Plotlogs
An Out Of Town Mission 241021
In a forest dense with unforgiving shadows and a chilling atmosphere known as The Path of Forgotten Echoes, Dean, a man torn by his past and haunted by the memory of a sister he lost, finds his journey taking a sinister turn. As he rides his bike through the forest, he hears a familiar, heartbreaking plea from his long-dead sister, begging him to stop running and to see her once again. Despite his initial resistance and anger, Dean’s despair gets the better of him, leading him to a desperate act to reconnect with the specter of his sister.
As Dean reaches out to her, his world is turned upside down. The sister's form shatters into blackened vines, pulling him into the abyss of the forest floor. Here, he is confronted by a malevolent entity known as the Whisperer, who offers him a harrowing choice: be freed from his guilt and sorrow but at the cost of his humanity. Without hesitation, Dean accepts, plunging himself into an unimaginable pain as his memories and emotions are stripped away, leaving behind a feral beast driven by rage and hunger.
The transformed Dean encounters Phoebe, a figure from his past, in a moonlit clearing. His recognition of her is tenuous, overshadowed by a compulsion to destroy. In a moment of violence, as Dean attacks, Phoebe drives a silver dagger into his heart. As he collapses, a flicker of recognition passes between them, a remnant of their shared history before prophecy and tragedy split their paths. Phoebe holds him as he fades, a gentle gesture that contrasts sharply with the cruelty of their final encounter.
Dean’s death is not just a physical demise but a symbolic release from the torments that have bound him to his past and to the forest. The vines and forest claim him, transforming his body into a part of the landscape, a tragic end to a soul unable to escape the shadows of guilt and grief. Thus, Dean becomes yet another lost soul ensnared by the forest's embrace, leaving behind a tale of sorrow, redemption, and the devastating consequences of choices made in the depths of despair.
(An out of town mission:SRSienna)
[Sun Oct 20 2024]
In The Path of Forgotten Echoes
The forest path stretches endlessly, swallowed by an impenetrable darkness that coils like mist between ancient, twisted trees. The air is thick with the scent of damp earth and old wood, tinged with a faint, sweet decay. Shadows stretch unnaturally long, moving as if alive, slithering between branches that creak like whispers exchanged in secret.
Faint, fragmented murmurs drift on the air, layered like echoes of half-remembered conversations, voices just out of reach, familiar and unsettling. Occasionally, a figure emerges from the mist; a face, half-seen and immediately forgotten, fading into the shadows as though it had never been there at all. A dim light flickers in the distance, neither growing closer nor farther, like a memory one can't quite fully grasp.
It is afternoon, about 57F(13C) degrees,
The road stretches endlessly beneath the wheels of Dean's bike, a blur of asphalt and shadows as the forest looms on either side, thick and opressive under the weight of the October moon looming as a thin sliver in the clouded afternoon sky. The hum of the engine vibrates through his body, drowning everything out until it doesn't.
A voice slips through the wind, soft and sorrowful, like a half-remembered lullaby from another lifetime.
"Dean," the whisper drifts along the edges of his mind, familiar in a way that tightens the chest. "Slow down... please' The voice is delicate, so soft, trembling with the faintest trace of a child's plea. "Just... stop... stop running. Come back to me. Just pull over. I need you to see me."
The sound is unmistakble; his sister, gone so many years ago, calling to him from somewhere just out of reach, as if the past could wind its way through the dark woods and pull him back.
Her voice is full of longing, of fear, threaded with the sorrow of someone left behind. "
The wheels, unbearably fast in their break-neck rage upon the asphalt, hardly swivel when exactly that path turns to forest path then to shadow. Riding upon a mote of darkness in an endless charge. Dean is determined, harsh, somber and sullen an every other meaning of the word while he twists the handle for more speed. What interrupts him in that sound. The voice, the plea. There is wariness to those eyes when he turns the handles aside and drives a boot down on the ground. Rips through the earth underfoot while the bike skews askew, grinds sideways in a horrendous screech until it comes to a sudden and abrupt halt.
What follows is silence. Just the sound of nature with its thrills, shadows and oppression while he stares around, near wide-eyed. Prone to mental manipulation, easy to influence he may be - but Dean is far from dull when he snarls into the ether; "Get the fuck out of my head!" Whatever it is, whoever it is, he searches for the illusion, the falsehood, whatever it is out there in fury suddenly risen. Quieter words follow; "You're not real." Because he killed her. Easily two decades ago. Another barked demand is made then. "Show yourself!"
