Chapter Text
The night before school resumed was unusually quiet.
Wednesday Addams lay still in her bed, the shadows of her room flickering gently as the wind whispered against the mansion's ancient windows. Sleep didn't come easily to her, but tonight, she surrendered to it more quickly than usual—perhaps because the dreams that followed were familiar.
In her mind, she was back in Jericho. The forest loomed tall and dark, the air thick with fog. She moved silently, her boots crunching against brittle leaves. Tyler stood ahead, unaware, his monstrous form rippling beneath his skin. In the dream, she didn't hesitate. Her blade sang as it sliced through the air. Tyler fell.
A small, satisfied smile curved her lips.
But just as she turned to leave, the dream began to distort. The trees twisted unnaturally. The ground beneath her feet cracked like glass. A shrill sound—metallic and unnatural—pierced the silence.
Her phone buzzed. She looked down to see a message from an unknown number: "You're not ready."
The screen flickered.
A second message followed: "But you will be."
Her pulse quickened. Was this part of the dream? Or something more?
Before she could react, the entire world shifted. The colors bled away, and cold gripped her body. What had been a vivid dream became something else entirely.
A vision.
Fire and screams. Smoke choking the sky. The world burned.
She stood frozen, surrounded by devastation. Cities were crumbling. Streets ran red. Corpses—both normies and outcasts—were strewn across the ground, their eyes staring lifelessly at the heavens.
She had seen death before. She had caused it. But this... this was extinction.
Monsters roamed the wreckage. Not the mutated kind or genetically engineered freaks. No, these were something far worse. Things that should not exist—clawed and horned, dragging chains, wearing faces that seemed stitched from human sorrow. They fed on fear. They multiplied by slaughter.
Wednesday wanted to reach out to Goody, to connect through the psychic tether she had used before. Her mind reached, strained—but the connection fizzled.
Instead, the vision grew more intense.
Outcasts tried to fight back. Sirens screamed. Hydes tore at the beasts. Pyrokinetics scorched the earth in desperation.
None of it mattered.
They all died.
And for the first time in years, Wednesday felt her heart race—not from excitement, but from something far more unwelcome.
Fear.
Then, through the ashen clouds, a crack of light tore the sky apart. It wasn't sunlight. It was colder—sharper.
A figure descended, suspended in brilliance.
It hovered beneath the clouds, shrouded in divine intensity. Though the figure was partly obscured by the blinding glow, Wednesday saw just enough to remember it forever: red visors burning like twin stars, a luminous blue orb embedded in its forehead, and armor that shimmered with pulsing energy.
The ground trembled beneath its presence.
And then it moved.
With fluid, mechanical precision, it lunged into the swarm of monsters and tore them apart—limbs flying, bodies combusting into ash. It was brutal. Efficient. Unstoppable.
The creature opened its chest plate. Dozens of small glowing orbs floated outward, humming with power. The air shimmered. Dust, fire, lightning—they were all drawn toward the orbs, pulled in as if the world itself were unraveling.
Then came the blast.
A beam of pure energy erupted from the center of the being's chest. It split the sky. It tore mountains from the earth. Everything—monster or otherwise—was incinerated in a wash of light.
Wednesday screamed.
And woke up.
Her body jolted upright, drenched in sweat. Her chest heaved. Her hands trembled.
She blinked and scanned her bedroom—the towering bookshelves, the gothic paintings, the moonlight slanting across the black wood floor.
Safe.
For now.
But the vision lingered behind her eyes, seared into her mind. She had seen something. Something real. Something coming.
And for the first time, she didn't believe she could handle it alone.
As much as she loathed admitting it—she needed help.
Only one person came to mind.
⸻
By the time the sun had risen behind the fog-draped hills, Wednesday was seated in her mother's greenhouse.
Morticia Addams, elegant as ever in her deep black robe, sipped a cup of crimson tea as she listened to her daughter recount everything—the dream, the text, the monsters, the figure from the sky. Her expression remained unreadable, but her eyes glowed with interest.
When Wednesday finished, silence settled between them like dust.
"Is there anything else, darling?" Morticia asked gently, brushing a dark lock of hair behind her ear.
Wednesday hesitated.
She had seen her in the vision—Enid. Flickers. Glimpses. She didn't understand what it meant. Was she in danger? Or was she part of whatever came next?
But she couldn't say it. Not yet.
"No, Mother. That's all."
Morticia tilted her head ever so slightly. "Do you wish to return to Nevermore?"
Wednesday's voice was steady. "Yes. That is what I want."
"Then that is what you shall have, my dear."
As the wind stirred the trees outside, Wednesday stared into the garden of shadows, her expression calm—but her mind racing.
Because something had changed.
And this year at Nevermore...
Would be unlike any before.