He had been calling her name for what felt like an eternity, each moment stretched thin and heavy with mounting worry.
His breath came in heavy, ragged gasps, each one sharper and more desperate than the last. His lungs burned like a searing flame, intensifying with every pounding stride.
He pushed forward relentlessly, weaving through the dense groups flooding the plaza without hesitation, until exhaustion caught up with him and his pace faltered, forcing him to stop and gasp for air.
He dropped to his knees, hands braced on his thighs as sweat slicked his brow and soaked the back of his shirt. His chest heaved, muscles trembling with exhaustion. He drew in a long, steadying breath, lifting his face toward the sky, he unleashed a primal, echoing yell. One that drew a sudden, visible recoil from the crowd.
"KAAARRNAAAAAA!!!"
For a long moment, the plaza fell silent, stunned by the weight of the name. Then murmurs began to ripple through the gathering—soft, cautious, as if the very sound unsettled them. Eyes flickered with suspicion and unease, shifting from the whispered name to him, questioning and wary, as if wondering who he was and why he dared speak it aloud.
Earlier that day, in a moment that was now nothing more than memory, he move through the crowd with a naive certainty, convinced that she'd be waiting just ahead. But as his search stretched far longer than he once anticipated, a cold dread settled in, a weight like nothing he'd ever felt before, clawing at the edges of his mind. That raw gnawing terror grew stronger with every passing moment, until his legs broke into a desperate run.
He covered a third of the entire plaza, driven by a single thought—finding her—but she was nowhere to be found.
Slowly, he pushed himself upright, muscles aching, and began to walk forward, driven by the relentless need to close the distance between them.
"How long has it been, *Gah*… Karna, just where did you *Hah* go…"
On the far side of the plaza, where the crowd thinned into loose clusters and the noise softened into a distant rumble, Karna moved along the outer walkway. Sunlight slipped across her hood as she drifted by, casting fleeting shadows that danced with the gentle sway of her tail, as if the shade itself whispered secrets only she could hear.
She followed the curve of the plaza toward the towering stone formations that ringed its edge—massive coral‑rock structures shaped by centuries of currents, rising like jagged pillars around the celebration.
A man stepped out from the flow of people behind her, quickening his pace to close the distance. Walter, the fishman tasked with the elimination of a nosy mermaid otherwise known as Karna by dirrect order of Hoardy Jones, failure was not an option he wanted to explore.
He smoothed his expression into something friendly, almost casual, and called out to her with a forced brightness.
"Hey—excuse me! Miss! I think I may have picked up something of yours, you dropped it, your bubbly coral,"
Without sparing him a glance, Karna subtly shifted the angle of her floaty, steering it toward the towering stone formations that framed the plaza's edge.
Walter's narrowed his gaze as he registered the change, a flicker of tension tightening his chest. He pushed off the ground harder, his pace shifting from a casual walk to a steady jog
On the far side of the plaza, where the boy had been not long ago, a small child tugged at her father's sleeve. "Hey papa, who'th Karna?"
The man's grunt came low and rough, threading through the plaza's hum like a shadow. He bent down, pressing a finger firmly over the child's mouth, silencing her before she could speak further.
"Don't even breathe her name," the voice warned, cold and harsh. "That lying scum betrayed us all. She's not the Karna we once believed in or the one we all looked up to."
"Hey Papa, you just said her name..." the child said, a hint of disbelief in her voice. The man ignored the comment, though a subtle twitch at his eye gave away his frustration.
His words spilled out slowly, thick with venom. "She played us, she lied to us, stabbed us in the back when we trusted her with all our hearts. But even so, there's nothing we can do about it. She's has ties with a dangerous group of scum."
Just beyond the towering stones, Karna moved swiftly through the maze-like pathways carved into the coral rock. Walter's breath quickened as the walls rose around him, twisting into tight corridors and sudden turns. He forced a smile, voice light but edged with something sharper beneath.
"Hey, Miss, uh Madame? Wait up! I just want to talk, alright?."
The father's voice echoed it's final note, a chilling overlay to the chase.
"so make sure you stay far away from that traitorous witch, got it?"
Before long Walter had come to realize that he'd lost all sight of her. His footsteps echoed hollowly as he pushed forward, the labyrinth stretching endlessly before him, twisting and folding back in on itself, it was almost maddening. He called out once again, for what might have been the tenth time, "Hey, I'm not here to fight You, Just talk to me." But his words vanished all the same into the thick, oppressive quiet.
A cold sweat broke out across Walter's skin as the shadows thickened around the jagged stones. His breath hitched, muscles tensing as a cold shiver ran down his spine. Fear clawed at his mind, sharp and insistent, warning him that something was coming.
His gut tightened—there was no denying it now. Something was coming, something swift and unseen. The shadows above stirred, and a sudden flicker of light and color caught the edge of his vision. Without warning, she descended like a living brushstroke, fluid and precise, weaving through the air with effortless grace.
Her brush swept out, a shimmering arc of resin trailing behind it, binding Walter in a slick, translucent skin tight glaze.
Then she spoke a set of words in a tone that felt almost, sinister.
Alchemicula: Snot Bubble.
The resin bubbled against his skin, a strange chemical reaction unfolding before his eyes. Tiny bubbles erupted rapidly, coalescing into a frothy, viscous foam that hissed softly as it released a faint, rising gas that expanded the resin from within. The substance spread swiftly, rushing into his lungs like a living tide.
"You… *Cough* y-you're The Bubble Witch!? D-damn i-i-it.…" his eyes began to flutter as a frothy substance escaped his gaping mouth. Within moments, he slumped into a deep, unnatural sleep.