The wheels, unbearably fast in their break-neck rage upon the asphalt, hardly swivel when exactly that path turns to forest path then to shadow. Riding upon a mote of darkness in an endless charge. Dean is determined, harsh, somber and sullen an every other meaning of the word while he twists the handle for more speed. What interrupts him in that sound. The voice, the plea. There is wariness to those eyes when he turns the handles aside and drives a boot down on the ground. Rips through the earth underfoot while the bike skews askew, grinds sideways in a horrendous screech until it comes to a sudden and abrupt halt.
What follows is silence. Just the sound of nature with its thrills, shadows and oppression while he stares around, near wide-eyed. Prone to mental manipulation, easy to influence he may be - but Dean is far from dull when he snarls into the ether; "Get the fuck out of my head!" Whatever it is, whoever it is, he searches for the illusion, the falsehood, whatever it is out there in fury suddenly risen. Quieter words follow; "You're not real." Because he killed her. Easily two decades ago. Another barked demand is made then. "Show yourself!"
The silence lingers, thick and unnatural, pressing against the edges of reality. Then, just as the shadows seem to settle, the air stirs; not with a breeze, but with a quiet, deliberate hum, like the distant ringing of a bell. The forest shifts, not in a movement but in atmosphere, the kind of change that crawls under the skin and whispers, "You are not alone."
From the shadows, a shape forms, a fleeting silhouette that hovers at the periphery of Dean's vision. It's her. A young girl, pale and familiar, her dark hair swaying as if stirred by a phantom wind. There's no anger in her gaze, only a heavy, inescapable sadness that settles deep into Dean's bones.
"You can't run forever," she chides softly, outstretching a hand. "YOu can't leave me behind."
The forest tightens around him, the shadows growing darker, heavier, suffocating. And then, just beneath the sound of her plea, something whispers, curling through the silence like smoke: "You know you want to."
It's instant how Dean's eyes are drawn to the darkness, the shadows that form a shape. He stares at it, stares at the young girl, pale, familiar, almost a mirror of Dean, if only he was the same age. It roils his blood enough for him to snarl again, grind his jaw, his teeth - but the bike doesn't move yet. It is kept exactly where it is while Dean watches with unflitting attention set upon her. Anger is /barely/ enough to fight the tide of sorrow. Barely. And it is a failing battle.
And the secondary, smoked voice is correct. Dean does want to. He years for it, for that reunion, to mend the mistake he did. That's enough to resolve his expression, returns it to that somber detachment with a glassy look while he shoves his bike back upright, and takes off on it very slowly. Dean's target is his sister, standing just over yonder in the patch of darkness - with his own hand stretching out in an attempt to claim hers and tug the poor ghost, if he can at all, onto the back of his saddle.
The moment Dean's hand brushes the pale, ghostly fingers of the girl, she shatters. Her form splinters like fragile glass, the edges of her outline crumbling into tendrils of blackened vines and twisting branches. They lash out instantly, hungry and vicious, coiling around his arm, snapping around the handlebars of the bike, and dragging him down, down, down... into the darkness beneath the forest floor.
The bike is ripped from his grasp as the vines tighten around his limbs, forcing his body into an unnatural contortion, each branch digging into flesh and bone. The shadows ripple, alive, suffocating, dragging him deeper into the suffocating earth as the world he knows dissolves into the night. His sister's voice, once sweet and sorrowful, distorts into a harrowing, jagged wail, like a scream caught forever in the throat of the forest.
The whisperer's voice slithers through the dark, soft and insidious, a sound that crawls inside his mind and splits it apart. "She never forgave you, Dean. Not really. ANd neither have you." The tendrils tighten, squeezing at his chest, as if daring him to break under the weight of the guilt it burdens upon him. "You can bury it. Drink it away. Fight it with your fists. But it will never leave you."
"You don't fight for power," the Whisperer breathes. "You fight to forget. But how do you fight what's part of you, Dean?"
"I can take it away. All of it," The worst are velvet smooth, wrapping around his mind like a lullaby. "The guilt, the sorrow, the endless running. Just one thread. A life where you are free. No pack. No memories. Just you."
Instantly, Dean is lost. Whisked by the tendrils, stolen by them into the earth as his bike goes off careening into the ether of the forest. Tumbling, falling down, grinding sparks as a steed without a rider. Everything a blur in that depth of darkness, suffocating but familiar. His own coffin. Yet, he lacks the strength to fight it for once. No trashing ensues from captive limbs, kept still in descent. Absent of noise, his voice, his sight, and even the ability to feel much beside the slithering approach of an accusatory voice - his hands are only made into fists.
