Chapter Text
Cold never left, just as day never came.
That was one of the first things Will understood about this place. November was never this cold in Hawkins. Here, the cold was not just in the air—it was the air. The cold here was not sharp or clean; it seeped into his bones slowly, clinging to him like wet clothes that never dried. The air itself felt damp, heavy with the sour stench of mold and decay, as if the world had been rotting for years without anyone noticing.
Will didn’t know how long he had been hiding in Castle Byers. Hours. Maybe days. Time didn’t work right here. The sun should have risen by now. It always did. But in this dimension, it never came. Darkness wasn’t the absence of light — it was permanent, pressing in on him from all sides.
At first, Will stayed completely still.
He was fairly certain the flower-faced monster had lost him, but the fear didn’t fade. If anything, it sharpened. His mind betrayed him, replaying the memory of its open mouth, the way rows of razor teeth glistened wetly. He hadn’t imagined the blood. He knew that. He didn’t know whose it had been, and that terrified him more than anything else.
His thoughts spiraled, ugly and relentless. Did the creature tear its victims apart instantly, or did it hunt like those carnivorous plants he’d read about. Waiting patiently, luring prey closer with something sweet before snapping shut? Did it kill quickly, or did it savor the chase?
Since Will wasn’t dead yet, he assumed the second.
Will wasn’t dead yet, which meant the monster either hadn’t finished playing or it was saving him for later. Maybe it dragged its food back to a nest. A safe place. Will understood that logic. Everyone wanted to eat somewhere safe.
The thought made his stomach twist. Hunger gnawed at him, sharp at first, then dull. Will hugged his knees to his chest, curling in on himself like a cocoon, hoping the pressure would ease the ache. He knew hunger. It hurt for a while, then it went numb, leaving only emptiness behind.
He had learned that a long time ago. He just thought that this ugly part of him, this ugly memories were long buried somewhere in dark corners of his mind never to be seen again.
When Joyce had to work and Lonnie was supposed to watch him, meals were often forgotten. Or ignored. Will never told his mom. She and Lonnie fought enough already. Will had always believed that if he stayed quiet — if he took up less space things would be easier for everyone.
Now he was here. Alone. Hiding from a monster in a broken mirror of his sanctuary in a world that shouldn’t exist.
Just another burden. Another thing for everyone to worry about.
The thought crept in slowly, poisonous and familiar. Every problem his family had ever had somehow circled back to him. Joyce worked herself to exhaustion because Will wanted expensive art supplies on his birthday. Jonathan lost his father because Will couldn’t be brave enough. Lonnie was kicked out because Joyce saw him slap Will. But it hadn’t even hurt that much. It hadn’t been meant to. It was meant to remind him where he belonged. And that screwed everything over.
What if Lonnie hadn’t been the villain?
What if Will was?
What if he was something that fed off other people, draining them until there was nothing left? He remembered old photographs from before he was born. Joyce, Jonathan, Lonnie. Smiling. Whole. They looked happier then. Maybe Will had ruined it all. Maybe he had always been too much, or not enough.
When he got home
If he got home
He would apologize. To his mom. To Jonathan. For everything.
That thought broke him.
Hot tears spilled down his face, the only warmth in this place. If he got home. Will wasn’t a hero. Heroes were brave. Joyce was a hero. Jonathan was. Hell even Mike was. Will was just the quiet kid who liked to draw. The kind of character who died first.
And then something snapped nearby.
Will clamped a hand over his mouth, trapping the scream before it escaped. His entire body went rigid. He didn’t dare breathe. Something moved in the darkness—a blur, too fast to see clearly.
Dark. Wrong.
Silence followed. Thick. Suffocating.
That was worse.
No footsteps. No breathing.
Nothing.
His heart hammered so hard he was sure the sound would give him away. His hands were slick with sweat, yet his fingers felt frozen, numb. Every breath felt borrowed. The stillness felt intentional, like the world itself was waiting.
Then he heard it.
A wet sound. Slow. Deliberate.
The smell changed.
A thick, coppery stench crept into the air. Blood. Fresh. Close.
Something unfolded behind him.
Will felt it before he saw it—a presence, towering, patient. The sound it made was soft, almost curious. A slow, wet click. He turned just enough to see the petals opening, stretching impossibly wide. Teeth gleamed inches from his face.
