dying
Chapter Text
The air tastes like iron and ash.
They’re deep under the city ruins—what’s left of them. Broken concrete hangs above like the jaws of a dead beast. A slab has crushed most of the supply rack. The emergency generator is out, or maybe the whole grid is. Either way, it’s dark. Not pitch-black—there are gaps in the ceiling where light leaks through like dust—but it’s the kind of light that makes you wish it wasn’t there. Doesn’t reveal anything helpful. Just outlines the damage.
Grian’s on his knees in the rubble.
Mumbo’s slumped beside him, half-upright against a pile of debris that used to be the stairwell. His shirt is soaked dark and sticky from where Grian’s pressing his hand. It doesn’t do anything. Not anymore.
He still breathes, but not for long.
“You’re awake,” Grian says. It comes out too quiet, like he’s scared to be louder. He leans closer. “Hey. Eyes open. You with me?”
Mumbo doesn’t answer right away. His eyelids twitch. There’s soot across his jawline, blood in his hair, a bruise rising beneath one eye.
“Again?”
Grian flinches. Not visibly. Just behind the ribs.
“Yeah,” he says. “Again.”
They’ve never said it out loud before.
He shifts so Mumbo’s head is more supported, adjusting the crumpled jacket behind him. It’s not enough. His hands are shaking. He tries to make it look like it’s from the cold.
There’s a long pause. Mumbo breathes—struggles to. The collapsed ceiling groans above them.
“You’re not—” Mumbo’s voice catches. “Not crying.”
“I know.”
“You always cry.”
Grian huffs a laugh. “No, I don’t.”
“You did. In the tower. With the fire.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down.”
Mumbo smiles, barely. “You held my hand. Your sleeve caught.”
“And you told me I was bad luck.” Grian presses harder at the wound, then eases off when Mumbo flinches. “Still think that?”
Mumbo’s eyelids flutter again. “No.”
Another pause.
The light shifts. Somewhere above, something collapses in on itself. Grian doesn’t look up. He doesn’t move at all except to breathe and keep his hand where it is, grounding them both.
His throat’s tight.
“Feels like we were just getting it right,” he says, half to himself. “You remembered faster this time.”
“Kind of hard to forget someone like you,” Mumbo mumbles. Then quieter: “That wasn’t a compliment.”
Grian smiles, but it doesn’t hold.
This shelter was supposed to be one of the good ones. They’d found it months ago and thought it was secure enough to wait out the raids. But the ground cracked last night, and the quake had been worse than expected. Mumbo had dragged Grian out from under a collapsed air duct, and Grian had tried to return the favor.
But it’s not going to work this time.
“You’ve got to stop dying first,” Grian says.
Mumbo doesn’t respond.
“I mean it. It’s not a good habit. Leaves me with all the paperwork.”
Still nothing.
Grian swallows. “Mumbo?”
A long breath in. Grian’s heart drops at the thought that he might be alone again so soon. Then, finally, Mumbo muttered out, “Sorry.”
He blinks fast. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I do. I left you alone last time. I didn’t mean to.”
Grian leans forward until their foreheads nearly touch. “I know.”
“It’s getting harder. Coming back. Finding you.”
“I know.”
Mumbo shifts slightly. “You always remember first.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
There’s no bitterness in it.
Grian has lived through empires, through revolutions, through gods and gods-forsaken worlds. Sometimes he finds Mumbo in a bakery. Sometimes in a war. Sometimes at the edge of space or the bottom of the sea. But he always finds him.
And then he always loses him.
It’s just how the story goes.
“I’m scared,” Mumbo says quietly.
Grian exhales, soft and full of ache. “I’m not.”
That’s a lie. But it’s the kind Mumbo needs.
They sit in silence again. Not the good kind. Not the comfortable quiet of morning coffee or post-mission stillness. This is the kind where there are too many things to say and not enough time.
Grian shifts, fingers still pressed at the wound. His other hand finds Mumbo’s, gripping it gently.
The stars through the broken ceiling are the same as always. Cold. Too far away to care.
“I wish—” Mumbo starts.
“No,” Grian cuts in. “Don’t say it.”
“But—”
“I’ll find you,” Grian says. “Next time. I promise.”
Mumbo’s breathing slows.
Grian doesn’t move. Doesn’t let go.
“It’s okay,” he says, voice cracking just slightly. “You can rest now.”
He doesn’t cry.
Not yet.
He just watches as Mumbo’s chest stops rising, as his hand goes slack, as the light above them fades into something colder.
Only when he’s sure they’re alone does he let the grief catch up.
His shoulders shake once. Then again.
Then he’s curled over Mumbo’s body, one hand still holding on, the other clenched in the dirt.
He doesn’t scream. Doesn’t sob.
But the air tastes like iron and ash.
And Grian’s heart breaks. Again.
---
The ceramic bowl is off-white with an uneven blue glaze pooling near the bottom. It’s the kind of thing Grian would’ve made in high school art class—he never did, but that’s what it feels like. Familiar. Personal. Like it came from a memory he doesn’t have.
He turns it over in his hands while Mumbo squints at the tiny price tag.
“That one’s hand-thrown,” the potter says from behind the stall. “All unique. You won’t find another like it.”
Mumbo glances at Grian, a little smile at the corner of his mouth. “You say that a lot.”
Grian lifts a brow. “What, that I like bowls?”
“No, that something reminds you of something.”
He shrugs, setting the bowl down carefully. “It’s probably just déjà vu.”
He doesn’t say: It’s probably from one of the lives where you died in my arms again. That would be weird over a five-dollar bowl at a Saturday market.
Mumbo keeps watching him, though. Not with suspicion—just with that quiet, unreadable kind of interest he always has when Grian says something half-truthful. He has a good poker face, but Grian’s known him too long across too many timelines. He’s getting better at telling when Mumbo’s about to do something sentimental.
Which he does. Immediately.
“Let me get it for you,” Mumbo says, reaching for his wallet.
Grian tries to protest. “It’s just a bowl.”
“It’s your bowl now,” Mumbo says, already handing over cash.
The potter wraps it in crinkly paper. Grian takes it because he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands. It’s warm from the sun and Mumbo’s fingers.
They keep walking down the line of stalls. Sunlight filters through the trees. Someone’s playing acoustic guitar near the fruit stands, not quite in tune. The smell of cinnamon and fried dough hangs heavy in the air, and the sky is blue like it’s trying too hard.
Mumbo sips his iced coffee. “You know, if you bring home one more random piece of pottery, we’re going to have to start stacking them on top of the cabinets.”
“I don’t bring home that many.”
“You brought home a platter shaped like a fish last week.”
“That was art.”
“It’s in the dishwasher.”
“ Functional art.”
Mumbo laughs, tipping his head back. Grian watches him. He doesn’t mean to, but it keeps happening. Every time Mumbo smiles like that—unguarded, a little goofy—something cracks open in Grian’s chest.
It’s not romantic in a grand, sweeping, music-swelled way. It’s just...constant. Familiar. Like breathing.
He tries not to think about how every timeline ends.
Instead, he says, “If you think the fish platter is bad, wait until you see the teapot I bookmarked online.”
Mumbo groans. “Please tell me it’s not the one with the haunted house theme.”
“You know me so well.”
“I do ,” Mumbo says. And it’s casual. Easy.
But it sticks.
Because that’s the thing—he does . They’ve only been together two years in this timeline. They met during lockdown at a community garden project. Grian was trying to save dying sunflowers. Mumbo was installing a rainwater system that didn’t work. They fought over hose pressure. Then had coffee. Then had dinner. Then didn’t really stop.
It’s been two years. But Grian’s known Mumbo for lifetimes.
And sometimes—on days like this—he lets himself believe Mumbo knows him back.
There’s a flower stall up ahead. Grian gravitates toward it without thinking. Mumbo slows to match his pace. The blooms are ridiculous—orange sunbursts and frilly pink lilies in cheap plastic buckets—but they’re bold, and Grian likes bold.
Mumbo picks one out. Holds it beside Grian’s face with mock seriousness. “Matches your vibe.”
“My vibe?”
“Yeah. Bright, slightly unhinged, might attract bees.”
Grian snorts. “You’re projecting.”
They buy a bouquet. Why not.
The woman at the flower stall gives them a free single stem for luck. Grian tucks it into Mumbo’s jacket pocket without comment.
They’re halfway back to the car when Grian slows.
He looks at the bowl again.
He really has seen it before. Not just in the vague, déjà vu way. He remembers it. On a table. Half-buried in rubble. Cracked down the middle, with blood dried in the glaze.
He remembers kneeling beside Mumbo, pressing down on the wound. The stars through the ceiling. Mumbo’s last breath. His hand going cold.
He remembers the bowl on the shelf right behind him when it happened.
Same glaze. Same shape.
Same crack down the side.
Except this one isn’t broken.
Yet.
Grian tightens his grip around it. His heart’s hammering. He keeps walking.
Mumbo doesn’t notice.
He’s talking about dinner. “We could do pasta tonight. Or something spicy? I don’t mind grabbing ingredients on the way home.”
Grian forces himself to respond. “Yeah. Pasta’s good.”
They reach the car. The door clicks unlocked. Grian gets in.
Mumbo stows the flowers in the backseat carefully. When he slides in behind the wheel, he turns to Grian and grins.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Mumbo says. “You just look weirdly nostalgic.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah.”
Grian glances down at the bowl in his lap.
“It’s probably just déjà vu,” he says again.
He doesn’t mention how his chest tightens every time Mumbo laughs. Doesn’t mention how he’s been dreaming of fire and stars and blood again. Doesn’t say anything about the bowl, or the shelter, or the ache behind his ribs that feels like he’s already lost something.
Mumbo starts the car. They pull away from the market with the windows down, the scent of sun-warmed flowers filling the car.
And Grian—quietly, softly—lets himself enjoy it.
Because this is the best it’s ever been.
And if it has to end, at least they had a morning like this.
---
The guards push Grian to his knees a bit harder than necessary.
He grits his teeth, wincing at the sting where the stone floor grinds into his skin, but doesn’t resist. Not really worth it when the blades are still drawn. Besides, the dramatic posture probably makes for better optics—kneeling, dirty, flushed from the run.
The royal court chamber is gilded and cold. Too many columns. Too much red velvet. Grian’s never liked this kind of excess. Too clean. Too still. He prefers mess.
He’s brought before a raised platform with only one seat occupied.
The man sitting there is tall, dressed in deep navy with gold trim, and his crown is subtle enough that it’s probably meant to imply modesty. His hands are clasped neatly. His back doesn’t touch the chair. His eyes are sharp, and he doesn’t speak right away.
Grian knows him immediately.
Mumbo.
Not his Mumbo—not yet—but close. The same jawline. The same steady gaze. A little more regal than usual. A little more detached.
Grian swallows around the lump in his throat.
“You were found,” Mumbo says, tone clipped and proper, “inside the restricted wing of the royal archives.”
Grian shrugs. “In my defense, your perimeter guards are very inefficient.”
A few gasps echo around the court. One of the guards behind him jabs the butt of a spear into his ribs. Not enough to break anything, but enough to bruise. Grian lets the pain anchor him.
Mumbo’s expression doesn’t change. “You were reading texts that have been sealed for over a century.”
“Good reads.”
“Who sent you?”
“Book club.”
This time the spear hits harder. Grian bites his tongue.
Mumbo leans forward slightly. “Do you know what the punishment is for breaching the royal archives?”
“I imagine it’s a stern talking-to and a free sandwich.”
Another jab. His ribs throb. He almost coughs, but holds it in.
Mumbo gestures to the guard. “Enough.”
Silence falls again. Grian breathes slowly through his nose. He keeps his eyes on Mumbo, who’s studying him with more interest than outrage now.
“Where did you hear about the Fifth Vault manuscripts?” Mumbo asks. “They were lost during the fire of Athellion.”
“They weren’t lost,” Grian says before he can stop himself. “They were hidden.”
The room goes still.
Mumbo rises.
He steps down from the dais with controlled precision, stopping just a few feet in front of Grian. From this close, the scent of parchment and cedar oil clings faintly to his robes.
“Those manuscripts have not been mentioned aloud in over a hundred years,” Mumbo says. “How did you know?”
Grian hesitates. His heart stumbles in his chest.
There’s something about the way Mumbo’s looking at him now—direct, piercing. Like the stare itself is an interrogation. Like maybe Mumbo is trying to place a name he should already know.
Grian opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again. “I’m a very good guesser?”
Mumbo doesn’t smile. But his head tilts, just slightly. “Your name?”
He considers giving a fake one. He really does.
But he says, “Grian.”
Mumbo blinks once. Slowly. His posture shifts, but only slightly. It’s not recognition. Not exactly. But it’s not nothing.
“Well, Grian,” Mumbo says, drawing the name out. “You’re either a spy, a heretic, or an idiot.”
“Can I be two?”
That almost gets a smile.
Almost.
Mumbo nods to the guards. “Escort him to the outer gates. Take down his name and image. If he’s caught again without authorization, he is to be detained on sight.”
Grian doesn’t move.
That’s it?
He’s let go?
The guards grab him by the arms and start hauling him up, but Mumbo raises a hand as if second guessing his decision.
“One more thing.”
Grian steadies himself, brushing his hands off on his trousers as he turns.
Mumbo meets his eyes. “Come back tomorrow.”
A pause.
“I—what?”
“You heard me.”
Grian stares. “Is this a trap?”
“You’ll find out tomorrow.”
Then Mumbo turns and ascends the dais again, robes trailing behind him.
Grian is shoved toward the exit.
But as the doors swing open and light spills across the marble, he’s not thinking about the archives anymore. Not the manuscripts. Not even the bruise spreading across his ribs.
He’s thinking about the way Mumbo said his name.
Like he was trying to remember it from a dream.
Like maybe he already had.
---
The shot misses by inches.
It’s not meant to scare. It’s not a warning. Grian knows the angle. Knows the distance. Knows Mumbo’s aim.
It was meant to hit.
He ducks out of instinct, heart hammering loud in his ears as he slips behind the low wall of crumbling sandstone. Bits of dust flake from the ledge. A second arrow thuds into the ground where he stood half a second ago. Not close enough to hit, but not far enough to ignore.
From across the ravine, he hears Scar shout something unintelligible. Jimmy yells back. There’s chaos now, but it’s all background noise. White noise.
Grian keeps his breathing shallow. Doesn’t peek out. Doesn’t move.
His hand brushes over the cracked bow in his inventory, but he doesn’t raise it.
He waits.
Eventually, the footsteps fade. The confrontation moves on. Someone probably dies. Probably not Mumbo.
It never is.
—
Later, he finds Mumbo on a ledge overlooking the desert, sorting through loot with the casual carelessness that only red-lifers ever have. No fear, no second chances. Just a flat horizon and a timer ticking toward zero.
Grian approaches slow. Careful.
Mumbo glances up. “Hey.”
Grian stops a few feet back. “You shot at me.”
Mumbo doesn’t look surprised. “Yeah.”
“You missed.”
A pause. Then a shrug. “Did I?”
Something flickers behind Grian’s ribs. “Why?”
Mumbo tosses a golden apple between his hands before stuffing it into a chest. “It’s the game, Grian.”
“That’s it?”
Mumbo doesn’t answer.
Grian forces a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. “No cryptic loyalty speech this time? No last-minute reversal?”
“You’re green. I’m red.” Mumbo doesn’t say it cruelly. Doesn’t say it at all like he means to hurt.
That’s what makes it worse.
“You didn’t remember,” Grian says.
Mumbo frowns faintly. “Remember what?”
Grian shakes his head, more to himself than anyone. “Nothing.”
He turns. Walks away before Mumbo can say anything else. Doesn’t wait to be followed. Doesn’t expect to be.
He isn’t.
—
That night, Grian camps on top of a hill made of gravel and loss. The firelight flickers. He doesn’t sleep.
Across the sands, he can see a flicker of red. Just barely. Mumbo, moving through the dark.
Red names never seem to sleep either.
Grian knows—has always known—that the Life Games aren’t real.
Not in the way that matters.
He doesn’t remember how he got here. None of them do. They wake up and play, and laugh, and die, and start over. Always.
But sometimes he thinks Mumbo remembers. Not the details—never the details—but the rhythm. The shape of Grian. Like his name is on the tip of Mumbo’s tongue every time they talk.
Sometimes, Mumbo smiles at him in the way you smile at something familiar. Like he’s seeing something through fog, and it’s comforting even if he can’t quite name it.
But not this time.
This time he took the shot.
This time there was no hesitation.
This time, maybe, he’s not going to come back around.
Grian lies flat on the roof of a half-buried building and watches the sky shift colors without changing. The stars never move here. Time is static. Just long enough for a season to pass, for grief to sprout and die before it can flower.
He wonders what it would feel like to play a game where he didn’t have to lose Mumbo.
—
He sees him again a few days later—if “days” mean anything here—at the edge of Scar’s trap-laden maze. Grian’s building his own fortress now. Not out of ambition. Just protection. Somewhere to hide when the betrayals start stacking up.
He spots red armor over the ridge. Mumbo again. Mumbo always.
There’s a moment where they both freeze.
Grian has the high ground. Has the advantage. Could shoot.
He doesn’t.
Mumbo waves. Casual. Too casual.
Grian waves back, but his bow never leaves his hand.
That’s what they do, now. Test each other. Pretend nothing’s changed.
Mumbo calls out, “You want to team up?”
“Thought you were working with Joel.”
“I was. Joel died.”
“Shame.”
Mumbo grins like it’s a joke. Grian doesn’t laugh.
He considers saying yes. Considers bringing him inside, letting him near. But he remembers the arrow. The aim. The words: It’s the game.
“No thanks,” Grian says.
Mumbo lifts a hand in surrender, turns, walks the other way.
And this time, Grian watches the distance grow.
It never feels good.
It never stops hurting.
He’s almost grateful for that.
Almost.
Because if it ever stops hurting, maybe that means he’s given up hope.
And he’s not ready to do that yet.
Not even now.
Not even here.
Not even after all of it.
---
Grian was knee-deep in scaffolding when he heard footsteps.
Not real ones, of course—just the soft tap of armor boots against stone, a rhythm he’d memorized seasons ago. Still, he didn’t look up.
Behind him, Mumbo said, “I brought copper.”
Grian muttered something vaguely appreciative and dropped another block in place. He was halfway through one of those overambitious cliffs he’d designed at three in the morning and immediately regretted. No plan, no symmetry, just vibes.
Mumbo’s footsteps lingered.
Grian placed two more blocks, misclicked the third, then finally glanced back. “You’re hovering.”
“I’m not hovering. I’m waiting to see if you want waxed or oxidized.”
“I’ll change it later.”
“You always say that.”
“And I usually do.”
Mumbo looked at him for a beat longer, then set the shulker box down. “You’ve got a chest full of diamonds and you’re still living like a resource-poor.”
“That’s because I am resource-poor. Emotionally.”
“Fair.”
Grian cracked a smile. “Anyway, don’t tell Scar. He’s still trying to scam me into a block of amethyst for every piece of moss.”
“Oh, he tried that with me too,” Mumbo said. “I gave him a stack of redstone in return. I think I lost that trade.”
“That’s the Scar tax,” Grian said.
They sat there for a moment longer, the conversation trailing off. Mumbo didn’t leave, and Grian didn’t tell him to. Eventually, he dropped down from the scaffolding and sat beside him on the edge of the floating platform. It creaked faintly beneath them. The sunset was doing that thing Minecraft sunsets always did—too fast, too orange, too square—and Grian didn’t look at it.
He looked at the horizon beyond it.
They didn’t talk for a while. The shulker box clicked shut. Somewhere below, a wandering trader coughed.
Then Grian said, “We’ve done this before.”
Mumbo turned slightly, brow furrowed. “What?”
“This. Sitting here. You giving me stuff. Me pretending to be annoyed.”
Mumbo blinked. “I mean, yeah? It’s kind of our thing.”
Grian didn’t respond.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. Just stretched a little too long.
Mumbo shifted. “I can leave, if you want. I just figured—I don’t know—you’ve been kind of quiet lately.”
Grian exhaled through his nose. “Quiet’s not always a bad thing.”
“No, I know. Just—” Mumbo paused. “You used to talk more.”
“Used to do a lot of things.”
“That’s not ominous at all.”
This time, Grian did laugh, a low sound that barely reached his eyes. “Relax. I’m not about to vanish off the server or anything.”
“Good.”
There was a pause.
Then Grian stood, dusted off his elytra. He turned back toward his build without another word, paused halfway there, opened his inventory, and tossed a diamond block over his shoulder.
Mumbo caught it without thinking. “Is this a bribe?”
“A refund,” Grian said. “For the copper.”
“I told you it was free.”
“And I’m ignoring that, as usual.”
He logged off a second later to his private server. No fanfare. No dramatic message. Just gone.
Mumbo stood on the floating platform, staring at the diamond block in his hand.
Somewhere, faintly, he had the strangest feeling he’d forgotten something important. Something worth chasing.
But the moment passed.
It always did.
---
The bell above the door chimed—shrill, sharp, then gone. Grian didn’t look up right away.
He had dirt on his hands and a rose thorn in his thumb and a tray of marigolds that absolutely refused to cooperate. The flower shop was warm with that kind of damp scent only potting soil could give off, and his apron was already stained from a spilled watering can. Nothing about the morning had gone particularly well.
Then a voice said, “Hi—sorry, I wasn’t sure if you were open?”
Grian straightened. The marigold tray tilted and promptly dropped out of his hands.
The tray hit the counter, bounced, and dumped six pots onto the floor with a horrible clatter. One rolled under the register. One cracked straight in half. The others spilled soil like it was something to be proud of.
The man—tall, curly hair, wearing a too-warm blazer for the season—froze.
Grian swore under his breath. “That’s—that’s fine. Totally fine.”
“You alright?”
“Yep. Happens all the time. Occupational hazard of having clumsy hands and trusting gravity.”
The man crouched to help him. “You don’t have to—” Grian started, but it was already too late. He had a handful of cracked ceramic and the stranger had the rolled-away pot in his palm like it was a rescue mission.
“I don’t mind,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t,” Grian lied. “I was already startled. You just added to the ambiance.”
That earned him a laugh. It was an easy one—rich, not performative. Grian blinked. His brain was still catching up.
Once the pots were upright and at least mostly intact, the man dusted off his knees and held up the one with the least dirt on it. “Cheerful little things. What are they?”
“Marigolds,” Grian said. “Technically calendula, but most people call them marigolds.”
“Cheerful was the right word, then.”
Grian tilted his head. “Is that what you’re here for?”
The man glanced around. “Yeah, actually. I’m new in town and my place looks kind of… dead. Thought I’d get something cheerful to offset the vibe.”
“Well, you came to the right place,” Grian said. “Assuming you don’t want actual cheer. I’m all out of that. But I’ve got daisies, zinnias, snapdragons… oh, and sunflowers, but they’re kind of showy. Depends on your threshold for dramatic flora.”
“I can handle dramatic flora,” the man said. “I think I’ll trust your judgment.”
“That’s dangerous,” Grian said, but already his hands were moving. He plucked a few stems from the fridge, trimmed the bottoms, wrapped them in brown paper with practiced ease. He didn’t think about it, didn’t really look up until he handed the bouquet across the counter.
Their fingers brushed. Barely. But it was enough.
Something in his chest jolted like a misfired piston.
The man seemed to pause, too. He was still smiling—warm, not awkward—but then he tilted his head, curious. “You look familiar.”
Grian’s heart did a full, horrible somersault.
“Probably just a common face,” he said lightly.
There was a second where neither of them said anything.
Then the man nodded. “Maybe so. Sorry—didn’t mean to make it weird.”
“You didn’t,” Grian said, and passed the bouquet over. “It’s twelve even.”
“Right. Cash okay?”
“Cash is my favorite.”
The man handed him a ten and two ones, fingers steady, and Grian took them without comment. He didn’t ask for a name. Didn’t give his. It was easier that way.
The door chimed again when the man left.
Grian stared at the closed door for too long. Then he dropped his forehead to the counter and groaned.
It never got easier.
That night, he stayed late.
The shop was quiet, lit only by the lamp above the till and the string lights he never took down after December. He rearranged the front window without any real direction—moved a stack of succulents to the left, shifted the chalkboard sign to catch the lamplight better, added a little vase of yellow mums to the corner where nobody looked.
He told himself it was just for the aesthetic. That maybe it would draw a few more customers in.
But what he really thought about was how long it had taken last time.
How many conversations. How many days spent pretending not to notice. How many hours spent trying to believe it was just coincidence—that spark of familiarity, that half-finished sentence Mumbo had started before Grian cut him off.
Grian pressed a hand to the glass and looked out into the empty street.
“How long this time,” he murmured.
No one answered.
They never did.
---
The alarms were still screaming when Grian hit the stairwell. Third floor—engineering lab. He didn’t stop to check for structural integrity. Didn’t pause to make sure the roof hadn’t caved in. The smoke was thick enough to sting through the mask, his lungs already working overtime, and the air shimmered with residual energy from whatever experimental junk the government had been stockpiling in this place.
He pushed through it anyway. One floor, two—his boots hitting each step with the practiced rhythm of someone who knew how long it took a fire to gut a room. He’d gotten there late. By all rights, it should’ve been over already. A clean mission. Quick.
It wasn’t.
A cough cracked through the static of his comms. Grian turned hard into the corridor, hand on the wall for balance, just as something groaned above him—metal bending, strained.
There. In the corner, slumped half-behind a toppled desk: someone in a soot-covered lab coat, one goggle strap broken, left hand pressed limply against a wall like he’d started crawling and then given up halfway.
Grian dropped to one knee.
“Hey. Hey.” He shook the man’s shoulder gently. “You with me?”
The man blinked, slow and dazed. Blue eyes, dazed expression. No blood, no burns that Grian could see, but definitely concussed.
Then, he finally asked, “Do I know you?”
The question came out raw, nearly inaudible under the hiss of leaking gas. The fire was climbing closer.
Grian’s heart skipped. Just once.
He shifted his grip. “Not yet,” he said, and hauled him up.
The stairwell was crumbling on the left side. Grian took the other. One arm hooked around the man’s waist, the other holding his grappling line steady. He fired the zip out the shattered hallway window, heard the clang as it latched, and said, “Hold tight.”
Mumbo—because he’d seen the ID tag clipped half-off the lab coat—was in no shape to argue. His fingers curled instinctively around Grian’s arm, tense and aching, and Grian didn’t look down as they swung out into the night.
—
By the time he got him to the emergency evac zone, Mumbo was half-asleep on his feet, murmuring something about capacitor arrays and someone named Zedaph stealing his favorite screwdriver.
Grian passed him off to a paramedic. Said, “Hit his head. Might be minor concussion. Get him water before anything else.”
The paramedic nodded. Grian didn’t wait to be thanked.
He was halfway to the roof again before Mumbo turned his head and saw the silhouette disappearing over the edge.
—
The photo showed up on the evening news.
Not a good one. Grainy, caught mid-swing. The vigilante's face was mostly obscured—standard mask, red-tinted lenses, utility strap across the chest—but you could see the angle of his jaw. The messy brown hair sticking out from the back of the mask. The gloved hand gripping Mumbo’s coat.
“Unidentified rogue individual aided in the rescue of at least one staff member following the failed raid on the East Engineering Research Hub,” the anchor said, voice smooth and emotionless. “Authorities are investigating the identity of the suspect.”
Mumbo sat on his couch with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his temple, watching himself being carried out of a building by a stranger.
He wasn’t sure why his throat felt tight.
Later that night, he dreamed of feathers and smoke.
—
The first time they crossed paths again, neither of them knew it.
Not really.
Grian was in civvies—hood up, headphones in, pretending to browse a row of secondhand books in a pop-up market. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He never was anymore. Not unless someone called him.
Mumbo walked past him on the way to the fruit stall. He had a tote bag over one shoulder, a list in one hand, and a half-eaten apple in the other. He was reading something off his phone and didn’t look up.
Grian did.
Just a glance. Then he looked away and tried not to hold his breath.
Fifteen seconds later, he ducked into the alley and leaned against the wall, heart going too fast. He hadn’t seen him in the daylight before. Not without the ash and the chaos. Not upright and walking and oblivious.
It was always strange, this part. The not-knowing.
Mumbo turned the corner, still reading his list. Grian kept his head down.
—
That week, Mumbo added a file to his private hard drive.
It was labeled: Vigilante\_UnknownRescue\_Theories.docx
Inside were three bullet points.
- Feathers? Can’t explain it, but it feels right.
- Voice familiar. Calm under pressure. Young. British accent—maybe Northern?
- Jawline similar to the guy at the flower shop. Ask about him? Too weird?
He saved the file and didn’t open it again.
But he thought about it more than he meant to.
—
Grian got the call two weeks later. Some corrupt tech firm pushing weapons under the radar. Mid-rise building. Soft target.
He didn’t expect Mumbo to be there. Not in the lobby. Not holding a tablet and arguing with a consultant about voltage limits.
He froze.
Mumbo didn’t see him. Didn’t look up.
Not yet.
Grian stepped back into the shadows.
He wasn’t ready.
Not for this version. Not for the moment the recognition might come too early, or worse—never at all.
He let the call go unanswered and walked away.
---
The greenhouse didn’t look like much at first.
Just a cluster of tarps stretched across what used to be a classroom. The windows were shattered—carefully, deliberately, so they could let in light—and the desks had been dragged into the hallway, stacked as makeshift barricades. You could still see the chalkboard behind a wall of vines. Someone had written "Don't die. Tomatoes first." in bright red marker on the wall.
It was probably Grian. Mumbo didn’t ask.
They’d made it about four weeks ago. Long enough for some of the seedlings to sprout. Long enough for the air to stop smelling like mildew and start smelling like life.
Mumbo stood on one of the tables with his arms full of tangled wires, trying to make the salvaged solar panel behave. “You’re sure the tomatoes need this much light?” he called, shifting his grip.
Grian, crouched in the dirt below with a tray of compost, didn’t look up. “They’re tomatoes, not vampires. Sunlight’s non-negotiable.”
“You say that, but the beans are doing fine with half the power.”
“The beans,” Grian said, stabbing a finger toward a crooked PVC pipe meant to act as irrigation, “are traitors. You shouldn’t trust them.”
Mumbo let the wires fall into place and raised an eyebrow. “You okay down there?”
“Perfectly sane.”
“Because it sounds like you’re planning a coup against your legumes.”
Grian finally looked up, dirt on his cheek and a stupid grin on his face. “They know what they did.”
Mumbo laughed. It came easier now than it used to. He climbed down from the table and dusted his hands off. “You’re something else, you know that?”
“I’ve heard.” Grian tipped the tray forward, inspecting the soil like it had personally offended him. “This batch isn’t draining right.”
“That’s because you keep planting them in soup.”
“It’s called nutrient retention.”
“It’s called a mess.”
The argument was familiar, looping. It always ended with Grian saying “Fine, you do it then,” and Mumbo replying “I will,” and then neither of them fixing anything because by that point it was too close to sunset and they were too tired to keep bickering.
There was a radio on the windowsill. Mumbo had found it a few days back and patched the casing until it stopped buzzing. Sometimes it picked up static. Once, it played a scratchy jazz station from across the ruins. Grian refused to let him change it.
“You know,” Grian said that evening as they sat on opposite ends of a broken bench, eating scavenged rice and mutant carrots, “I think this place might actually be good.”
Mumbo didn’t say anything at first. He just let the moment breathe.
“It feels like a pause.”
Grian gave him a questioning look.
“Like—we’ve always been running. Since the start. Since before the world cracked open.” He poked at the edge of the bowl with his spoon. “This feels like… like we stopped, finally. Even if just for a bit.”
Grian was quiet a moment longer, then leaned back against the wall. “Yeah,” he said. “It does.”
They didn’t talk about the last few times. They never did.
Some nights, Mumbo remembered flashes. A library. A tower. Something underwater. A ship. He never remembered everything, and it never came fast, but the echoes always lingered. Grian never filled in the gaps. He never corrected. Never reminded. He just let it come on its own.
And now?
Now it was quiet.
Mumbo would wake up to the smell of soil and the sound of Grian cursing at aphids. He’d spend afternoons wiring backup batteries and marking out plans for water catchments. They slept in the old principal’s office, pushed their cots together so the broken window didn’t leak on one of them. Grian snored sometimes. Mumbo said he didn’t, but he did too.
One night, Mumbo turned over and found Grian still awake, staring at the ceiling.
“You good?”
Grian blinked. “Yeah. Just thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“Always.”
Mumbo propped himself up on one elbow. The moonlight barely reached their corner. Grian’s eyes were shadowed, unreadable.
“What are you thinking about?”
There was a pause. Then Grian said, “You’re sleeping better.”
Mumbo nodded slowly. “Feels safe here.”
“Mm.”
He waited for more, but nothing came.
“…What about you?”
“I don’t sleep much.” Grian turned on his side, facing him now. “Not when it’s good.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to remember it. All of it. Just in case.”
Mumbo frowned. “In case of what?”
“In case it doesn’t last.” Grian’s voice was quiet. “It usually doesn’t.”
And Mumbo thought of a dozen half-memories he couldn’t name. Of bleeding out on a hillside. Of drifting in the dark. Of fire, of frost, of Grian’s face in every version of the end.
He reached out, brushed Grian’s arm.
“This time feels different.”
Grian didn’t answer. But he didn’t pull away either.
They fell asleep like that. Not quite touching, but not apart.
Weeks passed.
The greenhouse grew louder with green. The beans climbed up the support beams, the tomatoes finally sprouted properly (after Mumbo secretly adjusted the soil levels), and the radio played something soft and static-filled every morning. They had enough food to last a few months. Enough peace to pretend they’d always been here.
Until the quake.
Until the ceiling came down.
Until Mumbo dragged Grian out of the dust, and Grian tried to return the favor.
Until the silence underground.
Until the promise again.
Until—
But not yet. Not yet.
For now, in that fractured schoolhouse, there was laughter. There was dirt under fingernails and half-argued engineering and the scent of tomato vines. There was music through the radio fuzz, and hands brushing in the dark, and the way Grian sometimes looked at Mumbo like he knew something he couldn’t bear to say out loud.
And maybe he did.
But he didn’t say it.
Not while there was still time to let it be good.
---
Grian didn’t even realize what time it was until he saw the dark shape on the couch.