Minutes, maybe hours - maybe seconds. It's hard to tell how long he waits in silence, in deliberation and consideration of what is professed. Like the acrid scent of smoke clinging to back of a throat, the words root into his mind as a disturbing, compelling compulsion. To which he can only offer one reply, a muffled snarl daring with the ire of a man who has nothing to lose, and nothing left to live for. "Do your fucking worst - do it."
"Indeed, I shall."
The Whisperer seizes the thread within Dean, plucking it from the tangled mess of memories and regrets that coil deep in his soul. The moment it's touched, a searing pain ignites; every nerve set aflame, unraveling everything that ever made him whole. The agony is sharp and deliberate, a thing far worse than any knife or bullet, for it pulls from within. It drags forth the essence of what made him human, unwinding the guilt, the sorrow, the anger; the love he's buried so deep is almost forgotten. Each cherished moment slips away, devoured by the dark, leaving behind an aching void that throbs through his very being. His hands twitch, fists clenched tight, but the pain binds him still, as if daring him to scream, to fight, to beg.
And when that thread snaps free, it leaves him hollow; all that remains is the beast, raw, feral instinct unbound by memory, by sorrow, by anything but rage and hunger. Or so it seems.
The forest spits him out onto the path, releasing him from its grip, free just as the Whisperer promised - freed from the burdens that made him man.
The path twists once more, leading him straight to a clearing where Phoebe waits beneath the cold moonlight. Behind her, the shape of his sister flickers, her small hands clutching at the fabric of his jacket as if she could hide from what is to come. Phoebe stands calm, her expression somber, a silver dagger gleaming at her side. The Whisperer's machinations coils around them like a noose, all for the sweetest betrayal of its making.
Truly, it isn't a difficult process. The whisperer alreay finds anything she's sough as surface-level, the rest, embedded deep within, they're all that remains. Swelling, consuming, filling the gap of him left as he's made to emerge more beast than man. Far more than before, too. A wicked creation of destruction - if only he wasn't sick as a dog. The little girl is paid no heed, even swatted away with the back of a dust-and-grime covered hand so Dean can turn away. Straight to that clearing, lead by an unseen thing. That's where she is - someone he once knew. He can't remember, it doesn't resonate, remembrance gone - but it is enough to spark interest.
Dean takes off ahead, starts to storm, snarl, growl, bare his teeth in destructive need to fill in the hollow spot in his heart that now feels more cumbersome. Barely a few steps, an the rest of the distance Dean covers in the blink of an eye. Lunging, wreathed in mind - hand exteded in search of a throat to hold, a body to crush, and sow ruin to anyhing within his grasp. Right now, that is none othat than Phoebe - or so it seems to him. The name is long gone from his mind. Her face a distant, elsewhere haze. Just like any mindless creature that doesn't know whether the instrusion is harmful or not, Dean seeks to harm first. The swipe of his claw bares the side of his chest, his heart, easy, waiting for a plunge.
Phoebe stands firm in the clearing, holding her ground despite the storm of rage barreling toward her. The distance between them vanishes in a blink, and she barely manages to react. His hand finds her throat with terrifying precision, squeezing, as if to crack the bones beneath his grip and snuff out whatever presence remains in the void he can no longer comprehend. Her name means nothing to him now, and her face shifts in and out of focus, as distant as a dream. But she doesn't resist. Even as the clawed hand tightens, her gaze steady, sadness flickering in the depths of her eyes.
In one smooth, practiced motion, Phoebe pulls the dagger from er side. Silver gleams in the moonlight, just for a moment - a heartbeat's worth of a pause - before she drives it forward to the hollow of his chest. The blade pierces his heart with a terrible finality. The silver burns, a kiss of betrayal, not just from her, but from every memory he can no longer grasp. Phoebe catches him as he collapses, her arms around him just like they were all those years ago, when they were kids with no prophecy hanging over their heads. Something flickers deep within him, a hint of recognition, not enough to save him, but enough to hurt beautifully.
And all the while, branches and vines slither around him, winding through flesh and bone as the world melts away; the beast dissolving, leaving only a boy, shattered in a broken reflection.
