Live Forever season 1 (kika and Greeneyes)

Chapter 1 – The Follower Who Crawled Out of the Screen

The Royal Nation mansion squatted on its private Georgia hill like a Kardashian had mated with Versailles and the baby was raised on Red Bull and daddy issues. Forty-seven marble steps (each one engraved with a different sponsorship logo) led up to front doors that cost more than the GDP of a small country and opened automatically with the sound of a cash register cha-ching.

Inside, every surface was either pink, bedazzled, or both. The air smelled like vanilla Bath & Body Works had a threesome with Glossier You and a panic attack. Somewhere in the walls, a hidden speaker loop played the faint sound of someone crying while counting money.

It was 11:51 p.m. on a Friday in October, and the main filming room looked like a ring-light orgy. Twelve professional lights, six backup ring lights, one emergency ring light shaped like a crown, and a secret thirteenth ring light nobody talked about because it was shaped like a butthole (long story) bathed GreenEyes and Kika in a glow so bright it could guide lost sailors straight to an eating disorder.

Forty-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred twelve people were watching the live, and every single one of them was about to regret it.

GreenEyes leaned so close to the main camera that her pupils reflected as tiny black widows doing the renegade while wearing miniature UGGs. Her lashes were so long they had their own zip code. She wore a crystal bikini top that spelled ROYAL in diamonds and a smile sharp enough to perform an emergency C-section.

“Fifty million followers by midnight,” she announced, voice syrupy with four oat-milk lattes, Adderall, and the kind of confidence that only comes from knowing your surgeon is on speed dial and also your cousin, “and I let Kika put a live Chilean rose tarantula on my tongue for thirty full seconds. No cuts. No edits. Raw. Unfiltered. Like my skin after three hours of Charlotte Tilbury.”

Kika stood behind her in a couture ballgown made of actual recycled clown wigs (hundreds of rainbow curls hand-stitched by a Parisian atelier that immediately fired the intern who suggested it). The train dragged six feet behind her and smelled like abandoned birthday parties, spilled Hi-C, and the tears of children who asked for a puppy but got a branding opportunity instead. She hated clowns the way vegans hate being told “you just haven’t had it cooked right.”

“Fifty-one million,” Kika countered, forcing a smile so wide her cheekbones threatened to file for divorce and take half the fillers, “and GreenEyes does the worm across the spider pit in the basement while I narrate like David Attenborough on bath salts and a Red Bull enema.”

Chat lost its collective mind. Someone super-chatted ten grand just to type “make them kiss the spider and call it a gender reveal.” Another dropped twenty-five large with the message “I paid my rent for this, don’t let me down queens.”

The follower counter ticked upward like a bomb counting down to immortality, or at least a Netflix deal.

49,999,976…

49,999,998…

49,999,999…

Every single light in the mansion died at once.

Not flickered. Died. The temperature dropped thirty degrees so fast Kika’s lip filler crystallized. The ring lights bled crimson, then shifted to the exact shade of clown makeup applied by a serial killer. Kika’s breath came out in glittery pink clouds that immediately formed the words “help me” before dissipating.

A notification slid across the screen in Comic Sans written in blood and frosting:

ArachneSmilesOfficial started following you.

ArachneSmilesOfficial sent a gift: “Your fears, delivered fresh 👑🤡🕷️❤️ plus free shipping”

From the ceiling descended a single red balloon on a string made of dental floss, human hair, and what was definitely a piece of someone’s retainer. Written across it in sticky red letters that dripped onto the marble like a crime scene at Chuck E. Cheese: HONK IF YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER (or at least until the next trend dies).

Kika’s fight-or-flight short-circuited so hard she honked on pure reflex.

The sound that came out of her throat was not human. It was a wet, obscene clown horn (SQUEEEEEEEAK) that echoed off the vaulted ceilings, made every wine glass in the house shatter simultaneously, auto-tuned itself into a perfect C-sharp, and somehow added a bass drop.

The balloon exploded like it had been personally offended.

Out poured literally fifty thousand tiny spiders wearing microscopic red foam noses, rainbow afro wigs, and (this is the part that broke them) tiny light-up Sketchers that blinked with every step. They hit the marble floor and immediately started doing synchronized TikTok choreography: hitting the woah, transitioning into the griddy, then attempting to death-drop but just splattering because physics.

GreenEyes screamed so hard something inside her chest tore open like a Spirit Halloween pop-up in hell. A black, liquid shadow ripped out of her actual shadow on the floor, rising like sentient oil mixed with every 3 a.m. doom-scroll session. It formed claws, teeth, eight copies of her own screaming face wearing lash extensions, and looked at her with eyes made of pure void and cancelled brand deals.

It smiled with too many mouths, each one wearing a different shade of Fenty Gloss Bomb, and whispered directly into her skull in her own voice but with the energy of a hater who’d been waiting their whole life:

“Finally, mommy. Let’s get these bitches.”

