After returning from dropping their grandparents off at their hotel, Margo decided to call it a night.

  “Well, I better get some sleep before Dad comes up with another crazy training idea,” she announced with her trademark grin, trying her best to keep the mood light despite the storm brewing inside her.

  Her family’s laughter followed her up the stairs as she retreated to her bedroom, but the moment she closed the door, the facade crumbled. Margo pressed her back against the door and slid down to the floor, clutching her knees to her chest as tremors ran through her body.

  The memories were so vivid; memories from a life stolen by flame and violence.

  She made her way to the bathroom, catching her reflection in the mirror. Same face, same eyes, but inside lived two versions of herself: the college student with dreams of botanical research, and the battle-hardened survivor who’d felt magma burn through her veins as she died.

  She gripped the edge of the sink, watching as her knuckles whitened. Green light flickered in her eyes, a reflection of the mana stirring within her. Tendrils of ivy crept up from the drain, wrapping around her wrists like living bracelets; her powers responding to emotions she couldn’t contain.

  “Get it together, Margo,” she whispered, willing the plants to recede.

  As she washed her face, cool water mixed with silent tears, the memories pulling her under like a riptide.

  Her death had been excruciating. The Knightmare had broken through the frontlines, charging toward Ariauna, one of the few remaining healers. Without thought, Margo had jumped between them, her shield shattering as the beast’s magma-laced horn punctured her abdomen.

  The sheer force of the charge had destroyed her defenses. As a control mage specialized in plant manipulation, she’d never been built for direct combat. The beast’s horn had pierced straight through her, and then came the burning…oh God, the burning.

  The infernal beast had dragged her like a ragdoll, its magma-infused body incinerating her from the inside out. Her vision had blurred, the world reduced to searing pain and the screams of her comrades. It wasn’t until Hawk’s arrow had found the creature’s neck that it finally collapsed, taking Margo down with it.

  Her father had reached her first, skidding to her side and gathering her broken body in his arms. She’d never forget the look on his face; raw anguish breaking through his carefully maintained composure. Behind him stood her mother, Aurora, her hands already glowing with golden healing light.

  “Margo, no!” her mother had screamed, pushing through the crowd to reach her daughter. “Not you too!”

  But her father had caught Aurora’s hands, stopping her healing attempt. “It’s too late,” he said, his voice thick with grief. “If you use any more power, the rest of this Wave is lost. Everyone will die.”

  “Damn this wave and these people! This is my baby, Alexander!” Aurora had screamed, her face contorted with fury and desperation. “Don’t you have a heart?”

  The quiet devastation on her father’s face had been more terrifying than his rage would have been. He’d knelt beside her, taking her hand in his trembling one.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo,” he’d whispered, tears streaming unchecked down his face. “I’m so sorry I let you get hurt.”

  Despite the agony rippling through her, Margo had found the strength to smile. “Dad, c’mon,” she’d said, coughing up blood that stained her teeth crimson. “You were the best, I love you.”

  He squeezed her hand, his eyes never leaving hers. “You are amazing. Always the light in the dark that helped guide me home. It’s been my pleasure having you for a daughter and knowing you as a person.”

  Xavier, who’d been fighting on another front, had heard the news and rushed over. The moment he’d seen her, something in him had broken. He’d screamed to the sky, a sound of pure rage and grief, before turning that fury on the remaining monsters, his movements becoming a lethal dance of precision and violence.

  “Tell Maeve...I...love...her,” Margo had managed as darkness crept in from the edges of her vision.

  Then nothing. No pain, no burning, just... peace.

  Until she’d opened her eyes again, hovering above her own body.

  The memory shifted, and Margo found herself staring at her own death from outside herself. In the immediate aftermath, something extraordinary had happened, something she’d never had the chance to tell her family about in the previous timeline.

  Her skill had activated automatically upon death: Caress of the Mother.

  Caress of the Mother [Passive/Triggered]

  Through a deep, spiritual connection to nature, the user’s essence is preserved upon death, allowing them to transition into a minor nature spirit.

  This skill activates automatically when the user’s physical body perishes.

  She’d become a ghost of sorts, a spirit bound to the natural world. Unable to interact directly, she could only watch as events unfolded around her family.

  The most unexpected part was what happened to her physical body. As her family had gathered around her in grief, plants had begun to grow from the ground beneath her. Vines and flowers had wrapped around her form, cradling her in a natural cocoon.

  “No… my baby!” Aurora had screamed, lunging forward to tear away the vegetation.

