"Hey Ethan, aren't you curious about the skull tree? We should go and check it to see if the story is true," asked Pugsley as they walked back to their room, his tone carrying that quiet, unsettling enthusiasm that usually meant he was already planning something.
Ethan didn't share that energy.
"No, that feels like trouble," he said, his voice steady, uninterested.
In his mind, whatever was buried there was better left exactly where it was. He had no intention of digging up something that had already died once, especially when he wanted at least one school year without problems.
Pugsley didn't drop it.
"But aren't you curious if the story is real?" he pressed, his interest only growing.
The thought of digging under the skull tree, finding whatever was buried there, seeing it for himself—it wasn't something he was willing to drop easily.
Ethan glanced at him briefly before answering.
"It's real, I already checked," said Ethan, his tone dismissing the mystery before it could build.
The story, if anything, was less a legend and more something tied directly to the Addams family. It wasn't some forgotten tale passed down by students—Morticia and Gomez had been the ones who buried that so-called clockwork boy, not out of ceremony but necessity, after whatever he had become crossed a line even Nevermore wouldn't tolerate.
And Thing wasn't just a companion or a strange family relic.
He had belonged to that body.
The right hand, severed but still alive, now part of the Addams family as if nothing about it was unusual.
"So what is this clock heart still beating?" asked Pugsley as they continued walking, his curiosity now focused on something more specific.
Ethan didn't seem particularly interested in answering it seriously. To him, the idea didn't carry the same weight.
"Who cares," he said. "There are stranger things than a mechanical heart still working. This skull, for example, should not be able to move or make sound, and yet it does."
He picked up the skull as he spoke, turning it slightly in his hand. Its jaw loosened as if it was about to laugh again.
Pugsley watched it with interest.
"Yeah, it was interesting at first," he said, "but it got boring when I couldn't get any reaction out of it, even after I tried zapping it."
Ethan glanced at him.
"It's bone," he replied. "There's only so much you can expect. Electricity doesn't do much to something that's already dead."
Pugsley didn't look fully convinced, but he didn't argue.
Ethan shifted his grip on the skull slightly, then added, more casually,
"If you're still curious, we can go tomorrow and dig it up," he said. "See if that clock heart is actually there."
He already knew Pugsley wasn't going to let it go.
It was better to be there when it happened than to hear about it later.
At the same time, the Book of the Dead resting on Wednesday's table stirred without being touched.
The cover shifted slightly, then opened on its own.
Pages began to turn, one after another, the sound soft but deliberate, as if guided by something unseen rather than chance.
The movement didn't stop or hesitate, each page flipping with purpose, faster at first and then slowing as it approached something specific.
Finally, it stopped.
The page lay open.
An illustration filled it—a grave, freshly disturbed, the soil uneven as something forced its way upward. From within it, a corpse was emerging, its form rigid but unmistakably active, caught in the moment between burial and return.
Wednesday looked at the open book without moving closer, her eyes fixed on the page as if it were less a drawing and more a record.
"Enid, did you open this book?" she asked, her tone steady.
Enid immediately shook her head, not even stepping near it.
"No. Why would I go near that creepy book?" she said, her voice tightening slightly. "And why did you even bring that back here? What if those things come back for it?"
Wednesday didn't answer.
Her attention remained on the page.
At the same time, deep in the woods near Nevermore, the air began to shift.
The sky darkened without warning, clouds pulling together unnaturally as lightning churned through them, not striking outward but gathering, concentrating over a single point.
The ground beneath the skull-shaped tree grew still, the soil thickening as if something beneath it was pushing upward.
Then—
Lightning struck.
Not across the sky, but directly into the ground beneath the tree.
The impact didn't scatter but sank, followed by a low, mechanical ticking—slow and deliberate—as the soil began to crack.
A hand forced its way out, fingers rigid, movements unnatural as joints shifted beneath decayed flesh. The sound continued, steady and precise, echoing through the ground as something long buried began to rise again.
Ethan heard it.
A faint, unnatural shift in the air.
He walked to the window and looked out toward the woods. The sky there was darker than the rest, clouds tightening as lightning moved through them in uneven flashes.
It wasn't normal.
"I'm getting a creepy feeling," he said, watching the disturbance. "Like someone's messing with something they shouldn't."
He stared for a moment longer, then looked away.
"Meh… whatever." At Nevermore, strange things were just part of daily life anyway.
***
A/N: It's decided—the next world will be .
And on Patreon, the Wednesday arc is about to end, with The Boys arc starting next.
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