He paused halfway through shrugging off his jacket, keys still tangled in one hand, and blinked at the outline of Mumbo sitting stiff-backed and silent, arms folded. No lights were on. The kitchen was cold. The takeout bag on the counter hadn’t been touched.
“Hey,” Grian said, careful. “You didn’t wait up, did you?”
“I said dinner was at seven.”
Grian glanced at the microwave clock. 11:42. “Shit. I—I lost track.”
“Four and a half hours, Grian.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t even text.”
“I didn’t check the time. I got caught up.”
Mumbo stood. He didn’t raise his voice. He never did. That was the worst part. “You do this every time.”
Grian set the keys down slowly, like not making noise would soften it. “I said I was sorry.”
“You’re always sorry.”
Grian didn’t respond.
“You came home last week with paint on your hands,” Mumbo said. “And the week before that, you fell asleep at your desk. I’ve seen more of your voicemail tone than your face lately.”
“I didn’t mean to forget.”
“I know you didn’t.”
Mumbo moved past him and opened the fridge. He stared inside like he’d find something new. Like silence would eventually serve up answers.
Grian crossed his arms. “I’m trying.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
Mumbo turned, slow. “The point is you don’t seem like you want to be here.”
Grian flinched. It wasn’t dramatic, but it landed sharp anyway.
“I am here.”
“Physically. Not really otherwise.”
Grian looked away. The ceiling fan hummed above them. The light above the sink flickered once, then stilled.
“I’m not doing this on purpose.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Then why does it feel like a test I’m failing?”
Mumbo’s face tightened. “Because it keeps happening. And you never explain why .”
Grian opened his mouth. Closed it again.
The thing he wanted to say—the real thing, the one curled in the pit of his chest like a second heart—was too heavy. Too sharp-edged. Too much like prophecy.
Because I know this doesn’t last.
Because I remember waking up and forgetting your name and remembering it again when it was already too late.
Because even when we’re good, we’re on borrowed time.
He didn’t say any of that.
Instead, he looked at the counter. At the cold takeout. At the wilted paper bag and two sets of untouched chopsticks.
“Do you still have the pottery bowl?” he asked, quiet.
Mumbo blinked. “What?”
“The one from the market. That blue one. The one we pretended we didn’t overpay for.”
“…Yeah.”
“Can we eat out of that?”
Mumbo’s jaw clenched. For a moment, Grian thought he wouldn’t answer. Then:
“Fine.”
They didn’t talk while they reheated the food. Grian rinsed his hands in the sink, avoiding the mirror behind the dish rack. Mumbo opened the drawer where the bowl lived and set it on the counter like it might break just from being touched.
They split the food in silence. Ate in silence. Cleaned up in silence.
The only thing Grian said before bed was, “Don’t forget to turn off the outside light.”
Mumbo didn’t answer.
They slept back-to-back that night.
It was familiar, in a way Grian wished it wasn’t.
There was a version of this from a hundred years ago, in a place that smelled like smoke and dust and melted rubber. Another one before that in a house with too many stairs and not enough heat. He remembered a stone room, a ship cabin, a bunker, a cart, a loft.
Different worlds. Same angle of distance.
Sometimes they were better. Sometimes worse. Sometimes Mumbo didn’t remember him at all.
Sometimes that made it easier.
This version hurt in a specific way. The kind that only stung when you wanted to be known.
He lay in bed, watching the red numbers on the clock blink toward morning. Mumbo breathed slow beside him. Not fully asleep, not awake.
He wondered if he should say something. He wondered if he should lie.
Instead, he said, “I keep thinking I’m going to lose this.”
Mumbo didn’t move.
“I know that doesn’t make sense. I know I sound crazy.”
Still nothing.
Grian exhaled through his nose. “Never mind.”
He turned away again, folding his hands beneath his pillow.
Ten minutes passed.
Then, just as the red numbers ticked to 4:00, Mumbo said, low and not unkind, “Then stop pushing it away.”
Grian didn’t respond. He couldn’t.
They didn’t talk about it in the morning. Mumbo left early. Grian didn’t ask where he was going.
Instead, he wandered into the living room and stood by the shelf where the bowl was kept. It wasn’t fancy. Slightly chipped. Still had a market sticker on the underside. But they’d chosen it together. It had mattered then. It probably still did now.
He ran a finger along the edge.
Mumbo always kept it clean. No dust. No chips worse than the one it came with. Like he knew it’d be needed again. Like he was waiting for Grian to remember why it mattered.
The weight in Grian’s chest didn’t get lighter. But it shifted. Enough to breathe.
He picked up the bowl, turned it over in his hands, and smiled to himself, just barely.
He put it back. Sat on the floor.
And waited.
---
The candle on the desk had nearly gone out.
Mumbo didn’t notice until the flame flickered once, then again, catching low on the melted rim. He leaned forward and adjusted the base, nudging the wax pool back into alignment. His thumb brushed soot off the brass.
Across from him, Grian was bent over a half-translated margin. “If this is supposed to say ‘sun-born,’ I’m going to strangle your father’s third archivist.”
“It is,” Mumbo said without looking up. “And if you strangle her, she’ll put a curse on you in the afterlife. She was known for that.”
Grian hummed like he was thinking about it. He kept reading, pen tapping softly against the table.
It was late. Beyond the stone-framed window, the moon sat low and bright, thick clouds curled around the tower peak. Somewhere below, the city had quieted. In the northern hall, guards rotated their shifts, boots echoing like clock hands. Grian had long since learned to count them without thinking.
The candle hissed softly. Mumbo finally leaned back in his chair and stretched, arms above his head. His crown wasn’t on—it never was this late. He only wore it when he wanted to be seen.
“You know,” he said, voice low, “we’ve finished five tomes in four months. You might be the fastest archivist I’ve ever had.”
“You’re lucky I can fake a background in this language,” Grian muttered.
Mumbo raised an eyebrow. Grian coughed. “That was a joke.”
“Convincing one.”
“Shut up.”
Mumbo didn’t. Instead, he looked at him for a long moment, the kind that wasn’t quite unkind but wasn’t easy to hold either.
Grian didn’t shift. Just closed the book with one hand and let the other rest near the edge of the table. Close. Not quite touching.
“Do you think some people are fated to orbit each other?” Mumbo asked. Quiet. Like the question had come without permission.
Grian didn’t answer right away. The room was too still for a fast answer.
Eventually, he said, “Orbiting’s just falling slowly and never landing.”
Mumbo’s breath caught—just a little. The candle caught the edge of his profile. Grian didn’t look at him.
They sat like that for a moment longer, the silence drawn taut and close. Grian’s hand didn’t move. Neither did Mumbo’s. The space between them held a kind of tension that felt dangerous only because it was familiar.
If Grian leaned forward, just a little, he could close the gap.
He didn’t.
Mumbo did.
He didn’t get far. A sharp knock at the door made them both jolt like they’d been burned.
Mumbo straightened immediately, clearing his throat. “Yes?”
“Sire,” came a voice from the other side, muffled by the thick wood. “There’s movement in the southern border. Your brother asks for guidance.”
“I’ll be there in a moment,” Mumbo called back, steady.
Footsteps retreated down the hall.
He stood and adjusted his coat. Grian stayed in his chair, eyes fixed on the closed book in front of him.
“I’ll be gone an hour. Maybe two.”
Grian nodded once.
Mumbo looked at him like he wanted to say something else. Then he didn’t. He left without another word.
The lock clicked behind him.
Grian waited until the footsteps faded. Then he stood. He moved quickly, quietly, like someone used to vanishing. The bag beneath the cabinet was already half-packed.
He paused at the window for a moment. The moon had dipped lower. The clouds were clearing. He could see the far city towers, dim lights like constellations.
He didn’t want to leave.
But wanting was never the point.
He shut the bag and left the way he always did—without ceremony, without sound. The candle had burned low enough that it died the moment the door shut behind him.
By morning, the room was cold.
---
The grove was tucked behind a low ridge, half-hidden by vines and overgrown brush, just far enough from the border to feel forgotten. Grian had stumbled across it a few sessions ago and never told anyone. Not Scar, not Pearl, not Cleo. Definitely not Martyn.
Only Mumbo.
They sat cross-legged near the mossy trunk of a downed tree, plates resting on their knees, bits of bread and cooked beetroot between them. The food was technically stolen—Grian had snagged it from Scar’s stash during a distraction involving three creepers and a water bucket—but it felt less like betrayal when he was sharing it like this.
Mumbo was chewing carefully, like he always did when he was thinking too much. Grian nudged his knee against his.
“Oi. Don’t get philosophical on me while I’m trying to enjoy my illegal meal.”
Mumbo blinked. “You’re the one who started waxing poetic about moss textures.”
“Yeah, because they’re important,” Grian said, mouth full. “It’s the foundation of any good hiding spot. No moss, no secret grove. No secret grove, no secret alliances. No secret alliances, no fun.”
Mumbo raised a brow. “That’s a strong logical chain you’ve got there.”
“I’m a strong logical guy,” Grian said. “My logic is top-tier. My logic has layers.”
“Like onions?”
“Like TNT traps.”
That made Mumbo snort, which was what Grian had been going for. He grinned into his bread.
A pause settled between them—nothing heavy at first. The kind that came from ease, the kind they’d never quite gotten to have out loud during the last two lives. Not really. Not like this.
But then Mumbo set his food down and rubbed at his wrist.
“Have I…” he started, then stopped. Then again: “Have we done this before?”
Grian froze mid-chew.
Mumbo didn’t notice. He was staring out past the ridge, eyes unfocused, mouth turned downward in something that wasn’t quite a frown.
“What do you mean?” Grian asked. He meant to sound light, dismissive. He didn’t.
Mumbo shook his head almost immediately. “It’s nothing. Probably nothing. I don’t know. Dreams, maybe. Just feels—familiar. Like… the way you laugh when you're trying not to wake the world up. The way the bread’s burnt on one side.”
Grian looked down at his half-eaten slice.
“It’s burnt on both sides, thank you very much.”
“I meant that in a romantic way.”
Grian gave a short laugh. “That’s the worst romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
Another pause.
Mumbo shrugged. “I guess I just wonder… if we’ve been here before. Not just here—” He waved vaguely at the trees. “But like… this. You and me. Doing this.”
Grian’s fingers dug into the bark. “I think you’d remember.”
“I don’t think I would,” Mumbo said. “Not clearly.”
Grian didn’t answer.
They sat in the silence for a bit longer before Grian reached over and snagged the last beetroot slice from Mumbo’s plate.
“Rude,” Mumbo said.
“Strategic,” Grian said. “I’m a tactical genius.”
“You’re a menace.”
“Same thing.”
And just like that, the moment passed. Or it seemed like it had.
They stayed until sunset.
—
Later that week, Mumbo caught him before he could leave the grove.
Grian had been checking the trap lines. It was risky—they were supposed to keep their alliance secret—but Mumbo didn’t seem to care about the risk tonight.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said.
Grian turned. “What, another weird hypothetical?”
Mumbo held out a totem.
Grian blinked. “Where did you even get that?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“Didn’t ask if you did.”
Mumbo gave a faint smile. “I’ve been saving it. I figured you’d need it more.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
Grian stared at it. He didn’t reach for it. “Why now?”
“Because things are heating up. And I’ve seen how you play when you’re scared.”
Grian’s mouth tightened. “I’m not scared.”
Mumbo shrugged. “Okay. Still. Take it. Use it if I ever turn red.”
That got him to look up. “Mumbo—”
“I mean it,” he said, a little firmer. “I don’t know how this ends. But if I go red, and if we ever… if you ever hesitate, I want you to survive it. Just use it. Please.”
Grian stared at him. Then took the totem, fingers brushing Mumbo’s for just a second too long.
He tucked it into his inventory.
“I won’t need it,” he said.
Mumbo didn’t argue.
—
It burned a hole in his hotbar for the rest of the session.
Every time he saw Mumbo across the plains, helmet gleaming faintly in the setting sun, it itched at him. Every time someone asked where he was going and he lied, it pulsed like a pulse. Every time he watched someone else fall, it whispered that it was only a matter of time.
He didn’t sleep well.
None of them did, really. The world got smaller the longer it went on. The alliances got shakier. The trust lines blurred. Scar asked questions. Martyn stopped making jokes. Pearl started keeping distance.
And Mumbo—
Mumbo stayed the same.
Kept bringing him things. Kept walking too close. Kept talking like the world wasn’t pressing in on all sides.
Until it did. Until he turned red.
But that hadn’t happened yet.
Not yet.
The grove still stood. The moss was still green. The bread was still burnt.
And Grian still had the totem, hidden away where no one would see it.
Waiting.
---
The pressed camellia sat centered on the top step of Mumbo’s porch. No note, no string. Just the flower, careful and small, sealed between two squares of glass and edged in soft brass. He nearly stepped on it when he opened the door.
He stood there a second longer than he meant to. Then crouched down to lift it.
It was real. Real petals, real care. His thumb hovered over the edge before he tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, half-shielded from the cold. He knew what a camellia meant. Grian had told him last week, laughing into a cup of tea that had gone cold between them. “Perfect love,” Grian had said, like it wasn’t anything at all. Like it wasn’t a weapon.
Mumbo left the pastry box on his kitchen counter untouched. Walked the whole way to the shop without gloves, barely noticing.
—
The flower shop was quiet when he got there. The little bell didn’t ring when he opened the door—Grian must’ve forgotten to reset the latch again. The scent hit him first: lilac, rosemary, something citrusy. Something warm. Light pooled across the floor like someone had laid out gold foil and waited for it to catch.
Grian was asleep behind the counter.
His head rested on his arms, cheek pressed to a spiral notebook, hair sticking up from the back in a dozen wrong directions. He looked impossibly young like that. Soft-edged. There was dirt under his nails and a smudge of pollen across his shirt sleeve. A half-drunk cup of something sat next to him on the counter, still faintly steaming.
Mumbo didn’t say anything.
He walked over slowly and sat in the worn chair by the window. His usual spot. A stool that creaked when you leaned too far back and always had a cushion slightly off-center. He didn’t adjust it.
He just sat.
Time moved differently in here. Outside, the world was all honking cars and schedules and weather forecasts. But inside, the shop breathed. It exhaled quietly through the leaves. It hummed. The sun inched forward across the tiled floor, creeping toward the shelves of succulents and ribbon-bound bouquets. It touched the pots first, then the counter, then Grian’s elbow.
Mumbo leaned his head back against the wall and waited.
Eventually, Grian stirred.
He blinked slowly, still halfway between sleep and somewhere else. When his eyes focused and landed on Mumbo, he didn’t look surprised.
“You again,” he said, voice thick with sleep.
Mumbo smiled. “Yeah. Me again.”
Grian sat up, rubbing at his face. His hair was an absolute mess. Mumbo didn’t mention it.
“Did you knock?”
“Door was open,” Mumbo said.
Grian yawned. “Damn latch.”
“You should really fix that.”
“Too busy pressing flowers and dreaming of you,” Grian mumbled, then paused, half-realizing what he’d said.
Mumbo didn’t answer. Just reached into his jacket and pulled out the camellia.
He set it gently on the counter between them.
Grian blinked.
Then smiled. “I was wondering if it made it.”
“You left it on my step.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to ring the bell.”
Mumbo tilted his head. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. It felt too much like… saying it out loud.”
He was quiet for a moment, fingers tapping a lazy rhythm on the edge of the counter.
Mumbo leaned forward. “You were the one who taught me what it means.”
“Yeah,” Grian said. “I hoped you were listening.”
“I always listen.”
Grian looked at him, something unreadable in his eyes. Something Mumbo didn’t know what to do with. So he looked away, fiddled with the ribbon on a stray bouquet.
After a beat, Grian slid off the stool and disappeared behind the counter. There was rustling, then the smell of warm sugar and cloves.
“Brought you something,” Grian said, returning with a paper bag. “Trade for the pastry you’re definitely hiding under your jacket.”
Mumbo blinked. “How did you—”
“I know you,” Grian said simply.
They swapped bags.
Inside Grian’s was a crumpled napkin and three small scones, still warm. One had a bite missing.
“Sorry,” Grian said, mouth full already. “Quality control.”
Mumbo grinned. “Understandable.”
They ate in comfortable silence. The kind that had started showing up lately. Not forced, not awkward. Just… breathing room.
Outside, a light breeze scattered a few petals down the sidewalk. Inside, everything stayed still.
After the food was gone and the crumbs wiped up, Mumbo turned slightly in his chair.
“You really meant it, didn’t you?”
Grian didn’t pretend not to understand. “Yeah. I did.”
Mumbo swallowed. “I think I did too.”
Grian smiled without looking at him. “I hoped you did.”
Another pause.
Then Mumbo reached out and brushed a crumb from Grian’s cheek with his thumb.
Grian stilled.
“You’re allowed to,” he said, quiet now. “You don’t have to ask.”
Mumbo nodded. He didn’t move his hand away.
The door creaked behind them.
They both startled, turning too quickly. A delivery kid stood in the doorway with a flat of hydrangeas, squinting into the sun.
“Uh,” the kid said. “These go here?”
Grian cleared his throat, stepping back. “Yeah. Sorry. Counter’s fine.”
The moment snapped in half. But neither of them looked away from each other for a second longer than they had to.
As the kid left, Mumbo stood slowly, brushing off his jacket. Grian followed him to the door.
“Next week?” Mumbo asked.
Grian leaned against the frame. “You know where to find me.”
Mumbo paused, then leaned in, just slightly. Not a kiss. Not quite.
But close.
“I’ll bring cinnamon buns next time,” he said.
Grian smiled. “I’ll bring something better.”
He didn’t say what. But Mumbo believed him.
---
The cape had been the first clue—half-torn, snagged on a metal fence behind the bank just before it collapsed. Mumbo had recognized the stitchwork. Not right away, but the thread matched the kind Grian used on his costumes, the hemming style just slightly uneven near the bottom, like someone was too impatient to finish but too careful to ruin it.
He didn’t want it to be his.
But the match was too clean. And once he knew what to look for, the rest unraveled quick. The scorch marks left after fights. The way the vigilante disappeared into alleyways that just happened to border Grian’s neighborhood. The bruise patterns Mumbo recognized from sparring days, back when they’d trained under the same mentor.
He let it sit for a week.
Then he showed up on the rooftop.
Grian didn’t notice him right away. He was crouched low on the ledge, one leg dangling over the edge, hands braced loosely on his knee. His hood was down. No mask. Just wind-tossed hair and that dumb jacket he always wore under the suit like it didn’t give him away completely. The city lights caught the curve of his jaw, the set of his shoulders. He looked like he was waiting for something.
Mumbo didn’t say anything until Grian shifted—then he stepped forward.
“I figured it out.”
Grian froze. His head turned slowly, expression unreadable.
“Figured what out?” he asked, already getting to his feet.
“You,” Mumbo said. “The cape. The route patterns. The timing. The bruises you tried to cover with that stupid scarf.”
Grian didn’t respond right away. Then: “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Grian didn’t meet his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d want to know.”
“That’s not—” Mumbo exhaled sharply. “That’s not fair.”
Grian finally looked at him. “Isn’t it? You have your rules, Mumbo. You believe in order and structure and the law. I work outside of all that.”
“I believe in you.”
The silence hit harder than anything.
Then Grian shook his head, short and sharp. “Believing in me doesn’t mean liking what I do.”
Mumbo stepped closer. “I always want to know you. All of you. Even this.”
Grian’s jaw twitched. “You say that now. But when I set fire to a weapons drop or lead a car full of mercs off a bridge, you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t.”
“You’re a hero, Mumbo.”
“So are you.”
“No,” Grian snapped. “I’m a weapon. You just didn’t want to see it.”
Mumbo didn’t flinch. “Then show me.”
That made Grian falter.
“You want to prove me wrong? Fine. Hit me.”
Grian stared.
Mumbo took one more step, now chest to chest. “Hit me, Grian.”
And for a second, Grian almost did. His hand twitched. The air between them felt electric, dangerous. Like the start of something that could shatter.
Instead, Grian shoved him back—hard, but not cruel. “You don’t get to make this about you.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Grian said. “You want me to explain why I didn’t tell you? Because I didn’t want this. I didn’t want you to look at me like I was a loaded gun with a bad trigger. I didn’t want to lose the only part of my life that didn’t feel like performance.”
Mumbo swallowed hard. “You didn’t lose me.”
“Not yet.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t believe you.”
That stopped Mumbo short.
Grian turned, half-lit by the city glow, and muttered, “I don’t believe you,” again, softer this time. Not like a threat. Like a truth he hated.
Before Mumbo could say anything else, Grian leapt.
The wind caught his coat as he dropped down three stories and rolled into a sprint, vanishing into the shadows before Mumbo could even reach the ledge.
He didn’t follow.
Didn’t move.
Just stared out across the skyline, where a figure used to be.
He stayed that way for a while. Long enough for the buzz of the city to dull around him. Long enough that the words stopped rattling in his chest and just sat there, heavy and quiet.
When he finally spoke, it wasn’t loud.
“Don’t die before I see you again.”
Then he turned, stepped back from the edge, and left.
—
The next morning, the news lit up with grainy footage from last night’s chase. A silhouette caught mid-jump. A flash of blue across the screen. “Vigilante Threat Returns,” the headline screamed.
Mumbo turned the TV off without reading the rest.
In his kitchen, a cape sat folded on the table—one that matched the remnants he’d found.
He didn’t know if Grian had meant for him to find it. But he kept it anyway.
---
The feather is faded.
Not the kind that you pick up and think, oh, that’s still got some shine left in it. This one’s dull all the way through—threadbare, flattened at the end, almost gray despite the ivory edges that cling to its spine. Grian finds it shoved in the back corner of a storage barrel, curled under a stack of name tags he doesn’t remember crafting. He doesn’t touch it at first. Just looks at it like it’s going to tell him something.
It doesn’t.
His communicator buzzes against the wood behind him. He doesn’t check it until the light dims.
Mumbo: Hey, want to hang out later?
He flips the communicator back over and lets the screen go dark.
—
He shows up anyway.
It’s late enough that the fog’s rolled in around Mumbo’s base, collecting low between the stone arches. Grian doesn’t fly in—he walks, slow across the uneven path like he’s not sure what pace he’s meant to be keeping. Mumbo’s already outside, kicking a small rock down the slope from the front entrance, holding two mismatched mugs in one hand.
“Hey,” Mumbo says.
Grian nods. It’s the kind of nod that should come with a hi , or at least a noise, but he doesn’t add anything. He walks the rest of the way to the stairs, and Mumbo hands him one of the mugs without pushing.
“It’s not good tea,” Mumbo says, casual, filling in the silence like it’s a normal one. “But it’s warm.”
Grian takes a sip anyway. “Mm.”
They sit side by side on the edge of the balcony. From here, you can see the half-finished wall of redstone contraptions Mumbo’s been fiddling with for weeks. Grian traces the curves of one with his eyes. Then he doesn’t say anything else.
Mumbo glances over. “You okay?”
Grian shrugs. “Tired.”
He’s always tired. He says that often enough for it to mean nothing.
Mumbo doesn’t press. They sit like that until the fog starts to burn off and the light behind the redstone builds makes them both blink. Grian hands the mug back and mumbles something about needing to check on his chickens.
When he leaves, Mumbo doesn’t call him back.
—
Later that night, Grian doesn’t go home.
He gets halfway to his base, then circles back—flies slow loops above Mumbo’s farm, then lands outside the perimeter, just barely inside the torchlight. It’s quiet. A few lanterns still flicker near the base’s windows, casting orange glow across the tiled roof.
Grian doesn’t knock. He sits on the edge of the path, legs crossed under him, communicator dark in his palm.
He thinks of the feather again.
He doesn’t know which life it’s from. Could’ve been a prank, could’ve been a gift, could’ve been something he kept without realizing. It had that kind of weight to it—the kind you only feel when everything else is stripped back.
He doesn’t remember putting it in storage.
He doesn’t remember when he started forgetting things.
—
He starts building wrong the next morning. Not big mistakes—just off. Wrong palette, mismatched symmetry. He tears it all down and starts again twice. The third time, he stares at it too long, then gives up halfway and swaps into spectator.
From the sky, his base looks like someone else’s.
—
Scar corners him in the shopping district two days later.
“You’re acting weird,” Scar says, which is hilarious coming from him.
Grian rolls his eyes. “Thanks.”
“No, like. Weirder than normal. Not in a funny way.”
“I’m fine.”
Scar tilts his head. “You sure? Because I asked you yesterday if you were going to the meeting and you said ‘cactus’ and walked off.”
Grian shrugs. “Maybe I was thinking about cacti.”
“Grian.”
“I’m fine , Scar.”
That time he says it with a little too much edge. Scar raises his eyebrows but backs off.
“Okay. Just—y’know. Don’t fall into the void or something.”
Grian doesn’t say too late , but it’s close.
—
Mumbo messages him again the following week.
> Mumbo: Redstone’s being annoying. Want to come hit it with me until it works?
He stares at it for a minute. Then types:
> Grian: maybe later
But he never shows.
—
He does, eventually. Not for Mumbo. Just… out of habit.
He walks into the redstone lab and pauses. Mumbo’s got something sprawled across the floor—messy, overlapping wires, something that hums if you get close enough. Mumbo turns around when he hears the door.
“Hey!” he says, like he’s genuinely happy to see him.
Grian’s throat feels dry. “Hi.”
Mumbo gestures him over. “Don’t ask what this is. I don’t know yet.”
Grian moves toward the edge of the build. “That’s new for you.”
“Not knowing?”
“No, admitting it.”
Mumbo grins. “I’ve been learning from the best.”
Grian doesn’t respond. Not for a long moment. Then, abruptly, he asks, “Do you ever feel like you’ve already done something, but it didn’t happen yet?”
Mumbo looks up, careful. “Like déjà vu?”
“No. Like… like you can feel the echo before the sound.”
Mumbo lowers the wrench in his hand. “Grian.”
“Forget it,” Grian says, too fast. “That was dumb.”
“It wasn’t.”
He’s already turning to leave.
“Wait.”
Grian stops at the threshold.
Mumbo hesitates. “If something’s going on, you can tell me. You know that, right?”
Grian doesn’t turn around. “Yeah. I know.”
Then he leaves anyway. He walks until his name tag flickers off the edge of the server map.
He doesn't look back.
---
Scar’s laughter echoes like it belongs to someone else.
The warehouse floor is concrete—cracked, with jagged bolts and broken grates scattered across the space. Mumbo’s knees hit it first. His hands go down next, trying to brace, but his left shoulder’s already limp, and he collapses hard onto one side, breath punched out of him.
Scar doesn’t press the advantage. He never does—not when it’s Mumbo. He just circles slow, gloved fingers toying with the remote detonator at his hip. “You really do scream louder than I expected,” he says, voice bright. “That was good. Very theatrical.”
Mumbo coughs. Blood hits the ground. “You always were the dramatic one.”
Scar beams. “Thank you.”
It’s bait. Of course it is. He’s not even tied up—just cornered, hurt, and radiating enough vulnerability to draw Grian in like a beacon.
He doesn’t have to wait long.
The door caves in with a sound like steel giving up. A crack of air pressure splits the silence, and then Grian’s there—fast, feral, winged, eyes white-hot and shoulders glowing like something pulled from the sun.
Mumbo’s never seen him like this. Not really .
Scar sighs. “Took you long enough.”
Grian doesn’t answer. He doesn’t speak at all.
He moves.
—
Later, Mumbo will remember the sound.
Not the punches—not the impact, not the sharp crack of ribs or the way Scar’s body hit the crates—but the sound Grian made when he saw him. That inhale. That breath like it wasn’t guaranteed. Like he’d been holding it since the moment Mumbo vanished off the map.
Mumbo tries to sit up during the fight. He makes it halfway before a bolt of pain rockets down his side and he drops again, gasping.
Grian doesn’t even glance over. He’s too focused, too locked in, too brutal. Scar tries to teleport—he gets halfway through before Grian clips him mid-vanish, drives him to the floor, pins him there with a boot to the back and a snarl in a language Mumbo doesn’t recognize.
It ends quick after that. Not dead. Not maimed. Just enough to send a message.
Grian stands still for a long time after Scar’s down.
Then he turns.
His hands are shaking. Mumbo’s vision is doubled, but he sees that clearly—saw it earlier, too, in a hundred fights where Grian never let himself flinch. The way he’s trembling now is different. Like the aftermath costs more than the win.
He crouches beside him.
Mumbo blinks hard. “Hey.”
Grian presses his palm to Mumbo’s ribs, glowing just faintly as it works to knit bone. It’s not enough. His voice comes out quiet. “You always get hurt before I tell you.”
Mumbo huffs. It’s wet. “Tell me what?”
Grian doesn’t look at him.
He just says, “Next time.”
And then he lifts him like it’s easy—like Mumbo’s not bleeding down one side and barely conscious—and he runs .
—
They don’t go to the medic. They go to Grian’s place.
It’s high—rooftop loft above the skyline, old fire escape stairs and boarded windows that don’t really hide the view. Grian sets him down on the couch and disappears for a few seconds. When he comes back, his jacket’s off and his wings are still half-out, twitching like they haven’t fully relaxed.
Mumbo lies there, watching the ceiling spin. “I liked it better when I thought you were just a very weird guy with good reflexes.”
“I am a weird guy with good reflexes.”
“And wings.”
Grian exhales sharply through his nose, like he almost smiled. “Yeah. Those too.”
The silence that follows isn’t comfortable, but it’s not awful. Mumbo lets his eyes close, feeling the soft buzz of Grian’s healing magic settle over him like a blanket. It’s uneven, like always—Grian’s never been able to control it precisely. But it helps. The ache in his ribs dulls enough to breathe.
“You know,” Mumbo says after a long minute, “I’m not mad.”
“I am ,” Grian says, too fast. “I’m furious. I should’ve known Scar would try something like that. I should’ve—”
“You got there.”
“I was late.”
“But you got there.”
Grian’s mouth presses flat. He doesn’t argue again, but he doesn’t agree either.
Instead, he sits beside Mumbo and rests his head back against the wall. The glow from the wings fades. He closes his eyes.
“You’re shaking,” Mumbo says.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to carry all of it.”
Grian doesn’t open his eyes. “I do.”
“Why?”
Grian’s quiet.
When he finally speaks, it’s small. “Because if I let someone else carry it, they die. I’ve done that already. Too many times.”
Mumbo turns his head slowly. “What do you mean?”
Grian doesn’t answer. Not for a long while. Then: “You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?”
“Never mind.”
He stands.
—
When Mumbo wakes again, the sky outside is gray. Grian’s at the window, hands braced on the frame, wings down.
“You okay?” Mumbo asks, voice rough.
Grian nods once.
Mumbo doesn’t push. He just shifts upright, holding his side. “Thanks. For saving me.”
“You always say that like it’s not the bare minimum.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Mumbo breathes in. Holds it. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Alright.”
Another pause. Then, softer: “You said I don’t remember something.”
Grian doesn’t move. “Yeah.”
“Do you ?”
This time, Grian turns around. His face is unreadable. “I remember everything .”
It lands with the weight of truth.
Mumbo’s heart stutters.
He doesn’t know what to say to that. So he says the only thing he can: “You must be exhausted.”
Grian laughs, dry. “You have no idea.”
He walks over, crouches again by the couch. For a second, he just stares. Then he says, very softly, “I wish I didn’t.”
Mumbo reaches out. Not to stop him. Just to be there.
Grian leans in, just barely. “Next time,” he murmurs again.
Mumbo closes his eyes. “Don’t wait.”
---
The front display’s all wrong.
Grian stares at the stand of peonies he forgot to water, the stems leaning like they’ve given up. The rest of the shop smells like earth and clean air, but the peonies are souring—fading too fast, yellowing at the edges, like some part of the morning already missed him.
He runs a hand through his hair and flips the sign on the door to OPEN with more force than needed. It's later than it should be. The morning rush is already gone. He should’ve opened an hour ago.
The bells above the door jingle, and when he turns, Mumbo’s there holding two takeaway cups.
“I figured you were having one of those ‘lost to time’ mornings,” Mumbo says, offering one out. “You’ve got the peony guilt face.”
“I do not have a peony guilt face.”
“You absolutely do. You’re doing it right now.”
Grian scowls, takes the coffee anyway. “They were fine last night. I just—forgot. I was going to—then I started cleaning the front counter and got distracted by the loose receipts, and then I think I maybe reorganized the till by coin weight for no reason.”
Mumbo leans against the side of the counter. “And did you label the coins alphabetically again?”
Grian sips his coffee. “No.”
Mumbo raises an eyebrow.
“…Yes.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then they both start laughing—light and familiar, not too much, but enough to warm the place up. The shop always feels better when they’re in it together. Like everything’s in its right place.
—
They spend the next half hour pulling dead petals and repositioning the window baskets. Grian’s halfway through restocking the marigolds when Mumbo points at the sunflowers.
“Too much?”
“They’re perfect ,” Grian says. “They’re tall and dramatic and basically yelling. I love them.”
“They’re loud,” Mumbo counters. “And bright. Like—they’re trying too hard.”
“Excuse you, we are in a flower shop. They’re supposed to be extra.”
Mumbo grabs a bundle and holds them at arm’s length. “They don’t exactly say sophistication . They say ‘look at me I’m the sun.’”
Grian grins. “Yeah, that’s the point. They’re not subtle. They’re warm and honest and kind of ridiculous.”
“Hmm,” Mumbo says. “Kind of like you.”
Grian tries not to look startled.
Before he can recover, a kid walking past the storefront presses their face to the glass. “Are you two married?” they ask, cupping their hands around their eyes like binoculars.
Mumbo startles into a laugh. “Nope, just coworkers.”
Grian snorts too hard and ends up coughing into his sleeve.
The kid shrugs and moves on like the question didn’t matter either way.
—
Later, when the shop’s quiet again, Grian’s left fiddling with the card display. There’s one bent corner he keeps smoothing out, and the bouquet order list for tomorrow’s delivery isn’t actually urgent but he rewrites it anyway, cleaner this time.
Mumbo’s already gone—had to pick up something from the market, said he’d swing back by later with lunch if Grian didn’t feel like closing the shop for a break. He probably won’t even knock. He’ll just wander in and start making suggestions about color palettes.
It’s safe. It’s nice .
It’s not supposed to last.
Grian finds a post-it from the drawer beside the register and scribbles out a note. His handwriting’s too rushed to be legible to anyone else, but it doesn’t matter. The message isn’t for anyone else.