Blood seeps from the wound in his chest, trailing down like rivers along his skin as his sister clutches him, just as she did all those years ago. The forest pulls him deeper, roots piercing through muscle, dragging him low, until there is nothing left of Dean but a lifeless form twisting into bark and wood. Slowly, inevitably, he becomes one with the forest, anotther silent, warped tree among the countless souls who wandered too far and were lost to the darkness.
As Dean reaches out to her, his world is turned upside down. The sister's form shatters into blackened vines, pulling him into the abyss of the forest floor. Here, he is confronted by a malevolent entity known as the Whisperer, who offers him a harrowing choice: be freed from his guilt and sorrow but at the cost of his humanity. Without hesitation, Dean accepts, plunging himself into an unimaginable pain as his memories and emotions are stripped away, leaving behind a feral beast driven by rage and hunger.
The transformed Dean encounters Phoebe, a figure from his past, in a moonlit clearing. His recognition of her is tenuous, overshadowed by a compulsion to destroy. In a moment of violence, as Dean attacks, Phoebe drives a silver dagger into his heart. As he collapses, a flicker of recognition passes between them, a remnant of their shared history before prophecy and tragedy split their paths. Phoebe holds him as he fades, a gentle gesture that contrasts sharply with the cruelty of their final encounter.
Dean’s death is not just a physical demise but a symbolic release from the torments that have bound him to his past and to the forest. The vines and forest claim him, transforming his body into a part of the landscape, a tragic end to a soul unable to escape the shadows of guilt and grief. Thus, Dean becomes yet another lost soul ensnared by the forest's embrace, leaving behind a tale of sorrow, redemption, and the devastating consequences of choices made in the depths of despair.
(An out of town mission:SRSienna)
[Sun Oct 20 2024]
In The Path of Forgotten Echoes
The forest path stretches endlessly, swallowed by an impenetrable darkness that coils like mist between ancient, twisted trees. The air is thick with the scent of damp earth and old wood, tinged with a faint, sweet decay. Shadows stretch unnaturally long, moving as if alive, slithering between branches that creak like whispers exchanged in secret.
Faint, fragmented murmurs drift on the air, layered like echoes of half-remembered conversations, voices just out of reach, familiar and unsettling. Occasionally, a figure emerges from the mist; a face, half-seen and immediately forgotten, fading into the shadows as though it had never been there at all. A dim light flickers in the distance, neither growing closer nor farther, like a memory one can't quite fully grasp.
It is afternoon, about 57F(13C) degrees,
The road stretches endlessly beneath the wheels of Dean's bike, a blur of asphalt and shadows as the forest looms on either side, thick and opressive under the weight of the October moon looming as a thin sliver in the clouded afternoon sky. The hum of the engine vibrates through his body, drowning everything out until it doesn't.
A voice slips through the wind, soft and sorrowful, like a half-remembered lullaby from another lifetime.
"Dean," the whisper drifts along the edges of his mind, familiar in a way that tightens the chest. "Slow down... please' The voice is delicate, so soft, trembling with the faintest trace of a child's plea. "Just... stop... stop running. Come back to me. Just pull over. I need you to see me."
The sound is unmistakble; his sister, gone so many years ago, calling to him from somewhere just out of reach, as if the past could wind its way through the dark woods and pull him back.
Her voice is full of longing, of fear, threaded with the sorrow of someone left behind. "
The wheels, unbearably fast in their break-neck rage upon the asphalt, hardly swivel when exactly that path turns to forest path then to shadow. Riding upon a mote of darkness in an endless charge. Dean is determined, harsh, somber and sullen an every other meaning of the word while he twists the handle for more speed. What interrupts him in that sound. The voice, the plea. There is wariness to those eyes when he turns the handles aside and drives a boot down on the ground. Rips through the earth underfoot while the bike skews askew, grinds sideways in a horrendous screech until it comes to a sudden and abrupt halt.
What follows is silence. Just the sound of nature with its thrills, shadows and oppression while he stares around, near wide-eyed. Prone to mental manipulation, easy to influence he may be - but Dean is far from dull when he snarls into the ether; "Get the fuck out of my head!" Whatever it is, whoever it is, he searches for the illusion, the falsehood, whatever it is out there in fury suddenly risen. Quieter words follow; "You're not real." Because he killed her. Easily two decades ago. Another barked demand is made then. "Show yourself!"
