1. Rachel (Our Hare MC!)
2. Butter (Our Golden Spirit of Conquest!)
3. Adelaide (Our Magician Villainess!)
[Thirty Two Hours Remaining]
Rachel walked the outer wall of the castle, boots grinding softly through powdered stone as Regina moved beside her, each measured step disturbing a silence that had settled like a held breath. The battlements stretched ahead in a slow, unbroken line, their ancient parapets worn smooth by centuries of weather, war, and neglect.
A false history.
Behind them followed Snow.
Not walking, but guided.
A beautiful marionette, her movements precise to the point of cruelty, lush black locks and glassy eyes catching what little light filtered down from the torn sky. Threads shimmered faintly when the angle was right, reflections more than substance, tugging her forward in perfect, obedient increments. She did not stumble. She did not resist.
Powerless.
Aware.
Nia had long since withdrawn into Rachel’s Core, curled away with Nike and the other buns, leaving behind only a soft warmth at the edge of her soul—pressure eased, panic quieted.
What remained was patience. The kind demanded when everything else balanced on a knife’s edge, and rushing would only make the fall worse.
Misfortune’s threads writhed at the edge of Rachel’s perception, no longer anchored to her choices. They bent instead toward Regina, converging in fractured spirals around the broken queen like a storm unsure where to land.
Stone crunched beneath their feet as if powder.
The conversation that had preceded Regina’s first question had been brief—two words, spoken without ceremony. Yet those words had unfolded into nearly two hours of silence, the kind that stripped thought down to its rawest parts.
The acid rain had ceased. The thunder had moved on.
All that remained was the slow, soundless weeping of the heavens—black snow drifting down in lazy spirals, frozen tears dissolving against the stone before they could settle. Above them, the cloud cover thinned into ragged veils, pale light bleeding through like old parchment held too close to flame.
It washed over the battlements, over the ruined banners, the scarred stone, and finally over Regina herself. A monarch still standing in the snow, untouched by the cold, carrying a kingdom that had already begun to rot from the inside.
Regina’s green eyes drifted over the dead forest beyond her castle, her mumbles as soft as Snow’s gentle face. “The lovely face of lives we chase is but dust for wind to take when all is gone… The only loss is to not have loved at every cost. Is that to love at all?”
Rachel held her wrist loosely behind her back, putting herself in Regina’s position. “I can hear the real question beneath those words. How do you love when your heart is broken? How do you speak when you feel outspoken by the state of your fate?”
She paused, reflecting back on everything she’d gone through over the last few months—the horrors, the revelations, the conspiracies that spanned beyond mortal understanding.
“…All I can say is this,” Rachel continued quietly. “You keep your heart open, despite the stakes. You take a chance on your mistakes by embracing brand new days.”
Her gaze softened.
“Do you think an open wound can be healed with grace?”
Regina didn’t so much as look up, but the grief was shown. She stopped to stare at the thick forest, a tear falling down her cheek.
“To fix everything, I need to…let go. I have to give up control. How terrifyingly…poetic.”
Her focus wandered to the doll behind them, the singular soul in all the Fable realm, made into the puppet of that which should not exist. Not out of malice, but despair.
“I can forgive…and be forgiven, by learning to heal with my heart wide open. Oh, how much you demand of me for your promised freedom, Rachel. To release my treasonous daughter, whom I raised… A false life. Who I love with every beat of my blackened heart. Who I now fear… What cruelty is this fate?”
“Fate never claimed to be kind,” Rachel returned, sad eyes drifting to Snow. “You were judged before you even had the chance to become what fate had in store. Snow left you to die, alone, scared, and powerless, out of the story you are confined to… And you cannot fault her.”
Regina’s cold finger lifted to press against Snow’s perfect cheek, a mother’s pain fracturing everything she was. “How can I? I am merely a dream, acting in a false frame of reality, born out of sacrifice and torment. To me, our time is eternal, yet for Snow, she hardly knows who I am. To her, I am not her mother…and never was. Can such a divide be bridged?”
Rachel’s tail felt the coils of Misfortune circling, tightening around every throat, the tears in Regina’s eyes true and pure, loss laid bare, and she said the only thing that felt right.
“…That’s for you to decide.”
The Wicked Queen’s palm cupped around her daughter’s cheek, eyes wet, and the first ghost of a smile lifting. “I can see the demons you feared within me… I see the cracks and my faults. The hatred I felt has been snuffed out to embers. Now, all I feel is pain.”