Don’t forget today.
He peels the sticky side off and presses it to the edge of the register, right where his thumb always rests when he’s watching the door.
Then he sits back and breathes.
There’s a smell of cut stems and damp soil in the air. Someone down the street is playing a violin—not well, but not badly either. The wind rattles the door just enough to make the chimes shift.
And Grian sits still, holding a pen in one hand, staring at nothing.
—
When Mumbo comes back in an hour later with something in a paper bag and a dumb joke about artisan sandwiches, Grian smiles like he always does. He teases back, takes the bag, brushes their hands together and pretends not to feel how warm the touch is. He leans against the counter while Mumbo talks about a dog he saw on the way over, something about a lopsided bowtie and how he nearly followed it home.
Grian laughs at the right moments. Offers a story of his own. Lets it all happen.
But the note stays right where he left it.
He doesn’t point it out. Doesn’t explain.
And when Mumbo wanders off again, whistling, Grian doesn’t move to take it down. He just rests his fingers near it like maybe it’ll mean something more if he leaves it there long enough. Like maybe if he remembers today clearly enough, he won’t forget what it’s like.
He already knows how things go.
He’s had enough lifetimes to see the pattern form.
But today—today is quiet. Today is laughing over sunflowers and uneven coffee lids and a question through the window that made his heart trip without warning.
Today counts.
So he leaves the note. And he doesn’t forget. Not yet.
---
The guards arrived before sunrise.
Grian had just stepped out into the corridor, half-dressed, arms full of record books and half-sealed letters he was supposed to deliver discreetly to the steward’s hall. That was the excuse, anyway. He always had an excuse.
He didn’t even hear them until the metal echoed, loud and deliberate, down the stone corridor. Boots. Four pairs. Maybe five.
He didn’t run. There was nowhere to go.
—
By the time the guards pulled him through the back gate of the palace, the sun was up. Not high—just enough to cast long shadows across the great hall’s floor. The council had already been summoned, torches snuffed out and banners raised, the red-and-gold insignia of Mumbo’s house fluttering behind the throne.
Mumbo was already seated. Robes sharp. Back straight. Crown light on his brow like it didn’t mean anything to him anymore. His hand gripped the edge of the armrest like a lifeline.
They forced Grian to his knees at the center of the room.
“You are not who you claimed to be,” one of the councilors said, stepping forward. “You entered this court under a false name, bearing forged papers. Posing as an archivist.”
Murmurs rippled through the room. Grian stared at the base of the dais. His jaw ached. His hands were bound.
“You are not from this kingdom. You are—”
“Prince Grian, son of Alathen of Zephira,” another voice cut in. Older. Reluctant. “A runaway.”
That caused a stir.
Mumbo’s fingers twitched. Barely.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Grian muttered, eyes still down. His voice was hoarse from the dust and the bruise forming on his ribs. “I didn’t come here to start anything.”
“You fled your home,” the older councilor said. “And you concealed your title, your origin—”
“Because you were at war with us,” Grian snapped, looking up. His voice cracked. “Because we fought a war. And I wanted—” He faltered. “I wanted something else.”
“Silence,” a guard barked, stepping forward.
“Let him speak,” Mumbo said.
The guard stepped back instantly.
Grian’s breath stilled in his throat. Slowly, he looked up. Met Mumbo’s eyes across the distance. And for a moment—it was just them. No court. No guards. No throne. Just the same tension they always carried, stretched tight between them like a promise that never survived long enough to be kept.
“I didn’t come here as a prince,” Grian said. “I never asked you to call me anything but what I gave you. I worked in your libraries. I carried books. I ate dinner with the staff and I swept my own quarters. I did not lie to you, Mumbo. I just… didn’t tell you everything.”
“You’re a traitor,” someone said.
“No,” Grian said. He turned his head, looked at Mumbo again. “I wasn’t spying. I wasn’t building anything. I was just tired .”
He laughed—quiet, joyless.
“I was tired of being someone else.”
The council waited.
Mumbo stood slowly. The hall went still. Grian watched him descend the steps of the dais. Every footfall echoed. He stopped three paces away.
“I don’t know who you are,” Mumbo said. His voice was loud enough to carry, sharp enough to cut.
Grian didn’t flinch.
“I don’t know what you were planning. I don’t know what your kingdom told you to do when you crossed our borders. I don’t know how many years you spent hiding in plain sight. But I do know this—”
He stepped forward, close enough to tower.
“—I won’t help a traitor.”
Grian’s lips twitched.
It wasn’t a smile, exactly. But it was close.
“You always say that,” he said, so softly it was barely a whisper. “And I always forgive you.”
Mumbo didn’t move.
His fingers curled and twitched—barely—but didn’t reach.
Grian held his breath.
And then it was over.
The guards pulled him to his feet and turned him away. The chains at his wrists clinked faintly as he stumbled. He didn’t look back. Didn’t need to. He already knew what Mumbo looked like when he chose duty over love.
It wasn’t new.
—
Later, in the holding chamber beneath the barracks, Grian sat alone on a cot that smelled like iron and mildew. There was straw in the corners. No window. Just a slit near the ceiling that let in a rectangle of gray sky.
He pressed his forehead to the wall.
Eventually, the door creaked open.
He didn’t turn. Just said, “You’re not supposed to be down here.”
Mumbo shut the door behind him. Didn’t respond.
Grian sighed.
“I’m not going to beg,” he said.
“I know.”
“They’ll want to trade me. Use me for leverage.”
“I know.”
There was silence. Then soft footsteps. And then Mumbo sat across from him, just far enough that their knees didn’t touch.
“I wasn’t sent,” Grian said. “Not by anyone. I left. I left them . I didn’t come here for war or peace or politics. I came here because I remembered you.”
Mumbo’s jaw tightened.
“I thought maybe if I was someone else—if I just slipped in quietly—I could live a life without it all falling apart. I could stay long enough to matter.”
He huffed a breath. “Didn’t work, huh?”
Mumbo still didn’t say anything.
“I never tried to hurt you.”
Mumbo looked at him for a long time. “But you did.”
Grian’s eyes fell.
There was a pause. Not long. Just enough.
“Would you do it again?” Mumbo asked.
Grian didn’t answer right away.
“I always do,” he said eventually.
He didn’t mean this . He meant everything .
Mumbo stood. Grian didn’t follow his gaze this time.
When the door clicked shut again, Grian sat still for a long time.
Then, slowly, he raised his hands and stared at the cuffs.
They weren’t Watcher-forged. Not here.
But they felt familiar.
---
The sky was on fire again. Not literally—just that bruised red that came before the world reset. When the borders shrank. When the rules got stricter. When there was no such thing as second chances anymore.
Grian knew this part.
He’d seen it before. Felt the way time warped, how gravity dragged a little harder, how every breath sounded too close to his ears and too far from his lungs. Red life. One hit from death.
He stood at the edge of the ruined tower. Mumbo across from him, armor dented and sword raised halfway like he didn’t know whether he’d swing it. His breath was uneven, loud through the open mouth of his helmet.
They were the last two.
It hadn’t been a clean session.
The others were gone. Martyn first, then Scar, then Cleo, then Pearl—everyone else trickling out like sand through a cracked hourglass. It was just the two of them now. The server was watching. The gods or the Watchers or whatever sat up there and pulled the strings—this was what they wanted.
Grian had chased him here. Or maybe Mumbo had run just far enough to let it happen.
They circled each other. Not fast. Just enough to stay sharp.
Mumbo was quiet. Grian spoke first.
“It’s always you,” he said.
He didn’t shout it. Didn’t accuse. Just stated it like a fact.
Mumbo didn’t move.
“Even when I win,” Grian said, “it’s always you I lose.”
Mumbo's sword dipped a little. He looked tired. “You don’t have to.”
But the world didn’t pause for kindness. The timer ticked. Red hearts bled down Grian’s screen. His inventory was a mess—scattered weapons, half-broken tools, no food worth using. If he waited too long, the world would finish the job for him.
Still, he stood there.
“I could do it,” he said. “We both know I could.”
“You’ve done it before.”
“Yeah.”
Mumbo looked up at that. Really looked. “So why not again?”
Grian laughed, just once, bitter and short. “Because I’m so tired of it ending this way.”
“You could walk away.”
“I can’t.”
Silence stretched between them again.
Then Grian took a step forward.
Mumbo’s sword twitched up. Not raised. Just reaction.
Grian didn’t flinch.
“You always say it’s different,” Grian said. “Every time. You promise me it’ll be different. That this time we’ll make it out. That we’ll win together.”
“I mean it every time.”
“I know.”
He took another step.
Mumbo’s voice cracked. “Grian—”
“I’ve died for you before,” Grian said, low now. “I’ve killed for you. I’ve built worlds for you. I’ve burned them for you.”
The air shimmered. Red lines flickered at the corners of the terrain, like the world was being vacuum-sealed shut.
“I thought maybe this one would be it,” Grian said. “The one where we both walk away.”
Mumbo still hadn’t moved.
“I kept thinking,” Grian said, “if I just make the right call, if I just say the right thing, it’ll change. We’ll finally get it right.”
“You think this is your fault?” Mumbo asked.
Grian smiled. It wasn’t nice. “I think it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. The cycle always ends the same.”
He stepped closer.
This time Mumbo stepped back.
“Grian—”
“It’s okay,” Grian said. “This one doesn’t have to end with you losing me.”
“I—”
“I’ll do it for us this time.”
And before Mumbo could move, Grian stepped forward—right into range.
No weapon drawn. No defense.
The world didn’t wait. A tick. A breath.
Mumbo’s sword—already raised too high, too close—met contact.
A sound, dull and final.
Red hearts shattered across Grian’s screen.
He staggered once, exhaled like he hadn’t meant to, and crumpled forward.
Mumbo dropped the sword before Grian hit the ground.
“Grian—” His voice cracked apart. “No, no—”
But it was too late.
The world began collapsing around him. Grian’s body flickered. Spectator particles glimmered at the edges. Inventory spilled across the stone like breadcrumbs leading nowhere.
Mumbo didn’t move. Not until the border shimmered and snapped back. Not until the sky went silent.
He sank to his knees.
There was no victory fanfare. No cheerful tone.
Just the sound of the void beginning to hum again beneath the reset code.
Just the sound of a name whispered after it had already been lost.
—
Somewhere else.
A flicker.
A pulse.
Grian opened his eyes.
The sky was painted deep blue, speckled with stars. Not Watcher stars, not the Life border or the red-glow death haze—just a clean, open sky.
He sat up slowly.
There was grass beneath him. A quiet hum of city lights somewhere in the distance. Theater bulbs flickering on a marquee sign he didn’t recognize.
A handbill floated down beside him. It said something about auditions.
Grian stared at it.
Then he looked up again.
The world had reset.
Not the same world.
But his body remembered the fall. His chest remembered the hit. His hand twitched like it was still trying to reach for someone who didn’t grab back in time.
He sighed.
Then got to his feet.
The curtain hadn’t dropped yet.
---
The greenhouse was ash by the time the sun broke through the smoke.
Grian didn’t watch it burn. Not really. He stood outside the fence, breathing through his sleeve, staring at the spot where the roof used to be. The glass had melted in places, dripped down the walls like frost turned to blood. Black vines curled around broken latticework. Everything that had kept them warm, alive, growing—gone.
He didn’t cry. Not this time.
The raiders had been efficient. In and out. No warning.
Mumbo hadn’t made it out.
Grian dug the grave by the river. Same place as last time. Not because he had to. Not because he thought it mattered. Just because it felt wrong not to.
There wasn’t much left to bury. A charred glove. His compass. The old journal with waterlogged pages and blood at the spine. Grian tucked it under the dirt gently, like it might still be read in the next life.
He found a stone and pressed it into the earth like a marker.
He didn’t write Mumbo’s name. Just a word.
“Again.”
Then he sat down beside it.
—
The river moved slow here, thick with mud and ice. Grian sat with his knees drawn up and his arms around them, cheek pressed to one sleeve. The smoke was still in his hair.
He waited.
The wind pushed dead leaves across the bank.
He waited longer.
“Third time this year,” he muttered.
No one answered.
“Or maybe fourth. Hard to tell anymore.”
He glanced at the grave. The stone was crooked. The ground was still soft. He didn’t fix either.
“I wish you’d stop getting yourself killed,” he said. “It’s starting to get annoying.”
The wind answered that one. Not a whisper, not a voice—just air. Always just air.
“You always remember last,” Grian said. “That’s how it goes, right?”
He picked at the dirt near the edge of the stone. His nails were black with ash. His fingertips stung.
“I remember first. I remember everything .”
The silence afterward wasn’t heavy. It was normal . Like the sound of a house being empty. Like the way grief gets small, eventually, but never really leaves.
Grian lay back in the grass.
He tilted his head to look up at the sky. It was pale, choked out. No stars, no sun. Just grey light trying to mean something.
“I hate this part,” he said.
The grass tickled his neck. The ground was cold. He closed his eyes anyway.
—
He stayed for a long time.
Long enough that the light changed. Long enough that his ribs stopped aching. Long enough that his mouth dried out and his stomach stopped bothering to feel empty.
He talked more, off and on. Sometimes it was nonsense. Sometimes it was memories. Sometimes it was spite.
“You said we’d build something that lasted.”
He tugged a burr off his sleeve and tossed it toward the grave. It bounced once, then stayed there.
“Doesn’t count if it’s just me, Mumbo. I’m not the one with the blueprint. I’m just the idiot with the matches.”
The grave didn’t argue.
He shifted. Sat up slowly. His back cracked when he moved.
“I should go,” he said. “People are gonna notice. Well. Scar might. Pearl probably already knows. Joel’ll pretend he didn’t hear.”
The wind ruffled his hair.
Grian pushed himself to his feet.
He stared down at the grave.
“You’ll be back,” he said. “You always are. Just… don’t take long this time.”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
Just turned and walked upriver.
The world, as always, turned with him.
---
The shop door jingled when Mumbo stepped through, just like it always had. Grian didn’t look up right away. He was trimming the stems of a new bouquet, head bowed, hands steady.
“I kept the bowl,” Mumbo said.
Grian didn’t move. A second passed. Then another.
“It cracked,” Mumbo added, softer.
That got Grian to look. He set the shears down carefully and straightened, brushing rose petals off his apron. “So did I,” he said, and for once, it didn’t sound like a punchline.
They stared at each other. It was awkward. It was familiar.
Grian nodded his head toward the back. “You want to sit?”
Mumbo nodded.
—
The back room smelled like tea and eucalyptus and whatever flower Grian was drying by the rafters. He’d strung them up weeks ago. Still hadn’t bothered to take them down. Mumbo sat on the old wooden bench beside the window. The same spot he’d sat in last spring, when they still pretended they were friends with no history.
Grian came in a few seconds later with two mismatched mugs. “Green or grey?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not at all.” Grian handed him the grey one and sat beside him.
They didn’t talk at first. Mumbo didn’t drink the tea. Grian didn’t ask why.
“I thought you hated chamomile,” Mumbo said eventually.
“I do.” Grian took a sip. “It’s for show.”
That got the smallest smile out of him.
Grian glanced over. “You been okay?”
Mumbo shrugged. “Work’s been work. Scar wants to open a second location. Pearl’s threatening to move to the mountains again.”
“You let her, and I’ll never forgive you.”
“She says the light’s better for her skin.”
“That’s not a good enough reason to deprive me of her sarcasm.”
Another small smile. It didn’t reach Mumbo’s eyes.
The silence stretched again.
Then: “Do you think we could ever just be normal?” Mumbo asked.
Grian didn’t answer right away. He stared out the window. It had started raining again, light and rhythmic against the glass.
“We’re too old for normal,” he said finally. “But maybe we could be honest.”
He set his mug down. Turned to face Mumbo.
“Just for this time. Just this one.”
Mumbo didn’t move. He just looked at Grian, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hope or to run.
“I don’t think I’m built for normal,” Grian said. “I keep trying to be a person, and it always gets a little sideways. I thought maybe if I kept things light, didn’t say too much, didn’t expect too much—it would go easier.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
Mumbo looked down at the mug in his hands. “I cracked it,” he said again. “The bowl.”
“You said.”
“I tried to fix it. But it doesn’t sit right anymore. It wobbles. Like it doesn’t trust the shelf.”
Grian reached over. Took his hand.
Mumbo didn’t flinch.
“I don’t need it to sit right,” Grian said. “I just want it to stay.”
He wasn’t sure what he meant by it—himself, Mumbo, the bowl—but the words felt honest enough to say.
Mumbo looked up. “You said you cracked too.”
“I did.”
“Worse than the bowl?”
Grian laughed, low and short. “Probably. But you didn’t drop me on tile, so I guess there’s that.”
Mumbo squeezed his fingers once.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Quiet but not weak. “For all of it.”
“You always are.”
“I mean it.”
“I always know.”
Another silence. This one sat differently. Looser. Less like something waiting to break.
Grian shifted a little on the bench. Their knees bumped.
“I remember every version of us,” he said suddenly. “Even the ones that weren’t ours.”
Mumbo blinked. “What?”
“Never mind. That probably sounded—”
“Grian.”
He looked up.
Mumbo’s gaze was steady. “What do you mean?”
Grian hesitated. Then sighed. “I mean I’ve loved you a hundred times, Mumbo. And I think I’m ready to love you like it’s the first.”
The words didn’t echo. They didn’t linger. They just existed in the space between them, real and fragile and true.
Mumbo didn’t smile.
But he leaned forward, rested his forehead against Grian’s, and let the moment settle.
“I don’t think I’ll get it right,” he whispered.
“Me neither.”
“Then maybe we can just be wrong together.”
Grian closed his eyes.
“Just this time,” he said again. “Please.”
Mumbo’s hand was warm in his.
Outside, the rain kept falling.
---
The wood creaked beneath his boots as the soldiers stormed the deck, steel clanging, voices raised. Smoke curled upward from the lower decks, and the sails hung slack, torn from grapeshot. Somewhere behind him, someone screamed. Somewhere ahead, someone else surrendered.
Grian didn’t move.
His sword was gone—tossed overboard five minutes ago. He’d known how this would end the second the navy ship cut across the horizon. It had been too fast, too sure. They hadn’t stood a chance.
But he’d hoped.
That was his first mistake.
The second was trusting that the world would spare them just once.
“Down!” one of the officers barked, musket aimed square at his chest.
Grian raised his hands.
“Mumbo!” he called over the noise.
A blur moved through the smoke—black jacket, gold trim, familiar curls. Mumbo, stumbling over a fallen body, eyes wide, frantic.
“Get out of here!” Grian shouted. “Run, damn it, go !”
But Mumbo didn’t slow.
He skidded to a halt in front of him, arms out. “Not again,” he said, breathless. “I’m not losing you again.”
Grian’s jaw clenched. “You never lose me,” he snapped. “You leave me.”
Mumbo flinched like he’d been slapped.
The guards surged forward then, grabbing Grian’s arms, pulling him back. His wrists were yanked behind him, tied roughly with thick rope. Someone kicked his knees until he dropped. Someone else forced his head down.
Mumbo didn’t move. He stood frozen, hands fisted at his sides.
“Spared,” the lieutenant said, turning toward Mumbo. “As agreed.”
Grian’s stomach dropped.
“As—what?”
Mumbo’s mouth opened. No sound came out.
Grian looked up at him, face still pressed to the deck. “What did you do?”
“I—” Mumbo shook his head. “I didn’t—Grian, I didn’t mean to—”
“Oh, you didn’t mean to,” Grian said, laugh sharp, bitter. “Was it the map? The routes? Or just the promise you wouldn’t be touched if you brought them to us?”
Mumbo stepped forward. “That’s not—it wasn’t like that—”
Grian twisted in the guard’s grip. “Then what was it like, Mumbo ? Tell me what you thought would happen when they boarded us without firing a shot.”
Mumbo’s throat worked.
“Tell me,” Grian spat, “why I should believe that you didn’t know. Why you showed up again, after all this time, and suddenly we get found. You think I don’t remember what a setup feels like?”
The guards yanked him to his feet. His shoulders burned.
Mumbo still didn’t move.
“You think,” Grian said, voice dropping low now, quieter but colder, “that just because you came back, that erased the last time you walked away.”
“I didn’t walk away.”
“You did,” Grian said. “You always do.”
Silence settled sharp between them.
Then Mumbo said, too soft, “I’ll find you.”
Grian huffed a breath that could’ve been a laugh, but wasn’t. His wrists twisted against the rope. “You always say that too.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
Another step back. Another pull on the ropes.
Grian didn’t fight them. But he looked back once.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said. And he meant it.
He always did.
—
The brig was cold. Not dungeon cold—just empty. Wooden walls, rusted chains, a cot nailed to the floor. The cuffs around his ankles made walking annoying, but not impossible. They didn’t even bother with a proper cell door. Just iron bars, a key too far to reach.
He’d been there three days, he thought.
Or maybe two.
Didn’t matter.
He’d been worse places.
This one just had more time to think.
He tried not to replay it. The way Mumbo had looked at him. The way he’d stood there, caught between guilt and grief, and said nothing that mattered.
Grian didn’t know what would’ve mattered, anyway.
But it wasn’t silence.
He’d waited for Mumbo once before. Four years, two ports, a hundred letters he never sent. When Mumbo returned to him, he hadn’t asked why. Just taken him in like nothing had broken.
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe some things had to stay broken.
—
The door creaked on the morning of the fourth day. Grian looked up slowly, expecting the same bored guard, same bowl of gruel, same smirk that said you’re not getting out of this one, mate .
It wasn’t the guard.
It was Scar.
He was limping—barely—but alive.
Grian’s eyes widened. “You—”
“Thought I was dead?” Scar grinned, winced, and leaned on the wall. “You’re not the only one who can fake a fall. I just do it with more flair.”
Grian stood, fast, then nearly toppled with the chain drag. “How—where’s Mumbo?”
Scar’s face dimmed a little. “Don’t know. Wasn’t with the crew when we got clear.”
“You got clear.”
“We had to. The navy took you, and half the ship. Me, Pearl, Tango—others slipped out on the dinghies. Hid in the rocks until the main ship pulled away.”
Grian sat back down hard. “So he didn’t come with you.”
“No.”
Grian didn’t answer.
Scar watched him. “You think he turned us in?”
“He says he didn’t.”
“You believe him?”
“No,” Grian said. “But I want to.”
Scar didn’t argue.
“You know he’ll come,” he added, after a moment. “He always does.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Grian said quietly.
Scar handed him a knife. “So be ready when he does.”
—
Night came fast at sea. No lanterns. No moon. Just water and the sound of guards up top trading lazy stories. Grian sat cross-legged in the corner, Scar’s knife buried in his boot. He didn’t have a plan yet.
Didn’t need one.
If Mumbo showed, he’d act. If he didn’t, he’d wait.
He always did.
The creak of a floorboard outside snapped his attention up.
A whisper.
A key in a lock.
“Grian?” someone hissed.
He stood fast.
Mumbo’s face appeared through the bars.
Grian didn’t speak.
“I got one of the uniforms,” Mumbo said, rushing. “They think I’m a clerk. I can get you out now—if you come quick.”
Grian just looked at him.
Mumbo’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“I have one question,” Grian said. “Answer it right, and I’ll go.”
Mumbo nodded, urgent. “Anything.”
“Did you know?”
Mumbo froze.
The wind blew once through the crack in the door.
“I didn’t think they’d take you,” Mumbo said. “They promised—they said it would be a scare tactic, a search. That they’d board and leave. I didn’t—I didn’t know they’d arrest you.”
Grian nodded once. “Alright.”
Mumbo started fumbling with the keys.
But Grian didn’t move.
Mumbo paused. “Grian?”
“I’m not going.”
“What?”
“I can’t,” Grian said. “Not until you learn that not meaning to doesn’t undo it. That showing up late doesn’t fix leaving early.”
Mumbo gripped the bars. “I’m trying .”
“I know.”
Grian reached into his boot. Pulled the knife free. Slid it across the floor to him.
Mumbo stared.
“I don’t need saving,” Grian said. “I need truth . Bring me that, and maybe I’ll follow.”
And then he turned his back, sat down, and waited again.
Because he always did.
---
The tile was freezing through Grian’s jeans, but he didn’t shift.
Not when the wind slipped through the broken glass above. Not when the water crept down from the rusted ceiling pipe. Not when his arm went numb and his side throbbed where the shrapnel still sat, embedded like it belonged there.
He didn’t even flinch when footsteps echoed down the tunnel.
He knew the sound of those boots.
It had been seventeen days. Long enough to run out of food, long enough for the bleeding to slow. Long enough to remember what silence felt like when it wasn’t earned.
So he didn’t move. Just watched the shape approach from the shadows, slow and careful, hands up, expression soft.
Mumbo didn’t say anything when he saw him. Didn’t ask why Grian looked like hell. Just dropped to his knees beside him and sat close without touching.
The silence didn’t feel heavy this time.
“You found me,” Grian said after a minute, voice rough, cracking in the middle.
Mumbo didn’t look away. “Of course I did.”
Grian huffed, barely a sound. “I thought you’d forgotten me.”
“I couldn’t,” Mumbo said. “Not even when I tried.”
Grian didn’t laugh so much as exhale like it hurt. “That’s the curse, isn’t it?”
Mumbo didn’t answer. Just leaned in slow until his forehead rested against Grian’s. It was warm, steady.
“Or the reason we’re still alive,” he said.
They sat like that for a while. Long enough for the silence to become its own answer.
Grian didn’t close his eyes, but he stopped pretending he wasn’t tired.
Eventually, Mumbo pulled back. “I brought gauze. And painkillers. Scar said you’d be too stubborn to get checked.”
“I was busy,” Grian said, but he didn’t argue when Mumbo reached for the med kit and unzipped it with quiet fingers.
“You’re bleeding through your shirt.”
“Yeah,” Grian said, eyes drifting toward the floor, “that’s a problem for tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow.”
“Shit.”
Mumbo helped him sit up. It wasn’t graceful. Grian hissed, hand flying to his ribs, and Mumbo caught him by the shoulder just before he slumped back again.
“Easy,” Mumbo murmured.
Grian looked at him. “I thought you were done with this.”
“I was,” Mumbo said. “And then I wasn’t.”
He peeled the shirt back, slow and careful. The wound looked bad. Not fatal, not fresh, but raw and mean and crusted with dried blood. Grian didn’t wince. That worried him more.
Mumbo cleaned the edges with something that stung. Grian breathed through it.
“You could’ve let me die,” Grian said. “That would’ve been easier.”
Mumbo’s hands paused.
“I don’t do easy,” he said.
“No,” Grian said. “You do perfect. You do noble. You do walk away and pretend it’s not breaking you.”
Mumbo didn’t meet his eyes. “You always think I walk away.”
“You always do .”
“I’m here now.”
Grian looked at him.
He didn’t answer.
—
When the patching was done, Mumbo wrapped a blanket around both of them and leaned against the wall, close enough that Grian could feel the warmth off him but not close enough to lean.
They stayed like that until the sun filtered weakly through the cracks in the broken roof. The light turned Mumbo’s hair gold.
Grian hadn’t seen sunlight in days.
“I missed this,” Mumbo said.
“Getting hunted down by half the city?”
Mumbo huffed. “You know what I mean.”
Grian’s voice was quieter when he spoke next. “You came back.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am.”
Mumbo didn’t say anything for a moment. Then:
“I kept thinking about that time in the mountains. Remember? When the plan went to hell, and we ended up camped out in that old station with only one match and half a protein bar?”
“You gave me the bigger half,” Grian said.
“You gave me the fire.”
They looked at each other.
Grian didn’t move.
Neither did Mumbo.
But the air between them felt like it might shift.
Eventually, Grian leaned back against the wall and let the silence return.
—
They didn’t kiss. Not yet.
But they would.
And maybe this time, it wouldn’t be the last.
---
The windows stayed dark for hours.
Mumbo stood outside the shop for a while, hands in his coat pockets, rocking slightly on his heels. It was cold, damp. The kind of grey morning that clung to your clothes like regret. He glanced through the window one last time—no lights, no motion—and knocked.
Nothing.
He hesitated, then knocked again.
After a long pause, he heard the bolt shift. The door creaked open a fraction, revealing Grian. He didn’t say anything. He looked like he hadn’t slept, like he’d seen something he didn’t want to remember.
Mumbo offered a smile. “Morning.”
Grian didn’t smile back. Just opened the door and stepped aside.
—
The inside of the shop looked the same—neat, warm, filled with the faint scent of eucalyptus and old water. But the lights were off, and the vases near the windows were still full of wilted stems. The till was closed. The “OPEN” sign sat in the corner, flipped and dusty.
“I had a dream,” Grian said quietly.
Mumbo turned to look at him.
“It wasn’t a dream,” Grian added.
He walked slowly to the back of the shop, around the counter, and sank to the floor. Legs crossed. Back against the wall. He didn’t meet Mumbo’s eyes.
Mumbo followed him in and sat a few feet away.
“How bad was it?”
Grian’s breath caught. “I saw it again. The ship. The desert. The train. I—I think I remembered them all.”
Mumbo didn’t speak.
Grian glanced at him, eyes tired. “We always say we’ll fix it. Every time. And every time it ends. I wake up, or the world resets, or one of us dies. Sometimes you don’t even know me. Sometimes I have to start from scratch. Do you know what that’s like?”
“Yes,” Mumbo said quietly.
They sat in the stillness of the shop. Outside, the city moved on—cars passing, someone shouting down the street, the mechanical whirr of the bus pulling away from the stop. But inside it was just them, suspended.
“I don’t want to do it again,” Grian whispered. “Not if it’s going to be like this.”
Mumbo nodded slowly. “Then we’ll make it better this time.”
“How?” Grian’s voice cracked. “How do you fight a pattern written into the bones of the universe?”
“I don’t know,” Mumbo said. “But I’d rather try with you than forget without you.”
That earned a bitter laugh. “You never forget. That’s the problem.”
Mumbo shifted closer. Not enough to touch, but enough to close the space between them. “I used to think the ending meant we failed.”
Grian looked at him.
“But maybe it just means we get to try again.”
Grian didn’t respond right away. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “It still hurts.”
“I know.”
“I still love you.”
Mumbo inhaled. “I know that too.”
“I hate that I know how it ends.”
“And I hate that you’re always the one who remembers first.”
Grian cracked an eye open. “Would it help if I forgot?”
“No,” Mumbo said, too fast. “No, I don’t want that. Even if it hurts. Especially because it hurts.”
Grian looked at him, and something in his expression softened.
“You’re not scared?”
Mumbo didn’t look away. “I’m terrified.”
“But you’re still here.”
“Of course I am.”
They sat like that for a while. Grian’s breathing slowed. Mumbo reached for his hand, and this time Grian didn’t pull away. His fingers curled into Mumbo’s like it was muscle memory.
The shop was still dark. The flowers were still dead.
But the moment wasn’t.
—
After a long time, Grian whispered, “We should open the shop.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“We could leave. Go to the coast. Start again.”
Grian considered. “Wouldn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not about where we are.”
Mumbo looked at him. “Then what’s it about?”
Grian squeezed his hand. “It’s about who we are. And what we carry.”
“And what do you carry?”
Grian paused. “You. Always you.”
The answer came easily. Like it had always been true.
Mumbo’s voice, when it came, was quiet. “Then let’s try. One more time.”
Grian looked at the door. The sun had risen behind the buildings. The light was pale and cold, but it still reached through the glass.
“Okay,” he said.
And for once, he didn’t argue.
---
The child runs past in a blur of red and yellow, chasing something only he can see. His laughter is sharp in the morning air, too loud, too bright for the quiet street and the frostbitten trees.
Both of them flinch.
—
Grian feels it in his chest first—like a memory dragging its claws against the inside of his ribs. He shifts where he sits, stiff-backed at one end of the old bench, coat pulled tight around him. The winter sun does nothing. His fingers are cold.
The park is empty aside from the child and a few passing joggers. Quiet. Familiar.
He didn’t mean to come here. He only meant to walk. But his feet had taken him down streets he hadn’t thought about in years, past corner shops and cracked sidewalks until they landed here, in front of this bench like it still had something to say.
It does.
Of course it does.
He lowers his head, resting his chin on his scarf. He doesn’t look to his right, even though he knows. Knows with the kind of certainty that lives under your skin. Like a scar. Or a promise.
—
Mumbo sits on the far end of the bench, elbows on his knees, staring at the dead grass. His breath fogs slightly when he exhales, steady, measured. Too slow to be natural.
He’s not sure why he’s here. He doesn’t come to this part of the city. Hasn’t in years. But last night, he’d dreamt of train tracks—abandoned and rusted, vines twisting between the ties. Of dust on stained glass. Of lanterns rising over a harbor.
He woke up sweating.
He hadn’t gone back to sleep.
Instead, he got dressed, put on his boots, left the flat. Walked until the air was sharp enough to make him feel real again. Until he ended up here.
The bench creaks a little when he shifts. There’s someone else sitting on it. Has been since he arrived. They haven’t looked at each other. But the weight of them is impossible to ignore.
—
Grian remembers everything.
The stolen ships and the desert storms. The tangled roots of the forest and the way the Watchers had stared. He remembers castles and catacombs. The feel of Mumbo’s hand in his, cold and trembling and always there.
He remembers the pain, too.
Each goodbye layered like sediment—crumbling in different ways, but always, always there. An inevitability. A blueprint.
He doesn’t know why he woke up this time remembering more than usual. Sometimes it’s fragments. Sometimes it’s nothing at all until he stumbles into it.
But this time he knew from the second he opened his eyes.
It’s happening again.
—
Mumbo doesn’t have the words for it. Doesn’t even have the shape of it. But something’s been wrong for weeks. He’s been on edge. Twitchy. Waiting for something to drop, even though nothing’s hanging.
Everything in his life is fine. Normal. Work, friends, the too-small flat with the stained ceiling tile and the quiet heater. He’s even been sleeping better lately, until last night.
But he can’t shake the feeling. Like someone called his name and he missed it. Like someone’s standing just behind him, waiting.
—
The child stumbles in the grass and falls, laughing.
They both flinch again.
And that’s it.
The moment cracks open.
Grian turns his head slowly. Looks down the bench. Meets Mumbo’s eyes.
Mumbo freezes.
There’s recognition—but not in the usual way. Not in the “oh, I know you from somewhere” way. It’s deeper than that. More uncertain. Like trying to remember a face from a dream you had a long time ago. Like trying to find the memory behind the emotion.
