Belongs to @Cindy_ella12 —————————-

The relentless pulse of the grandfather clock swallowed the dim light of the room, each tick a hammer blow against the urgency churning beneath White Rabbit's ribs. His fingers, a tremor running through them like a live wire, adjusted the stiff, black ruffles of his suit, a ritual against the coming storm. The rabbit mask, a cold, unyielding shell, pressed against the network of scars that spiderwebbed his face.

It was a prison, a shroud over the boy who had once chased wonder through the pages of "Alice in Wonderland," now a distant, shattered dream. His journey to Makai, a desperate leap through a tearing portal in search of sanctuary from a life unlived, had yielded only sharper pain, a world where oppression was the only law.

Vengeance, a bitter, constant hunger, had forged a legion of demons to his will, all turned against Darkcom and the insidious Lady who ruled it. Yet, beneath the mask's rigid surface, a different kind of pulse beat – the demonic thrum in his veins warring with the phantom ache of a lost childhood.

Tonight, the air crackled differently. Amidst the swirling haze of battle, facing Dante, a son of Sparda, a red-hot fury surged through him, no longer containable. In a desperate, guttural roar, White Rabbit's hand lashed out, seizing the mask.

With a raw, tearing sound, he ripped it from his face, scattering shards of the old self into the chaotic wind. No longer obscured, the deep, crisscrossing scars that mapped his features were starkly revealed, each line a silent testament to a thousand battles, a thousand moments survived. Unbound, unleashed, he fought with a feral abandon, a man reclaimed by the very chaos he sought to quell.

But even a man unbound could fall. The encounter ended in a dizzying plunge, the icy darkness of an unseen abyss swallowing him whole. As he sank, a chilling clarity seeped into his bones, sharper than the cold itself.

He awoke with a soft gasp, the plush of a couch cushioning his fall, the rhythmic whisper of a familiar clock still claiming the quiet air. The fight, a heavy cloak, settled on his shoulders. The war was far from over. He knew, with a certainty colder than the void, that the path to uniting these fractured worlds, and perhaps even finding his own redemption, lay not in despair, but in rising, in reclaiming the scattered fragments of who he truly was.