Hands rising, Regina placed both hands on her crown and lifted it off her head, moving it above her daughter’s.
“I beg for peace from the hands that broke me. Grace from the mouth that never spoke it. You watched me drown in guilt, you poured… I wear your silence like a sentence. You were already gone. I traced your absence as if it were a sculpture. But never meant to forgive… You just wanted me to bleed for it…because I was just the blight in your story.”
She stared at the blinding artifact, then at her daughter with the most complex range of emotions Rachel had ever seen. “I wore your memory like a wound, but I was never the one who left. I prayed to a version of you that never answered. Now, I know the truth, and my eyes are clear.”
A pillar of light broke through the dark veil, black snow purifying to glistening diamonds. “If control is my sin, then I tear myself apart and offer it to you in love… For I have nothing else to give. May you love with every step you take… I will be okay.”
The Wicked Queen placed her crown on Snow White. And the world changed.
Not all once, but with one shed tear and a flower’s bloom in the courtyard.
Snow’s glossy vision regained light, staring into Regina’s accepting eyes, and what followed wasn’t words, but tears. Snow lurched forward, wrapping her fable step-mother into an embrace that collapsed the fracture of the White Kingdom.
“…I’m so sorry.”
Regina’s arms closed hesitantly, her words barely a whisper, “I smile like it’s second nature…but it’s just muscle memory. There is an ache beneath everything I say…”
Snow’s voice broke. “I don’t know what to do… What can I do?”
“I do not have answers for a daughter I never raised… I buried my heart so deep. I called it strength… But I forgot where I left it. I stitched my heart back together with borrowed thread,” she mumbled, tear-struck eyes drifting to Rachel, “but I cannot say I am whole again. I still tremble in the snow, but I cannot help but flinch when I hear…my daughter’s voice.”
Her grip gradually tightened, pain and sorrow unfiltered. “You are the silence I learned to scream through, and now my fate is in your hands… Snow White, My Treacherous Queen. For I am nothing but a whisper in a false story.”
Several seconds passed amidst the breaking clouds as a new sovereign was recognized. Yet, the land showed scars that remained. Snow pressed her forehead against Regina’s.
“…You’re not broken or forgotten. Yes, I may have another woman and father that I call mother and father. Yes, I tried to bury my duty to you and this realm in favor of my own problems in the real world. And yes…I cannot do that any longer. In trying to correct the story… I became the Wicked Queen in my own story.”
Carefully breaking away, she looked directly into her stepmother’s accepting gaze. Hands rising, she removed the artifact and placed it back on Regina’s crown as the renewed queen’s red eyes widened in disbelief.
“I do not deserve the title of queen yet… Mother.”
“But… I am not your mother,” Regina mumbled.
“Not yet.” Snow smiled, accepting and welcoming. “Yes, I already have a mother. And I am willing to accept another, who will teach me to take her place upon the throne.”
Rachel stepped back, wearing a smile as Nia munched on popcorn and held her breath in awe, watching the whole thing from inside her soul.
Snow spread her gown and fell to one knee, bowing her head before the emotional queen. “Allow me to pledge my loyalty once again to the Kingdom of White…and you, Mother. Will you accept me?”
Bright blue eyes rising, Rachel nodded as Regina fought down her turbulent heart and held out her hand. Snow pressed her lips to it, with the queen’s words trembling in the frosted morning air.
“Welcome home, Princess Snow… My daughter. We have much to discuss.”
“That, we do.”
Taking this moment to step in, Rachel put a hand on her hip, flashing her teeth. “Everyone loves a happy ending. We have a lot of work to do. Let’s correct the story… Because what’s coming requires all the power you can summon, Queen Regina.”
Rachel gestured to Snow, then to the castle. “Your path to freedom is close. And your dream is closer than you think… Follow me.”
✧⸻✧⸻✧
[Butter’s PoV]
[Twenty-Seven Hours Remaining]
Frank’s laboratory deep underneath Snow’s castle hummed with the quiet energy.
Butter watched Scarlet’s face cycle through confusion, suspicion, and something approaching horrified understanding as the scientist spoke. Adoncia stood rigid beside Butter’s chains, club raised, uncertain whether to strike or wait.