  But Alexander had stopped her, his analytical mind kicking in despite his grief. “Wait,” he’d said, studying the plants with dawning realization. “It feels like her. The mana signature... it feels like hers.”

  He’d been right. Even in death, her connection to plant life had manifested, creating a living memorial that protected her remains.

  “It might be the safest place for her body,” Alexander had reasoned, his voice strained but steady. “We have no way to protect it at this point.”

  He’d turned to the others, his grief transforming into cold determination before their eyes. “I’m sorry you’re in pain, and I know it hurts. However, look around! We’re not on Earth, we’re at war. Maeve! Wake the hell up and pay them back for what they stole from us!”

  Watching her father in that moment, Margo had first glimpsed the transformation that would define him in the coming months. The loving father was still there, but something harder and colder was taking shape beneath the surface; something forged in loss and tempered by necessity.

  In her bedroom in the present timeline, Margo curled into a ball on her bed, feeling phantom pain where the Knightmare’s horn had pierced her. The memories continued to flow, fragments of a timeline that existed only in her family’s minds now.

  After her death, she’d followed her father like a shadow, witnessing his gradual transformation. She’d watched as he and her mother grew distant, their shared grief creating a chasm neither knew how to bridge. She’d seen Maeve caught in the middle, struggling to connect with both parents while dealing with her own trauma.

  Joshua had capitalized on the fractures in their family, gradually wrestling more control over the camp. When you were drowning, you grabbed any lifeline offered—and Joshua had been happy to provide that illusion of security.

  One of the most difficult things to witness had been Joshua’s relentless pursuit of her mother. As one of the last and most powerful healers, Aurora had been assigned to Joshua’s main party along with Micah and Morgan. Margo had watched his eyes track her mother’s movements, had heard his thinly veiled innuendos and offers of “protection.”

  Her mother had rebuffed him consistently, but that hadn’t stopped his advances or Morgan’s simmering jealousy. Margo had witnessed the tension building day by day, powerless to intervene.

  "Then we lost Xavier," Margo whispered to her empty bedroom. She'd been there when it happened, a powerless shadow following her brother's final moments.

  She'd felt a strange pull that day, an intuition that led her spectral form to follow Xavier's scavenging party. The forest had seemed to whisper warnings, the leaves rustling with unusual urgency as if nature itself sensed the approaching danger.

  She'd watched as the Hyenas ambushed them at the old gas station, her brother and his friends scattering in different directions as they fled for their lives. She'd followed Xavier, her incorporeal form keeping pace as he darted between trees, activating his escape skill with practiced precision.

  For a moment, it had seemed he might escape; until that arrow found his shoulder.

  "I think I hit something, boss!" she'd heard Grayson call out to his comrades.

  Fear and frustration had surged through her as she'd watched her brother stumble, pulling out the arrow with a stifled cry of pain. When Grayson had emerged from the trees, machete gleaming in the dappled light, Margo had felt a desperation unlike anything she'd experienced since her own death.

  "Got you now, pretty boy," the Hyena had sneered, advancing with his blade raised.

  "No!" Margo had screamed silently, her formless voice lost to all but the trees and soil.

  Something had shifted then; a connection forming between her consciousness and the living earth beneath them. With every ounce of concentration she possessed, Margo had willed the forest floor to respond, to help, to protect.

  Miraculously, a vine had begun to grow, pushing through the soil with unnatural speed. As Xavier had lunged with his short sword, seemingly overextending himself, Grayson had tried to dodge; only to find his ankles ensnared by the vine. His momentary confusion had been enough for Xavier to drive his crossbow bolt into the man's stomach.

  It was the first time since her death that Margo had managed to affect the physical world. The effort had been tremendous, draining her spectral form until she flickered like a candle in the wind. By the time she'd recovered enough to continue following Xavier, he was gone, lost in the depths of the forest.

  She'd searched frantically, drifting between trees and through undergrowth, but found no trace of him. Only days later did she learn his fate from the whispers of returning scavengers—lured by a Harpy's song, his body never recovered.

  She'd cursed her spectral form then, hating its limitations, hating that her one successful intervention hadn't been enough to save him. If only she'd been stronger, if only she'd understood her abilities better, perhaps her brother would still be alive.

  She watched him stagger at the river’s edge and silently cried as the large creature approached her brother. He seemed to smile at rest and whisper a few words, tears forming in his eyes. Suddenly the creature opened its mouth and sank its fangs into his neck.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  She cried alone in silence, as she lived in a world all on her own.

  After Xavier disappeared, her father had been consumed by grief, searching relentlessly for any sign. When a scouting party formed to check another hospital for supplies, Alexander had volunteered, fiercely clinging to the faint hope of finding his son; or at least discovering what had happened to him.