“Hi,” Grian says quietly.
Mumbo licks his lips. His voice is raw. “Have we met?”
Grian holds his gaze. “Yes.”
A beat.
Then Grian adds, softer, “A thousand times.”
Mumbo blinks. He doesn’t look away. “That’s… oddly specific.”
“I know.”
They sit with that for a moment. The breeze picks up, ruffles the edge of Grian’s scarf.
Mumbo turns a little more toward him. “Do I know your name?”
“You used to.”
“Do you know mine?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask what it is?”
Grian smiles, but it’s not quite humor. “You can.”
Mumbo huffs. “That’s not an answer.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Why not just tell me?”
“Because if you don’t remember it, you’re not ready.”
Mumbo’s expression shifts—frustration, confusion, something sharper. “I’m not trying to play games.”
“Neither am I.”
Mumbo hesitates. His voice is gentler when he says, “Then what are we doing?”
Grian doesn’t speak for a long time.
Finally, he says, “Trying to see if this version of us makes it.”
Mumbo can’t explain why he doesn’t laugh. Why he doesn’t get up and leave. He wants to—there’s a part of him that wants to shake this off like static. But another part—deeper, more honest—wants to stay.
Wants to hear more.
“Is that what this is?” he asks. “A version?”
“One of many.”
“And you remember them all?”
Grian nods.
“What happened to the last one?”
Grian’s smile fades. “You don’t want to know.”
“Try me.”
“You drowned,” Grian says, simply.
Mumbo doesn’t respond right away. “Was it your fault?”
“No.”
“Was it yours?”
“…Yes.”
Another silence.
Grian shifts, stretching his legs out in front of him. “It’s always different. But it’s always us.”
“I think I believe you,” Mumbo says eventually.
Grian glances at him. “You always do.”
They don’t move for a while. Just sit.
The child’s gone. The sky’s paler now, the kind of blue that promises rain.
Grian finally stands. Mumbo watches him, wary but calm.
“You’ll remember,” Grian says. “Eventually. Probably soon.”
“Do you want me to?”
“I always do.”
“And when I do?”
Grian tilts his head. “We start over. Or maybe we don’t.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It never is.”
He turns to leave.
“Wait,” Mumbo says.
Grian pauses.
“Can I at least know what you were to me?”
Grian looks over his shoulder. “Everything,” he says.
And then he walks away.
---
The tavern was too warm, too crowded, too loud. Sailors pressed shoulder to shoulder along the back wall, spilling tankards and slurring songs that had too many verses. Candles flickered low in greasy sconces, and the scent of burnt oil hung thick in the air. Mumbo pushed through it all without hesitation, barely blinking at the shove of an elbow or the near-slosh of rum down his shirt.
He saw him the moment he stepped inside.
At the far table, tucked near the fire, Grian sat hunched over parchment, one boot braced on the rung of the stool and the other planted on the floor like he might run. A cartographer’s kit lay open beside him—ink, compass, dull knife for sharpening quills. He was in disguise, but only halfheartedly: dark dye in his hair, collar too high, sleeves rolled precisely to the elbow. Still him.
Still always him.
Mumbo crossed the floor. He didn’t say a word until he was close enough to touch him.
“You look well.”
Grian didn’t look up.
“You left me in chains,” he said, calm.
Mumbo didn’t deny it. “Would you have stayed if I hadn’t?”
This time Grian did look up. His eyes were tired, but not dulled. No forgiveness in them.
“You don’t get to ask me that,” he said. “You don’t get to make this about what I would’ve done.”
Mumbo pulled the chair back with one hand and sat. “Then let’s talk about what you did.”
“Oh?” Grian’s tone was sharp. “Which part? The lying, the scheming, or the part where I saved your life four separate times and you still sold me out to the Royal Navy?”
“I didn’t sell you out,” Mumbo said quietly. “I traded you.”
Grian laughed—short, humorless. “You always were good at justification.”
“They were going to kill the crew.”
“They did kill the crew.”
“Because you broke the deal!”
Grian’s hands were still. His voice wasn’t. “Because they were never going to honor it. And I was never going to sit there with shackles on while you sailed away like some tragic hero.”
“I didn’t sail away,” Mumbo said.
“No,” Grian agreed. “You got shot instead.”
There was silence between them. Thick. Old.
Someone shouted near the bar. A mug shattered. Neither of them flinched.
Mumbo leaned forward, hands on the table, palms open. “I searched for you for months.”
“And when you found me, you decided not to say anything until now?”
“I didn’t know it was you,” he said. “Not at first.”
“Right. Because the fake name and bad wig really threw you off.”
“You were mapping a coastline I named. I figured it out.”
“I know,” Grian said. “That’s why I stayed.”
Mumbo blinked. “What?”
“I could’ve left. I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kill you or kiss you,” Grian said, flatly.
That stopped Mumbo cold.
Grian didn’t look away.
Eventually, Mumbo said, “Did you make up your mind?”
“No,” Grian said. “Still working on it.”
Another beat.
Mumbo ran a hand through his hair. “Why do you always lie?”
It came out harsher than he meant it. Grian didn’t flinch.
“Because you always leave or die,” he said. Not cruelly. Not gently. Just tired.
Mumbo swallowed.
“I thought you were dead,” Grian said, voice quieter now. “And I was angry. And I told myself it didn’t matter. That you’d made your choice. But it wasn’t true.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You never mean to.”
That stung. He didn’t show it. But Grian saw anyway. He always did.
“I’ve lied,” Grian said, more softly now. “To survive. To steal. To stay one step ahead. But with you, it was different. I started lying to make the good parts last longer.”
Mumbo stared at him.
“You’d look at me like I was something real,” Grian continued. “Even when I wasn’t. And I thought—if I could just keep the story going, maybe we could get another week. Another month.”
Mumbo didn’t speak. His throat felt too tight.
“You should’ve let me rot,” Grian said. “It would’ve been cleaner.”
“I didn’t want clean,” Mumbo said, finally. “I wanted you.”
Grian didn’t react. Not outwardly.
But he didn’t stand up either. He didn’t leave.
And that was something.
—
Outside, the wind picked up.
Inside, the tavern noise rose and fell like a tide, surging with laughter, snapping back to low murmurs. Mumbo glanced toward the window, then back to Grian.
“You still charting fake maps for smugglers?” he asked.
“I’m diversifying,” Grian said. “Cartography, forgery, espionage.”
“Respectable.”
“And you?”
Mumbo shrugged. “Merchant ship. Officially. Unofficially, I transport things people don’t want seen.”
Grian tilted his head. “And here I thought you were going straight.”
“I did, for a bit. Then I got bored.”
Grian’s mouth twitched like he might smile. But it didn’t quite happen.
Mumbo tapped the table twice. “You want to get out of here?”
“Depends,” Grian said. “You still think you’re the good guy?”
“I never did.”
“Then maybe.”
—
They didn’t walk out together. Grian waited five minutes after Mumbo left, paid his tab, packed up his things like he had all the time in the world. Like he hadn’t been drowning in ghosts since the moment their eyes met.
Outside, the sky was gray. The cobblestones slick from an earlier storm. Mumbo stood across the street, not watching, but waiting.
When Grian crossed, neither of them spoke.
They just walked.
Neither one ahead of the other.
Just side by side, like they hadn’t spent years trying to forget what that felt like.
Like they might do it again, even if it was foolish.
Even if it was doomed.
Even if it was just one more version of the same story, rewritten badly but still returned to. Always. Without fail.
---
The game started like it always did.
Grian spawned into the world with the same rush of wind, same sudden sun blinking in his eyes. The same land, too—yellow-grassed and sharp with dry cliffs, far from water. He breathed in and out once, chest rising slowly. Then he dropped the redstone he’d kept clutched in his hand, buried it beneath a pile of gravel, and got to work.
No alliances. Not this time.
Not if he could help it.
He didn’t wave when Martyn passed by. Didn’t make eye contact when Pearl called to him across the desert. Didn’t even go near Mumbo at first. He spent his first three hours underground, digging tunnels and laying torches, the silence stretching long enough that even his own footsteps stopped echoing in his ears.
He’d tried the other way before. Making friends. Making more . It never mattered. The ending always came.
This time he’d be ready for it.
This time he’d stop it.
—
He started small.
Tripwires that he knew were meant for Mumbo’s path—he redirected them. A TnT trap under a pressure plate in someone’s base, one he remembered from the last run, he dismantled and left no trace. When Scar planted a tree too close to the ledge, Grian quietly built a fence around it.
He stayed distant but kept watch. Always, always watch.
Mumbo was slower this time. More cautious. He stuck with BigB and Cleo for a while, kept close to Pearl’s tower, didn’t trust traps he hadn’t built himself. Grian didn’t talk to him, not really. But he listened. He trailed. He learned.
—
The first time Mumbo nearly died, it was a misstep off the mountain path. Grian caught the moment—dropped what he was doing and threw himself against the block below, placing a haybale just fast enough to soften the fall. Mumbo didn’t see him, but looked around, confused, rubbing at his shoulder.
The second time, it was an arrow trap meant for someone else, but the angle was wrong and Mumbo wandered into it by mistake. Grian redirected it before it could trigger. That time Mumbo looked up and caught Grian’s eye.
He didn’t say anything. Just gave a small nod. Grian nodded back.
They didn’t speak. But they didn’t stop watching each other either.
—
Scar accused him of going soft. Pearl said she missed his chaos.
“I’m not here to cause chaos,” Grian muttered, mostly to himself. “I’m here to win.”
But that wasn’t quite true. He wasn’t trying to win. He just wanted to see if it could be different. Just once .
—
The third time Mumbo nearly died, it was Pearl’s trap.
A cave-in—redstone wired to gravel, triggered when someone opened a chest labeled definitely not a trap . Grian remembered it well. Mumbo had been the first to find it last time, opened it out of curiosity and got crushed before he could say a word.
So this time, Grian left a sign above it that just said not for you . He didn’t think it’d work.
It did.
Mumbo laughed when he saw it. Didn’t touch the chest. Turned around and walked off, but not before glancing back up at the ridge where Grian had been crouched.
“Thanks,” he said. Quiet. Uncertain.
Grian didn’t answer.
—
He kept expecting the world to push back. For the reset to come early, or the timer to glitch, or for Mumbo to die anyway in some unpredictable way. But it kept working.
For once, it was working.
Until it wasn’t.
They were two hours from the final day.
Most of the others were already red. Grian hadn’t killed anyone. He’d gone yellow early, let Scar push him off a cliff just to avoid suspicion. He didn’t care. Not this time.
Mumbo was still green. Still alive. Still—
The tower collapsed at sunset.
There wasn’t supposed to be a trap there. Not yet. That wasn’t supposed to happen for another hour. Grian had just gone to get more blocks—just a short walk away—and when he turned back, the base was crumbling. A blast. Falling stone.
A scream.
He ran.
By the time he reached the wreckage, the dust was still rising. Logs and stone slabs twisted together in a chaotic pile. The sky above was pink. Mumbo lay half-buried under a collapsed beam.
His name flashed red a moment later.
Grian dropped to his knees.
“No, no—this wasn’t your time,” he said, voice cracked. “I changed the script. I fixed it.”
He yanked away the debris with shaking hands. Blood smeared across stone. Mumbo’s eyes were half-lidded. His skin too pale. Grian pulled him free anyway, held him tight, ignored the system telling him Mumbo was gone.
“This wasn’t it,” Grian muttered. “You were supposed to— I changed it. I remembered everything, and I fixed it. I did it right.”
Mumbo didn’t stir.
Grian’s vision blurred.
He screamed. Wordless. Loud. Ugly.
—
The reset came like a wave.
Sudden. Cold. Tearing everything apart.
One moment Grian was on the ground, arms around Mumbo’s limp body. The next, he was standing alone in the starting zone, the wind back in his ears, the grass undisturbed.
No items in his inventory.
No death messages.
No allies.
No Mumbo.
—
He didn’t move.
He just stood there. Breathing. Blinking.
He clenched his fists once. Then again.
And then, finally, quietly, he said, “Okay.”
No one answered.
The sun began to rise again.
---
The back room always smelled like too many things. Soil, wilted stems, old tea left to cool beside the register. Grian never aired it out. He said the mess kept the place alive.
Right now, it smelled like sweat and something sharp and electric, like ozone or nerves. The lights were dimmed—half the bulbs in the overhead string had gone out last winter and stayed dead. They blinked every so often anyway, like they didn’t want to be forgotten.
Mumbo was down on one knee.
He held out the ring with both hands like it was fragile, though it was just bent wire and three glass beads in red, green, and gold. A little uneven. One loop sharper than the others.
Grian stared at it. Then at Mumbo. Then at the ring again.
And burst out laughing.
Mumbo’s eyes went wide. “Is that a no?”
“No,” Grian said, still breathless. He pressed his hand to his mouth and tried to get air in. “No, it’s just—God, it’s so you . You couldn’t even buy one?”
“I was going to,” Mumbo said defensively. “But then I saw the old bead box in your desk drawer and, well. It felt better this way.”
“You used the ugly wire I keep for fixing vases.”
“It’s sturdy!”
Grian shook his head and wiped at his eyes. The laughter had turned into hiccuped sobs somewhere in the middle.
“I always wanted it to be you,” he said, voice cracking. “You know that, right?”
Mumbo was still kneeling. “I do now.”
“You always were.”
He stepped forward and dropped to his knees too, not caring about the dirt-streaked tile. He took Mumbo’s face in both hands. Pressed their foreheads together like it might keep them both from falling.
“I’m saying yes,” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Idiot.”
Mumbo laughed once, short and shocked, and pressed the ring into Grian’s palm. His hands were shaking. Grian slipped the ring on—it caught on the bend in his knuckle but settled in place after a twist. Too tight. Too loose. It didn’t matter.
They didn’t kiss right away. Just sat there, breathing in sync, curled into each other like the room might shift and knock them apart if they let go.
—
The music came from the little speaker on the shelf. Old jazz—static at the edges, scratchy and slow. Mumbo got up first and offered Grian his hand. Grian rolled his eyes but took it anyway.
“Can’t dance,” he muttered.
Mumbo smiled. “Good. That makes two of us.”
They moved like bad clockwork. Too many elbows. Too little rhythm. Grian nearly stepped on Mumbo’s foot twice, and Mumbo twirled them both into the workbench once and apologized a hundred times.
Still, they didn’t stop.
The petals scattered on the floor didn’t crunch underfoot. Just slid. Some were from the bouquet Grian had knocked over yesterday and never cleaned up. Some were from a box Mumbo had dropped trying to be subtle.
The lamplight made them gold.
They danced until Grian’s arms got tired and Mumbo’s legs started to ache. Until the music stopped without warning, and neither of them went to restart it.
“I’m scared,” Grian said, quiet.
Mumbo didn’t pretend not to hear him. “Yeah.”
“I keep thinking—I mean, this is real, right? You and me. It’s not just something we’re doing until things get hard again?”
“It’s real.”
Grian’s mouth quirked. “You say that like you believe it.”
“I do.”
“That makes one of us.”
Mumbo stepped back just enough to see his face. “Hey. It’s okay to be scared.”
“You weren’t.”
“I was terrified.”
Grian blinked. “You didn’t look terrified.”
“I was proposing. With wire , Grian.”
That made him huff a laugh, soft and half-broken. He leaned his head on Mumbo’s shoulder, and they stood like that for a while. The overhead lights clicked once, then stayed steady.
—
Outside, the street was empty. The front window of the shop had long since fogged over from the kettle they forgot to turn off and the broken heater that kept the place a little too warm. The “CLOSED” sign had slipped sideways on its string.
They didn’t notice.
Mumbo sat on the floor eventually, back against the cold wall, and Grian curled up beside him like he didn’t trust the world to let him be alone in a room with this much happiness.
“I used to think we wouldn’t make it,” Mumbo said.
“You used to be right.”
Grian didn’t say it with bitterness. Just honesty. Like all their missed moments had become something far away, already buried. Still present. Still sharp. But quieter now.
“You’ll keep the ring?” Mumbo asked, like it mattered.
Grian held up his hand, fingers splayed. The beads caught the light. The wire had already started to tarnish.
“It’s ugly,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“It’s mine.”
They didn’t kiss again until the silence got too heavy. And even then, it wasn’t rushed. Just warm. Steady. Grian pulled Mumbo in with both hands and held him like he didn’t want to let go.
Like he wouldn’t have to.
Like that had ever been true.
—
It was nearly morning when they noticed how much time had passed. The sun hadn’t risen yet, but the sky was getting that pale bluish edge to it that always made Grian feel like he was running out of time.
Mumbo shifted. “We should sleep.”
“Should.”
“Do you want to?”
Grian shook his head. “Not if it means this day ends.”
Mumbo didn’t argue.
They stayed there a little longer. Until the air cooled enough to remind them they weren’t invincible. Until the shadows started creeping across the shop again and the first bird called outside.
Then Mumbo stood. Held out his hand again.
“Come on. Let’s go lie down.”
Grian stared up at him. “Just lie down?”
“We’ll figure out the rest later.”
Grian looked at the ring again, then back to Mumbo.
“Okay,” he said.
And this time, he meant it.
---
The celebration begins in the afternoon with bells.
They don’t ring like they used to. Not for weddings or war, not for mourning or freedom, just for announcement. Tradition. That’s all it is now. Every clang echoes through the palace grounds, and Grian stands at the top of the west courtyard with his back straight and his hands loosely clasped in front of him like he’s not thinking of anything at all.
Mumbo is next to him. They’re not touching.
Pearl had been the one to tell him, surprisingly gently. Their parents had gathered her and Grian both in the solar, cloaked in aging robes and years of detachment, and said that they’d made a decision. Not because they wanted to rule out Pearl—though she’d already made it clear she wasn’t interested—but because it was time. And Grian, they said, had the temperament of a ruler. Steady. Trusted. Practical.
Pearl had made a face that said clearly we’re remembering different childhoods, but she didn’t argue.
“You’ll be good,” she said to him privately later, when the door had shut and the titles were official. “You’ll hate it, but you’ll be good.”
He hadn’t answered.
The bells are still ringing when the trumpets go off. It’s absurdly ceremonial, all of it. The town square below is packed. Everyone’s smiling. Banners hang from the watchtowers. There’s red and white dye on the walls, symbolic marks of peace and transition, and flower petals tossed from high balconies that drift down like they’ve always known how to fall. It’s all designed to look spontaneous, but Grian had been there for the planning. Nothing is ever spontaneous.
He wonders if Mumbo hates it as much as he does.
The announcement ends. The crowd erupts. They wave flags and raise glasses and cry out chants that sound rehearsed. Grian smiles and lifts his hand and plays the role.
Mumbo doesn't speak. Not until they're inside again, and the great oak doors have shut behind them, and the guards stationed by the wall are pretending not to listen.
"You were quiet," Grian says without turning around.
Mumbo adjusts the collar of his advisor robes. “You had it handled.”
Grian turns then. "Is that how it's going to be from now on?"
Mumbo’s jaw ticks, but he doesn’t rise to it. “You’re the heir now.”
"And you're still you."
“I’m your advisor,” Mumbo corrects.
Grian steps forward. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t press further. Just lets the silence sit between them until it chokes out the conversation entirely. It’s not new. This is the shape they’ve always taken when they’re too close to what they want.
—
The feast that night goes long. Nobles, merchants, knights—everyone invited, everyone beaming. Pearl makes a speech that’s half-sarcastic and entirely affectionate. The wine is good. The pastries are better. Grian doesn’t eat much. His hands won’t stop shaking.
They sit him on the elevated dais beside the empty thrones. It’s symbolic. Everything is symbolic. He can’t tell if it’s meant to honor him or warn him. Mumbo sits one seat over. They don’t speak. They haven’t since the courtyard.
Later, he slips away through the north hall and down the corridor with the cracked windows, the one that lets in moonlight like water through a broken dam. He finds the small antechamber where the scribes once worked—no one uses it anymore—and shuts the door behind him.
The oil lamp flickers weakly. It’s enough.
He sinks to the stone bench and stares at the mosaic on the wall. He’s looked at it a dozen times since he was a child: a lion wrapped in ivy, a crown held just out of reach. He never understood it before. He does now.
He stays there until the door opens again.
Mumbo enters slowly. He doesn’t speak right away. Just steps over the threshold and waits, like he’s asking permission without words.
“You should be at the feast,” Grian says.
“So should you.”
Grian gives a breath of laughter. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t say I didn’t want to celebrate without you. He’s already said too much.
Mumbo sits across from him, knees nearly touching. “You’re going to be a good king.”
“That’s not the point.”
“No,” Mumbo agrees. “It’s not.”
There’s quiet again.
“I thought it would feel better,” Grian admits. “Being chosen. Being trusted. Being…” He gestures vaguely. “All of it.”
“And it doesn’t?”
Grian looks at him. “You’re here. But you’re not here.”
Mumbo flinches. It’s small, but Grian sees it.
“You know why,” Mumbo says.
“I know what you told me. That your people needed a place to go. That you needed a role to play. That you’d serve in my court if I let them through the gates instead of turning them away like my parents wanted to do when they found me in your dungeon.”
“And you did.”
“And I would again.” Grian’s voice cracks. “But I didn’t do it to earn you back. I didn’t do it so you’d stay near me but not with me.”
“You’re the heir,” Mumbo says again, like it’s the answer to everything.
“And you’re the only thing I ever wanted that I got to choose for myself.” Grian’s voice is low, hoarse. “But you chose this.”
Mumbo doesn’t speak.
“You chose it when you refused to look at me on the dais. When you let the council announce me like I wasn’t shaking. When you stopped writing letters. When you smiled in public and locked your door at night.”
“I had to,” Mumbo says quietly.
“No, you didn’t.” Grian stands. “You always act like duty is a chain. Like it’s a curse that you have to carry. But I know you. You chose it. You always choose it.”
Mumbo rises too. “You needed someone you could rely on.”
“I needed you .”
His voice breaks on it.
“I needed you to be selfish. Just once. I needed you to look at me like I was more important than a crown or a charter or your pride.”
He’s too close now. But he doesn’t step back.
“We got everything we wanted,” Grian whispers, his breath shaking. “Except each other.”
Mumbo stares at him for a long time. He doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t say I’m sorry .
He says, “Your people needed you.”
Grian nods. “But I needed you.”
That’s where it ends. At least for now.
The next day, he’ll wake to a list of appointments and advisors to meet. There will be new laws to review and land disputes to mediate. The realm is preparing for transition, and everyone wants to meet the next king.
Mumbo will be there, beside him. Steady. Sharp. In reach, but never touching.
And Grian will carry it like he always does. With a tired smile. With the weight of a crown not yet placed but already felt.
He’ll be a good king. Just like Pearl said.
Even if he hates it. Even if it costs him the only thing he ever wanted for himself.
---
Mumbo doesn’t notice at first. The news is just background noise, grainy audio coming from a half-muted feed while he makes tea in the kitchen, trying to ignore the twitch in his hands. He’s gotten used to nights like this—Grian out on patrol, communication silent, his stomach in knots—but it doesn’t mean they’re any easier.
The kettle clicks off.
He’s reaching for a mug when something about the newscaster’s voice cuts through the haze. There’s a sharpness, a reverence, and then a pitch that makes Mumbo’s blood turn to ice.
“…unmasked during the altercation with the Syndicate’s leader. We’re replaying the footage now, for those just joining…”
Mumbo’s fingers twitch. The mug slips. Hits the tile, bounces once, and shatters.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe.
Onscreen, the footage plays. Low angle, shaky handheld from a bystander. There’s smoke—sirens—Grian’s voice, unmistakable, rough with exhaustion.
The mask is torn.
And then there’s him .
Clear as daylight.
Grian. On live television. No filter, no distortion. Just him, standing in the center of a broken street with blood trailing down his jaw and too many eyes watching.
The screen freezes on his face. The reporter speaks over it: something about civilian safety, about the risk of exposing vigilante identities. Mumbo doesn't hear a word.
He’s already out the door.
—
The apartment is a mess of adrenaline by the time Grian stumbles through the door. He’s not limping, not bleeding anymore, not visibly shaken—but the silence in his bones is louder than the sirens outside. He locks the door behind him, then stands with his back pressed to it like the world might follow him in if he moves.
The TV is off. The window’s cracked.
And Mumbo is sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, looking like he hasn’t breathed in an hour.
Grian exhales. “I didn’t want you to find out like that.”
Mumbo looks up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
There’s no anger in his voice. Just something bruised. Something half-sunk.
Grian crosses the room slowly. “Would you have believed me?”
Mumbo huffs, soft and sharp. “I always believe you. Eventually.”
That almost gets a smile. It doesn’t reach either of them.
“Did anyone follow you?” Mumbo asks next. It’s instinct, not doubt. “Cameras? Trackers?”
“I went underground. Doubled back twice.” Grian shifts his weight. “The Syndicate’s gone quiet. The press thinks I’m back at the scene.”
He doesn't say they all know now . He doesn't have to.
Mumbo nods once, then again, more slowly. “I thought maybe you were cheating on me.”
That makes Grian look up fast.
“Every time you were late, every time you had some excuse or a call or a new bruise you couldn’t explain. I thought—” Mumbo’s voice cuts out. “I was so sure I knew you better than anyone. I kept telling myself I was being paranoid. I didn’t want to accuse you of lying.”
“I was lying,” Grian says. “But not like that.”
“I know that now.” Mumbo swallows. “I just—I didn’t want to be the person who didn’t trust the one he loves. Even when everything said I should.”
There’s a pause.
“I thought if I pushed, you’d pull away,” he adds.
“I thought if I told you, I’d lose the only thing that wasn’t built on a lie.”
Neither of them sits. The room feels small. The air feels tight.
Eventually, Grian says, “You know, it started before we met.”
Mumbo nods. “Yeah.”
“But I didn’t stop. I should have. I wanted to.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
Grian doesn’t answer.
“I think you wanted to,” Mumbo says, quieter. “But you didn’t know how.”
There’s a long silence.
When Mumbo stands, it’s not sudden. Just careful. Like approaching a wounded animal.
He stops in front of Grian. Doesn’t reach for him. Just stands close enough that Grian has to look up.
“Do you want to try now?”
Grian doesn’t speak for a second. His jaw twitches. He looks away.
“I’m tired, Mumbo,” he says finally.
“I know.”
“It doesn’t stop. No matter what I do.”
“I know.”
“They’re going to be watching everything now. Our building. Our friends. You.”
“I know.”
“If you stay, you’ll be in danger.”
Mumbo nods.
Grian finally looks back at him. “And if you leave, I won’t blame you.”
Mumbo doesn’t answer right away. He just tilts his head slightly, searching his face.
“You know what the dumbest part is?” Mumbo says eventually. “I think I’m more afraid of losing you than I am of all of that.”
Grian’s breath hitches.
“You’re not easy to love,” Mumbo adds, soft. “You’re reckless and secretive and you make terrible coffee and you lie like it’s second nature.”
“Wow,” Grian says, voice dry. “Really winning me back.”
Mumbo cracks half a smile. “But you’re also mine.”
There’s a pause.
“Right?” he asks, quieter.
Grian doesn’t answer. He leans forward and presses their foreheads together, eyes shut.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.
“I know.”
“I wanted to tell you every time I saw you waiting at the window. Every time you asked if I was okay. Every time you kissed me like it might be the last time.”
Mumbo’s hand comes up slowly. Settles on his waist.
“I never stopped loving you,” Grian says.
“Good.”
There are sirens still echoing in the distance, and the low murmur of helicopters, and someone yelling in the street. But none of it gets in.
For the first time in weeks, Mumbo kisses him.
It’s not perfect. It’s not magic. It doesn’t fix everything.
But it’s real.
When they pull back, Grian presses their hands together—his fingers are still gloved, half-burnt, and Mumbo doesn’t flinch.
“You know what this means,” Grian says. “They’re going to want an interview. Damage control. The League is probably halfway to my door.”
Mumbo hums. “And?”
“And I might not get to come back here for a while. I might have to leave. Disappear. Go underground again.”
Mumbo shrugs. “Then I’ll come with you.”
Grian blinks.
“You’re not the only one who can vanish, you know,” Mumbo says. “I don’t have powers, but I’ve got a bug-out bag, a burner phone, three fake IDs, and a lot of experience ghosting government departments.”
Grian stares at him.
“What? You think you’re the only one with secrets?”
That gets the first real laugh out of Grian since he walked in the door. He rests his forehead on Mumbo’s shoulder.
“We’re going to regret this,” he says.
“Maybe.”
“But not tonight.”
“No.”
The camera never sees what happens next.
The news feed cuts off somewhere between the fire crews arriving and the league statement going live. The footage is already archived. The interviews are scheduled. The threads are spinning.
But in a small apartment on the east side of the city, two men hold each other like the sirens outside are just another kind of silence.
It’s not over.
It’s barely started.
---
It’s warm in the greenhouse. Not unbearable—just humid enough to make his hair curl and his shirt stick to the small of his back. Sunlight slants through the glass like syrup, catching the dust in the air, and everything smells like earth. Not mold, not rot. Just soil. Green things. Life.
Grian blinks and pushes open the crooked door. It sticks halfway, as always. The hinges are old, rusted orange with age and salt, but they hold. They always hold.
Inside, the rows are as he remembers them. Squash in the back. Tomatoes still in netting. The old stack of crates from before the collapse leaning up against the left wall, and in the middle—
“Mornin’, sunshine,” Mumbo says without looking up.
He’s crouched in the dirt, elbow-deep in a planter, one glove missing. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow and his boots are already muddy, and there’s a smudge of dirt across the bridge of his nose. He’s humming to himself. Something slow. Something that used to play on the old turntable when they still had batteries to waste on records.
“Didn’t expect you to be up before noon,” Mumbo adds.
“Didn’t expect to see you ,” Grian says before he can stop himself.
That makes Mumbo pause. He looks over, eyes squinting in the light, and smiles. Just a little.
“You look like you’ve been hit by a sandstorm.”
Grian looks down. His hands are covered in dirt. His sleeves are stained. He doesn’t remember digging. Doesn’t remember anything before the greenhouse door.
Mumbo stands. Walks over. Doesn’t hesitate—just reaches up and wipes a smudge off Grian’s cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“There,” he says. “Perfect.”
Grian breathes in. It smells like mint and sweat and dirt. He closes his eyes.
“You okay?” Mumbo asks. “You’re being weird.”
“You’re not real,” Grian says, but it comes out softer than he means it to. Not an accusation. A hope.
Mumbo just tilts his head. “Does it matter?”
And maybe it doesn’t.
They sit on the old bench in the far corner of the greenhouse, where the glass is cracked in a spiderweb and the air always feels like spring. Mumbo pulls out a bag of dried tea leaves—real ones, not the scavenged kind—and they boil water over a small burner, careful not to scorch the bottom.
They talk about nothing. About everything. The best place to grow carrots this late in the season. The last time Mumbo patched the greenhouse roof and fell off (again). The record they’d play if they could only choose one.
Grian laughs, loud and sudden, at something stupid Mumbo says about song lyrics, and the sound sticks in the air like honey.
Mumbo leans in and kisses him. It’s not dramatic. It’s not heavy. Just a brush of lips and a hand on Grian’s jaw, thumb smearing away dirt again like he can’t stand to see Grian messy. Like he’ll keep kissing until it’s all gone.
It tastes like mint. Like home.
When Grian wakes, he’s cold.
—
The bunker walls are close. Metal. Old. There’s condensation on the pipe above his head, dripping every eight seconds exactly. He stares at it.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
Drip.
His back aches. His legs are stiff. The cot under him hasn’t softened in months. He exhales and rolls onto his side.
The room is dark, except for the low red emergency light in the corner. Power rationed again. The vent hums slow and steady. The air smells like nothing.
But his hands—
His hands are dirty .
Fingernails caked in mud. Palms stained. A cut across one knuckle that’s still tacky with blood.
He sits up too fast. The blanket falls.
There’s a flower on the table.
Bright orange. Small. Real.
Fresh.
It’s not just a dream. It never is.
He walks over to it like it’ll vanish if he makes a sound. He doesn’t touch it. Just stares. The petals are still wet from dew, and the leaves haven’t curled, and there’s a little bit of greenhouse soil still clinging to the stem.
He hasn’t been outside in three weeks.
He swallows hard. Looks over his shoulder like maybe, just maybe, Mumbo will be there this time. Standing in the doorway. Sitting on the cot. Laughing from the other room.
But the bunker’s still empty.
Grian pulls a battered chair over and sits next to the flower. He doesn’t move for a long time.
At some point, he reaches for a marker and scrawls a new note on the wall next to the others:
- Brought a flower again. Woke up with dirt under nails.
He stares at the one above it.
- Heard him say my name in the tunnel. Nothing there.
And the one before that.
- Record player turned on by itself. Played our song. Power was out.
The wall is full. Memories that shouldn’t be possible. Dreams that leave things behind. Visits he doesn’t know how to explain. It’s not ghosts. It’s not hallucinations. It’s something else.
It has to be.
He doesn’t cry. Not anymore. He’s too tired for that.
He just sits. Waits for the tea to boil, like he’s not the only one drinking it. Sets out two cups like he’s not alone. Leaves the door to the hallway open like someone might walk through it.
He stares at the flower, and he waits.
Because it’s not just a dream.
And it never is.
---
The screen freezes on a blurry smile—sunlight catching on teeth, windblown hair, a crooked camera angle that was probably never meant to capture something so important. Grian’s fingers hover just above the laptop trackpad, the grainy footage paused on a frame that shouldn’t exist.
He doesn’t remember taking this video. Doesn’t remember this version of himself. But he knows, in the bone-deep way you know a voice before the words register, that it’s him. Younger. Smaller. Laughing off-camera, holding it steady with the kind of joy that doesn’t realize it’s temporary.
In the foreground, Mumbo grins into the lens, a paper towel crumpled in one hand and a juice box in the other. He’s making some kind of joke—Grian knows without audio. He knows the way Mumbo’s shoulders move when he’s trying not to laugh too early. He knows the tilt of his head, the squint of his eyes when the sun’s in the wrong spot and he can’t be bothered to adjust. The house behind them is small, unfamiliar. The fence is falling apart. The grass is overgrown. But the light—god, the light looks the same as always.
