I didn't catch a glimpse of the Daruma San's lonesome crimson eye nor did I wish to. Grabbing hold of Ana's fisted hand, I muttered a curse and ran. She quickly wriggled her hand free from my grasp, using both arms to run faster. We ignored the furied growls which followed us from behind rather focusing on our breathing. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. A technique we had mastered from our previous testing sessions in Garrenbuck.

There was no possibility of stopping or slowing down, we had to keep running further, even if that meant that we were only running further into the forest and away from freedom.

"W-we can't do this forever." Ana gasped.

The wispy snowflakes which fell from the sky hardened to ice. Sleet pelted our shaven heads and covered backs, creating angry, engorged welts on our exposed skin. My hands began to turn an alarming shade of purple as my body, from the neck down, slowly lost feeling.

"We have to," I gasped, "I won't let what happened to Joan happen again."

"We have to face it. It won't hurt us," Ana yanked on my arm as if to tell me to slow down.

I ignored her. Clearly she had hit her head.

"It can't hurt us, Phe. It's a ghost."

"It can't hurt us? Tell that to Joan, or tell that to yourself." Ana was bleeding. Though I couldn't exactly pinpoint where, her left sleeve was drenched in a dark, red sticky substance and I doubted highly it was a consequence of randomly discovering a strawberry jam slip and slide.

"I fell." That sounded like a lie and we both knew that.

I glanced at her haggard appearance and shook my head. "When someone falls they scrape their knee, they don't rip the skin off of their arm."

"The ghost didn't touch me. I did it to myself." There were many times during the course of my friendship with Ana Cortez where I called insanity but this time I really meant it.

"You're crazy, I am not stopping."

"Fine, then we have to get out of here."

I didn't have enough oxygen in my lungs to tell her that, that wasn't going to be possible. The forest looked to be expanding before our eyes. We were surrounded by acres of slumped, twisting trees entangled in a spiderweb of poisonous vines and thorn bushes. Snow and ice blanketed the ground, obscuring any abnormalities worth noting. The ground beneath our feet shifted as the growls grew louder. I made the perilous mistake of looking back as the ghost uprooted a series of trees, creating its own lumberyard behind us.

"Up ahead. Turn now!" That was less of a directive as Ana jammed her shoulder into mine, forcing me to turn left.

We jumped around a tree just before it could could squash us like a bug and then, that's when I saw it. Through the veil of snow and ice, I could see a clearing up ahead and what looked like a thousand darkened silhouettes, standing around, watching us approach. It was so close, I could actually see freedom. Ana and I just had to survive long enough to reach it.

"We're not going to make it." I yelled as another tree fell, nearly ripping off my head.

"Yes we are! Now move it." Before I could process what she was saying, Ana pushed me one more time sending me into a somersault.

Together we tumbled out of the forest and into the waiting arms of the nearest G.S. soldiers. I had never been so happy to feel the bruising grip of a dimwit on my arm and without so much of a protest or a whimper on my tongue, I allowed the guard to pull me towards the lineup. When the guard turned Ana and I around to face the forest, I tried to catch a glimpse of the Daruma San's single red eye but it the forest was impossibly thick. Strange, I thought, since most of the trees should have been demolished from the horror scene I had just experienced. But the forest stood absolutely still and silent as if there was nobody in the forest at all, least of all a bloodthirsty ghost.

I looked back at Ana, my face contorted with visible confusion. She took one look at my puzzled expression and mouthed, "mind games."

I was suddenly reminded of what Paxton had said earlier in the night when we were trapped on the transfer bus.

"You a witch or a vampire?" His voice was rough as if he had not spoken in a very long time.

"I don't know yet." My band had slid down my forearm, resting comfortably at my elbow. The deep mulberry color gave no insight into my true identity as an Other.

"Well for your own sake," he cracked his neck, "I hope you're a witch."

Ana straightened her posture upon hearing that. "Why? Did you hear something?"

The rest of the bus was suddenly interested in our conversation as well. Paxton didn't seem to like the attention. He managed a response through gritted teeth.

"Not much," he lamented, "but I overheard two soldiers talking about the trial- they called it an old witches game."

That did little to calm the fears of those trapped on the bus. Human children grew up playing hop-scotch and tag whereas young witches grew up with ouija boards and seances. Legend says when witches secretly dwelled amongst the humans, they tricked their human peers into playing the most horrific slumber party games. The masochistic beasts took great pleasure in watching their unsuspecting classmates summon various ghouls and demons into their bedrooms. In the best case scenario the human children were left mildly traumatized and in the worst, they died.

"So that means we have to be a witch to survive?" Ana scoffed.

The purple banded prisoners slumped back against the wall as the rest of the bus began to fidget in their seats.

"No but it means you have to realize what the name of the game is going to be. It's a witches game so it'll be a mind game."

My knees nearly gave out from my sudden realization. It was a mind game. The real haunting of the Daruma San was happening the whole time in our heads. In a couple hours when the G.S. soldiers began to comb through the land, they would find a perfectly kept forest devoid of any haunted entities with a trail of dead teenagers leading back to the lake. Each one, prompted by a sudden fear of this "ghost" had taken their own lives. The Daruma San never even had to touch them.

It was with that startling discovery did I finally remember the existence of my two other friends. Frantically, I began to scour the crowd, looking for their familiar faces. It was not an easy task as everyone looked relatively the same but just as I found myself losing hope, my stare collided with two eyes, both a startling shade of green, which could only belong to my supposed Jade Prince. He looked like a shell of the strong Cortez boy who had galavantly led me through the forest. Dark circles hung below his eyes as a deep gash ran along the length of his chin. Esther was standing beside him though I didn't notice her at first. She was a naturally small girl but looked be folding in on herself as she stared at Ana and I, the realization slowly sinking in. I turned my head away from her accusatory stare as I began to hear her hysterical cries. The guards tried to get her to behave but it was unclear if she heard them or if she even cared.

She continued to wail until I heard the sickening crunch of the back of an assault rifle colliding with her head.

I didn't dare look as they collected her limp body off of the ground and loaded it into the back of a transfer bus. I couldn't bare it. I killed Joan and broke Esther along the way.

One in one-tenth of the kids tested possess the Other gene and only one-third of those kids survive the Aptitude Trials. Joan was the first to go, I thought, as I surveyed the crowd and now there were only four of us left.

If we wanted to live, we had to escape Garrenbuck before the next Aptitude Trial

**This is completely unedited lol. This series is on indefinite hiatus**
XOXO,
Ro.**

Here is one last amazing piece of art by @chemicalvamp