Will tried to scream.
The sound never made it out.
Something slammed into him from behind.
The force knocked the air from Will’s lungs in a thin, useless wheeze. He hit the ground hard, gravel and rot biting into his skin, before something rough and impossibly strong wrapped around his legs. Arms? Paws?
Whatever held him twitched, adjusting its grip, as if testing how much pressure his small body could take before breaking.
Cold burned where they touched him.
Will thrashed instinctively, nails scraping uselessly against the stone, against the walls of Castle Byers as he was dragged backward. His heels left shallow tracks in the damp ground before losing purchase entirely. Something wet brushed his ankle and lingered there, pulsing faintly. The world tilted. Darkness swallowed the edges of his vision.
He screamed then.
This time the sound came out. Thin, broken, desperate. But the place devoured it. The noise didn’t echo. It didn’t linger. It was gone the moment it was made, as if the world itself refused to acknowledge it.
It felt like screaming into a mouth already closing.
The monster hauled him through forest that bent wrong, past walls of the houses that pulsed faintly, veins crawling beneath the surface like something buried too close to the skin. Shadows stretched and recoiled as he passed, clinging to him longer than they should have. Vines brushed against his face, his neck, cold and slick like drowned hands. One slid briefly into his mouth, tasting him, before slipping away. The air grew thicker the farther they went, harder to breathe, each breath tasting of rot and iron.
Will’s head knocked against something solid. Pain flared white-hot, then dulled. The impact rang through his skull, leaving everything muffled, distant. His vision swam. He caught flashes as he was dragged along—broken shelves, toppled furniture, warped shapes that tugged at something deep in his memory.
Bookshelves.
The realization hit him weakly, distant and unreal.
A sob crawled up his throat, half-formed, strangled by fear.
The place they dragged him into looked like the Hawkins library, or a corpse of it. Tall shelves loomed crooked and swollen, half-consumed by black vines that crawled over the spines of ruined books. Some of the books twitched faintly, as if something inside them was still alive and struggling. Pages lay scattered across the floor, fused together by moisture and mold. Some were stained so dark they no longer looked like paper at all. The smell here was overwhelming. Old paper, decay, and something alive beneath it all, breathing.
The tendrils yanked him upright.
Will barely had time to register the wall behind him before more vines surged forward, wrapping around his wrists, his ankles, his chest. They pulled him flat against the stone with ruthless precision. Something tightened around his throat—not enough to choke him, just enough to remind him how easily it could. He cried out as they tightened, the pressure stealing his breath, his ribs screaming in protest.
“Please,” he whispered, the word tearing out of him without thought.
His voice sounded small here. Insignificant.
The vines didn’t respond.
They pulsed instead, as if answering something he couldn’t hear.
Something moved at the far end of the room.
The sound it made was subtle but wrong. A slow shift, like roots tearing free from soil.
Will lifted his head as much as the bindings allowed. His vision blurred, but he could make out a shape emerging slowly from the darkness. Tall. Too tall. It’s body was barely visible beneath the writhing mass of vines that clung to it, threaded through it, as if the creature and the environment were the same thing. Some of the vines sank directly into its flesh, disappearing beneath skin that looked cracked and dead. It’s movements were deliberate, unhurried. Confident.
It didn’t need to rush. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Watching.
Will’s chest hitched painfully. His fingers twitched uselessly against the restraints. The vines reacted instantly, tightening in response to the movement, punishing the attempt. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to look away. But he couldn’t.
The thing tilted its head.
The motion was almost curious. Almost gentle.
For a brief, horrifying moment, Will had the overwhelming sense that it could see everything. Not just him, but his thoughts. His guilt. His fear. All the ugly, buried parts he had tried so hard to hide. It felt like fingers rummaging through his chest, sorting through memories like pages in a book.
The room seemed to close in around him. The shelves leaned closer. The vines crept higher up the walls. The cold deepened, crawling into his skull, freezing his thoughts mid-panic. His vision darkened at the edges, pulsing in time with his heart.
The last thing Will saw before the darkness took him completely was the creature stepping closer, vines tightening around him like a promise.
Not a threat.
A certainty.
Then the world went black.