Grian breathes out slowly and drags the video back five seconds. He watches it again. Same grin. Same juice box. Same split-second glance toward the camera that flickers too fast to hold. He’s rewound it twelve times.
He only meant to look for an old email. A file. Something stupid, like a receipt or a tax form. But he clicked the wrong folder, and there it was—labeled something generic. Untitled001.mov. Hidden away in a cloud drive that shouldn’t have crossed timelines. But it did.
Behind him, the front door opens.
He doesn’t turn. He just stays there, back curled over the laptop like it’s a relic, like touching it too hard might break the moment completely. Mumbo’s footsteps are quiet today—soft shoes, probably, or bare feet.
The couch creaks. Silence.
Grian still doesn’t turn around.
A minute passes. Maybe two. Finally, Mumbo asks, “What are you watching?”
Grian hesitates, thumb brushing the laptop’s edge. He doesn’t answer. He hits play again.
The video loops.
Eventually, Mumbo stands. Pads across the room. Leans over Grian’s shoulder.
“That’s not me,” he says.
Grian exhales. “It was.”
He expects disagreement. A laugh. Maybe confusion. What he doesn’t expect is the quiet way Mumbo goes still.
“How old were we there?” Mumbo asks.
“I don’t know,” Grian says. “A lifetime, maybe.”
Mumbo stays where he is. The light from the screen casts odd shadows across his face, like someone is trying to remember what he looks like from memory alone.
Grian doesn’t look at him. He presses pause again and stares at the frozen frame.
“Have you ever thought we’ve done this before?” he asks.
“Dreamt it,” Mumbo says. “I’ve… dreamt it, sometimes. You, me. Somewhere else.”
Grian nods.
“Sometimes I wake up and I’m sad, and I don’t know why,” Mumbo continues. “And then I see you in the kitchen, or hear you laugh, and it hits me like—like déjà vu, but bigger. Like I’ve lost you before. Like I’m going to again.”
Grian closes the laptop.
The air feels thinner with it gone. Like turning off a radio that was only playing static. He pushes the laptop aside and sits back against the wall, legs folded. Mumbo doesn’t move.
“I think we’ve been different people,” Grian says. “In different lives. Different names. But it’s always you. And me. And something going wrong.”
Mumbo finally sinks down beside him. Not touching, but close.
“And we never remember?”
“You don’t. I do.” He swallows hard. “Most of the time.”
“That sounds lonely.”
Grian laughs. It’s a sharp, tired sound.
“Yeah. It is.”
Mumbo’s quiet for a long time after that.
“Why do we keep trying, then?”
Grian doesn’t answer right away. He leans his head back against the wall and stares at the ceiling, like it might give him a reason. A pattern. A thread to pull.
“I don’t know,” he says finally. “Hope, maybe.”
“Do you think it’ll work this time?”
Grian closes his eyes.
“I want it to.”
That’s not yes. But it’s not no.
The clock ticks in the background. The radiator rattles softly. Someone outside yells at their dog. Life keeps moving, uncaring.
Mumbo shifts, pulling his knees to his chest.
“I believe you,” he says again, softer this time. “Even if I don’t remember. I believe you.”
Grian looks at him for the first time since he walked in. His face is still warm from the screen. His hands are loose on his knees. His hair’s a mess. He looks like every version of himself Grian’s ever lost.
He wants to say something back. Something real. Something grounding.
But instead, he says, “Do you want to see it again?”
Mumbo nods.
Grian opens the laptop. Plays the video. They watch in silence, side by side, not touching.
This time, when the screen freezes on Mumbo’s smile, Grian doesn’t rewind it. He just lets it sit there.
And Mumbo says, almost reverently, “I think I remember that shirt.”
The lights flicker.
Grian doesn’t look away. He doesn’t have to. He already knows what’s coming. But for now—just now—they sit together. They remember. Or try to.
And outside, the world holds still a little longer than it should.
---
The square is crowded. Sunlight glints off the raised pikes lining the perimeter, banners curling in the wind like they’re unaware of what’s about to happen beneath them. The platform is too tall. It’s meant to be seen from every angle, from every window, from every eye watching behind stained glass and feathered hats. Grian knows—he designed it that way. Not this platform specifically, but the guidelines for all executions held within the city’s core. Visibility, he’d written. Transparency. Honor.
He stands now at the top of the steps, flanked by two guards with halberds and polished crests. His crown is new. It still pinches above his temples. His expression is impassive, trained. He does not allow his eyes to shift. Not to the side. Not down. Not even when the iron-bound door at the base of the platform opens.
Mumbo walks through it with both wrists chained, and his chin raised.
It had been a quiet trial. No shouting, no sobbing, no last-minute confessions. The nobles had brought their evidence—missing ledgers, intercepted correspondences, coins marked with the seal of the outer territories—and Mumbo had not denied it. He had not defended himself. He had only said, “If the choice is between their starvation and your comfort, then yes. I stole.”
He hadn’t looked at Grian once.
Now, as the guards guide him up the steps, he still doesn’t.
Grian watches his ascent like a man carved out of salt. He doesn’t shift. He doesn’t speak. His grip tightens slightly on the edges of his cloak, but it’s a controlled gesture. Nothing the public can see.
The crowd is quiet, but it’s the heavy kind of quiet—the kind that waits for blood.
The speaker—an older man with a voice like cracked stone—steps forward and unfurls the scroll. “Mumbo Jumbo, former advisor to His Majesty Grian of the Western Realms, you stand convicted of theft, fraud, and treason against the crown. You have been found guilty by the council of lords and sentenced to death.”
There’s a small stir at that. Nobles nod to one another behind gloved hands. A few townsfolk whisper. Someone gasps.
Mumbo remains still.
The speaker looks to Grian. “Your Majesty. Do you wish to oversee the sentence?”
There is only the barest pause.
Grian steps forward.
He faces Mumbo for the first time since the arrest. His gaze is direct, but not harsh. His voice, when he speaks, carries over the square without effort. “Mumbo Jumbo,” he says, “you were my advisor. My friend. My—” He stops. Reframes. “You betrayed the nobles who trusted you. You betrayed the structure that kept our borders safe. But you did not betray the people.”
Mumbo’s head tilts. Not enough to be called surprise, but it’s something.
“You acted out of compassion,” Grian continues, “however misplaced. You stole from wealth that could have been distributed fairly. You undermined diplomacy. But you did not do it for yourself.”
He breathes in. It catches on something in his chest.
“I cannot absolve you,” Grian says. “But I will not kill you.”
Murmurs erupt. A sharp intake of air. A low ripple of discontent from the nobles. But none of them move to stop him.
Grian lifts a hand, and the guards still.
“You are hereby exiled from this kingdom. Effective immediately. You will be escorted to the eastern border and released. You may not return. If you do, your life is forfeit.”
He lets the words hang. Then, quieter: “You will live. But not with me.”
Mumbo finally looks up.
His face is unreadable, but his eyes are dark with something that almost looks like betrayal. Or maybe it's understanding. Maybe it’s both.
“You never choose me,” he says.
Grian doesn’t flinch.
“I always choose you,” he says, steady. “But sometimes it doesn’t work out the way we want it to.”
Mumbo’s mouth twitches, just slightly.
“And besides,” Grian adds, quieter now, meant only for him, “you didn’t choose me first.”
The crowd hears none of it. The crowd doesn’t matter.
Mumbo holds his gaze for a long moment. Then he nods once, like he’s accepting a burden he already knew was his.
The guards take him by the arms. They don’t drag him—he walks on his own. Down the platform steps. Past the watching crowd. Past the nobles who whisper and the townsfolk who keep their eyes averted.
Grian doesn’t turn until the doors close again.
He doesn’t move as the crowd begins to shift, unsure if they should cheer or jeer or simply go home. He doesn’t blink when the nobles approach, voices clipped and pointed with dissatisfaction. He doesn’t speak when Pearl appears beside him and lays a gentle hand on his shoulder.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to.
That night, the crown feels heavier than it ever has. He places it on the stand beside his bed and looks at it for a long time. He doesn’t touch it again.
He doesn’t sleep, either.
Morning comes with fog along the outer ridge. There’s a line of horses and a procession of guards heading east. Grian doesn’t watch them go. He doesn’t need to. He knows how it ends.
What the people will remember is mercy. What the nobles will remember is weakness. What Grian will remember is the look in Mumbo’s eyes when he said you never choose me.
Because it was never that simple.
Mumbo had chosen duty again and again, and Grian had let him. Grian had needed him, and Mumbo had needed to be needed, but never in the way Grian wanted. And when it came down to it—when it was all on the line—Mumbo had chosen the people.
And Grian had chosen the crown.
It didn’t mean he loved him any less.
But it did mean they couldn’t stay.
He sits at the council table later that afternoon, listening to proposals about border trades and marriage alliances, about grain supply and taxes and which duke is angling for whose land. He answers smoothly. He corrects one bill and rewrites another. He listens when he has to and nods when he doesn’t.
No one mentions the execution.
No one mentions the exile.
And Grian does not mention the ache in his chest that hasn’t gone away since the square.
The next week, he finds a letter. It’s unsigned, but the handwriting is familiar. A list of trade routes that bypass the tariff gates. A warning about a brewing rebellion in the north. A small note at the bottom:
Still watching. Still helping. But from further away. —M
Grian folds it once. He doesn’t show anyone. He places it beneath the crown on the stand and closes the door behind him.
The weight doesn’t lift. But it shifts.
And for now, that’s enough.
---
It doesn’t feel like the Life Series.
There’s no red names on the edge of the screen. No pressure behind their conversations. No enchantments they’re grinding for, no suspicious glances thrown over dirt walls. Just a shallow valley cut between two hills, sun-soaked and quiet, ringed with trees and wildflowers. For the first time in weeks, there are no arrows in the air. No death messages in the sky. Just the two of them, alone.
Mumbo bends down to gather more poppies and comes back with a lap full of color. Grian watches him struggle to keep them all from falling through his arms and grins.
"You could use a chest, you know," Grian calls from where he’s half-finished a mossy cobble wall. “Or your inventory.”
“But where’s the romance in that?” Mumbo drops to his knees beside the little cottage they’ve been building, gently laying the flowers out in a rough heart shape on the grass. “Tell me this doesn’t look lovely.”
“It looks like you ran into a florist and exploded.”
"That’s the vibe."
Grian snorts. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you like it.”
He does. Grian doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. Mumbo stretches out on his back next to the flower-heart and sighs. He tilts his head to watch the clouds. Grian picks up his stone again, smooths another row into the cottage wall. The sun warms his back, the wind barely rustles the trees. There’s no name tags approaching. No eggs. No life count dwindling to nothing.
Mumbo doesn’t close his eyes, just keeps watching the clouds.
“You know,” he says, after a while, “we could stay here.”
Grian’s hands pause. He doesn’t look over.
“We’ve got enough food,” Mumbo continues. “A little farm, those cows you lured. No one else comes this far. We’re not in anyone’s territory. You and me—we’re neutral. It’s not breaking the rules if no one sees it.”
“Mhm.”
He doesn’t say yes. He doesn’t say no either.
Mumbo props himself up on one elbow. “We could just wait out the chaos. Make a little base. Play house.”
Grian smiles, faintly. “It’d fall apart in a week.”
“We’d make it a week and a half,” Mumbo counters. “And we’d do it with style.”
This time, Grian laughs. “You think building with cobble and birch is style?”
“We’re trendsetters.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“You’re stalling.”
That makes Grian freeze. Just for a second. But it’s long enough.
Mumbo rolls over, lifts himself up, brushes off his trousers. Walks toward the edge of the clearing, to the biggest tree on the slope. He takes out his axe—not to threaten, not to gather—just to carve. The bark peels away in curled ribbons as he carefully shapes the heart into the trunk. He works slow, deliberate. And when he finishes, he adds an initial.
G.
Just one letter. Not both. Not yet.
Grian walks over eventually. Leans on the other side of the tree.
They don’t speak for a minute. Just the sound of wind and soft footfalls in grass. A bee hums nearby.
“We could stay here,” Mumbo says again, softer this time.
And Grian looks out at their tiny house, the incomplete roof, the messy flower garden, the empty space where a kitchen might be. He looks at the wild grass where Mumbo had sprawled and the tree now marked with a shaky heart. He listens to the quiet.
And he hears it.
The ticking.
It’s not loud. It never is. But it’s there—just behind the silence, beneath the wind, under every breath. Like a heartbeat not quite matching his own. The server tick. The clock counting down. The game always watching.
He turns away from the tree.
“We can’t,” he says. And he doesn’t say it cruelly. Doesn’t let it hang heavy. Just places it down, honest. “You know we can’t.”
Mumbo doesn’t look surprised. Just nods.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”
“Yeah.”
They go back to building. The chimney goes up a little higher. Mumbo patches the floor with mangrove planks. Grian adds a flower box beneath the window and arranges the poppies there instead of scattered across the field.
They don’t talk much after that.
That night, they don’t sleep.
Not out of fear. Not even out of planning.
They just sit on the roof, backs against the chimney, watching stars rise over their tiny patch of world. Mumbo points out constellations—ones they’ve made up, not the ones that actually exist.
“That one looks like Cleo.”
“That’s just three stars in a row.”
“Exactly. And she’d be offended if you said anything else.”
Grian laughs, then quiets.
He thinks about what comes next. About the alliances shifting every day, about the game always pulling tighter around them, about how long they can stay here before someone else finds them—or before the server itself decides it’s time to push them out.
Mumbo leans against his shoulder. Just slightly.
Grian doesn’t move away.
They sit like that until dawn.
By morning, the cottage is finished.
There’s food in the barrels, wheat in the field, tools mended, armor clean. Everything’s ready. Everything’s perfect. The kind of base they never get to make in the Life Series—too safe, too quiet, too much like a real home.
Grian lingers by the door while Mumbo checks the fences.
“Breakfast?” Mumbo calls, waving an apple.
Grian nods, but doesn’t move.
He glances once more at the tree. At the carved heart.
Then at the horizon, where a faint name tag flickers in and out of view, far away but getting closer.
He doesn’t call out a warning.
Just turns back toward the house and walks inside.
Chapter 2: I used to think the pain would fade, but it never does
Summary:
The sad conclusion
Chapter Text
The first explosion lit up the skyline like a flare. Half a second later, the power grid failed. Grian didn’t flinch.
He was already running.
Down the broken rooftop, cape half-torn and flapping uselessly behind him, sparks crackling at his heels. The Watcher comm in his ear buzzed with static, then cleared just enough to let the voice through.
> “Stand down. That is a direct order—Watcher-Primary, do you copy—”
He ripped the earpiece out and threw it off the ledge.
It skittered down the fire escape behind him.
Below, the train screamed along the track, brakes seizing in panic as the energy field surged through the rail junction. People on board. Civilians. And Mumbo—Mumbo, who’d gone to fix the signal override after Grian told him not to.
Always like this.
The sky was too bright. The air tasted scorched.
Grian leapt.
The impact of his landing shattered the rooftop window beside the rails. He barely rolled out of it. His wings—flickering between energy and feather—flared once, caught him, dragged him forward through sheer force. He hit the track just as the train crested the hill.
“Grian—?” Mumbo’s voice crackled in over the emergency override comms. "You're not— what are you doing —”
Grian didn’t answer. He braced. Palms pressed to the track, power pulled from the earth and the rails and the broken circuitry overhead. The field was rupturing—he could see it, smell it. If he didn’t stop it now, the explosion would take the train and the neighborhood with it.
He pulled.
The world screamed in his bones.
Behind him, the Watchers arrived too late.
He felt them—sharp edges in the air, the press of magic and threat. Too many to count. But none close enough. Not before he was finished.
The power surged through him and shattered the containment field.
The energy dissipated like smoke.
The train groaned as it slowed—meters away from him. Not derailed. Not exploded. Just… stopped.
He collapsed.
And when he woke up, everything was ash.
—
He was labeled rogue by morning.
Treason against protocol. Unauthorized energy channeling. Compromised containment zones. Failure to prioritize mission over personal connection.
And worst of all— refusing direct Watcher orders.
They stripped him of access. Erased his clearance. Replaced his name in the records with a codename marked AWOL .
By the time he staggered back to the safehouse, half his suit fried and his hair full of soot, he was already a target.
Mumbo didn’t look surprised when he walked in.
“You’re late,” he said, without getting up.
“I stopped a train.”
“I saw.”
Grian sank onto the floor, pulled at the strap of his burned harness, let it fall.
“I wasn’t supposed to save you.”
“No,” Mumbo agreed, softly. “But you did.”
He came closer, hesitated only a second before crouching beside Grian. Their knees touched.
“Why?”
Grian didn’t answer right away. His hand twitched toward his chest—where the Watcher badge used to be. The space felt empty now.
“I think I forgot,” he said, voice quiet. “What it was all for.”
Mumbo looked at him like he knew. Like he’d seen it coming.
“They’re going to hunt you.”
“I know.”
“They’ll send the others.”
“I know.”
Grian stood, slow and sore. “But we’ve got a head start.”
—
The city burned as they ran.
Sirens in the east. Flooded tunnels. Drones overhead. Grian kept to the rooftops when he could, stuck to shadow when he couldn’t. Mumbo followed without question, breath sharp and pace steady, even as the buildings cracked and the sky turned orange from the fires still rising behind them.
“They’re bottlenecking routes out of Sector Seven,” Mumbo said, ducking behind a half-shattered billboard. “We need to go west, through the flood barrier.”
“Not if Cleo’s stationed there.”
“She was pulled two days ago.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
They kept moving.
There were still posters of Grian on the walls. Recruitment calls. Glowing accolades. The one who watches the watchers. He tore one down as they passed. Couldn’t bear to see it.
They reached the edge of the district by dawn.
The water lines had cracked and flooded the service roads. Grian’s wings sparked when he tried to ignite. He let them fall. Mumbo climbed the support column instead, then offered a hand.
Grian took it.
They ran like that. Not looking back. Not thinking about the fact that this was wrong, that they were fugitives now, that everyone they used to trust would see them as threats. Just holding on.
As if that made it real.
As if that made it last.
—
They stopped under an old signal tower on the outskirts.
It was quiet for now. The kind of silence that meant they weren’t being followed—yet.
Mumbo pressed a hand to his ribs. “You’re bleeding again.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.”
Grian waved him off. Slid down the wall and stared out across the cracked train yard.
“They’re going to find us,” Mumbo said. Not accusing. Just fact.
Grian didn’t argue.
“I’m not asking you to be a hero,” Mumbo added.
Grian tilted his head. “You think I did this for the heroics?”
“No,” Mumbo said. “I think you did it because you didn’t want to lose another person.”
That shut him up.
A long pause passed between them. Sirens in the distance. The wind pulled ash across the yard.
“You were never supposed to save me,” Mumbo said. “I made peace with that a long time ago.”
“But I always do,” Grian said, tired. “Even when I shouldn’t.”
He looked down at his hands. Still crackling with leftover power. The marks of the Watchers still embedded in his skin. They didn’t fade. Not even when you broke free.
“Do you regret it?” Mumbo asked.
Grian thought about that. About everything.
“No,” he said, eventually. “But I wish it could’ve been different.”
Mumbo didn’t say anything. Just sat beside him. Leaned his head back against the rusted steel, eyes closed.
Grian closed his, too.
They didn’t sleep. Couldn’t afford to. But they rested. Just for a moment. Just enough.
Then the sky lit up again.
And they started running.
---
The blanket had half-fallen off sometime around three in the morning. Grian didn’t move to fix it. Just sat there in the creaky chair near the window, watching the rise and fall of Mumbo’s breathing. There was a gap in the curtains wide enough to let in some of the streetlight, so the shadows in the room stretched longer than they should have, like they were waiting to be acknowledged.
Mumbo stirred, mouth slack, breath shallow. His leg twitched once. Then again. He mumbled something.
Grian leaned forward.
"Gr—Grian," Mumbo whispered, barely audible, and turned onto his side.
Grian didn’t answer. Didn’t shift, didn’t blink. Just let the name hang there between them.
A car rolled by outside. Some muffled music, some late-night conversation. None of it loud enough to matter.
When Mumbo woke up a few minutes later, blinking blearily at the ceiling, it wasn’t dramatic. No gasp, no bolt upright. Just a slow drag of breath like he was trying to figure out where he was. He turned his head toward Grian and frowned a little.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“Didn’t sleep.”
Mumbo pushed himself up slowly, back stiff from the couch. “You could’ve taken the bed.”
“You were already in it.”
“Still.”
Grian shrugged.
They let the quiet settle again. Mumbo rubbed at his neck absently, then stilled like he was remembering something.
“I had a dream,” he said. “We died.”
Grian stayed still.
“In a desert, I think,” Mumbo went on. “Or a canyon. Somewhere too dry to breathe. You were yelling at me to leave. I didn’t. I think we—” He faltered, eyes flicking toward Grian like he wasn’t sure if it was stupid to finish.
“Did we?” he asked.
Grian let out a slow breath. “A few times.”
Mumbo blinked. “What?”
Grian stood. Pushed the curtain open a bit more. The sky was still dark, maybe four or five in the morning, a faint purple edge bleeding in behind the buildings.
“You said we died,” Grian said, like it was casual. “You didn’t say how many times.”
Mumbo didn’t reply. Just watched him with that tired look, like he was trying to make sense of a sentence missing its middle.
It would’ve been easy to say something else. A joke. A deflection. But Grian didn’t reach for it this time.
“I don’t remember,” Mumbo said quietly.
Grian didn’t turn around. “You’re not supposed to.”
There was a pause. A soft scrape of the bedsheets. Mumbo stood, padded over barefoot. He stopped a foot away.
“But you do.”
It wasn’t a question.
Grian finally looked at him.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Not all of it. But enough.”
Mumbo ran a hand through his hair. “Is that why I feel like I’ve known you longer than I have?”
Grian didn’t nod. Didn’t deny it.
“You say things like you’ve already heard the answer.”
“Because I have.”
“Right.” Mumbo let out a soft, disbelieving breath. “Cool. Normal.”
“I didn’t plan it,” Grian said. “I didn’t want this.”
Mumbo leaned against the windowframe. His voice was softer now.
“What happened?”
The question hung there. Not heavy. Just… inevitable.
Grian didn’t answer. He looked at the streetlights. The edge of the lamppost flickering at the corner. The way the shadows slanted across Mumbo’s hands, like they’d done this before.
“Do you ever wake up,” Grian said slowly, “and feel like you forgot something really important? Like you had it in your hand and dropped it, but you don’t know when?”
Mumbo nodded. “All the time.”
“That’s what it’s like.”
“For you?”
“For you.” Grian’s voice was even. “You’ve been remembering pieces. Dreams. Flashbacks. They’re fragments from the last time. And the time before. They bleed through.”
“But not the whole thing.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you remembered everything—” Grian stopped. “You wouldn’t stay.”
Mumbo frowned. “You don’t know that.”
Grian gave him a tired look. “I do.”
Mumbo stepped closer. “So what? You’re just going to carry it alone?”
Grian didn’t answer.
They stood like that for a while. Close enough that their hands could’ve touched. Close enough that Mumbo’s heartbeat might’ve been audible if it wasn’t drowned out by everything Grian couldn’t say.
“You’re still not gonna tell me?” Mumbo asked.
Grian hesitated. Then:
“I tried to, once. Before. I told you everything. You laughed at first, then cried. Said you wished you could’ve helped sooner.” He swallowed. “Then the world ended again. And when it started over, you forgot.”
Mumbo’s voice was barely above a whisper. “So this has happened. Really happened.”
Grian nodded.
“And you keep remembering.”
“Someone has to.”
“That sounds like hell.”
Grian didn’t deny it.
Mumbo glanced at him. “So when you said we died—”
“Not all at once,” Grian said. “Sometimes apart. Sometimes together. Sometimes it wasn’t us at all, but someone we should’ve saved.”
Mumbo’s eyes flicked to the window. “Why us?”
“I don’t know,” Grian admitted. “But it keeps happening. So I keep trying.”
“And one day it’ll stop?”
“I hope so.”
Mumbo rubbed the back of his neck again. His voice was quiet.
“Do I tell you I love you?”
Grian blinked. “What?”
“In the other lives. Do I say it?”
Grian didn’t speak.
“That’s a yes,” Mumbo said, softly.
Grian didn’t move. “You don’t remember.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t mean it.”
They stood in silence again.
Eventually, Mumbo moved back toward the couch. Sat down. Picked at the edge of the cushion like he didn’t know what else to do with his hands.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “Not yet.”
Grian turned.
“I mean it,” Mumbo said. “If we’ve done this before—if I’ve already believed you once—I probably will again.”
Grian stared at him for a long moment. He looked down at his own hands, at the faint scar on his wrist from the last loop. The one Mumbo had bandaged. The one neither of them had mentioned.
He sat down beside him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Mumbo glanced over. “For what?”
“For dragging you into this again.”
Mumbo leaned his head back against the wall. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
Grian nodded.
“Then I guess we’re already in.”
They didn’t sleep.
Just stayed side by side until the sun started to rise, and the new day settled around them like maybe it wouldn’t break this time.
---
The florist across the street had finally given in and started stocking those ridiculous heart-shaped vases Mumbo hated. He pointed at them through the window with a kind of horrified delight, the same way someone might point out a wasp’s nest in their mailbox.
“I swear they multiply,” he said. “Last week it was two. Now it’s six. That’s unnatural.”
“They’re not rabbits,” Grian replied, flicking a petal off his sleeve. “They’re just tacky.”
“You say that, but I caught you drawing one in your sketchbook.”
“I was mocking it.”
“You added shading.”
Grian snorted and reached for the little bundle of orange blossoms on the counter. “We’re not using them.”
“We are absolutely using them,” Mumbo said. “They’re symbolic.”
“They smell like soap.”
“They symbolize eternal love.”
“They make me sneeze.”
“Then it’s meant to be a tragic romance.”
“You’re the tragic one,” Grian muttered, tucking the bundle behind the stack of sample bouquets. He turned back to the table. “Alright. We’ve got white peonies, blue delphinium, baby’s breath—don’t make a joke about that again—”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were. I could see it.”
Mumbo held his hands up in surrender and smiled. It was a familiar kind of morning: slow, ordinary, sunlight creeping in through the wide windows, scent of eucalyptus and damp stems hanging in the air. The prep table was a mess of ribbon clippings and binder clips and half-finished mockups, and neither of them had the patience to clean it up yet.
“We’re almost there,” Mumbo said, reaching for his mug. “And you haven’t threatened to call the whole thing off in—what, two days?”
Grian raised an eyebrow. “It’s been one. Barely.”
“Still progress.”
Grian grumbled something under his breath and went back to sorting greenery.
They kept working in tandem, conversation drifting. Grian was muttering about aisle arrangements. Mumbo was drawing on the chalkboard again—some rough sketch of a flower arch, too lopsided to be useful. At one point, he tried to convince Grian to let him use moss as filler. (“Moss is in , Grian. It’s cottagecore.” “You’ve never even been inside a cottage.” “What does that have to do with moss?”)
Grian was about to argue back when he heard it. A shift in breath, an inhale that caught partway through.
Then a sharp sound—ceramic hitting tile. The mug slipped from Mumbo’s hand and shattered on the floor.
Grian turned.
Mumbo was slumped against the prep table, face gone pale, one hand gripping the edge like it might steady him.
“Mumbo?” Grian said, stepping forward.
Mumbo blinked at him. His mouth opened like he was about to speak—but then he sagged, knees buckling.
Grian caught him before he hit the ground. “Hey—hey. Stay with me. Come on.” He eased him down, arms cradling around his shoulders. “You’re okay, just breathe.”
But Mumbo wasn’t moving. His eyes fluttered once, like he was still trying, but his body had already gone slack in Grian’s arms.
“No. No, no, no,” Grian said, frantic now. “Not here. Not this one.”
There was no wound. No blood. Just fading warmth and the sharp scent of orange blossoms crushed beneath them.
Grian pressed a hand to Mumbo’s chest. Nothing.
He shook him. “You don’t get to leave like this,” he said, voice rising. “You don’t get to laugh and fight with me about stupid flowers and then go .”
The world didn’t respond.
He tried again. Pushed harder, pleaded under his breath.
Mumbo didn’t stir.
Eventually, Grian sat there, breath shallow, hands trembling in petals and broken ceramic.
—
The shop was quiet.
Too quiet. Even the hum of the cooler in the back felt wrong. The street outside had gone blurry behind the windows. Too bright. Too distant.
Grian didn’t move.
At some point, someone must’ve come in. A customer, or a neighbor, or maybe Scott from next door. Someone who asked if everything was alright and backed away when they saw his face.
No one stayed.
By the time Grian stood again, it was nearly dark.
The table was still a mess. Mumbo’s chalk sketch still half-finished. The orange blossoms sat wilted where they’d been dropped.
Grian didn’t look at them.
He walked to the counter. Picked up the pen from the side and uncapped it. In the back of the wedding planning book—the one with the ugly gold script and overstuffed pages—he wrote something in the margins.
Just one line.
Then he closed it.
—
He didn’t bury him.
There wasn’t a body. Not really. Just a shape, a memory, a heat that had drained away.
The vase of orange blossoms stayed where it was. Grian didn’t touch it.
—
He stopped taking new orders.
The ‘closed’ sign stayed up.
The shop didn’t die overnight. Just dimmed. The petals curled in the cooler. The chalkboard faded. The water in the vases got cloudy, then clearer, then empty.
Some people knocked. A few left notes. “Thinking of you.” “Come by when you’re ready.” “Miss the flowers.”
Grian didn’t answer.
—
It took weeks before he found the courage to open the wedding book again.
When he did, the ink hadn’t smudged. His writing was small and tight in the margin of the last page.
> We almost made it through one.
Almost.
Almost was worse.
—
When the next life started, he’d remember.
He always did.
But for now, he sat in the flower shop, in a timeline that hadn’t made it, and didn’t look at the orange blossoms.
---
The air was too still for a place like this.
What was left of the sky blinked down in broken color, dust hazing the red into orange, the orange into gold. On the edge of the wreckage, where the ruined tower twisted up like it still remembered being something useful, Grian stood with the relic humming in his hand and the last warmth of Mumbo’s life seeping away beside him.
He hadn’t brought him here to die.
But the end had caught up, same as always.
Mumbo was leaning back against a metal slab, one leg half-draped in the worn remains of a curtain. It might’ve been from a library once. Maybe a hotel. Maybe one of those city centers that used to have glass fountains and music playing in the walls.
“It's not too late,” Mumbo said. His voice was thin, but not soft. “You could still throw it into the fire and say it was a dud. You could stay.”
Grian didn’t answer.
The relic wasn’t glowing yet. It sat quiet in his palm, cool to the touch, and lightless. The kind of silence that wasn’t asleep, just waiting.
“You always do this,” Mumbo said.
Grian crouched down slowly. The metal beneath him groaned a little. “I don’t always leave.”
“You don’t always stay .” Mumbo’s breath rattled out in a low exhale. “You find the out. The loophole. The glitch in the pattern. And then you go.”
“I tried to fix it.”
“I know.”
“I built you a water filter, and a generator, and a shielded greenhouse.” Grian’s voice was low now. “I figured out how to synthesize meds from the old supply run leftovers. I mapped out migration routes of whatever the hell those lizard-dog things are. I rewired your spine stabilizer myself.”
“I know.”
“I kept you alive for longer than anyone said was possible.”
“I know, Grian.”
He looked at him. Mumbo wasn’t crying. Wasn’t angry. He just looked tired. Really, really tired. Not like someone who wanted to be saved again.
Not like someone who expected it.
Mumbo shifted a little, slow and careful. “Do you remember that first version of this place? Before the bombs? Before the mutants? The one where we ran the radio tower?”
“Yeah.”
“You always hated being inside. I had to bribe you with coffee to keep you from wandering out into the smog and getting eaten by birds.”
“They weren’t birds.”
“They had wings.”
“They had teeth .”
Mumbo laughed, and coughed through it. His hand pressed to his chest. The bones in his fingers stuck out too far now. His nails had gone brittle from the radiation, cracking down the middle.
Grian turned his face away.
“You’ll forget me,” Mumbo said again, quieter this time.
Grian didn’t respond.
“You will,” he said. “That’s the trade. You reset and lose the weight. That’s why you make it further every time. You leave the grief behind.”
Still no answer.
Mumbo’s gaze lingered on the relic. “You told me once you’d keep choosing me. But what if I’m not in the next one? What if you don’t even look?”
“I always look.”
“You didn’t, last time. I found you .”
“I was busy being hunted by lichen-infected cannibals, Mumbo.”
“I still found you first.”
Grian let out a short breath that didn’t quite make it into a laugh. He sat back on his heels, staring at the sky.
There was a lull. A long one.
The relic finally pulsed once. Dim.
Almost time.
Grian turned it in his hand.
He could throw it. Could smash it into the wall, pretend the circuitry had fried. Could stay here, rebuild again, find another workaround, buy another day.
Or he could go.
Start again.
Maybe find a version of Mumbo not already dying.
Mumbo spoke before Grian could say anything. “I’m not asking you to stay.”
Grian’s head snapped toward him.
“I’m not,” Mumbo said, and there was no bitterness in it. “I just want you to know . I remember every version of you that tried. Even the ones that forgot me.”
The relic lit again, slightly brighter.
Grian stared down at it.
“You don’t get to remember,” he said.
Mumbo tilted his head. “What?”
“You’re dying. You’re going to be dead in about fifteen minutes, and you still remember every time. That’s not fair.”
“You always hated fairness.”
“Not when it works against you.”
Mumbo smiled. “Then do me a favor.”
Grian looked up again.
“When you go forward, try to fall in love with me faster. I’m tired of waiting for you to catch up.”
The relic flashed once, gold-blue.
A wind swept through the wreckage—too sudden to be natural. It stirred the dust and ash in curling arcs, like it was making space.
The glow spread.
Mumbo’s eyes fluttered closed.
Grian reached out and brushed his hand against his cheek.
Then he stood.
He didn’t say goodbye.
The relic’s light overtook him, and Mumbo faded like a dream in mid-morning—still smiling.
—
He woke in a new world. Different smell. Different sound. Gravity just slightly wrong. His hands didn’t ache anymore. There was a scar on his arm he didn’t remember earning. And everything inside him was hollow.
But something tugged. Faint. Familiar.
A voice—maybe, or a tone, or a color that shouldn’t’ve had meaning but did.
He stood.
And walked.
And didn’t know why.
