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My mouth goes dry. “No.”

Rhett looks at me then at my mask still hanging from my hand. The pale wood. The stitched mouth. I haven’t worn this one in decades. Tonight was supposed to be theater. A costume. A joke only three men understood.

Something cracks across the front and I look down. A thin line splits the mask from forehead to chin with dark liquid seeping through it.

Rhett takes one step back. “Well, that’s new.”

The mask grows warm in my hand… then hot. I drop it. It lands face up in the dirt. The stitched mouth moves once.

I stop breathing.

The black cord pulls tight… then loosens while the carved lips separate.

Then… a whisper crawls from inside. “SOWER.”

Rhett doesn’t make a joke and Kai doesn’t move. Neither do I.

The voice comes again… only louder. “SOWER!”

I draw my knife and drive it straight through the mask. The wood splits and the whisper stops.

Silence swallows us and for half a second, I almost believe I’ve done something.

Then every scarecrow in the field screams.

Not one.

Not seven.

Dozens.

The sound tears through the corn.

Human. Female. Agonized.

And from somewhere beyond the maze… the party cheers. They think it’s part of the show.

Of course they fucking do.

I rip the knife from the broken mask. “Find Sage.” I tell them.

Rhett is already putting his mask back on with a grin. But this time there’s nothing playful about it.

“What are you going to do?”

I look toward the lights. Toward the woman who shouldn’t exist. The woman who is wearing a red ribbon that wasn’t in the barrel. The woman whose bloodline has been gone for more than two centuries. The woman the Earth has been waiting for.

“I’m getting that fucking ribbon off her.”

Kai says nothing.

I look at him. “What?”

“You still don’t understand.”

I fold my arms over my chest. “Then enlighten me.”

His eyes drift toward the black root bleeding under my boot. “The ribbon didn’t choose her.”