The wheels, unbearably fast in their break-neck rage upon the asphalt, hardly swivel when exactly that path turns to forest path then to shadow. Riding upon a mote of darkness in an endless charge. Dean is determined, harsh, somber and sullen an every other meaning of the word while he twists the handle for more speed. What interrupts him in that sound. The voice, the plea. There is wariness to those eyes when he turns the handles aside and drives a boot down on the ground. Rips through the earth underfoot while the bike skews askew, grinds sideways in a horrendous screech until it comes to a sudden and abrupt halt.
What follows is silence. Just the sound of nature with its thrills, shadows and oppression while he stares around, near wide-eyed. Prone to mental manipulation, easy to influence he may be - but Dean is far from dull when he snarls into the ether; "Get the fuck out of my head!" Whatever it is, whoever it is, he searches for the illusion, the falsehood, whatever it is out there in fury suddenly risen. Quieter words follow; "You're not real." Because he killed her. Easily two decades ago. Another barked demand is made then. "Show yourself!"
The silence lingers, thick and unnatural, pressing against the edges of reality. Then, just as the shadows seem to settle, the air stirs; not with a breeze, but with a quiet, deliberate hum, like the distant ringing of a bell. The forest shifts, not in a movement but in atmosphere, the kind of change that crawls under the skin and whispers, "You are not alone."
From the shadows, a shape forms, a fleeting silhouette that hovers at the periphery of Dean's vision. It's her. A young girl, pale and familiar, her dark hair swaying as if stirred by a phantom wind. There's no anger in her gaze, only a heavy, inescapable sadness that settles deep into Dean's bones.
"You can't run forever," she chides softly, outstretching a hand. "YOu can't leave me behind."
The forest tightens around him, the shadows growing darker, heavier, suffocating. And then, just beneath the sound of her plea, something whispers, curling through the silence like smoke: "You know you want to."
It's instant how Dean's eyes are drawn to the darkness, the shadows that form a shape. He stares at it, stares at the young girl, pale, familiar, almost a mirror of Dean, if only he was the same age. It roils his blood enough for him to snarl again, grind his jaw, his teeth - but the bike doesn't move yet. It is kept exactly where it is while Dean watches with unflitting attention set upon her. Anger is /barely/ enough to fight the tide of sorrow. Barely. And it is a failing battle.
And the secondary, smoked voice is correct. Dean does want to. He years for it, for that reunion, to mend the mistake he did. That's enough to resolve his expression, returns it to that somber detachment with a glassy look while he shoves his bike back upright, and takes off on it very slowly. Dean's target is his sister, standing just over yonder in the patch of darkness - with his own hand stretching out in an attempt to claim hers and tug the poor ghost, if he can at all, onto the back of his saddle.
The moment Dean's hand brushes the pale, ghostly fingers of the girl, she shatters. Her form splinters like fragile glass, the edges of her outline crumbling into tendrils of blackened vines and twisting branches. They lash out instantly, hungry and vicious, coiling around his arm, snapping around the handlebars of the bike, and dragging him down, down, down... into the darkness beneath the forest floor.
The bike is ripped from his grasp as the vines tighten around his limbs, forcing his body into an unnatural contortion, each branch digging into flesh and bone. The shadows ripple, alive, suffocating, dragging him deeper into the suffocating earth as the world he knows dissolves into the night. His sister's voice, once sweet and sorrowful, distorts into a harrowing, jagged wail, like a scream caught forever in the throat of the forest.
The whisperer's voice slithers through the dark, soft and insidious, a sound that crawls inside his mind and splits it apart. "She never forgave you, Dean. Not really. ANd neither have you." The tendrils tighten, squeezing at his chest, as if daring him to break under the weight of the guilt it burdens upon him. "You can bury it. Drink it away. Fight it with your fists. But it will never leave you."
"You don't fight for power," the Whisperer breathes. "You fight to forget. But how do you fight what's part of you, Dean?"
"I can take it away. All of it," The worst are velvet smooth, wrapping around his mind like a lullaby. "The guilt, the sorrow, the endless running. Just one thread. A life where you are free. No pack. No memories. Just you."
Instantly, Dean is lost. Whisked by the tendrils, stolen by them into the earth as his bike goes off careening into the ether of the forest. Tumbling, falling down, grinding sparks as a steed without a rider. Everything a blur in that depth of darkness, suffocating but familiar. His own coffin. Yet, he lacks the strength to fight it for once. No trashing ensues from captive limbs, kept still in descent. Absent of noise, his voice, his sight, and even the ability to feel much beside the slithering approach of an accusatory voice - his hands are only made into fists.