—
Somewhere in that world, Mumbo was alive.
Not here, not yet. Not the same one. Maybe not even one that knew who he was.
But Grian knew.
He always did.
---
The sword hit the dirt with a dull thunk. It should’ve sounded louder. It should’ve sounded like something permanent.
Mumbo took a step back. Not far. Just enough that the shadow he cast slipped out from under Grian’s feet.
“I’m not doing this,” Mumbo said.
Grian stood there, breathing hard, hands white-knuckled on the bow. The tip was already drawn. It had been, before either of them said anything.
“You have to,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“No,” Mumbo said. “I don’t. That’s the point.”
“You’ll die.”
“I know.”
Grian took a breath. It didn’t feel like enough.
“Pick it back up.”
“No.”
“Fight me.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
Mumbo looked at him. Not pleading. Not begging. Just quiet, and sure, and tired in a way Grian had only ever seen after the fourth death, the reset that wasn’t really a reset. When the red came back and never left.
“I don’t want to fight you,” Mumbo said.
Grian swallowed hard. “That’s not the point.”
Mumbo tilted his head slightly. “Isn’t it?”
The sky flickered. Not like a storm. Like code. Like something underneath this was failing.
“I didn’t get you this far to let you—” Grian’s voice cracked. “You have to fight.”
Mumbo’s face didn’t change. “What difference does it make? One of us goes either way.”
“I’m not—I can’t just—”
“You can.”
“I don’t want to. ”
“I know.”
The silence that followed wasn’t quiet. It was full of wind, and system lag, and the soft flicker of particle effects in the tall grass.
Grian’s arms were still tense.
The bowstring groaned.
Mumbo took one more step forward.
“I forgive you,” he said.
Grian’s grip slipped.
The arrow fired.
He didn’t mean to.
There was no choice. But he still didn’t mean to.
Mumbo jerked once, chest caving slightly in the middle. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Grian dropped the bow.
He caught him before he hit the ground.
They landed together—knees in the dirt, elbows scraping stone. Grian’s hands on Mumbo’s chest like they could rewind time if they just held tight enough. Like maybe this one could be undone.
It couldn’t.
The death screen flickered in. Faint red text. Game over. Respawn unavailable.
Grian didn’t look at it.
Mumbo’s eyes were wide. Not afraid. Just—there.
And then not.
“I hate this game,” Grian said.
His hands were fading.
—
The respawn lobby was quiet.
Always was, when it ended. No music. No chat feed. Just a gray-blue void and the soft echo of someone else's bad luck.
Grian sat in the corner. Or where the corner would be, if the edges had walls. He curled in on himself with his hands pressed to his knees like it would keep them from shaking. They didn’t stop.
He didn’t know how long he was there before Scar spawned in next to him. Or maybe he had been there the whole time and Grian just couldn’t see him through the glitch-stretched sky.
“You did it,” Scar said softly.
Grian didn’t answer.
“You won.”
He shook his head.
Scar didn’t push it. Just sat beside him, legs swinging over the edge of nowhere. “He didn’t want you to lose.”
“I didn’t want to kill him.”
Scar glanced sideways. “He knew.”
Grian still wasn’t looking.
“You okay?” Scar asked, and he didn’t say it like it meant anything.
“No.”
Scar nodded like that made sense.
“He didn’t even try,” Grian said. His voice was raw. “He didn’t even try to fight me. He just gave up. ”
Scar didn’t respond.
“I didn’t mean to shoot.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t . I was still talking. I was trying to get him to—” He stopped. Swallowed again. “I didn’t fire.”
Scar waited.
“I didn’t fire .”
Scar nodded slowly. “The game did.”
Grian’s jaw locked.
“That’s worse,” he said.
Scar didn’t argue.
—
They weren’t in the same server next season.
Grian joined late. Scar messaged once—no pressure, just checking in. Grian didn’t answer until the day after he’d already spawned in.
Everything felt wrong.
The terrain was pretty. Too pretty. Not enough sharp angles, no cursed mountains, no half-finished towers stuffed with stolen loot. The border was wider. The rules were looser. The lives glitched when he joined, starting him with a yellow name even though he’d only just logged on.
He didn’t pick up a bow all season.
Impulse offered one once. Grian didn’t even look at it.
He built. Mostly in silence. Scar tried to partner up again—“for old time’s sake,” he joked—but Grian brushed him off. He wasn’t ready.
He didn’t know if he ever would be.
—
It took three seasons before Grian saw Mumbo again.
He wasn’t supposed to be there. Hadn’t shown up on the whitelist, hadn’t spawned in with the others. But one morning, Grian logged on, and there was a name in chat. Short. Familiar.
<MumboJumbo joined the game.>
Grian stared at the screen for a full minute before he moved.
He found him in the trees. Far edge of the map. Not building. Not fighting. Just sitting with a wooden hoe in his hand and a tree that refused to decay.
Mumbo looked up when Grian approached.
“Hey,” he said, like nothing had happened.
Grian’s mouth was dry. “You came back.”
Mumbo smiled. “I always do.”
Grian sat down slowly.
Neither of them said sorry.
Neither of them said thank you.
Neither of them brought up the arrow.
They just sat there. Two players in the grass. No death screen. No red names.
Not yet.
---
The garden’s quieter than it used to be. Even the wind doesn’t stir like it once did. The hedges have been trimmed too neatly, the petals swept from the paths. It feels curated. Watched.
Grian doesn’t wait near the roses. He’s not that sentimental anymore. Instead, he sits on the stone bench behind the statue of the founding queen, where the moonlight can’t quite reach his face. His hands are bare. His cloak’s been left behind.
Mumbo arrives late.
Not suspiciously so, but noticeably. He doesn’t wear anything fine—no velvet or silver trim, just a dull brown cloak pulled close against the cold. He looks taller than Grian remembers, and thinner. He’s still got that worn-down edge in his posture, like life itself’s a little too loud.
“You look well,” Grian says, even though it’s not quite true.
Mumbo snorts. “You always say that.”
“And you always act like it’s a compliment.”
“It’s not?”
They sit there for a moment, quiet. The kind of quiet that’s born from a shared history rather than an awkward one. The kind of quiet that makes space instead of filling it.
Then Mumbo sits beside him.
There’s no hesitation in it, which surprises Grian more than it should. The last time they saw each other, there’d been so much unsaid it nearly smothered them both.
“How’s exile?” Grian asks, trying not to sound bitter.
“Dry. Uneventful.” Mumbo leans back and squints up through the canopy. “Turns out poverty and treason are less romantic when you’re not stealing for a cause.”
“You’re still helping,” Grian says. “I get the letters.”
“I know.”
They lapse again. Grian’s fingers twitch against his knees.
“You kissed me once,” Mumbo says suddenly. “Here. In this garden.”
Grian doesn’t deny it. “You told me not to do it again unless I meant it.”
“Did you?”
“I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“Then why didn’t you follow?”
The question’s not accusatory. It’s just… tired. Like it’s been sitting inside Mumbo’s chest for years, wearing itself raw.
“I couldn’t,” Grian says.
“I know.”
Mumbo turns toward him, slowly. “So why am I here now?”
“Because I couldn’t stop thinking about what it might have looked like if we’d both been braver.”
Mumbo hums. He looks away again. “You’re still wearing the same ring.”
“It’s the only one that fits.”
They don’t talk about the crown. They don’t talk about the council. They don’t talk about the bounty that was quietly placed on Mumbo’s head by a duke who didn’t like being embarrassed, or the royal guard Grian had reassigned to patrol the southern coast instead of pursuing “unauthorized border crossings.”
They don’t talk about the last meeting, or the execution-that-wasn’t.
But when Mumbo’s hand brushes against Grian’s on the bench, neither of them pulls away.
“I missed you,” Grian says, voice tight.
“I hated you,” Mumbo replies.
“I deserved it.”
Mumbo sighs, long and quiet. “You did.”
They sit in that for a moment. The ache of it. The honesty.
“But I hated me more,” Mumbo admits. “Because I knew I was right. And I still wanted you to stop me.”
Grian finally turns toward him. “You thought I wouldn’t?”
“I thought you wouldn’t do it publicly. I thought—I don’t know. Maybe I thought you’d make a scene. Prove you still cared.”
“I thought I was proving that by letting you live.”
“Maybe you were.”
Mumbo’s smile is faint. Pained.
“I just wish it hadn’t felt so much like losing,” he says.
“It was,” Grian murmurs. “For both of us.”
A breeze moves through the garden, pulling at the ends of Mumbo’s cloak. Somewhere distant, a gate creaks closed.
“We’re running out of chances,” Grian says.
“I know.”
“So let’s run,” he says, barely louder than the wind. “Let’s just—go. Leave the council. Leave the politics. The throne. All of it.”
Mumbo smiles, a little sad. “We always say that.”
“And we never do.”
“Because we’re cowards.”
“No,” Grian says. “Because we’re kings. And kings don’t get to be selfish.”
“You’re the only king here.”
Grian’s jaw tightens. “Don’t do that.”
Mumbo shifts, and finally—finally—turns to face him directly. His eyes are soft, but tired. The lines around his mouth are deeper than they used to be.
“If I say yes,” he asks, “what happens?”
“I send a letter,” Grian says. “To Pearl. To let her know she’s queen now.”
“She won’t like that.”
“She’ll survive.”
“And the dukes?”
“They’ll move on.”
“And the kingdom?”
Grian looks at him, full and steady. “It already survived losing you. It’ll survive this.”
Mumbo looks down at their joined hands. He lifts Grian’s and presses a kiss to his knuckles.
“Just for an hour,” he says.
Grian nods. “Just for tonight.”
They kiss like strangers—careful, searching. Like they’re trying to relearn each other’s lips after too many years apart. Like they’re not sure if this will break the world or rebuild it.
Mumbo’s hands are cold against his cheeks, but Grian leans into them anyway. His own hands slide under Mumbo’s cloak, gripping the back of his tunic like if he holds hard enough, the world will stop moving.
But the world never stops. Not for them. Not even here.
A bell tolls in the distance. Midnight.
Mumbo pulls back slowly. His lips are parted like he might say something, but whatever it is, it dies behind his teeth.
Grian exhales. “We’ll leave at dawn.”
Mumbo doesn’t nod. He doesn’t shake his head either.
Instead, he lets go of Grian’s hand, and walks back through the trees.
Not fast. Not like he’s leaving. But not like he’s staying, either.
Grian watches him until he’s gone. Until the garden is empty again.
Until the moonlight no longer feels like it’s enough.
He stays on the bench until the bell tolls again.
Then he gets up. And begins writing his final decree.
---
The door is left unlocked. Not by accident—Grian always triple-checks it before bed—but tonight, he doesn’t care. He leaves it open, the note on the counter, and walks out before he can talk himself down.
There’s no dramatic slam. No suitcase. No drawn-out voicemail. Just silence, and then nothing.
The train leaves at 2:17 a.m.
Mumbo reads the note six hours later.
It’s short. Of course it is.
> Sorry. I just—I can’t. Not again. Please don’t come find me. —G
That’s it. That’s the whole explanation. No apology. No reason. Just a neat, quiet withdrawal. Like he was canceling plans instead of running out on a life.
Mumbo holds the note like it might bite him. Like if he stares at it long enough, it’ll make sense. Then he folds it once, puts it in the drawer beside the sink, and does what he always does when something hurts too much to process:
He makes tea.
Three months pass.
—
The thing is, Mumbo doesn’t look. Not at first. He thinks maybe that’s what Grian wants. Maybe he’ll come back, or maybe he’ll reach out, or maybe—maybe Mumbo can find it in himself to let it go.
He can’t.
He tries. Genuinely, he tries. He sees friends. He works. He even deletes a few old messages so he’s not tempted to reread them like a fool.
But it keeps catching him in small, quiet moments. When he gets home and expects someone to have left a mug in the sink. When he turns toward the passenger seat, forgetting for a second that it’s empty. When he hears a snort of laughter in a crowded space that sounds too familiar.
Eventually, he cracks.
Scott finds him halfway through booking a ticket to a coastal town in Devon.
“Don’t,” Scott says, sliding the laptop shut. “You’ll just make it worse.”
“I need to know he’s alright.”
“You want him to see you.”
Mumbo doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
Scott sighs. “So go. But don’t expect anything.”
—
He finds Grian in a bookstore, of all places. Not working there—just browsing, tucked between two overstuffed shelves. He’s wearing a hoodie with the sleeves pushed up and glasses Mumbo’s never seen before. His hair’s longer, messier. His eyes flick up once, then down.
Mumbo doesn’t approach him then.
He waits until the next day. Shows up outside the little apartment above a bakery and knocks once.
It takes a full minute before Grian opens the door.
He looks like hell. Thin, underslept, startled.
“I asked you not to find me,” Grian says.
“You did,” Mumbo agrees.
Silence.
“...How long have you known where I was?” Grian asks, resigned.
“Long enough.”
Grian presses his fingers to his temple. “God. Of course you did.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t look?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t.”
Mumbo raises an eyebrow. “That’s cruel.”
“You think I’m cruel?” Grian laughs, hollow. “I left you. I ran. And you still came.”
“I wanted to understand.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought we were worth that.”
Grian leans against the doorframe, arms crossed tight. “You want to know why I left?”
“Yes.”
Grian stares at him, jaw clenched. “Because I got scared.”
“I figured that much.”
“No,” Grian says, voice rising. “You don’t get it. I wasn’t scared of you . I was scared of me . Because for the first time in my life I wasn’t looking for a way out. And that terrified me.”
Mumbo doesn’t speak. Just watches him.
Grian goes on, shaking now. “Every other time, I knew it would end. I planned for it to end. I could keep people at arm’s length because I already knew I’d be gone. But you— you made me want to stay. And if I stayed, I could mess it up. I could ruin it. I could lose you.”
Mumbo nods, slow. “So instead, you left.”
Grian swallows. “It felt safer.”
“Safer for who?”
Grian doesn’t answer.
Mumbo steps forward. “You think running hurts less?”
“I think staying would’ve broken me.”
“And this hasn’t?”
Grian’s shoulders drop. “Every day.”
There’s a pause. The kind that’s too full to breathe through.
Then Mumbo says, softly, “What were you so scared of?”
And Grian answers the only way he knows how. Honest. Quiet.
“Losing you again.”
Mumbo nods, almost like he’d expected it.
His voice is soft, but it cuts clean: “Then you never had me at all.”
It’s not cruel. It’s not meant to be. It’s the truth. The brutal kind that leaves nothing in its wake but silence.
Grian flinches.
Mumbo doesn’t look angry. He looks tired. “You didn’t trust me to stay. You didn’t trust us to survive it.”
“I didn’t trust myself.”
“Then what was I even doing there?”
Grian’s voice cracks. “Loving me. I thought.”
“I was,” Mumbo says. “But love isn’t a ghost you run from. It’s something you show up for. Even when you’re scared.”
“I wanted to,” Grian says.
“I know.”
They stand in the doorway, all that unspoken weight between them. Rain starts up in the distance—soft, steady, like it’s trying not to interrupt.
“I’m not here to fix it,” Mumbo says after a beat. “I’m not here to beg. I just needed to know why.”
Grian nods.
Mumbo turns to leave.
He gets as far as the hallway stairs before Grian calls out.
“Mumbo.”
He stops. Looks back.
“I did love you.”
Mumbo just nods. “I know.”
And then he walks away.
Not out of anger. Not out of spite.
But because sometimes, knowing is all you get.
---
The wreck is visible from the cliffs—just the ragged tip of the mast sticking out like a broken tooth. The rest is buried under the tide, splintered against reef and stone and time.
Mumbo stares at it from the ridge. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe, if he’s honest.
Three days ago, there’d been fire on the horizon. Just a hint of smoke curling into the sky like a warning. No flare. No sails. No signal.
He’d known it was Grian’s.
He hadn't said it aloud. Couldn’t.
Instead, he’d dropped everything and rerouted the Aphid west—no crew, no backup, just him and a bottle of rum that hadn’t been touched since the last time they said goodbye.
He makes it to shore just as the sun’s starting to set. His boots sink into wet sand as he walks—then stumbles, then breaks into a sprint.
“Grian!” he yells. Once. Twice. A dozen times.
No answer.
The hull is unrecognizable. Half caved in. Black scorch marks eating through the painted wood. The sail’s shredded. The flag’s missing.
The nameplate— Aviator —is the only thing still whole.
Mumbo drops to his knees in the surf and runs a shaking hand across the carved lettering. Salt stings his eyes. Or maybe it’s not the salt.
He’s not sure what he expects to find. A handprint. A scrap of red fabric. A voice behind him saying “Took you long enough.” But there’s nothing. Just the sea, licking up what’s left like it’s entitled to grief now too.
He doesn’t bother stripping off his coat. Just wades in until the cold swallows him whole.
“Grian!” he shouts, louder this time. “It’s me!”
The waves don’t answer. Neither does the sky.
He dives once, twice, three times. Comes up with kelp in his teeth and blood on his palms from grabbing onto coral too sharp to hold. Keeps going.
There’s no body. No trail. No sign he ever made it off the ship. Which means—
Which means he didn’t .
Which means he chose not to.
Mumbo doesn’t stop. Not when his lungs scream. Not when his shoulders give. Not when the tide turns and tries to take him down with it. Only when he has nothing left does he stagger out of the water, gasping, half-drowned and still completely empty.
The stars are out by then.
He collapses on the shore, sand cold against his face, and stares up like the sky might blink first.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Just wakes up the next morning with seaweed tangled in his collar and the shape of Grian’s name still stuck to the back of his throat.
—
They were supposed to meet again. That was the deal. They never said it, never dared to spell it out, but it was always there—between kisses, between letters, between every dumb smile passed from ship to ship like a secret.
They’d promised, without promising.
Now there’s nothing left to keep.
—
Grian had always been ready to die.
Not dramatically. Not in the self-sacrificial, throw-myself-on-a-sword way. But in that quiet, matter-of-fact way people get when they know too much and feel too hard. He treated it like a logistical possibility, not a fear.
“If it happens, it happens,” he used to say. “But I want it to matter.”
Mumbo had hated that.
He’d always bitten back the urge to say I want you to live instead .
Apparently, Grian hadn’t.
—
They hold a service a week later. It’s barely that—just a bonfire on a beach with too few mourners and too many what-ifs.
Pearl’s the one who says it out loud. “He didn’t want to start over again. That’s why he stayed.”
Mumbo doesn’t reply. He just nods. It sounds like Grian. It hurts like Grian.
Impulse throws the first flower into the flames. Pearl throws the second. Scar doesn’t throw anything, just stares at the fire like it might apologize.
Mumbo doesn’t stay to see the end of it. Doesn’t say goodbye again. The words don’t taste like anything anymore.
—
Afterward, Mumbo moves inland.
Not far—just enough that the ocean doesn’t show up in every window, doesn’t call to him with every tide. The Aphid stays docked. His compass gathers dust.
He starts writing letters again. It’s stupid, but he does it anyway. Slips of paper tucked into bottles, or folded into the hollow tree out back. Sometimes he burns them.
Sometimes he doesn’t.
He doesn’t know if Grian would want him to keep going.
But he does.
Because someone has to remember.
And for the first time in their long, tangled history—
—it’s him.
---
Grian almost doesn't react.
He just stands there, cornered in a half-lit stairwell six floors below street level, blinking like Scar didn’t just rearrange the whole universe with a sentence. The flickering overhead light casts shadows in odd places. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe.
Scar doesn’t flinch either. He’s holding the folder loose in one hand, like it’s not evidence of a war no one’s admitting to.
“You heard me,” Scar says. Calm. No tilt to it. Just certainty.
Grian swallows. His tongue feels like ash. “What did you say?”
“I said,” Scar steps forward, “you’re not the only one repeating.”
Silence again. The kind that’s never natural. Somewhere up above, a pipe groans.
“…how do you know that?” Grian asks, voice sharp, but not defensive. Cautious. Wary. Like he knows there’s only one kind of answer to that question, and none of them are good.
Scar shrugs. “Same way you did, I’m guessing. Things don’t line up. Gut feeling. Déjà vu that doesn’t quit.” He taps the folder. “Dreams that aren’t mine.”
Grian doesn’t look at the folder. He doesn’t need to. He knows what’s in it.
Scar continues, flipping it open. There are photos—sketches, really. Some with names, some just with notes scribbled in a fast, looping scrawl. One of them is of Mumbo, in a suit he’s never worn before, fire flickering in the background.
Another shows Grian himself, mask half-torn, smile too wide, color drained from everything but his eyes. This is the one where he doesn’t make it , is written in the corner. Don’t let him see you fall .
“I started drawing them during the city collapse,” Scar says. “The first one, I mean. With the ash storm and the—what was it—BioSync towers. Back when Tango still had all his teeth.”
Grian presses his hands to his temples. “That never happened.”
“No. But it did.”
“Not here.”
“Not this time,” Scar says, and there’s a difference. “You and him always find each other. That’s the one thing I’ve started trusting. But it’s not always clean. And you—” he steps closer again, folder closing with a soft snap—“you’re the only one pretending it’s your fault.”
Grian doesn’t answer.
Because he knows what’s coming.
Scar leans in. “You’re breaking something,” he says. “Maybe not just this world. Maybe the next one too.”
Grian laughs, but it’s cracked at the edges. He slides down to sit on the steps, arms wrapped tight around his knees like they’re the only things holding him together. “I’ve already broken everything.”
Scar doesn’t argue. He just sits beside him, leaving space between them like he knows how badly it would hurt to be touched right now.
They sit there for a while. The hum of power lines above, faint running water in the pipes, the occasional siren miles away. Static between timelines.
Then Scar pulls out a final photo and holds it between two fingers. “He loves you.”
Grian doesn’t look at it. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” Scar sets the picture down between them. “Even when he doesn’t know it. If I’m there, and I remember , I can see it. Anyone can.”
Grian stares at it now. It’s Mumbo, again. Not in a suit this time—just tired, crouched on a rooftop with blood on his shirt and ash on his face, reaching for something just out of frame. The note reads: He thought you were gone. He cried anyway.
“I don’t want to go back to that,” Grian says.
Scar raises an eyebrow. “To what?”
“To hoping,” Grian says. “To thinking this might work. It doesn’t. Every time I try—every time I think maybe this time I can stop whatever’s coming—something goes wrong. He dies. Or I do. Or we both forget. And I don’t know if I can do it again.”
Scar considers that. “But you always do.”
“Because I have to.”
“No. Because you want to.”
Grian finally looks at him. “That’s not better.”
Scar nods, like he gets it. “No. But it’s truer.”
There’s a long pause. Not peaceful. Just long.
Finally, Grian speaks. “What if this is the one where it sticks?”
Scar leans back against the wall. “Then stop running from it.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“Is it?” Scar pulls his coat tighter. “You think you’re the only one who remembers the bad endings? You think you’re the only one who’s made a call that got people hurt?”
Grian doesn’t respond. Doesn’t need to.
“Some of us live through the fallout,” Scar says. “Some of us don’t. But if I get a shot to do it better, I take it. That’s the job, isn’t it?”
Grian closes his eyes. “It’s not a job.”
Scar huffs. “Tell that to the multiverse.”
He stands. The moment breaks. He dusts his coat off, picks up the folder, and tucks the drawings away again.
“You’ve got a choice,” he says. “You always do. That doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Doesn’t mean it’s the one you want. But it’s there.”
Grian opens one eye. “What do I do?”
Scar shrugs. “Try. For once, actually try.”
Then he walks off.
And Grian’s left on the stairs, jaw tight, heartbeat louder than it should be, the edges of the world still warping like they want to crack under the weight of too many memories.
The drawing lies face-up on the concrete beside him.
Mumbo, reaching.
Grian doesn’t touch it.
Not yet.
---
There’s a knock at the door.
Not loud. Not insistent. Just… there. Three short raps, spaced too carefully to be casual. Grian doesn’t move at first. His hands are still half-buried in redstone wiring, sorting out one of the newer piston mechanisms for the tower elevator. He hadn’t been expecting anyone. He doesn’t get unexpected visitors, not anymore.
But it comes again. A fourth knock.
He sighs, wipes his palms on his trousers, and walks up the stone stairs to the top floor, already half-ready to tell Scar to let himself in next time. Or Pearl. Or literally anyone who’s here to ask about some build height dispute.
But it’s not them.
Mumbo’s standing on the porch. No tools, no gear. Not even his signature red tie—just a black button-down, sleeves rolled, hair a little wind-tossed like he flew here without much of a plan.
For a second, Grian doesn’t say anything.
Then Mumbo does.
“I saw you,” he says. His voice is steady, like it’s been practiced, maybe said aloud too many times. “In the bunker. In the palace. On the beach.”
Grian doesn’t open the door any wider. Doesn’t invite him in. Just stares.
“…How much do you remember?” he asks, and his voice is very, very quiet.
Mumbo exhales. “Enough to miss you.”
And that’s what does it. Grian steps back. Not far, just enough to let him through. He doesn’t look at him as he walks past. Doesn’t look when Mumbo pauses near the window, or when he runs a hand through his hair like he always does when he’s buying time.
They end up sitting on the floor. No real reason for it. There are chairs, a couch, a whole dining room table somewhere upstairs. But neither of them mentions it. They just fold down onto the carpet like it’s instinct. Like that’s what they’ve always done.
Grian’s the first one to speak again.
“This one’s not going to work either,” he says.
Mumbo nods. “But we’ll try anyway, won’t we?”
There’s a beat. Then two.
Grian leans sideways until their shoulders touch.
“We always do.”
He doesn’t cry right away. Not really. There’s no sobbing, no big, dramatic moment. But at some point, tears start to fall. Quiet, the way glass cracks in the cold—silent until it shatters. His eyes stay fixed on the wall. He doesn’t wipe his face.
Mumbo doesn’t say anything about it. He just sits there, solid and still.
“You remembered before I did,” Grian says eventually, voice wrecked. “Didn’t you?”
“Couple weeks ago. Around the time Zed started glitching out.”
Grian lets out a huff of air. “Figures.”
“I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Neither did I.” He sniffles. “How’d it come back?”
“…A dream, I think. Of the treehouse. Before Evo.”
“Oh.”
“Then the jungle, then the bunker. It just kept coming.”
Grian nods slowly. “Scar knows.”
Mumbo turns his head. “ Scar ?”
“He remembered for a while, too. Maybe he still does. We had a conversation about it. He said we always find each other.”
Mumbo laughs, soft and disbelieving. “Of course he did.”
They fall quiet again.
Outside, the wind hits the side of the tower and makes the roof groan. A llama spits in the distance. Neither of them move.
“I thought maybe this was the one,” Mumbo says eventually.
Grian closes his eyes.
“Two whole seasons,” Mumbo continues. “We’ve been here. Hermitcraft. I thought… if it was going to break, it would’ve broken already.”
“It’s not broken.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
Grian laughs wetly. “Ironic.”
“Yeah.”
They sit with that for a while.
Time doesn’t matter much here. Not the way it used to. Not the way it should . They’ve both lived a hundred lives, maybe more. Some fast, some brutal, some long and beautiful and fleeting in all the wrong places.
Mumbo sighs. “What if this is it, though?”
“This what?”
“This world. This version. What if we’re finally free? No resets. No rerolls. Just… us.”
Grian thinks about that. His face twists. “That’d be cruel.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve already done things I can’t take back. Hurt people. Left people behind. I’ve died , Mumbo. I’ve—” his breath catches, “—I’ve given up on this more times than I can count.”
“I haven’t.”
Grian looks at him.
“I never gave up on you,” Mumbo says. “Even when I didn’t know who you were. Even when I was someone else.”
“You always found me.”
“I always wanted to.”
Grian doesn’t answer. He just leans a little harder against him.
They let the silence stretch after that. It’s not uncomfortable anymore. It’s not heavy. Just present.
Grian eventually kicks his legs out and stares at the ceiling.
“Do you think we picked up a curse?” he asks. “During the Life Games?”
“I think something noticed us,” Mumbo replies. “Whether or not it was malicious… I don’t know.”
“Do you think we’re the only ones?”
“No,” Mumbo says. “But I think we’re the only ones still trying.”
Grian hums. “Wouldn’t that be poetic. A punishment for hope.”
They go quiet again.
The sun filters through the windows in strips. Mumbo’s fingers brush the edge of Grian’s sleeve and stay there. Neither of them acknowledges it.
It could almost be normal. It could almost be peaceful.
And for now, that’s enough.
---
Mumbo kicks the door shut with his foot. It slams too hard—wind catching it just right—and echoes in the hall like a threat. Grian startles hard enough to drop the shirt he was folding.
“It’s just the wind,” Mumbo says immediately, not looking up as he balances the grocery bags against his knee and fishes for the keys in his coat pocket. “We’re safe here.”
Grian exhales through his nose. Not annoyed—just grounding himself. “You should stop saying that like it’s a spell.”
“Maybe it is,” Mumbo offers, nudging the door again to make sure it catches. “Maybe if I say it enough, it becomes true.”
“It is true,” Grian says, a little more defensively than he means to. “This is real.”
That gets Mumbo to look up. He’s holding a bunch of celery in one hand and two limes in the other, for whatever strange recipe he’s decided to try this week, but for a second he just watches Grian. His gaze is steady.
“It’s real,” Mumbo agrees.
They hold the moment between them, quiet but sure. And then Mumbo ruins it by dramatically pretending the celery is a sword.
“—You’re insane,” Grian says, already laughing, reaching over to grab one of the bags off his arm. “Put the produce down.”
“Never,” Mumbo declares, and brandishes it again. “I’m defending our home. What if the wind comes back?”
“It can have you ,” Grian mutters.
Still, the tension breaks. He sets the bag on the counter and sorts through it—vegetables, more tea, some weird canned fish Mumbo swears he didn’t buy. Their kitchen is cluttered in the way of lived-in places. Mugs stacked on the drying rack. A lemon that’s been sitting on the windowsill too long. A calendar with no actual dates filled in.
Grian’s socks slide a little on the linoleum as he shifts his weight. He catches himself on the edge of the sink, then nudges the calendar crooked on purpose.
Mumbo notices and straightens it without thinking.
It’s easy. That’s the part that always catches Grian off guard. How easy it is.
No end of the world. No life counters. No giant reset button waiting to be pushed. Just—this.
They’ve lived in the apartment for seven months. Small city. Cheap rent. Rooftop garden with dying basil and too much mint. They have separate desks but share the same weird mismatched office chair. They bought a table together and haven’t eaten at it once.
And they’re happy.
Mumbo washes his hands while Grian puts away the groceries. The water runs loud, the faucet screeching slightly. The radio crackles in the corner, mid-way through a weather report.
Clouds this evening. Potential for storms.
Grian stacks a few cans on the shelf and glances over.
“You got the cheap brand again,” he says.
“I got the one that tastes best.”
“You say that, but—”
“Grian, you make toast for dinner three times a week. I’m not taking food critiques.”
“Toast is a staple .”
Mumbo dries his hands and leans back against the counter, grinning. “You’re a staple.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Does it have to?”
Grian tosses a dishtowel at him. It misses.
The laundry’s still unfolded in the living room. Mumbo takes over grocery duty, and Grian heads back to the half-finished pile of shirts and socks and those ridiculous patterned boxers Mumbo pretends he doesn’t like but keeps re-buying anyway.
There’s something about folding laundry that’s oddly soothing. Repetitive. Tangible. One of the few chores that doesn’t feel like a waste of time.
He’s halfway through stacking the towels when Mumbo joins him, sitting cross-legged on the floor and taking over the socks without asking.
They don’t talk for a bit.
Outside, the wind rattles the glass. The clouds that had been faint and trailing earlier are now pulling heavy across the sky, the first signs of a real storm.
Grian’s hands pause. His heart jumps. Some deep, half-buried part of him starts bracing for alarms, for swords drawn, for walls that cave in and lives that bleed red from names.
But Mumbo speaks first. Calm. Clear. Familiar.
“We’re safe here.”
And—he believes it. Not permanently. Not with his whole soul. But just enough to let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
He nods once. “I know.”
It’s not a lie.
They finish the laundry together. Grian shoves the socks into the drawer with a total lack of care. Mumbo tries to color-match the shirts. They end up swapping two by accident and don’t bother fixing it.
Later, they sit on the couch with cups of tea. Mumbo has one foot tucked beneath him. Grian’s legs are stretched out over the coffee table.
They’re not talking. They don’t need to. Every now and then, Grian leans his head back against the cushions and just watches Mumbo breathe. Watches the way his fingers tap on the mug. The way his hair curls near the ear. The little things that have always, somehow, found their way through every world and every ending and every beginning.
“Do you think it’s going to rain?” Grian asks eventually.
“Probably.”
“That a problem?”
“Only for the mint.”
“You could use the mint.”
“I always use the mint,” Mumbo says, exasperated. “That’s the issue. I’ve created an imbalance. The basil’s jealous.”
Grian snorts. “You’re such a nerd.”
“I’m practical,” Mumbo argues. “The herbs talk , Grian.”
“They’re plants , you spoon.”
“They’re vengeful .”
Grian rolls his eyes, but it’s so familiar he feels his throat tighten around it. All the things they’ve survived. All the ways they’ve failed. And still, here he is—sitting in a too-warm apartment with someone who folds socks and defends basil like a knight in shining armor.
Maybe that’s the point. Not peace. Not escape. But still .
Still being here.
Still having a now.
Grian shifts closer. Mumbo doesn’t react, just tips his head when Grian rests his chin lightly on his shoulder.
For a long time, neither of them says a word.
Then the wind rattles again—softer this time. Like it’s already passing them by.
And Grian leans up, presses a kiss to Mumbo’s cheek. It lands light, just below the eye, more real than anything has felt in weeks. Mumbo turns toward him, breath catching, and their lips meet softly at the edge of the windowsill, where the sun used to reach before the clouds rolled in.
The kiss doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t change the past. But it doesn’t have to.
Outside, the sky darkens. But inside, for now, it’s warm.
---
The warehouse was already on fire when they arrived.
Smoke curled like fingers through the broken rafters. The metal scaffolding groaned overhead. Grian hit the ground hard, cape torn at the shoulder, while Mumbo skidded to a stop just behind him. The air shimmered with the residue of energy weapons, Watcher tech half-glitching from the wreckage.
Somewhere beneath the haze, someone screamed. Scar, probably. His voice cracked around the edges now, too warped to sound familiar.
