“It’s for a deal!” Ahsoka turned, her face pale with terror. “He’s coming! Zilla, what are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” Zilla answered coldly, unsheathing a dagger. “You left me in the forest, Ash. But this time…” She began to prowl toward her sister, her gaze turning hollow and manic. “I won’t let you leave.”

Ahsoka’s warrior instincts flared, but her heart sank at the sight of her sister’s descent into madness. “But sister…”

The tent flap flew open. Anakin stepped in, his presence heavy and suffocating. “Zilla, it’s time for—” He stopped dead, his eyes narrowing as they landed on the runaway. “Ahsoka?”

Anakin didn’t look relieved; he looked like a man who had finally found a lost possession. To him, love was a leash—a way to control, dictate, and dominate. He believed his iron grip was for their own good, a twisted form of affection that demanded total submission.

Ahsoka didn’t hesitate. She snatched a nearby weapon, leveling it at his chest with the precision of a trained fighter. “Stay back! Give me my Padawan braid.”

Zilla lowered her dagger, a dark, jagged laugh escaping her lips. “Yeah, sister,” she hissed, her voice dripping with venom. “Give him what he deserves. Make him pay for every time he’s been hard on you. Make him bleed for every time he tried to own us.”

Miles away—or perhaps in a different layer of reality altogether—Miriam sat on the freezing floor of Rumplestiltskin’s castle. As the author, she knew every stone of this place, yet the cold felt more real than any word she had ever typed. She stared at the wall, paralyzed by the realization that she was no longer the creator, but a character in her own tragedy.

Suddenly, the heavy oak door groaned and swung open. There was no hand on the latch; it was the unmistakable, oily pull of Rumple’s magic.

She forced herself up, her limbs stiff and trembling. She crept toward the threshold and peeked out into the corridor.

“Rumple?” she whispered, her voice cracking.

The hallway was a void. No torches were lit; no shadow moved. It was a vacuum of darkness. Had he left? Or was this just another layer of his psychological game?

Rumple didn’t just want her trapped; he wanted her to break herself. He delighted in the mental gymnastics of his victims, watching them hope for an escape he had already blocked. He was a psychopath who played with emotions like a child pulling wings off a fly, and now he was using Miriam’s own plot twists against her.

She had written him to be a monster. Now, he was proving to her just how well she had succeeded