  Margo followed closely behind the party, her spectral form drifting unseen among them. They’d made it to the hospital without incident, but as they’d begun collecting supplies, disaster struck.

  The Hyenas, led by the infamous murderer “Bloody Chris” Samson, had surrounded the hospital. Margo had watched in horror as the scouting party scattered, her father buying time for the others to escape.

  Backed into a corner of the hospital’s lobby, her dad had faced Chris Samson himself; a massive, unkempt man with a jagged-toothed smile and a bloodstained machete.

  “Looks like we caught the Beta of the village, boys,” Chris had drawled, his country accent dripping with malice as he jumped down from the second-floor balcony. The concrete cracked beneath his feet on impact, a testament to his enhanced strength.

  Her father assessed his surroundings with calculated precision, but the exits were blocked and he was completely surrounded.

  “Whoo boy! Someone definitely doesn’t like you!” Chris taunted, unsheathing his machete. “I’ve been offered a hefty reward for your head.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Chris,” Alexander had replied, his voice steady despite the danger. “You know my people and I are the only ones standing against these Waves.”

  “Oh my apologies, Threads,” Chris had mocked, throwing up air quotes. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you on the frontlines. As a matter of fact, you never give any of your ‘special advice’ to me or any of my boys on the Southern front.”

  Alexander had tried reasoning with him, appealing to their shared humanity. “Chris, you might be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. I’m sure you’ve been sent to handle the problem, but we need every living being to fight. You’ve seen the damage!”

  “Sorry compadre,” Chris had replied with false regret. “Truly, I do understand, believe it or not. Your stealthy daughter, Maeve was it, actually saved my ass once during the first wave. I’d like to hold up my end of the bargain, but I’ve been offered a lot of resources, medicine, and more to make sure you and your people disappear.”

  He’d stepped closer, machete gleaming in the dim light. “It’s just business, nothing personal.”

  In a flash of movement, dad had used his Threads to fling a hospital chair toward one of the exits, knocking a female Hyena off her feet. “Go! Now!” he’d shouted to the remaining members of his scouting party.

  As they fled, her father maintained his hold on the chair, pinning the woman down while simultaneously hurling anything within reach at the approaching Hyenas. But he’d been outnumbered and outgunned.

  As the last member of his party escaped, dad finally relented, taking a magically enhanced blow from Chris that sent him crashing into the wall.

  “I mean, who wears a suit in the apocalypse?” Chris had laughed, gesturing to his companions.

  The woman Alexander had pinned down approached with a dagger while nursing a clearly broken arm. “The meat hurt me,” she’d snarled. “I’m owed!”

  “Go ahead and take your pound of flesh, girl,” Chris had said, pointing his machete at Alexander.

  Alexander had slowly risen to his feet, back against the wall, eyes scanning for any possible escape. Finding none, he’d squared his shoulders, prepared to face his death with dignity.

  It was then that Margo, in her spectral form, had felt a desperate urge to help her father. Though incorporeal, she’d discovered that she could still influence plants. With focused effort, she’d caused a vine to sprout from between the cracked hospital tiles, ensnaring the woman’s legs as she lunged at Alexander.

  “What the hell?” the woman had shouted in surprise, looking down at the plant that had seemingly appeared from nowhere.

  In that moment of distraction, Alexander had struck. With lightning-fast reflexes, he’d grabbed a piece of rebar from the debris and driven it through the woman’s skull with one of his Threads.

  “You... don’t get to take me for free.” he’d said, his voice unnervingly calm.

  “So be it,” Chris had snarled, raising his machete. “Die, trash!”

  As the machete descended toward her father’s head, Alexander threw himself sideways, crashing into a pile of debris. His agility barely saved him as the blade embedded itself in the wall where his neck had been seconds before. Blood trickled from a cut along his temple, staining the collar of his once-pristine suit.

  “Almost got you that time, Threads!” Chris cackled, wrenching his machete free from the plaster in a shower of dust.

  Dad struggled to his feet, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The threads he produced flickered weakly; blue wisps that barely materialized before disintegrating. Margo could sense his mana reserves depleting, his life force guttering like a candle in a storm.

  “You know what I’m gonna do after I kill you?” Chris taunted, circling him predatorily. “I’m gonna find that pretty little daughter of yours, the one with all the knives. What’s her name again? Maeve?”