Pearl had vanished twenty minutes ago. One second they were watching each other’s backs—next second, the comms had fizzed out and she was gone.
Mumbo knew what that meant. So did Grian. They just hadn’t said it out loud yet.
“Is it just us?” Mumbo asked, out of breath.
Grian didn’t answer right away. He hauled himself upright, stumbling a little as the floor shuddered. “Scar’s still out there,” he said instead.
“Scar’s lost it,” Mumbo snapped. “He turned on us three missions ago , Grian, you just didn’t want to see it.”
Grian turned, eyes bloodshot. “I saw it.”
Mumbo stared at him. The building shuddered again, and a second blast cracked through the eastern wall.
They ducked. Concrete split down the side of a column. Sparks rained from the ceiling.
“—We have to go,” Mumbo said when it cleared, voice low. “We can’t win this.”
“I know.”
“Then come on.” He caught Grian’s wrist. “Come on, let’s—”
Grian pulled back.
Just a little. Just enough.
Mumbo froze. “Grian.”
“They’re not after you ,” Grian said quietly. “They never were.”
Mumbo let go. “Don’t.”
“You can still get out.”
“No—”
“You’ve done enough.”
Mumbo’s hands clenched at his sides. “I’m not leaving you again.”
“You didn’t leave. You survived.”
“That’s not the same thing—”
Grian looked at him. Really looked. “It is.”
Mumbo’s breath caught. “Will I see you again?”
The question sounded too young. Too raw. He hadn’t meant to say it like that.
Grian flinched like it hurt. His jaw worked for a second, like he was trying not to speak at all. Then, quietly, without looking him in the eye:
“In another life.”
Mumbo stared at him.
Smoke clawed past his boots. The Watchers were getting closer. He could hear the static buzz of their suits, the click-click-hum of their hover-drives on approach.
Grian stepped back.
“Mumbo. Run.”
And this time—he did.
He ran.
He didn’t look back.
Didn’t mean he didn’t hear the blast.
Didn’t mean he didn’t feel the warehouse collapse behind him.
—
The safehouse was a week south of the city, past the flood plains and under the radar of any comm tower still loyal to Watcher surveillance.
Mumbo made it there on foot. Four safehouses, three abandoned subways, and two fights later, but he made it.
He didn’t talk to anyone.
He didn’t answer any comms.
He stitched his own arm back together, cleaned his gear, took a shower that ran cold after four minutes.
He didn’t ask about Pearl.
He didn’t ask about Scar.
He didn’t ask about Grian .
They didn’t have anything new to tell him anyway.
Someone patched through an intercepted signal three days later. A pulse, a half-second spike of energy so precisely coded it could only mean one thing: Watchers, confirming termination.
No name. No footage. Just a tone.
It rang in his ears long after the broadcast ended.
He didn’t sleep that night.
—
There were nights when he still swore he saw him. On rooftops. In crowds. In the distance, just far enough to doubt.
He stopped turning his head. Stopped chasing it.
The city fell. Then it rebuilt. Then it fell again.
The resistance restructured into something quieter. Ghosts and hushed voices and lines of code that left no signature. Mumbo helped when they asked. Otherwise, he stayed gone.
He told himself that was the point.
—
A year passed.
The war never really ended. It just shifted sideways. Quieter fronts. Less fire. More memory.
One night, in a place that had once been a library before the shelling, Mumbo found a half-charred book. The inside was warped from water damage. But someone had underlined a line on the first page, heavy and precise:
"The world ends quietly for the ones who’ve seen it too loud."
He ripped the page out and kept it.
—
Two years.
He stopped checking rooftops.
Three.
Someone slipped him coordinates with no sender. He followed anyway. Nothing there. Just ocean.
Four.
There was a new name rising in the underground, masked and sharp-tongued and reckless as hell. They called him Wingless. Mumbo didn’t ask.
He already knew it wasn’t Grian. Just another ghost.
—
By five years, the ache dulled. Not in a healing way. Just in the way all old pain turns familiar.
He didn’t know what made him go back.
Maybe it was the storm. Maybe it was the radio static. Maybe it was nothing.
But five years to the day, Mumbo returned to the wreck.
The warehouse was gone now—just a foundation of ash and twisted steel overgrown with moss. Weeds poked through the rusted floor grates. The air didn’t even smell like smoke anymore.
But he knew the shape of loss when he walked into it.
He stood in the center, boots scuffing against scorched concrete.
Closed his eyes.
Said nothing.
The wind passed him.
For a moment, it felt like breath.
For a moment, it felt like Grian might be watching.
For a moment, Mumbo almost turned around.
But when he opened his eyes again, he was still alone.
And somewhere, far above or far away, the Watchers watched on.
---
The shrine wasn’t meant to be anything, at first.
Just something to do with his hands. Something to break the stillness that had followed him off the ship like a second shadow.
It started with driftwood. Pieces he found wedged into the rocks near the tidepools, still salt-wet and pale where the bark had stripped away. Then glass—shattered green bottles, old lantern panes, rounded sea glass in blues and whites that looked like old sky.
He didn’t plan it. He didn’t measure or design or name what he was building. Just found a patch of sand past the cliffs and knelt in it, working until the tide got too close to ignore.
He didn’t know why he was doing it. That wasn’t the point.
The ocean called him Grian’s name.
Sometimes in the rustle of the tidegrass. Sometimes in the cry of gulls overhead. Mostly in the way the waves crashed, retreated, crashed again, like something trying to speak and failing.
The same way Mumbo did when he opened his mouth to say anything.
He stayed on the island long after the rest of the crew had moved on.
It wasn’t even their island. Just a temporary berth—a speck of green on the map that had a water supply, a stretch of flat shoreline, and enough cover to disappear. It wasn’t special.
But Mumbo stayed.
He had no orders. No plans. No map. Only the tide and the slow ache of muscle memory.
He woke up early each morning and walked the shoreline. Checked the edge of the cliff for wreckage, even though he already knew he wouldn’t find any. Sometimes, in a moment of weakness, he even took out the spyglass.
Just in case.
Just in case he was wrong.
(He wasn’t.)
By the end of the week, the shrine had grown taller than him.
Driftwood stacked into uneven spires. Glass pieces slotted between them, catching the light when the sun shifted right. One piece of rigging wrapped like a tether around the middle, knotted and frayed.
Mumbo added a feather one day—bright red, maybe from a parrot, maybe not. He didn’t remember where it came from. Just found it in his satchel and stuck it into the highest branch like a flag.
He didn’t call it Grian’s shrine. Didn’t call it anything.
But when he sat in front of it, he felt like he wasn’t entirely alone.
Even if he was.
—
People came and went.
Some were sailors from the old crew, checking in with solemn faces and uncertain eyes. They brought bread, news, questions. Most didn’t stay.
No one asked Mumbo to leave.
They just watched him, said nothing, and went.
He didn’t mind. Didn’t care, really. Their lives kept moving. So did the current. So did the wind.
But Mumbo’s world had narrowed down to the weight of sea glass in his palm, the sound of the surf at dawn, the quiet ache behind his ribs that never got worse, never got better.
It was only after the second month that he started talking out loud again.
“If you’re still out there,” he said once, kneeling in front of the shrine with a soaked rope in his hands, “I’m waiting.”
He wasn’t sure who he was saying it to.
Wasn’t sure why the words felt wrong in his mouth.
He didn’t say Grian’s name. Not even in the quiet.
It was easier that way. Easier to keep it vague, to pretend this waiting wasn’t grief.
(Wasn’t failure.)
—
The sea didn’t answer.
It never did.
But sometimes—when the sky turned pink just before sunset, when the tide lapped at his boots like a dog nosing for food, when the glass caught the light just so—Mumbo forgot what he was waiting for.
Not completely.
Just for a second.
A long blink. A breath. A shift in the wind.
And then it was back.
Sometimes he’d frown at the shrine, suddenly uncertain what it was supposed to be. Why he’d built it. Who it was for.
And then it would hit him again like a wave to the chest. And he’d remember. And he’d sit down hard in the sand like it had knocked the air from his lungs.
He never cried.
Or if he did, he didn’t notice.
—
One morning, there were footprints in the sand.
Not fresh—washed out near the water’s edge, only half a heel and a smudged toe left behind. Could’ve been from a bird. Could’ve been his own from the day before. He didn’t follow them.
But he stared at them for a long time.
Longer than made sense.
He watched the tide erase them completely, then stood there for a while after, not sure what he’d been expecting.
He didn’t say anything that day. Not even to the sea.
He just sat near the shrine with his head in his hands, listening to the wind claw at the glass.
—
When the rain came, he let it.
Didn’t cover the shrine. Didn’t move his bedroll. Didn’t light the fire.
He just let it fall.
It soaked through everything. His clothes, his hair, the feathers, the rope, the paper he’d tucked under one of the rocks weeks ago with something scribbled on it that he didn’t remember writing.
The ink ran until the page was just blotched lines.
He didn’t replace it.
He forgot it was there.
—
“If you’re still out there,” he whispered one night, eyes closed, forehead resting against the driftwood, “I’m here. I’m still here.”
The shrine didn’t answer.
But the wind pulled at his coat like it wanted something. And the waves whispered something that almost sounded like laughter.
Mumbo didn’t open his eyes.
He just sat there, breathing shallow, until the tide rose high enough to touch his toes.
He didn’t move.
Not yet.
—
He didn’t know how long it had been.
He didn’t keep track anymore.
Sometimes he felt the urge to pack up. To leave. To sail somewhere warm, or busy, or loud. He never did.
He didn’t have a ship. Didn’t have a crew.
Didn’t have Grian.
And the idea of setting out again without him felt more wrong than staying.
So he stayed.
The shrine stayed.
The ocean kept crashing.
And Mumbo sat on the shore, fingers digging into damp sand, trying to remember what, exactly, he was waiting for—what promise had been made, what name he hadn’t let himself say.
Somewhere across the waves, the world spun on.
And he waited.
---
The room echoed with reflections.
Mirrors lined every surface—walls, ceiling, floor—and none of them were kind. Some shimmered like water, blurred and distorted. Others were sharp enough to show the blood under Grian’s nails.
Every version of him stood in those mirrors.
Every failure.
Every loss.
He watched himself pulled underwater. Watched himself burnt to ash. Watched himself crawling through a battlefield, screaming Mumbo’s name, hearing nothing in return.
He didn’t look away.
That was the deal, wasn’t it? See everything. Know the truth. Carry it.
“Still think you’re the one who can fix it?” Pearl asked, arms crossed.
She wasn’t in the mirrors. Just here. Just real.
Grian didn’t answer. He stared at the glass in front of him—one version where he’d made it in time. Pulled Mumbo out from the rubble. Held him like it would matter.
But Mumbo still died.
A slow bleed. A shaky breath. Grian’s hands pressed tight against the wound. Useless.
Pearl sighed behind him. “You’re not fixing anything.”
“I know,” he said.
“You’re reliving it.”
“I know .”
His voice cracked on the second word, sharp and too loud. It bounced off the mirrors, came back to him warped.
Pearl didn’t flinch. Just stepped closer, quiet, like she knew he wouldn’t listen anyway. She was probably right.
Grian gripped the edge of the console, fingertips white with pressure. The metal beneath his palms was humming—alive, almost. The kind of ancient tech that ran on thought and pain and something older than magic.
“This time,” he muttered. “This time I’ll get it right.”
Pearl shook her head. She’d heard it before. They both had.
She turned to walk. No urgency, no anger. Just… done. Like the words weren’t worth the air anymore.
“I find him in every lifetime,” Grian said, not quite a shout.
Pearl stopped. Didn’t look back.
“It has to work out once, right?” he said. “Just once.”
Slowly, she turned. Her face was unreadable at first. Then a sad smile tugged at her lips—tired, knowing.
“It has to,” she said.
Then she walked away.
—
He didn’t follow her.
The console flickered under his hands, one screen breaking into shards of light that folded out into a different world.
One he didn’t recognize.
That happened sometimes. New timelines bloomed like rot when he wasn’t watching. Some version of him always died, always chose wrong, always left too soon or stayed too long. Some versions weren’t even him. Some were versions of Mumbo.
In this one, Mumbo wore white and gold. No scars. No blood.
He stood at the helm of a floating ship, something built from glass and light. A fleet behind him. A purpose in his eyes.
Grian didn’t exist in that world.
He stepped back from the console.
Another screen bloomed. And another. And another.
Mumbo with blood on his lips. Mumbo lost to static. Mumbo choking out Grian’s name over a radio that never transmitted.
He watched all of them. Made himself watch.
The Watchers didn’t interfere anymore. Not here. Not in this space between.
He’d earned that much.
They called it observation. A gift, they said. Knowledge. Understanding.
But it was a box. A loop. A prison made of echoes.
He stayed in it willingly.
The room changed around him. Walls stretching, folding. The reflections twisted into tunnels, each ending in a version of Mumbo’s face.
Grian didn’t know if that was the machine reacting to him or just his mind breaking a little more.
He touched the closest mirror.
It rippled.
This one was quiet. A life that could’ve been peaceful. Mumbo working a garden. A dog barking somewhere off-screen. No explosions. No masks.
Grian didn’t know what version of himself lived there. If any.
He almost stepped through.
Then the mirror glitched.
The garden caught fire. The sky split. Mumbo ran for something, someone, screaming.
Grian turned away.
—
He lost time again.
Didn’t know how much.
There was no sun here, no clock. Just infinite corridors of glass, reflections of lives that never lasted, and a console that waited for his next command.
He didn’t speak it aloud. Just thought it.
The console responded anyway.
The mirror showed the first time he met Mumbo. Not the canonical one. Not the one with explosions and redstone and a rivalry.
No, this was smaller. A soft world. Mumbo had laughed at something Grian had said, that awkward crinkly-eyed laugh like he couldn’t help it. Grian had looked stunned for a second, like he hadn’t been expecting it to work.
That version of Grian looked happy.
That version of Mumbo didn’t know what was coming.
Grian reached for the mirror again. Pressed his palm to it.
The surface trembled. Resisted.
He pushed harder.
The console beeped behind him. Error tone. Timeline sealed.
Grian’s jaw clenched.
He tried again.
The mirror fractured. Light split through it, jagged and wrong. A voice—Watcher, maybe, or maybe just his own—whispered not this one.
He stepped back.
The mirror healed.
—
At some point, he stopped trying to go through.
He just watched.
He watched versions of himself fall in love.
He watched versions of Mumbo walk away.
He watched them die. Over and over. Bright. Brutal. Sometimes it was quiet, and that was worse.
Sometimes Grian cried. Usually not. More often, he just sat in the middle of the room, watching the mirrors spiral around him like orbiting stars, trying to map the pattern.
There wasn’t one.
—
Pearl came back.
Eventually.
She didn’t knock. Just appeared at the threshold and leaned against the doorframe.
“You eating?” she asked.
“No.”
“Sleeping?”
“No.”
She walked in. Looked at the console, the spiraling mirrors, the broken ones on the floor from when he’d thrown something days ago. Or hours. Or years.
She didn’t say anything.
He finally glanced up. “There’s one version where we don’t meet.”
She raised a brow. “You and Mumbo?”
“No. Me and you .”
Pearl tilted her head. “Weird.”
He nodded. “You’re so happy in that one.”
Pearl frowned. “So?”
“So I’m wondering if it’s me. If I’m the variable.”
She looked at him like he’d said something deeply stupid. “You think you’re the curse?”
“I think I’m the constant.”
Pearl crossed the room. “You think love’s supposed to survive entropy? You think grief’s not gonna find a way through?”
He didn’t respond.
She sat beside him. Didn’t touch him. Just sat.
“I get it,” she said after a while. “You keep thinking if you could just make the right choice—”
“It wouldn’t end the same.”
“Yeah.” She paused. “But it always does.”
He nodded. Slowly. Like his neck was too tired to move any faster.
“I’m not trying to fix it anymore,” he said.
“No?”
“I’m trying to understand what I broke .”
Pearl leaned back on her hands. “That’s worse.”
He laughed, but it didn’t sound like him.
—
Later, when she was gone again, he stood in front of the console.
This time, he didn’t pick a world.
He picked a moment.
Just one.
The first time Mumbo said his name like it meant something.
Grian let the mirror load. Let the warmth of that second bathe the room like sunlight, even though he knew it wasn’t real.
He didn’t reach through.
He just watched.
Because maybe this time—maybe if he just stayed here, quiet and still—it wouldn’t end.
---
The coronation is held at dusk. Gold banners hang from every parapet, every steeple, every arched walkway of the castle that once felt like home. Grian barely hears the roar of the crowd when the crown is placed on his head. It’s heavy—not because of weight, but because it doesn’t suit him. Not really. It never did.
He keeps his hands steady. He keeps his face still. He breathes.
Later, the cheers will blur. The scent of lavender in the hall, the burn of incense, the wine pressed into his palm—he’ll forget all of it. What he’ll remember is Pearl’s eyes across the dais, quiet and unreadable. What he’ll remember is the way the ring on his finger shifted ever so slightly when the scepter was passed into his grasp.
He'll remember that Mumbo wasn’t in the crowd.
The garden is exactly as he left it, because Grian made sure of that. No one else uses it anymore. The official gardens—the ones the public can stroll through, the ones with marble paths and curated views—are enough for everyone else. But this one’s locked. This one’s guarded. This one’s his.
He waits.
The moon is higher than he expected by the time Mumbo appears from the far arch, hands tucked into his sleeves. He looks tired. Not like he hasn’t slept, but like the kind of tired that gets built into your bones. Like he carries something no one else can see.
Grian doesn’t get up. He doesn’t speak. He lets Mumbo reach him in silence.
“You once promised we’d run,” Mumbo says. His voice doesn’t waver. It doesn’t accuse.
Grian still can’t look at him. “I lied,” he says. “But I loved you when I said it.”
Mumbo nods, just once. He glances toward the fountain, dry now, and leans against the stone rim. “I know.”
They stand there for a while, the wind dragging through the hedges. Grian presses his palms flat to the bench and watches the spot where the roses used to bloom. He remembers hiding there once, laughing against Mumbo’s mouth. He remembers sunburnt skin and stained hands. He remembers promises. Small ones. Big ones. Stupid ones.
“They cleared your name,” he says after a while. “The council. Pearl made sure of it.”
Mumbo shrugs. “Didn’t ask them to.”
“She said you wouldn’t.” Grian twists the ring on his finger. “She said that if you were going to stay gone, you should at least stop being hunted.”
“I appreciate that.”
Grian hums. “You’re not staying, though.” He didn’t word it as a question, because he already knew the answer.
Mumbo finally turns to look at him. “No.”
“Just wanted to see if I’d actually do it?”
“Wanted to see if you’d look like you meant it.” He studies him for a moment longer. “You do.”
“I do.”
It’s too easy, then, to slip into old patterns. Grian’s hand lifts, and Mumbo doesn’t flinch when he tucks a stray lock of hair behind his ear. Their eyes meet, and neither of them tries to pretend this doesn’t ache. This always aches.
Mumbo says, “Do you remember the orchard?”
“Yes.”
“You asked me to build you a cottage.”
Grian smiles faintly. “You said it was too far from the capital.”
“I said it’d take too long to get back if things went wrong.” Mumbo’s gaze drops. “I think that was the first time I realized you were never going to leave.”
“I wanted to.” Grian looks at his hands. “You believe that, right?”
“I do.” Mumbo’s smile is tired. “You never stopped wanting.”
They talk, then, the way people do when there’s no real point in pretending anything can be fixed. They talk about the bakery that used to sell bread that tasted like honey. They talk about Ren, who left court after that whole ordeal with the northern territories, and how he sent Mumbo letters—strange ones, off-topic, but well-meaning. They talk about Impulse’s third child, and how Xisuma tried to retire again and failed miserably.
They talk like nothing matters. Like everything still could.
At some point, Grian rests his head on Mumbo’s shoulder. He doesn’t remember moving, but he’s there, and Mumbo doesn’t move away. He smells like ash and rain. His thumb grazes Grian’s wrist.
“This could’ve been different,” Grian says.
“It always could’ve been,” Mumbo replies.
Grian laughs, but it’s more of a breath. “Every lifetime. I find you in every one.”
“And you lose me in every one?”
“I try not to.”
“That’s not always enough.”
“I know.”
Mumbo shifts. His hand lifts, hovers near Grian’s cheek, then settles on his arm. Not to pull him closer—just to anchor them there. Just to mark the moment.
“I don’t want to do this again,” Mumbo says quietly. “I don’t want to be the person you almost kept.”
Grian lifts his head. “You weren’t. You were the one I almost followed.”
“And almost is the loneliest word in the world,” Mumbo murmurs.
The silence is deeper, this time. Grian doesn’t know what to say. He’s been the one to walk away before. He’s been the one to wear the crown, to let the kingdom weigh him down like chains. But tonight—tonight, he’s already given it away. He already signed the decree. He already made Pearl queen.
But he doesn’t say that. Not yet. He just looks at Mumbo like the world might give him one more hour.
Mumbo stands. “You did what you could.”
Grian nods.
Mumbo starts to go.
Grian doesn’t call him back.
It’s the kindest thing he can do.
But this time—this time—he follows. Not to stop him, not to beg him. Just to walk with him, one last time, through the garden they used to share.
They don’t speak. The hedges rustle. The moon is nearly overhead.
Mumbo slows. Grian does too.
Then Mumbo says, “Tell me you still remember.”
Grian says, “I never stopped.”
Mumbo reaches out, almost without thinking, and catches Grian’s hand in his. Their fingers link. They don’t stop walking.
Not until they reach the gate.
And there, Mumbo finally lets go.
“I’ll be across the border by sunrise,” he says.
“I won’t send anyone.”
“I know.”
Mumbo hesitates. “And if you need me?”
“I’ll know where to find you.”
They don’t kiss. They don’t hug. They just look.
And then Mumbo’s gone.
Grian waits until the sound of his footsteps fades entirely.
Then he locks the gate behind him, presses his back to it, and breathes in the night like it’s all that’s left.
The garden stays empty.
The dawn doesn’t wait.
---
The transmitter’s shell is cracked down one side, metal peeled back like a rusted can. Grian stares at it for a long time before he moves. His hands aren’t steady, but he lifts it anyway—fingers grazing the bent antenna, the loose wires. It’s fried. The last whisper of a voice, already half memory, sits like dust in the air.
He doesn’t bother trying to fix it.
He throws it. Hard. It hits the wall of the bunker with a loud, brittle clatter and skids across the concrete floor.
Silence again.
He sinks to the floor with his back to the wall. Slides down slow. Head tipped back, eyes tracing the hairline crack in the ceiling.
Too late , he’d said.
Maybe it was. Maybe that really was it. One flicker in the static, one word from a voice he hasn’t heard in—God, how long has it been? He doesn’t keep track anymore. It hurts less if you forget what day it is.
It doesn’t stop the ache, though. Doesn’t stop the way his chest had twisted when he heard his name in that voice, faint and garbled and real. Doesn’t stop the way it echoed even after it cut off. The way it left something clawing in his throat.
It’s Mumbo.
And maybe—just maybe.
Grian’s eyes fall to the workbench in the corner. Covered in dust and half-sorted scrap. Wires, solder, bent copper, a flashlight with one working bulb.
The next day, he builds another one.
It takes hours. His fingers are clumsy with cold. He keeps wiping sweat from his brow even though the bunker is freezing. He doesn’t talk while he works. Doesn’t even hum.
When he finishes, he stares at it for a full minute before flipping the switch.
The beacon light flickers once. Then steady.
He adjusts the dials. Pulls the mic toward him. The hum of static buzzes to life, sharp and clean.
He leans in. Swallows.
“This is Grian,” he says. “If you can hear me… if anyone can hear me…”
A long pause. Nothing but static.
Then he tries again.
It becomes routine after that.
Each day, he gets up. Checks the power. Adjusts the antenna. Transmits. Listens.
Some days he talks. Some days he just breathes into the line.
“This is Grian.”
“This is day… eighty-something. I think. Time’s weird now.”
“I saw a fox this morning. I thought it was you.”
“I haven’t said your name out loud in weeks. Feels like I might break something if I do.”
He keeps the signal going even when his voice cracks. Even when he feels stupid. Even when he starts talking just to remember how. Even when he knows—really knows—it might never reach anyone.
Because it’s Mumbo.
And hope is a habit, at this point.
—
One night, he dreams of the sky before it fell. Not the fire. Not the screaming. Just light. Clouds in stripes across the horizon. Mumbo with a coat draped over his shoulders, talking about something mechanical with his hands. Grian can’t remember what it was. Only remembers how Mumbo smiled.
When he wakes, the transmitter is still humming. He drags himself out of bed.
“This is Grian,” he says, voice thick with sleep. “You’re still out there, aren’t you?”
No response.
“Say something,” he whispers. “Please.”
He sits there until the sun rises.
—
Days turn to weeks. The garden outside the bunker doesn’t grow anymore. Nothing does. He still checks. Still clears the ash when the wind gets bad. Still waters the dead soil out of instinct.
He finds a broken radio tower half-buried in the hills. Salvages enough from it to build a better antenna. Clamps it to the roof of the bunker with a scrap of old signage and a bent car jack. Connects the wiring with trembling fingers.
Static turns clearer. Sharper. He thinks he hears something on day seventeen of the new system—a pop, a breath—but it could be anything.
Could be wind.
Could be his own mind turning on itself.
He sends the message anyway.
—
It’s on day twenty-six—twenty-six since the rebuild, maybe a hundred-something since the beginning—when it happens.
He’s outside. Trying to fix a leak in the water capture system. It’s started freezing again, and the bucket traps are useless. He’s muttering under his breath about insulation when the bunker radio chirps.
Just once.
A crackle.
He freezes.
One slow step. Then another. He drops the wrench without thinking.
Inside, the room is still. Nothing’s changed. The radio hums. The mic light is blinking.
He lunges forward and hits the replay.
Static.
Then—
“...rian?”
It’s broken, garbled, faint. But the shape of it—the rise and fall, the syllables—it’s not anyone else.
He slams the mic. “Mumbo? Say that again.”
Nothing.
He says it again. Then again.
Silence.
He grips the mic so hard his knuckles go white. “You’re not real,” he says under his breath. “You’re not—this is just another—”
The light on the mic flashes once.
He stares at it like it might bite.
He doesn’t sleep that night. Just sits by the transmitter, headphones over one ear, waiting. Every time the static shifts, his heart jolts. Every time it doesn't, he feels sick.
—
Three days go by.
No more voice. No more flashes.
He rebuilds the transmitter again anyway. Reroutes the power. Boosts the signal. Tunes it until the crackling is so loud it rattles his teeth.
He adds a second mic. Sets one to play a looping message. Just coordinates. Just his name.
Just in case.
The third mic, he uses for talking.
“This is Grian,” he says every morning. “I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”
“I think I saw you again. Not you-you. But someone with the same eyes.”
“I miss arguing with you. Just yelling about nothing. You’d hate how quiet it is now.”
“I don’t care how far you are. I’ll wait.”
He says it every day.
Even when his voice starts to fray.
—
Another month passes.
He finds part of a wrecked drone in the hills and spends five days trying to convert it into a relay. It doesn’t work, but it gets his hands busy. His mind quieter.
He dreams of Mumbo again. But this time, Mumbo looks older. Tired. Wearing a coat patched with something that might’ve been curtains. He doesn’t say anything. Just sits beside Grian in the bunker, both of them listening to static.
When Grian wakes, the chair next to him is still empty.
But the mic light is blinking.
He fumbles the switch.
The message is faint. But this time it lasts longer.
“...you copy? This is... on relay frequency... Grian, if you’re... hear me... I’m at—”
The signal cuts. Too fast. Too rough.
Grian stands up so quickly he knocks the stool over.
He rewinds it again. And again.
Each time, the voice comes clearer.
It’s Mumbo.
Definitely Mumbo.
And this time, he’d been trying to respond.
Not a memory. Not a ghost. Not a fluke.
Grian sits down hard. Heart pounding.
Then he reaches for the soldering iron, the copper wire, the power cells.
If he can trace the relay.
If he can boost the signal again.
If he can—
Well.
It’s Mumbo.
And maybe—just maybe—the signal will come back.
---
The sun isn’t setting—because there’s no sun left to set—but the sky dims anyway, gray filtering into black. The hill’s still steep, still patchy with scorched grass and bloodstains and the shallow divots left by hasty redstone. Grian stands at the peak alone. No fanfare. No message. No crown.
Just the wind.
He looks down at his hands. Dirt caked in the lines of his palms. A smear of something darker drying along his knuckle. His bow is broken at his feet, string snapped. His hotbar is empty now, reset to default. But the scoreboard still flickers faintly in the corner of his eye. [Grian] \[WINNER] . Like a joke. Like a brand.
Behind him, there’s a crunch of gravel.
Grian doesn’t turn.
“Hey,” Scar says, quiet, like he’s afraid of startling something.
Grian blinks. His throat’s dry.
Scar steps beside him, hands in his pockets. His respawn skin hasn’t loaded all the way. There’s still a pixel flickering on the edge of his arm, a visual echo of the last few moments. “They said you could stop now,” Scar says. “If you wanted.”
Grian doesn’t say anything.
“If you say yes,” Scar goes on, “you won’t wake up here again. You could go back. Your private server. Evolution, even. They’d let you.”
Grian stares at the horizon. His jaw clenches. “And if I don’t?”
Scar shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. “Then you don’t.”
Silence.
The sky keeps dimming. Stars haven’t loaded. Or maybe they’ve been turned off.
Grian exhales. “I don’t stop, do I?”
There’s no answer.
The light hits harder this time. Not a glow—just a wash of white. Bleaching. Erasing. It eats the hill, the scoreboard, Scar.
Then Grian.
—
The respawn is smooth. It always is.
Fresh grass. Full saturation. Clear sky like nothing ever happened. A few trees scattered in the distance, stripped of leaves. The world hasn’t generated all the way yet. Chunks are missing. Everything’s too still.
Grian breathes in. Dirt and digital springtime.
His hotbar fills with starter tools. Stone, not wood. That’s new.
Scar’s voice chimes in through local chat. “Don’t look now, but I think we’re in another one.”
Grian opens his inventory. The compass is already there. He closes it again. Doesn’t bother asking who it points to.
“Same rules?” Scar asks.
Grian looks up. “They don’t change.”
—
On the second day, Ren tries to build a bunker. Martyn blows it up before it’s finished.
On the fourth, Impulse dies to lava. Grian watches it happen. Doesn’t interfere.
By the sixth day, they’ve all started calling each other “yellow” and “red” again like it means something real.
Grian’s green.
He always is.
—
The first Watcher appears at midnight, right outside the world border.
Grian sees it while he’s gathering sand. Just a flicker of movement. Too smooth to be lag, too fast to be a mob. He stares for a long time. It doesn’t blink.
He doesn't either.
He goes back to camp. Doesn’t mention it.
—
“You could say no,” Scar says again. “Next time.”
They’re crouched on a ledge overlooking Cleo and Bdubs’ base. Cleo’s got a crossbow trained on someone Grian can’t see. There’s tension in the air, a tight coil about to snap.
Grian doesn’t answer.
“You’re allowed to say no.”
“I did once,” Grian says, flat. “And they rerolled the whole thing until I said yes.”
Scar looks at him. “You remember that?”
Grian shrugs.
The coil snaps. The fight breaks out below. Cleo goes down first.
—
They try to make it different.
Scar builds a bakery. Etho sets up a fishing hut. Pearl farms flowers instead of gear. It lasts four episodes. Then someone’s name turns yellow.
Grian’s doesn’t.
—
The Watchers stop standing at the edge.
They don’t need to anymore.
Now, they follow.
Grian sees one near the enchantment table. Another at the border of Pearl’s camp. Sometimes he hears one behind him, too close. When he turns, it’s gone.
None of the others mention them.
He doesn’t bring it up.
—
Someone breaks into his base and leaves a cake on the table.
He doesn’t eat it.
—
“Do you ever wonder if we’re even playing anymore?” Martyn asks, breathless, blood on his tunic.
Grian tosses him a healing potion. “We’re surviving.”
Martyn shakes his head. “Not the same thing.”
Grian doesn’t disagree. Doesn’t answer either.
They both stare out at the mountains.
Another player dies. Thunder echoes.
Grian flinches.
Martyn doesn’t.
—
The scoreboard flickers every time someone logs in. Or out. Or speaks. It’s never really gone.
Sometimes it lists players who aren’t online.
Sometimes it lists players who never were.
—
Scar’s got a whole wall now. Names scratched into stone. “Everyone we’ve lost,” he says. “I want to remember.”
Grian stares at the wall. Sees names that shouldn’t be there. Bdoubleo. Tango. Mumbo. Jimmy.
“I don’t remember some of these,” Scar says.
Grian looks away. “Doesn’t mean they weren’t here.”
—
One morning, Grian wakes up in a different version of his base.
Everything’s off by a few blocks. The walls are too thick. The storage room leads into a cave that shouldn’t be there.
He steps outside and the sky’s the wrong shade of blue.
When he blinks, it’s back to normal.
He doesn't ask anyone if it happened to them too.
He doesn’t want to know the answer.
—
They get to the endgame. Again.
Grian’s the last one. Again.
There’s a crown this time. It glows.
He doesn’t put it on.
Just stands there. Breathing. Looking at the world and how still it is. There’s a Watcher in the distance. Arms crossed. Staring.
Scar reappears.
Grian doesn’t look at him.
“You did good,” Scar says. “They’re happy.”
Grian clenches his jaw.
“They said you could stop,” Scar adds.
“No,” Grian says.
Scar waits. “No, you won’t stop?”
“No,” Grian says again. “I didn’t win.”
Scar’s voice lowers. “You’re the last one left.”
“That’s not the same.”
Silence.
Scar looks down at the ground. “You could still walk away.”
“No,” Grian says again. “I can’t.”
“But they said–”
“The illusion of choice is not a luxury I will allow myself anymore.”
The world blanches white.
Reset.
—
New game.
Same players.
Same roles.
Same crown.
Same scoreboard.
Grian looks at his hands. Clean again. No scars. No blood. No choice.
And the watchers, smiling.
Still watching.
---
The relic was unassuming at first. Just a fractured cube nestled in the corner of the vault—wedged between some end crystals and a chest of old Elytra wings no one had touched in seasons. It wasn’t labeled. It didn’t glow. It looked like it’d been there for years, unnoticed.
Mumbo picked it up anyway.