Minutes, maybe hours - maybe seconds. It's hard to tell how long he waits in silence, in deliberation and consideration of what is professed. Like the acrid scent of smoke clinging to back of a throat, the words root into his mind as a disturbing, compelling compulsion. To which he can only offer one reply, a muffled snarl daring with the ire of a man who has nothing to lose, and nothing left to live for. "Do your fucking worst - do it."
"Indeed, I shall."
The Whisperer seizes the thread within Dean, plucking it from the tangled mess of memories and regrets that coil deep in his soul. The moment it's touched, a searing pain ignites; every nerve set aflame, unraveling everything that ever made him whole. The agony is sharp and deliberate, a thing far worse than any knife or bullet, for it pulls from within. It drags forth the essence of what made him human, unwinding the guilt, the sorrow, the anger; the love he's buried so deep is almost forgotten. Each cherished moment slips away, devoured by the dark, leaving behind an aching void that throbs through his very being. His hands twitch, fists clenched tight, but the pain binds him still, as if daring him to scream, to fight, to beg.
And when that thread snaps free, it leaves him hollow; all that remains is the beast, raw, feral instinct unbound by memory, by sorrow, by anything but rage and hunger. Or so it seems.
The forest spits him out onto the path, releasing him from its grip, free just as the Whisperer promised - freed from the burdens that made him man.
The path twists once more, leading him straight to a clearing where Phoebe waits beneath the cold moonlight. Behind her, the shape of his sister flickers, her small hands clutching at the fabric of his jacket as if she could hide from what is to come. Phoebe stands calm, her expression somber, a silver dagger gleaming at her side. The Whisperer's machinations coils around them like a noose, all for the sweetest betrayal of its making.
Truly, it isn't a difficult process. The whisperer alreay finds anything she's sough as surface-level, the rest, embedded deep within, they're all that remains. Swelling, consuming, filling the gap of him left as he's made to emerge more beast than man. Far more than before, too. A wicked creation of destruction - if only he wasn't sick as a dog. The little girl is paid no heed, even swatted away with the back of a dust-and-grime covered hand so Dean can turn away. Straight to that clearing, lead by an unseen thing. That's where she is - someone he once knew. He can't remember, it doesn't resonate, remembrance gone - but it is enough to spark interest.
Dean takes off ahead, starts to storm, snarl, growl, bare his teeth in destructive need to fill in the hollow spot in his heart that now feels more cumbersome. Barely a few steps, an the rest of the distance Dean covers in the blink of an eye. Lunging, wreathed in mind - hand exteded in search of a throat to hold, a body to crush, and sow ruin to anyhing within his grasp. Right now, that is none othat than Phoebe - or so it seems to him. The name is long gone from his mind. Her face a distant, elsewhere haze. Just like any mindless creature that doesn't know whether the instrusion is harmful or not, Dean seeks to harm first. The swipe of his claw bares the side of his chest, his heart, easy, waiting for a plunge.
Phoebe stands firm in the clearing, holding her ground despite the storm of rage barreling toward her. The distance between them vanishes in a blink, and she barely manages to react. His hand finds her throat with terrifying precision, squeezing, as if to crack the bones beneath his grip and snuff out whatever presence remains in the void he can no longer comprehend. Her name means nothing to him now, and her face shifts in and out of focus, as distant as a dream. But she doesn't resist. Even as the clawed hand tightens, her gaze steady, sadness flickering in the depths of her eyes.
In one smooth, practiced motion, Phoebe pulls the dagger from er side. Silver gleams in the moonlight, just for a moment - a heartbeat's worth of a pause - before she drives it forward to the hollow of his chest. The blade pierces his heart with a terrible finality. The silver burns, a kiss of betrayal, not just from her, but from every memory he can no longer grasp. Phoebe catches him as he collapses, her arms around him just like they were all those years ago, when they were kids with no prophecy hanging over their heads. Something flickers deep within him, a hint of recognition, not enough to save him, but enough to hurt beautifully.
And all the while, branches and vines slither around him, winding through flesh and bone as the world melts away; the beast dissolving, leaving only a boy, shattered in a broken reflection.
Blood seeps from the wound in his chest, trailing down like rivers along his skin as his sister clutches him, just as she did all those years ago. The forest pulls him deeper, roots piercing through muscle, dragging him low, until there is nothing left of Dean but a lifeless form twisting into bark and wood. Slowly, inevitably, he becomes one with the forest, anotther silent, warped tree among the countless souls who wandered too far and were lost to the darkness.