  Dad lunged forward with desperate fury, a primal scream tearing from his throat as he swung a piece of broken pipe. The Hyena leader easily sidestepped the clumsy attack, bringing his knee up into his stomach. The blow sent him sprawling across the broken tiles, gasping for air.

  “Pathetic,” Chris laughed, gesturing to his remaining men. “Hold him down. The orders were to make him feel every second of this.”

  Two Hyenas grabbed Alexander’s arms, pinning him to the ground while a third pressed a boot against the back of his neck. Chris approached slowly, savoring the moment as he twirled his machete.

  “I’m gonna peel you like an apple, starting with those fancy fingers of yours,” he whispered, squatting beside the pinned man. “One joint at a time. I want to see how many pieces I can remove before you stop screaming.”

  In that moment, as Chris reached for his father’s hand, something impossible happened. The world seemed to shudder, the air growing suddenly heavy with a pressure that made Margo’s spectral form recoil. The fluorescent lights still clinging to the ceiling flickered violently; seemingly impossible since there had been no power for years.

  The Hyena pressing his boot against Alexander’s neck stumbled back, gasping as if suddenly unable to breathe. “What... what’s happening?” he wheezed, clawing at his throat.

  Then Dad went still…completely, unnaturally still. Not the stillness of surrender or resignation, but the perfect stillness of a predator assessing its prey. The men holding his arms exchanged nervous glances, their grips faltering.

  “What are you doing, don’t let him.…” Chris began, but his words died as Alexander’s head slowly turned, revealing eyes that had gone completely black, as if the pupils had expanded to consume the irises.

  “Spider’s Calm,” he whispered, his voice changed; deeper, smoother, utterly devoid of emotion.

  The change was instantaneous and absolutely terrifying. The mana within the room seemed to bend toward him, like iron filings drawn to a magnet. A wave of pressure expanded outward from his body, slamming the nearest Hyenas into the walls with bone-shattering force.

  As Alexander rose to his feet with fluid grace, the air around him shimmered with visible currents of mana; a violet haze that distorted the space itself. The Hyenas backed away, their expressions shifting from confusion to dawning horror.

  “What the fuck are you?” Chris demanded, machete raised defensively as he retreated.

  The Threads erupted from her father’s fingertips; not the fragile blue filaments of before, but thick, sinuous cords of royal purple that writhed with purpose. They didn’t merely extend from him; they unfurled like living things, dozens upon dozens of them branching in all directions, filling the air with their pulsing luminescence.

  Dad, no… not Dad anymore, this was someone else wearing his face; it regarded the man with clinical detachment.

  The mana pressure in the room intensified until it became almost unbearable. Dust and small objects began to float upward, suspended in the thick energy that radiated from the transformed man. One of the Hyenas collapsed to his knees, blood seeping from his nose and ears as the pressure crushed the more fragile mana channels in his body.

  Chris bellowed in rage and fear, charging forward with his machete raised high. The blade descended in a vicious arc; only to stop midair, caught in a single Thread that had moved faster than sight. The weapon hung suspended for a moment before shattering like glass, fragments tinkling to the floor in slow motion.

  “Impossible,” Chris whispered, staggering backward.

  The purple threads moved with horrifying synchronicity, like the appendages of some vast, alien intelligence. They shot forward in all directions, each finding a target with unerring precision. Men screamed as the purple cords pierced through limbs, wrapped around necks, or burrowed beneath skin like sentient needles.

  The woman who had tried to attack Alexander earlier lunged from behind with her dagger. Without looking, he sent a Thread backward that caught her mid-leap, suspending her in the air. With a slight twist of his fingers, the thread constricted, slicing her cleanly in half at the waist. The two pieces of her body fell to the ground with wet, heavy sounds.

  “You were going to cut off my fingers,” her father’s booming voice echoed to Chris, his voice eerily conversational. “An interesting approach. Inefficient, though. Let me show you a more elegant method.”

  The Threads descended on Chris like a hydra of violet lightning, each strand finding a different joint, wrapping around with surgical precision. With a single, subtle gesture from Alexander, they all tightened simultaneously. Chris’s body convulsed as twenty-seven joints; fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, hips, and vertebrae all dislocated at once, rendering him a grotesque, twisted marionette.

  His scream echoed through the hospital corridors, a sound of pure, primal agony that even the hardened Hyenas found unbearable. Those still alive tried to flee, scrambling over each other in their desperate attempts to reach the exits.

  None made it. The Threads were everywhere, filling the room like a living web, catching each fleeing figure and reeling them back toward their master. Alexander stood in the center of the carnage, arms slightly extended, face expressionless as he orchestrated the systematic dismantling of his enemies.