“You want to…fix the Fable Seeds?” Scarlet repeated, her blood coiling defensively. “With Butter’s power? But, Butter, you said it wasn’t possible. Even for you.”
Butter crossed her legs the opposite direction, plucking at her dress with a thoughtful hum. “Indeed! I believed it was structurally impossible. I am so curious. He’s not lying, Scarlet. Doesn’t that make it even more exciting?”
“No!” Scarlet’s fang poked out, clearly nervous as she glanced between the monster family and Frank. “He could believe it and be wrong. What then? Snow could die. Red could go crazy. There are so many other bad outcomes!”
“She’s such a smarty,” Butter giggled, leaning closer to Adoncia with a grin. “I see she’s picked up Rachel’s paranoia. Those are really good questions. What do you say, Frank?”
Adoncia winced as a crack of strange black lightning forced her back. “Mistress, please, this isn’t the time to be reckless. The Empress would be livid.”
“I beg to differ,” Frank muttered, adjusting his glasses, that strange pocket watch ticking in his palm. “Empress Elinor would find my experiment an appropriate risk to see to its end.”
“And what do you know about my empress?” Adoncia snarled back, aura flaring and making Butter proud at how good she was becoming without the help of Elinor or her support. “You’ve never been to our world!”
Frank sighed and moved to a crystalline display, brushing past Scarlet’s blood without a care in the world. “Technically, this is your original world, Adoncia Vences. You haven’t even passed a year in that world you were taken to.”
Her maid bristled, starting to shake a little. “How do you know my last name? Who are you? Where are you getting this information from?”
Butter leaned left and right, chains clattering as she bubbled with energy.
“Realistically, there are only two possibilities for him to have that much insight, Blue Eyes! He’s somehow a higher entity himself, above even the 7th-dimensional beings, or…”
“He’s working with Nungal,” Scarlet hissed, now looking even more uncertain.
“As we speak,” Frank stated, tapping gears and flicking dials, “Rachel is consolidating power in a rather unconventional way. I’m rather impressed, actually. I hadn’t planned on her being this competent. It makes my experiment far easier than I’d anticipated. Though…”
He shifted to examine Scarlet. “There are areas of error that could create quite the mess. You see, we aren’t dealing with typical forces. The Fable architecture is fundamentally corrupted. Every Seed carries a Black Mote at its core—a fragment of Eldritch influence designed to release entities of the Crimson Tide when the Fable collapses.”
A shiver ran through Butter, head rising as she felt the passing ripple of power fracturing space-time around them. A pressure passed through the chamber—not force, not magic, but attention.
Scarlet stiffened as if a blade had been drawn across the back of her neck, every drop of her blood spreading out. The world seemed to tilt for her as she stumbled, just slightly, like something vast had turned its gaze sideways and brushed against them in passing.
It wasn’t here.
It wasn’t coming.
It had simply…looked.
“Don’t,” Scarlet snapped, voice sharp and frightened as she whirled on Frank. “Don’t say that name. It…didn’t feel that way the last time I heard it.”
Her eyes burned, pupils tight, hands shaking as crimson patterns crawled up her arms of their own accord. “This feels the same as when Black Hat was free.”
The pressure faded. The hum of the lab returned.
But Scarlet didn’t relax.
Butter hummed, shaking it off with a testing, internal presence of her spirit—about the best she could do while locked out of her powers. Frank simply returned to the box containing The Eye of Utelira, making a few adjustments as he checked his watch.
“Mmm. The fractures left in Fate’s threads are being filled in by the Eldritch forces… Is that your plan! Goodness. How…unusually generous of you.”
“High Queen? What are you talking about?” Adoncia pressed.
Scarlet moved closer to the clock, seeing the reflection of Rachel start to emerge in the gears, moving through the halls with shadows—shadows that were gradually becoming people.
Frank actually showed a small smirk, taking a fraction of a second to glance her way. “I wouldn’t be so quick to think me so benevolent, High Queen.”
The fanged girl broke into the discussion, being a tad more roundabout in connecting the dots. “Black Hat. Why do they look all smoky…like he was? Quit dancing around the topic,” she demanded, keeping her gaze on Rachel and the tearful people who came out of the darkness.
Butter perked up upon seeing Snow beside her, looking radiant as ever, and, shockingly, Regina, moving with the grace of a queen.
