Book Five, Chapter 97: Not Quite The End

~Riley~

For a moment, I panicked as I watched the big silver screen.

We had not planned on Antoine recovering.

Sure, we had hoped for it when we used his nightmare trope to try and ease some of his trauma so he might stand a fighting chance against the wolf, but that was a pipe dream.

It was uninformed. It was… meant to make Kimberly feel better.

Somehow, he had beaten the curse. I couldn’t be sure, but I assumed it was because our advanced rolling silver disconnected him from the pack. Maybe it was even the emergence of Clara wolf.

Whatever the case, it did create a dilemma. With the pack leader defeated and essentially out of the picture—except for some cheesy little dramatic final words—it meant we had an undead werewolf running around with nothing to do.

We had relied on this being our endgame, on using the wolf Clara as a key to beating Serena. We had talked through several scenarios for this. But now that Serena was out of the picture, how did Clara fit in?

The good news was that we had beaten the rescue. Our only win condition was beating the clock, and we had certainly done that. Points to Antoine.

What mattered now was our final score, and it was up to Kimberly to bring things home.

I watched as she stared down the large undead wolf with rugged determination, tears streaming down her face.

The screen cut to a pitiful sight at the edge of the scene.

“Clara,” Serena called from where she had crawled after Antoine defeated her.

“Clara!” she screamed out. She had silver in her heart; there was no way she was going to last for much longer. But the script insisted. It was possible she had a trope for it. Heck, the undead Clara wolf might have had a trope that caused this to happen.

It could also have been the result of our improvisation altering the script.

I had no idea.

“That’s not her,” Kimberly said, her voice cracking, tears held back. “That’s not Clara. Not really.”

She was confident.

Serena crawled across the grass, and the Clara wolf did nothing; it seemed confused.

No. It was waiting. It was waiting to see what Kimberly had to say.

Clara-wolf looked at Serena. It saw her. It took in her scent. Still, it didn’t move.

It—and the wolves that had decided to follow it—just stared down Kimberly with possible ill intent. They growled, they howled, they filled the air with terror and wind.

These remaining wolves were one complicating thing with this storyline. Even if you beat the pack leader, there would still be a bunch of hungry wolves around who wanted to eat humans. Now, Kimberly had to find a way to defend herself against the rogue wolves, the wolves loyal to Clara, and Clara-wolf herself.

Kimberly held my Silver Spoon Knife, ready for a fight. She had a gun in her other hand.

And then she lowered them.

“I remember everything,” she said, her voice strained but resolute. “It came to me in dreams. I remember the darkness, the loneliness.” She paused as if suddenly struck by another memory. “Mother…”

She said “Mother” like she was saying a demon’s name.

Was she using Convenient Backstory? That wasn’t the normal use of that trope. Normally, it was for changing your backstory to get skills, but she had used it to gain “psychic” powers before, and it would seem that adding a reincarnation backstory to your character was fully within the power of that trope.

“I remember your mother… my mother,” she said faintly, unsure of whether those were the right words.

She seemed… afraid, more than she had before, and not of the wolf in front of her. Where was this fear coming from? Her character?

Frankly, I didn’t know, but we did discover that Clara’s mother may have been involved in her death. After all, “Amadeus Sing” was convinced Clara’s parents had murdered her.

How any of this tied together, I didn’t know just yet. Secret lore really did live up to its name and Kimberly was playing fast and loose here.

Serena continued to scream for Clara but she grew quieter and quieter. She eventually died without the wolf looking at her.

It was truly sad. The details of her story were a mix of fiction and truth, but the feeling was real enough that I couldn’t deny it. It was a tragic death.

The wolf—Clara—got closer to Kimberly.

Kimberly dropped the knife and the gun.

“You aren’t going to hurt me,” she said. She was giving this moment her all. “Because you… you protect me, don’t you? In life… and after. You’re not Clara. You’re her wolf. My wolf. I know you… I’m her. Aren’t I? Not just a piece of her. I am Clara. I remember this place. I remember you… What happened here?”

Kimberly looked absolutely emotionally wrecked as she prayed for answers.

And Carousel took it from there. Flashes and memories started to play rapidly on the screen. I was watching an edited cut of the film in the theater, so this was how Carousel chose to wrap things up: with one of those vague flashback explanations.

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Kimberly’s voice played over the flashbacks.

They were simple. A woman crying over a young, pale, beautiful Clara, who laid deathly still, her eyes open.

“My mother tried to cure me,” Kimberly said. “She couldn’t. She was trying to kill you, to kill the wolf, but she killed me instead. It was an accident.”

She was crying. I could hear it in her voice.

The flashback supported Kimberly’s story.

“Serena wanted me to run away with her, but I didn’t. I couldn’t leave my family. They entombed me in that crypt and didn’t know I was still there, that I lingered as a spirit, unable to truly die. You were there with me, waiting too. And even when I was called away, I still came back over and over again.”

The flashback cut to Kimberly as a teen approaching the manor with her friends. Then, it showed a similar scene with a different young blonde woman. Then another.

The flashback ended.

Kimberly looked at the ancient wolf and at Serena, lying dead in the grass.

There was silence for a moment. Then the Clara wolf howled. With that howl, all of the rogue wolves yelped and ran into the forest. Even those wolves that had decided to follow Clara backed down, fleeing.

Kimberly and the wolf locked eyes and stared as the first ray of dawn reached over the horizon.

The night was over.

The wolf began to revert to human form—or something resembling it. Its hulking frame began to shrink, the thick fur receding like shadows pulling away from the light. Its massive head diminished, the sharp, feral features softening, collapsing into the delicate proportions of a young woman. But this was no vibrant, healthy figure.

What emerged was a grotesque, withered shell—a desiccated, mummified corpse, its skin stretched taut over fragile bones as though the curse could not return life to the human form.

The camera cut in and out along with the transformation. When the camera returned, the hollow remains toppled forward, crumpling to the ground in a brittle, lifeless heap, a mere shadow of what had been before.

Kimberly fell, too.