  “You talked about hunting my son,” he said softly to the whimpering Chris, who hung suspended before him, body contorted into impossible angles. “Did you find him? Did you kill my boy?”

  Tears streaming down his face, Chris nodded. “P-please... no more... Yes! It was Joshua! He forced me to do all this!”

  Something flickered across Alexander’s face then; a brief spasm of grief immediately subsumed by the cold emptiness of Spider’s Calm. “Thank you for your honesty,” he said, almost gently. “Knowledge, even painful knowledge, is valuable.”

  With a flick of his wrist, the Threads tightened one final time. Chris’s body simply... came apart, separated into neat, precise sections as if dissected by an anatomist. Blood rained down, splattering across Alexander’s suit, his face, the floor around him; yet he didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t show any reaction at all.

  When the last Hyena had been silenced, Alexander surveyed the room with calculating eyes. Finally satisfied, he stepped back to observe his work. The purple light of the Threads cast strange, shifting shadows across his blood-spattered face

  “Xavier,” he whispered, looking up at his macabre creation. “I hope you can rest easier now, son.”

  Then he turned, as if sensing Margo’s presence for the first time. Though she knew he couldn’t truly see her, his eyes fixed directly onto the space she occupied, a slight smile playing at the corners of his lips. The smile held no warmth, no humanity, it was the expression of something ancient and patient, something that had been waiting beneath his skin all along.

  That smile still haunted her to this day.

  As he walked out of the hospital, the threads retracted into his fingertips, leaving the grisly display intact. His posture had changed completely; no longer the slightly stooped tailor, but something regal and dangerous. Mana continued to shimmer around him like a cloak of power, visible only to those attuned to its currents.

  From that day forward, rumors spread through the camp about a giant spider that had taken up residence in the abandoned hospital. No one dared search the building again, terrified of encountering the creature that had left such nightmarish evidence of its presence.

  Only Margo, invisible in her spirit form, knew the truth: there was no monster spider in the hospital; or rather, the monster wasn’t a spider at all, but something that wore her father’s face like a mask, something that had emerged when Alexander Evans ceased to exist and Threads was truly born.

  Back in her bedroom, Margo hugged herself tightly, trying to ground herself in the present. Green light pulsed beneath her skin as her connection to plants responded to her emotional turmoil. A small vine crept across her bedsheet, wrapping around her wrist in a gesture almost like comfort.

  She’d never told anyone what she’d witnessed that night. How could she? The father who had emerged from that hospital wasn’t the same man who had entered it. Something had changed in him; or perhaps something had been unleashed, something that had always been there beneath his careful control.

  In the days that followed, she’d watched her father grow colder, more calculating. The warmth that had defined him seemed to disappear except for brief moments with Maeve. His Threads had changed permanently, remaining that royal purple color that pulsed with power.

  His combat abilities had increased exponentially, as had his detachment. He’d begun to view everything, and everyone as pieces on a chessboard; resources to be allocated for maximum efficiency. Even when they’d discovered Xavier’s fate, her father’s grief had been channeled into cold, methodical planning rather than expressed openly.

  By the time of the final Wave, Threads had become a figure both revered and feared within the camp. His strategic brilliance had saved countless lives, but few had felt comfortable in his presence.

  Margo wiped her eyes, taking a deep breath to steady herself. She still hadn’t told her father that she’d witnessed his transformation, that she’d been present for the darkest moments of their previous lives. Part of her feared what he might say; or worse, what he might not say. What if he didn’t deny becoming that cold, ruthless strategist? What if he saw it as necessary, even now?

  She made her way to the bathroom, splashing water on her face. She needed to pull herself together. Her reflection stared back at her from the mirror, green mana flickering in her eyes like distant lightning.

  “You can do this, Margo,” she whispered, patting her cheeks. “Practice your smile until you feel it.” She forced her lips into a cheerful grin, holding it until her cheeks ached.

  As she prepared for bed, Margo made a silent promise to herself. Someday, when things had calmed down a bit, she would tell her father everything she knew. She would tell him how she’d watched over him until the end, how she’d seen him sacrifice everything, including his own humanity to protect what remained of their family.

  And maybe, just maybe, she could help ensure that this time around, he wouldn’t have to become that man again.

  As she drifted off to sleep, plants grew around her bed, forming a protective cocoon of greenery; nature itself responding to her unconscious desire for safety. She dreamed of apples and their uses, her mind seeking refuge in the mundane rather than returning to memories of blood and purple Threads gleaming in the darkness. She was home now, and this time, she would do everything in her power to make sure it stayed that way.