“One example among many.” Frank used a pair of gloves to pick up the box containing her necklace and held it over a chest. It opened, revealing a mess of items, and he dropped it inside. “Every Fable Seed carries the same corruption. Every Fablekin who achieves their ‘happy ending’ or falls to their ‘tragic fate’ releases the same fragment of that infection into reality.”
Shattered glass rose out of the chest, laced with blue Ichor, and rising to create a schematic that made Butter’s divine senses ache.
“If left to manifest, as Adelle and her mistress desire… It only takes a dozen bloomed achor points to give the Tide a foothold, latching onto Fate’s broken network. It would drown everything in the Red Sea.”
Scarlet’s blood went still. “But Fate would have stopped them. Unless…”
Frank’s sad eyes met hers. “Yes, your mother used you as the anchor point to create the Fable Seeds, smuggling the Black Seeds in that they then needed to be nourished by consuming Legend and Mythic Seeds, feeding them and creating a false reality between dimensions.”
Butter tilted her head, chains rattling musically. “You set all this up to stop the Scarlet Hand. Oh, yes, Priss would be most interested in that. Perhaps you could shed some light on where I can direct my twin to exact her revenge against Jennifer? We have our own war happening against the Scarlet Hand in our new world, after all.”
“I do not have information regarding that branch of the Hand,” he stated, now rearranging the patterns of divine script flowing through the chest—the blood of what Butter could only assume was Eldritch in origin. “What happens in the Outlands is not my concern.”
“Humph.” Butter puffed up her cheeks and looked away. “You do know. You just don’t want to tell me. Perhaps Priss would like it that way. She likes to feel smart and active.”
“What does the High Queen have to do with this, then, smart guy?” Adoncia demanded, stepping forward with her club now raised to the schematic the man was constructing. “Why take her? You seem to have powerful items already. Why do you need her specifically? Why not go after Nungal?”
Frank smiled—genuinely, this time as he looked at her as if she were a child.
“I’d think it was obvious. Life Force. Simple and pure.”
Butter held up a peace sign. “I do have that in spades! I’m so popular.”
“Oh, more than you are aware,” he said softly, glancing her way. “The High Queen’s soul carries the architecture of—well, we can just say a unique property that is quite challenging to obtain. One not even Nungal could provide—not just healing, not just growth…but the template for sustainable being.”
He gestured to the extraction device, still humming with stolen golden light as the Eye rose to the center of the schematic.
“I needed a fragment of that essence. Enough to rewrite the Fable Seed’s core architecture. To provide what the Seeds were always meant to provide—genuine souls for Fablekin. Reversing the effects and purifying the consumed souls…”
He turned to bow to her in a way of respect. “Let me be clear, I want to create a Life Bomb that will destroy those like Black Hat, and use the purified, Eldritch Force with Butter’s unique attribute to create true souls. Real existence. Not borrowed time. Those within the Existences of the Legendkin Seeds, the nourishment of Mythickin Seeds, cannot be reversed, but one tragedy can be used to avoid another, and provide opportunity.”
Frank’s charming smile shifted to Scarlet.
“Now, are you interested?”
Scarlet’s eyes widened. “And Rachel…felt your plan in misfortune, and has been working around it, because it helps us?”
“Well, as I said,” he mused, adjusting his suit and returning to his task, “I am hardly a saint. I am merely trying to seal the corruption for my own end—the salvation is a side effect. What matters is preventing the Tide from using the Fablekin collapse as a doorway into your Red Sea… Because that would make Nilly intervene. And I cannot allow that.”
Butter laughed, bright and genuine, making everyone flinch.
“Oh, you wonderful man!” she beamed. “You’re not the villain you pretend to be. You’re the reluctant hero who can’t admit he cares!”
Frank’s composure didn’t so much as crack a hair as he turned to bow to her. “I am honored by your grace, My Lady, but truly, I don’t care. I am simply fixing the residual flaws that came with Rachel’s reckless action of breaking Fate’s threads. This fight is truly not mind, nor do I care for anyone within Scarlet’s web… But someone I care about does.”
“Liar,” Butter whispered warmly, “a beautiful, tragic liar. But that’s okay. I’m happy to be of help! What are we fighting?”
The laboratory’s energy shifted as the shadows began to quiver.
Somewhere far away, through dimensional walls and Eldritch barriers linking to the core of this realm, were breaking open.
The blond man moved a long, diamond-shaped mirror fragment into place, causing violet light to spill from its edges. “We’ve reached the happy ending… Rachel, proving misfortune’s power, by completing another Fablekin tale… The tale of a mother’s grief with fangs.”