Grian barely had time to turn around before the thing lit up in Mumbo’s hands. Not a soft glow. Not a shimmer. Just—white, hot, brutal light. No noise. No time to shout. Just light.
Then Mumbo hit the floor.
—
Grian was already dropping to his knees, skidding across tile that hadn’t been polished since Scar said he’d do it and then forgot. Mumbo’s eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing anything. Not the ceiling. Not Grian. Not the vault. His lips were parted, breath shallow. His fingers twitched once, like they were still holding the cube. The cube, now cracked and dull, rolled to the side. Useless.
“Mumbo,” Grian said, quiet first. Then louder. “Mumbo.”
No answer.
Impulse’s voice echoed faintly from another corridor. Something about redstone or checking in later. Grian didn’t hear the rest.
“Mumbo,” he said again, trying not to panic. He shook his shoulder. Mumbo didn’t react. “Come on. Don’t do this.”
It had only been a second. Or maybe a minute. Or maybe longer. Grian couldn’t tell. Time felt unstable. Like he might blink and find himself in another server.
And then Mumbo breathed in sharp.
He sat up too fast. Grian flinched back.
Mumbo’s eyes snapped to his like they’d been searching for him. Like they’d already lost him.
“You,” Mumbo said. His voice was hoarse. “You’re still here?”
Grian froze.
Mumbo blinked again. His expression flickered. “No. Wait. You—this is this one.”
Grian didn’t know what that meant. “What happened?”
Mumbo exhaled shakily, then laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh. It sounded like he’d broken something inside trying to get it out. He clutched the side of his head with one hand, bracing himself.
“You’re the same in every world,” he said, quiet. “You always look at me like that. Like I matter.”
Grian’s mouth went dry.
Mumbo looked down at his hands, palms trembling. “But I never keep you.”
The silence settled like ash. Heavy. Dense.
Grian swallowed. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know how to explain it.” Mumbo’s voice cracked. “It was like—every memory, every version, every server, every reset—stacked on top of each other. I saw you die. I saw you leave. I saw you fall out of the sky. I saw you fly away. I saw you look back and I saw you not look back and—” He stopped. Shook his head. “It’s all the same. You’re always just out of reach.”
He didn’t say you always leave. But it was there, curled behind his tongue.
Grian hesitated. Then, softly: “Not even this one?”
Mumbo didn’t answer.
—
Later, they sat on the floor of the vault.
The relic had been placed gently back where it was found, like pretending it was never touched could undo it. Grian sat with his arms draped over his knees. Mumbo leaned against the wall, staring at the floor.
“You said it was every version,” Grian said eventually. “All the servers?”
“Even the ones that never made it past day one.” Mumbo closed his eyes. “Even the ones that weren’t supposed to happen. Even the ones where I didn’t join. I still knew you.”
“That’s a lot of Grians.”
“They were all you.”
Silence stretched again.
“I’m scared,” Mumbo said. It was almost a whisper. “What if I ruin this one too?”
“You didn’t ruin any of them,” Grian said, quieter.
Mumbo huffed. “Then why don’t they last?”
Grian didn’t have an answer. Not one that made sense. Not one that fixed anything. Not when he still had days where he woke up and couldn’t remember which season it was. Or how many resets ago Mumbo had been away.
“You said I’m always the same,” Grian said after a long time. “Are you?”
“No,” Mumbo said immediately. “Not even close.”
Grian looked at him.
“I try to be,” Mumbo said, voice tight. “But I change. Some versions of me get angry. Some shut everything out. Some just... stop logging in.”
Grian said nothing.
“This one,” Mumbo went on, “I think this one—” He cut himself off.
Grian didn’t push. But he looked at him carefully. “What about this one?”
Mumbo didn’t meet his eyes. “This one’s trying. But he’s scared he’s already too late.”
—
They didn’t talk about it again for three days.
Then Grian brought him to a build.
It wasn’t a new one. It was half-finished, overgrown, old enough that the chunks around it stuttered a little when you got close. Mumbo paused at the edge.
“You remember this?”
“Kind of,” Grian said. “It was meant to be a storage room. But I got distracted.”
Mumbo walked through the open frame. “You always get distracted.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t care,” Grian said.
Mumbo didn’t say anything. He touched the edge of the scaffolding, where a vine had grown through the side and snapped a plank in two. “In one version,” he said, “we never built anything together. You were on the other side of the world.”
“Yeah?” Grian asked.
“I think it hurt just as much.”
Grian stood beside him. The sun passed behind a cloud, just enough to cast the place in softer light.
“This version of me,” Mumbo said again, “wants to be someone you stay for.”
Grian looked down at the floor. “I think this version of me wants to try.”
Mumbo looked at him. “Do you think that’s enough?”
Grian met his eyes. “It has to be.”
And he meant it.
But deep down, Grian still wondered if this was the version that would stick.
Because if Mumbo remembered everything—
Then somebody had to forget.
—
The new base wasn’t grand. They didn’t plan it like the vault or sketch blueprints across the dirt with colored wool. It just sort of happened—one log placed after another, a makeshift wall, then a roof. Nothing big. Nothing to impress. It sat near the edge of a forest, tucked against the shoreline where the sand met the grass in an awkward, patchy line.
“Bit small,” Mumbo said the third time he walked through it and hit his head on a half-slab.
Grian snorted. “You’re the one who said it didn’t need redstone.”
Mumbo raised a brow. “You were the one who said we needed a porch.”
They stared at each other for a beat. Then both broke into quiet laughter.
—
They put in a pink glass skylight. Grian insisted. “It’ll be romantic,” he said, holding a stack of dyed panes and looking pleased with himself. Mumbo didn’t argue. He just placed them from the roof, balancing precariously on top of temporary scaffolding, while Grian passed up glass and said things like no, two to the left and wait, that one’s crooked.
“It’s a square, Grian.”
“You’re placing it crooked.”
“That’s not even how geometry works—”
“Just move it.”
—
They made tea.
Grian had to replant the sweet berry bushes three times because he kept forgetting where he’d left them and walking straight into the thorns. Mumbo didn’t say anything, just kept a stack of glow berries in his offhand and passed them over without comment. The water boiled over an open campfire they’d built into the kitchen hearth, which made the whole base smell faintly like burnt oak and moss.
Mumbo sipped his tea and leaned back in a spruce chair he’d made too high for comfort. “It’s like camping,” he said.
Grian stretched his feet out across the floor, cradling his mug in both hands. “It’s like pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
Grian shrugged. “That it’s always been like this. That it will stay like this.”
—
They went mining. Not because they needed the materials—they were both too well-stocked for that—but because it was quiet down there, and the caves were big and empty and full of noise that didn’t demand answers. Mumbo held the torches. Grian held the pickaxe. They took turns filling shulker boxes and teasing each other about their sorting systems.
“None of this is going to go where it’s supposed to,” Mumbo said, holding up a box full of coal, string, and three saddles.
“I have a system,” Grian replied, deadpan.
“You have a sickness.”
“You’re one to talk.”
They were chased by a creeper once. Grian panicked and dug straight up into gravel. Mumbo saved them both with half a heart left and refused to let Grian live it down.
“Mining buddy,” he said solemnly as they limped home. “You’re not allowed to panic-mine upward ever again.”
“Noted.”
“And you owe me one fully enchanted chestplate.”
—
They filmed a timelapse.
It wasn’t even for anything important—just a field of amethyst and terracotta that Grian wanted to clear for a view. Mumbo set up his camera account, tweaked the angle for ten minutes, and then called down that he was ready.
“You’re sure it’s not going to record me placing a block and then running into a bush again?”
“No promises.”
Grian flipped him off. The camera probably caught that, too.
Later, Mumbo sent him the rendered footage. Grian watched it in silence, then played it again. In the background, near the end, you could see Mumbo land on the roof with his Elytra. Just for a second. Just watching.
He didn’t mention it.
—
“Maybe this is the one that works,” Grian said one night. The porch lights were flickering, dim enough to make the pink glass above them look soft instead of garish. His mug was empty. The tea had gone cold hours ago.
Mumbo sat beside him, hands tucked under his arms for warmth. He didn’t answer right away. Then:
“I think we’ll make it work.”
Not it will work. Not it’s meant to. Just we will.
Grian turned his head to look at him. Mumbo looked back, steady.
They kissed under the pink glass sky.
—
They kept going.
Grian rebuilt the porch again because the stairs didn’t curve right. Mumbo let him, even though he thought it was fine. He added a hidden redstone contraption that made the tea kettle whistle when it was ready. Grian pretended not to notice, then quietly bragged about it to Impulse the next day.
They added a greenhouse. Mumbo kept bees. Grian built a bird bath. They had a disagreement about how many trapdoors counted as “tasteful,” which turned into a full server debate after Scar walked in and started rearranging flower pots.
Grian laughed more. Mumbo filmed less. Neither of them mentioned the scoreboard.
Not once.
—
But sometimes Grian caught himself watching Mumbo when he thought he wasn’t being watched. Just watching. Like he was waiting for something to break. Like he was waiting for Mumbo to remember something new.
And sometimes Mumbo would wake up before Grian and sit out on the porch with his tea, watching the clouds roll over the horizon. His expression blank. As if counting how long the calm could last.
—
Grian found a relic buried behind the waterfall two weeks after the greenhouse was finished. It looked like the one from the vault. A little more cracked. A little more forgotten.
He didn’t touch it.
He buried it again.
—
“It feels safe,” Grian said, weeks later, when they were lying on the grass outside the base and watching the stars through the pink glass. “Too safe.”
Mumbo turned to him. “Do you want it to be dangerous?”
“I want it to be real .”
“It is.”
Grian didn’t answer.
He stared up at the sky. At the pink-tinted stars that didn’t flicker. At the glass that never cracked. At the silence that never broke.
Safe. Too safe. Like a snapshot of something that had already ended.
Grian clenched his fists. “I think I’m scared.”
Mumbo nodded. “Me too.”
They didn’t look at each other.
And far underground—deep enough that the music of the world didn’t reach—something shifted. Something old. Something waiting.
The pink glass above them held. For now.
—
It started with a single block.
Just gone. No explosion, no entity griefing, no click of a pickaxe. A stone brick in the hallway of Tango’s base just… wasn’t there anymore.
He logged off, logged back in. Still gone. So was the chest beside it. Zedaph said it was probably lag. Cub said corrupted chunk. Impulse said, “Well, that’s weird,” and went back to his redstone.
But then Bdubs logged in to find the back wall of his bedroom missing. And Scar’s entire roof caved in— not by Creeper. Just a clean, sudden absence. A few blocks here, then five, then twenty, then…
Now it was a problem.
—
They gathered in a voice call.
“I think we should start logging all the missing blocks,” Xisuma said. “Mumbo, Grian, Stress, can you check around your areas and mark anything suspicious?”
“Already ahead of you,” Grian said, pulling up a list he’d started tracking privately days ago. He didn’t share it. Just said, “It’s happening near the borders first.”
“What borders?” Joe asked.
“The edges. Far corners of the map. Places people haven’t built much yet.”
“What does that mean?” Cleo asked.
“I don’t know,” Grian said. Then he added, “But I think it’s coming closer.”
—
They started seeing the pulse.
Only sometimes. Only when they were moving fast or flying high or blinking one too many times. Just a flicker in the corner of vision. A shimmer of transparency. A whole chunk that didn’t load and then did, but not quite right. Things floated a little off-grid. Entities blinked out for a frame. You could hear yourself speak a half-second before your mouth moved.
“Something’s eating the world,” Ren said. He said it like a joke, but no one laughed.
Impulse checked server performance. No lag spikes. No plugin errors. No faulty datapacks. Everything was clean.
“It’s not the game,” he said. “It’s the world.”
—
The void spread faster at night.
Someone—maybe Gem, maybe False—said it first. That things felt thinner after sunset. That the air itself seemed more fragile. The big areas—the base perimeters, the nether hubs, the big builds—stayed intact. But things on the edges—the farms, the secret bunkers, the random pillars from old build plans—started going.
Mumbo watched it happen once. From the inside of an old stone quarry, he saw the back wall disappear cleanly. Not mined. Not world-edited. Not undone. Just gone. As if the server decided it didn’t belong anymore.
He ran straight to Grian’s base.
—
Grian was building faster than Mumbo had ever seen.
Slabs, stairs, full blocks, wool and wood and glass. Every wall had reinforcement. Every ceiling had double layers. He wasn’t even working on one build—he was placing things everywhere, in layers and patches, like a man trying to hold a ship together by taping it shut from the outside.
“Grian,” Mumbo said, breathless. “What are you doing?”
“Building.”
“You’re doing it wrong.”
“No, I’m doing it fast.”
Mumbo stepped in front of him. Grian didn’t stop placing.
“Grian.”
Still nothing.
Finally, Mumbo grabbed him by the wrist and held .
“ Grian .”
The click of the blocks stopped.
Mumbo looked him in the eye. “Can’t we stop it?”
Grian blinked.
His hand twitched.
He didn’t answer.
—
When the next set of blocks vanished—this time in the middle of Pearl’s mob farm—Grian stayed online for twelve hours straight. Mumbo had to drag him to the storage room and sit him down.
“You’re going to burn out,” he said, handing Grian tea.
Grian didn’t drink it.
Mumbo sighed. “It’s not like building faster is going to stop the void.”
Grian still didn’t speak. Just looked down at his hands like maybe the void was crawling up them.
Mumbo hesitated, then said softly, “You do know what this is, don’t you.”
Grian flinched.
That was answer enough.
—
He started waking up in the middle of the night.
Not in real life—on the server. Middle of a Minecraft night, when the sky was black and the moon was gone and nothing on the server should have been happening.
Sometimes Mumbo would log in to find Grian already on. Not building. Just… hovering. High above the void. Not over the real world. Somewhere off in spectator, in corners where the chunks were empty and the air pulsed faint violet.
Mumbo stopped asking what he was looking for.
He already knew.
—
“You’re getting the call, aren’t you,” Mumbo said one morning. Not angry. Not accusing. Just quiet.
Grian had a chest open in front of him. A shulker of concrete powder in his offhand. He didn’t respond.
“You keep checking,” Mumbo said. “You keep listening for it. Every time something disappears, you look like you’re trying to hear it louder.”
Grian whispered, “It’s not a call. It’s a signal.”
“Same thing.”
“No. A call you can reject.”
Mumbo’s voice cracked. “So you can’t stop it.”
Grian finally looked at him. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you didn’t say yes either.”
—
Xisuma tried a rollback backup.
It didn’t work. The void didn’t reverse. It just waited . And when the rollback finished, it resumed as if nothing had changed.
“We can’t out-code it,” Impulse muttered. “I don’t think it’s in the code.”
Bdubs built walls around his base. Layers and layers of them. Blocks so thick no player could break them quickly. They vanished within the hour.
Xisuma ordered server lockdown protocols.
Doc tried to make a portal out.
Ren started logging goodbye messages.
Grian kept building.
—
At some point, someone said it—probably Cleo.
“This isn’t like the moon getting big. This isn’t corruption. This is deletion .”
Grian didn’t disagree.
Neither did Mumbo.
Because they both knew what this was. And Grian had felt the pull in his chest long before the others noticed.
—
The world was unraveling.
And Mumbo couldn’t stop thinking about all the times Grian had said, “I’ve been here before,” without ever saying how many times . Or how many versions of this had already ended. How many times Grian had tried to rebuild faster. How many times Mumbo had asked if they could stop it. How many times the answer hadn’t come.
He watched Grian now, hands shaking as he placed another row of blocks. Sandstone, quartz, prismarine—none of it matching, none of it neat. Just volume . Just resistance.
“You know this won’t hold,” Mumbo said.
“I know,” Grian said.
And kept building.
—
Somewhere off-grid, a whole biome disappeared.
Impulse marked the coordinates.
Scar said, “We’re out of time.”
Grian said nothing.
The pulse in his chest beat louder.
And the Watchers waited.
—
Grian sat in the center of his base, legs folded, headset pressed tight to his ears. There was no one else online. It was 3:14 AM server time, and the void had taken out the entire west ridge of Impulse’s main tunnel two hours ago.
He’d already finished recording the regular videos. A few backups, a half-finished tour, some quirky B-roll for a bit that wasn’t going to land anymore. The server was half-held together with debug scripts now. Xisuma had activated emergency rollback protocols in a test world, but even those weren’t sticking. Grian didn’t care. He just wanted the room to be quiet.
He opened his recorder. No camera. Just audio.
"Hey."
Silence, then a sigh.
“I don’t know if you’ll ever find this. You probably won’t. That’s… probably the point. I’m not leaving a map or anything. No coordinates. I’m not even using a chest you know. Just a locked file. Hidden vault. One of the old kind. The kind I’d forget about if I didn’t have it marked in my base planning notes from Season 6.”
He hesitated.
“I guess I’m just trying to make it feel like this matters. Like… something will still be here. Like it won’t just go blank.”
Click.
He deleted the file.
Opened a new one.
This time, his voice was quieter.
“…You don’t have to listen to all of this. Not if it makes you feel weird. I just wanted to say…”
He stopped.
Then started again.
“I always find you,” Grian whispered. “And I always lose you.”
His hand hovered over the stop button, then pressed it without a word.
He encrypted the file. Moved it to a redstone-powered vault buried in the wall of an abandoned starter base—one from months ago, before the central perimeter builds, before the seasons started warping around each other. He knew where it was. No one else did. It needed a lever combo and a trapdoor flip and one of Mumbo’s old password locks that didn’t even work properly anymore unless you pressed the buttons exactly on beat.
It was enough.
He closed everything.
—
The next morning, he brewed tea.
Mumbo was online, standing on the roof, staring into a chunk void that hadn’t loaded back in. The server said it was normal. Grian didn’t believe it.
He handed Mumbo a mug and sat beside him.
“Do you think it’ll stop?” Mumbo asked.
“I don’t know,” Grian said. “It’s not code.”
“Then what is it?”
He didn’t answer. Just sipped his tea. The silence stretched long.
Mumbo didn’t push. Just stared into the space where the terrain used to be and pretended he didn’t notice how Grian was watching him, like he was memorizing the slope of Mumbo’s shoulders or the curve of his jaw when he smiled. Like he was afraid he wouldn’t get the chance later.
—
Xisuma announced a lockdown.
“All right,” he said in the group chat. “Final backup is being taken today. After this, any rollback will be permanent. We can’t risk corruption spreading into the control systems.”
“Control systems?” Scar asked.
“Of the backup server.”
There was no reply for a while after that.
—
Grian spent the rest of the afternoon wandering. Not building. Not terraforming. Just walking. Old bases, weird terrain glitches, mini-games no one finished. He stopped at a field of signs—one of those joke projects where everyone left a silly note. One of them just said: “i stole your crafting table –mumbo.”
He stood in front of it for a long time.
Then he added one.
Just a single sign in the corner, hidden behind the others.
“I left something for you. If you need it. -G.”
He didn’t say where.
—
He started logging off earlier. Not all the way gone. Just AFK, idle. Still on voice, sometimes. Quiet. Mumbo kept building like nothing had changed, but he kept checking the player list. Even when Grian was there, it didn’t feel like he was. Not always.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s happening?” he asked once, when Grian came back from idle.
“I don’t think I can,” Grian said.
“Or you won’t.”
“That too.”
They didn’t talk for a while after that.
—
Grian watched the void take a chunk of Etho’s vault. He didn’t blink.
Impulse sent a server ping check.
False asked if this was a lore bit.
Grian logged off mid-sentence.
—
The vault lock was janky.
He redid the redstone three times.
The message still played perfectly.
That was the thing with records—you only ever needed them to work once .
—
Mumbo knocked on Grian’s base later that night. No answer. He hovered for a bit, then dropped in through the skylight. It was dark. Grian wasn’t there.
But all his tools were missing from the item frames.
—
The next morning, Grian logged in like nothing had changed.
“You were gone,” Mumbo said.
“I was tired,” Grian said.
“You took your tools.”
“I was cleaning.”
“You don’t clean.”
Grian looked at him. Didn’t say anything. Then turned back to the wall he was fake-building.
Mumbo didn’t push further.
He didn’t have to.
—
There was a moment—a single moment—where Grian looked like he was going to say something. It was after a group meeting. Everyone was talking in voice chat, debating the last rollback schedule, joking about whether they should just blow up the server now and call it a finale.
Grian hovered near Mumbo in the corner of the voice call, not talking, mic muted.
Then he unmuted.
“Mumbo,” he started.
But the call disconnected.
Server hiccup.
By the time they reconnected, the moment had passed.
—
That night, the server logs flickered.
A change in packet activity.
A new IP location.
Grian was still online.
But something else was connected now too.
—
In the secret vault, buried beneath the starter base, a file blinked red.
Waiting.
—
The world split at the edges before it caved in.
Chunks of redstone dust scattered midair as the build beneath them crumbled. The sky—once soft and purple from the shaders—fractured in rows, sharp lines tearing through it like someone had forgotten to texture the end credits properly. It groaned. Not with weather, not like the moon rising, not like thunder in the nether ceiling. It groaned like something deep beneath the world had finally sat up.
Mumbo was the first to react. “We have to go.”
Grian’s boots hit the stone with a sound that didn’t quite echo. His breath fogged when it shouldn’t have.
“No,” he said. “We have to close it.”
“Grian, it’s the void.”
“I know what it is.”
The server had started stuttering, not with lag but with judgment. Every ten steps they took forward, four blocks vanished behind them. Not in patterns. Not in chunks. Just gone. No particles. No error code. Just missing.
And still, Grian kept building. Redstone loops, detector rails, nether quartz. His hands glowed faintly.
Mumbo shouted, “What are you even doing?”
“Stalling.”
“For what?”
Grian looked at him then, like it was obvious. “For you.”
The portal was unstable. It flickered, one corner already singed at the edges. They didn’t have a spare flint and steel. It wasn’t like that.
Mumbo ran forward, grabbing Grian by the arm. “I’m not going without you.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, I do!”
The sound in the air bent sideways. A massive tear opened behind them—right where their starter base used to be. Grian’s wings caught the draft. Not from wind, but from absence.
He jerked forward, just slightly. Enough to give Mumbo leverage. Enough to let Mumbo think, for one horrible second, that he could pull Grian with him.
But Grian didn’t move.
He braced one foot against the portal frame, spun Mumbo by the shoulders, and shoved him through.
“GO.”
Mumbo’s shout cracked the frame. “GRIAN—”
Then the portal surged.
Grian turned.
Behind him, the void pulsed, flickering in and out with impossible light.
It wasn’t alive, but it recognized him .
He met it head-on.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “Not this one.”
His hands sparked with gold. Watcher-touched. Not fully transformed, but close enough. The pull at his chest—the recall, the weight, the ache—had been going for weeks. But he hadn’t answered.
Now, he used it.
Energy arced out like a net. It crackled over the crumbling world, forming a dome—not to fix it, not to restore, but to pause .
He just needed to hold it still.
Long enough for the portal to seal.
Long enough for Mumbo to land safely.
Long enough for this version of the world to mean something .
For a second, he thought he might do it.
For a second, the void shrank back.
But then it came again.
Harder.
Faster.
Stronger than before.
And Grian—already flickering at the edges—dropped to his knees.
His wings fractured.
His hands bled glowstone.
He gritted his teeth. “Not yet.”
The void answered with silence.
Then surged forward.
And the world disappeared.
—
In the backup server, Xisuma’s console screamed errors for twenty-seven straight lines.
—
In a private world, Mumbo spawned on top of a replica of their Season 6 base.
He hit the grass hard.
Rolled to his feet.
Spun around.
Nothing.
No portal. No shimmer. No sound.
Just quiet.
He stood there for a minute. Then another. Then another.
He waited long enough to make himself sick.
Then opened chat and typed:
`/msg Grian You made it, right?`
No response.
`/msg Grian Say something.`
Nothing.
`/msg Grian Please.`
Nothing.
He sat down on the hill.
And waited.
—
In a hidden vault—one the rollback hadn’t touched—a redstone lamp flicked on.
It blinked once.
Paused.
Then played back a file.
Grian’s voice.
Quiet. Steady.
“I always find you. And I always lose you.”
—
The world didn’t crash.
It reloaded .
But Grian didn’t respawn.
Not here.
Not yet.
---
It’s cold here, but not in the way Grian knows cold. Not the kind that makes your fingers numb or chokes your breath midair. It’s quiet cold. Thin. Hollow. Like the absence of sensation more than the presence of any.
He floats—if floating even applies. No ground. No gravity. No sky, even. Just him, somewhere, weightless and detached.
His skin glows faint around the edges, a shimmer of white-gold fracturing into dust and reforming again. A heartbeat, maybe. If he still has one.
There’s no visible light, but he sees. Sees the seams in the space around him, each thread humming.
Watcher space.
That’s what they’d always called it when they talked in whispers. In warning. In half-remembered fear.
It’s not a place. It’s a between . A waiting room where the walls watch back.
He doesn’t try to move. There’s nowhere to move to.
He doesn’t try to speak. Not until the voice comes.
"You understand now."
It doesn’t echo, but it resonates. Deep. Like it knows him better than it should.
Grian chokes on nothing. He tries to speak and fails the first time. Tries again. “I just wanted—”
He swallows. Or feels like he does.
“I just wanted to love him.”
Silence stretches. The thread around him pulses once.
“Then do it again.”
Grian’s hands twitch. One curls toward his chest. There’s nothing there. Not a body. Not a heart. Not anything but memory and instinct, and even those feel slippery now.
“Why?” he whispers.
The voice doesn’t answer.
But something shifts.
A memory unravels—not harshly, not torn, just loosened. A single string pulled from the edge.
The exact hue of Mumbo’s eyes. The shape of the way he smiled. Not gone, not fully. Just a little blurred.
Grian flinches. “No.”
“You asked for this,” the voice says. “Every time.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did.”
It doesn’t sound cruel. Not angry. Not mocking. Just certain.
“You said you’d give anything.”
Grian clenches his jaw. “I didn’t mean—”
“You never mean to forget.”
Another thread slips.
The way Mumbo laughed when he fell in lava the first time. The lilt of his voice when he said “Redstone’s easy, Grian. I’ll teach you.”
Gone. Not entirely. But far enough away it makes Grian’s throat hurt.
He gasps. “Please.”
“You asked us to let you try again.”
The world around him pulses, and suddenly there are doors . Not physical—nothing here is—but shaped like choice. Paths he’s walked before.
Season 6. Season 7. Evo. Back and back and back.
Some doors are sealed. Others cracked open.
One swings wide.
Beyond it, a spark—familiar, warm.
Mumbo.
Still laughing. Still building. Still believing.
Grian moves toward it.
And then stops.
His hands are flickering worse now. Pieces of him drop off like sand in the wind. His head aches like a name is trying to slip out.
“I don’t want to forget.”
“You don’t get to choose,” the voice says. Not cruel. Just final.
“Then why ask me anything?”
“Because you want us to.”
He almost screams. Almost shouts that no, he doesn’t, he wouldn’t, he never would —
But somewhere, deep down, past the parts of him already crumbling, he remembers the exact moment he said it.
“If I can just have one more chance. Just one. I’ll make it work this time. I swear.”
He’d said it into a half-broken recorder once, sobbing. Season 3? 4? A world long since reset.
He’d meant it .
He still does.
“Then do it again,” the voice says.
—
And Grian begins to forget.
Just a little.
The heat of Mumbo’s hand in his.
The scrape of redstone torches scattered across the floor.
The way the sky looked through pink glass.
Gone.
Only slightly.
But enough.
He turns toward the open door.
Steps forward.
The world begins again.
—
Somewhere, in a different place, Mumbo wakes up gasping.
He doesn’t know why.
He just feels like someone is about to leave him behind.
Again.
But when he opens his inventory, nothing is missing.
And that’s what scares him the most.
---
The light in the dressing room buzzed faintly overhead, flickering like it hadn’t been turned on in years. Grian sat perfectly still on the stool, hands slack in his lap, eyes fixed on the mirror. His reflection blinked back—messy hair, rouge dabbed too heavily on one cheek, the sharp edge of eyeliner threatening to smear. His costume glittered faintly in the low light, gold-threaded trim catching where the bulb above him flickered to life again.
Somewhere beyond the wall, there was movement. A door creaked open. Floorboards shifted.
And humming.
Familiar. Unfamiliar.
He stood. Slowly. Legs unsteady, like he hadn’t used them in a while. Maybe he hadn’t. He pressed his palm to the edge of the vanity and waited for his balance to return. His handprint stayed behind in the dust.
Outside the door, the hallway stretched in both directions. Faint red carpeting lined the floor, worn thin from shoes and time. Grian moved on instinct, following the tune.
Through the half-open stage door, light spilled in. Soft, not stage-ready. The theater house lights were off, but one lone spotlight floated overhead—dim, wavery, not yet fixed on anything. A figure stood underneath, fiddling with the controls at the base.
Mumbo.
Hair slightly curled from heat, dressed in a velvet vest that looked like it belonged to a magician or an usher or something in between. The stage apron was scattered with props—candelabras, ropes, a coiled length of fairy lights.
He hadn’t seen Grian yet. Just hummed, absently, as he twisted something on the panel and stepped back.
The light jolted and corrected. Focused. And in that sharp sweep of brightness, Mumbo looked up.
Their eyes met.
For a long second, nothing moved.
Then Mumbo tilted his head, smiling. A little sheepish. A little confused.
“Do I know you?”
Grian didn’t breathe. Didn’t move.
Then he smiled. “Not yet.”
And that was that.
—
They found a rhythm, like people who hadn’t met but somehow still remembered how to fall into orbit. Mumbo worked the lights. Grian took to the set design. A few others trickled in—Impulse, Scar, Cleo. None of them said anything strange. None of them seemed to realize how odd it was that they’d all simply arrived .
Scar made a joke about getting cast as a tree again. Cleo said something about curtains that never closed properly. Impulse found an old fog machine in the back and nearly set the fire alarm off.
No one questioned the playbill that listed no title. No one questioned the showtime, eternally marked as Tonight.
It was a dream that forgot it was dreaming. And Grian didn’t wake up.
He didn’t want to.
Sometimes the dressing room mirror caught him looking too long. Like he was counting the things he couldn’t name anymore. Like he was wondering why his hands always shook when Mumbo leaned over the control board too close, voice soft, smile warm.
Sometimes he touched the mic pinned under his shirt and didn’t know why. There were no cameras here. No watchers.
Sometimes the spotlight flickered.
—
The night before the first dress rehearsal, Grian found Mumbo backstage, bent over a tangle of cords with a flashlight in his mouth.
“You need help?” Grian asked, already crouching.
Mumbo startled slightly but didn’t drop the light. He pulled it free from his lips and grinned. “I’m trying to reroute the dimmers for Act Two. It keeps blowing out the stage right bulb.”
Grian nodded like that made sense. It didn’t. He’d never been trained in theater lighting. Not really. But somehow his hands knew what to grab. His fingers moved without thinking.
“I feel like I’ve done this before,” he said under his breath.
“Hmm?” Mumbo looked up.
Grian hesitated. “Nothing. Just—deja vu.”
Mumbo nodded slowly. “Me too. All the time lately.”
He didn’t elaborate. Grian didn’t ask.
They worked in silence for a while. Then, softly:
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Grian looked over. Mumbo’s face was still half-lit from the flashlight. There was a gentleness to it. A weight behind the words, as if they’d been earned through absence.
Grian wanted to say, I always find you .
Wanted to say, I lost you again .
Wanted to say, I’m scared I won’t remember the next time.
He didn’t say any of that.
Instead, he said, “Me too.”
—
On the day of the first full run-through, the curtain jammed halfway. It sputtered mid-lift, stuttered like a skipping record, and hung crooked across the arch. No one moved.
Grian stood center stage in full costume. Mumbo was in the front row, clipboard in hand. The light buzzed. Cleo coughed somewhere in the wings.
“Bit dramatic,” Scar muttered.
Grian stepped forward. “Let’s take it from the top.”
The curtain didn’t budge. He tried to fix it. Tried again. Then looked up toward the booth.
No one was there.
He frowned. “Mumbo?”
No response.
He turned toward the house, but Mumbo was gone.
The clipboard sat neatly on the seat, pen tucked in the spiral binding. Grian took the stairs down from the stage too fast, calling, “Mumbo? You alright?”
Nothing.
Not backstage. Not in the tech room. Not at the board.
Grian stood in the middle of the lobby, empty and echoing.
Something in his chest pulsed. Familiar.
Like a signal.
Like something calling back.
He pressed a hand over his ribs, breathing hard.
The spotlight flickered once above the stage. Then again. Faster. Unstable.
Something was breaking.
Something always did.
He ran.
—
He found Mumbo on the roof, crouched near the edge, fiddling with the wiring box for the external lights.
“I was just trying to fix the marquee,” he said when Grian reached him. “The ‘O’ keeps falling off.”
Grian didn’t answer.
Mumbo turned and froze at his expression. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
The question struck too deep. Grian didn’t know how to answer.
He stepped closer. His hand hovered like he meant to touch Mumbo’s shoulder, then pulled back.
“I thought you were gone.”
“I’m right here.”
The pulse under Grian’s skin faded. Quieted. But not all the way.
“You said you didn’t know me,” Grian whispered. “When I found you.”
Mumbo smiled. “Well. I’m learning.”
Grian bit the inside of his cheek.
He wanted to say, Do you remember the void? Do you remember the lab, the cave, the wings, the sunless days?
He wanted to say, I’m not ready to lose you again.
He wanted to say, Even if this is all fake, even if it’s a lie, I’ll take it.
But the wind shifted. The sky cracked faintly along the clouds. The building groaned.
The world was not stable.
Not forever.
And they both knew it.
—
That night, in the darkened dressing room, Grian stared at the mirror again. His own reflection stared back, tired. Waiting.
He pulled the mic cord from under his collar and whispered into it:
“I always find you.”
His hand shook.
“And I always lose you.”
He closed his eyes. Pressed stop.
Didn’t delete it this time. Not yet.
The show began again tomorrow. Again. Always again.
Everything_black on Chapter 1 Sat 30 Aug 2025 03:24AM UTC
Last Edited Sat 30 Aug 2025 03:29AM UTC
Comment Actions
Everything_black on Chapter 1 Sat 30 Aug 2025 03:29AM UTC
Comment Actions
iwannabeknown on Chapter 2 Thu 28 Aug 2025 04:57PM UTC
Comment Actions