✧⸻✧⸻✧
[Adelaide’s PoV]
[Twenty-Seven Hours Remaining]
The mirror rippled with crimson light as Adelle’s face rematerialized, and for the first time, Adelaide actually saw her face—and it showed fear.
“Apologise for the earlier interruption with that meddlesome man. I—”
“Adelaide!” The Scarlet Hand’s true architect spoke her name like a curse, interrupting her. “What have you allowed Frank to do with the subject? Did you not leave safeguards?”
She frowned, adjusting her floating hat.
“We fashioned a soul-deal. Sure, he can play little games and obstruct, but he must give me Butter’s power within the hour. It also must be potent enough to accomplish what I desire. I will ascend every floor—reach beyond the Tower to divinity itself! He can be annoying. He cannot betray me.”
“You fool.” Adelle’s ruby eyes blazed. “He can give you everything you want and still betray you! He’s using her power, with—where did he get Ane’zath’s blood? He broke into my vault…” she seethed, seemingly distracted as she performed some complex ritual on her end.
“Mirrorverse fragments, broken from Rachel’s ascention… How did he stabilize them inside this dimension? These ingredients. The design…is to rewrite the Seed architecture. To seal the Black Mote! If you do not stop him, you will ascend only to have your power stripped!”
The words hung in the fractured space between realms.
Adelaide’s smile froze.
“Wait.” Adelaide’s mind raced, cards materializing around her in agitated spirals. “You’re saying the corrupted elements in the Fable Seeds…those are needed for this device to work? Those aren’t exactly stable.”
“Of course they aren’t! How else do you expect your fragile, mortal soul to become malleable enough to ascend?” Adelle’s voice shook with something Adelaide had never heard from her. Genuine terror. “It should be impossible. No one could recreate the ritual… He has Scarlet there! Dammit!”
Adelle leaned closer, her composure fracturing. “The Crimson Tide is the only force capable of reshaping reality into something sustainable. He’s going to fulfill your promise and use you as the sacrificial medium instead of the goddess you captured! The burst of potent Divine Energy. To get this information, he’d need to be in league with…The Ever-Shifting Mists!”
She felt ice creep through her veins as the crystal in her hand shone bright and fractured amidst Adelle’s expanded, horrific Soul Expansion.
“They oppose the inevitable. They oppose you, Adelaide!” Adelle’s voice cracked. “And Frank—that thing pretending to be human—he’s not just opposing you. He’s trying to destroy the entire mechanism that will save reality itself! If he succeeds, Adelaide, everything will be erased… I’ve interfered as best I can from here. Take this…and fix your mistake.”
Adelaide’s hands trembled as a ripple in space passed through, placing a syringe in her hand, filled with crimson liquid. “This is better than the device… This will give you all the power that you wanted. Act fast. Absorb everything… Become the goddess of magic you always claimed to be.”
Adelaide’s smile turned cruel, looking up at the panicking cultist. “Surely there’s more than just this. Do you truly think I’d be so stupid as to take it without proper protection from the side effects? Obviously, this is some Eldritch Syrup,” she rolled her hand around the broken ‘lie-to-me’ crystal, recreating it.
“Your daughter is there and needed for Frank’s ritual. You wouldn’t endanger her by giving me this unless you thought she’d be safe… You think she will kill me after I stop Frank? Nice try. I need more contingencies.”
“You don’t understand what is at—”
“I understand perfectly.” Adelaide tossed the vial into the air, leaving it to float. Her cards snapped into her hands as she pulled up the Tarot card of death. “You’re afraid, Adelle. If everything is truly about to end… Why skimp out on your one card that could answer?”
The sharp-eyed woman’s gaze narrowed, and after a moment, she removed a necklace around her own throat—a bone finger. She passed it through the portal.
“A piece of an Eldritch creature beyond your understanding that will rewrite reality, and fate itself to keep you safe if you had died… Kill—”
She cut the connection before Adelle could respond, teeth gleaming as she saw the crystal’s confirmation of her claim. The woman’s own personal safeguard.
So, she thought, pulling out the bunny-pin charm Frank had given her. The handsome scientist was playing a longer game than any of us. This is serious… This play is getting fun.
Her smile turned predatory.
“Perhaps it is time for me to take center stage.”