GreenEyes blinked. “Okay… new trauma just dropped, but make it fashion.”

She instinctively pointed at the clown-spiders like she was calling security at a Miami nightclub.

The shadow weapon (she named it Sharon on the spot because it felt right and also because Sharon was the name of the assistant who’d quit last week after GreenEyes made her pick up dog poop with her bare hands) lunged without waiting for further orders. It devoured half the horde in one chomping bite. The sound was exactly like stepping on a bag of Takis filled with actual bones. Crunchy, spicy regret.

Kika, meanwhile, was hyperventilating so violently the air around her condensed into a shimmering, hot-pink sphere the size of a Tesla Cybertruck. The remaining clown-spiders bounced off it like they’d hit a brick wall made of distilled childhood terror and Glossier Boy Brow. Every impact made the bubble pulse brighter, and faint circus calliope music leaked out like a broken ice-cream truck that only played “Entry of the Gladiators” in a minor key.

The chat thought it was the greatest AR filter of all time and started throwing money like they were at a strip club run by Mark Zuckerberg.

Then the floor-to-ceiling smart-glass windows exploded inward in a symphony of shattering crystal that sounded like a million champagne flutes committing ritual suicide because they couldn’t handle the vibes.

The first real monster landed with a wet, meaty slap the size of a Tesla Model X doing a burnout on someone’s childhood.

Twenty spiders fused into one pulsating, obscene mass (legs braided together like your aunt’s Fourth of July cornrows from hell, abdomens swollen and translucent, revealing tiny screaming clown faces trapped inside like those gross jelly candies with bugs in them but worse). The central head was a melted Pennywise wearing lash strips made of actual human hair and a grin stitched from what used to be lips but now looked like a failed Kylie Lip Kit.

It opened its primary mouth (a vertical slit lined with human teeth wearing tiny “World’s Best Influencer” enamel pins) and spoke with the voice of their old manager Chad who’d ghosted them after embezzling eight figures, moving to Dubai, and starting an NFT project called “ClownCoin.”

“Ready for the collab of the century, queens? This one’s permanent. No take-backs. No refunds. Terms and conditions applied at fusion.”

GreenEyes didn’t think. She just pointed like she was flagging down an Uber Black at 3 a.m.

Sharon surged forward, splitting into thirty screaming shadow-tentacles wearing tiny Von Dutch trucker hats (because even nightmare creatures deserve Y2K nostalgia). They shredded the clown face clean off the spider mass. The body collapsed, legs still twitching in perfect choreography, trying to hit the griddy even as black ichor sprayed across the Italian marble in patterns that somehow spelled out “ratio.”

Kika’s panic bubble tripled in size, now large enough to fill half the filming room, glowing radioactive Barbie pink and playing the ice-cream-truck version of “Pop Goes the Weasel” but every time it said “pop” a tiny scream came out.

GreenEyes grabbed Kika’s wrist (her nails were still perfect, somehow, because even the apocalypse respects a good acrylic) and bolted for the hallway that led to the panic room. Behind them, more windows exploded. More fused horrors poured in: some made of seven spiders, some of twenty, one dragging the melted remains of a carousel horse wearing a birthday hat and a sash that read “Miss Congeniality 666.”

They moved in perfect synchronization, legs braiding and unbraiding like a living jump-rope made of nightmares and sponsored by Jump Rope for Heart but evil.

GreenEyes risked a glance back. Sharon was still fighting autonomously, tearing through clusters like a Vitamix made of childhood trauma and daddy issues, but there were too many. One of the smaller ones was trying to floss with its own silk while another attempted to do the “Cupid Shuffle” but kept falling over because it had too many left feet (literally).

They skidded around a corner, Kika’s panic bubble bouncing monsters off the walls like a deadly game of Pong played with anxiety and existential dread.

They slammed into the titanium panic-room door. GreenEyes punched in the code (ilovemoney666) while Kika’s bubble expanded to fill the entire hallway, turning it into a hot-pink rave from hell.

The door hissed open.

They dove inside.

The door sealed with a sound like a judge’s gavel at a war-crimes trial.

For three full seconds there was silence.

Then something knocked politely from the other side: knock knock knock, like eight knuckles made of chitin and a dream you can’t wake up from.

A voice vibrated through the steel, using both their voices at once but with the cadence of a ring-light giveaway:

“Greeneeeeeeyes… Kikaaaaa… open up. It’s time for your close-up. And by close-up we mean eternal screaming.”

Kika whimpered. Her panic bubble flickered, then stabilized, turning the entire panic-room interior neon pink and making everything look like the inside of a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper that had been possessed.

GreenEyes looked at the monitor wall. Every camera feed showed the same thing: fused spider-clowns covering every surface like a living carpet made of trauma and ring-light glare, all facing the lens, all smiling with too many teeth and perfectly contoured cheekbones.

One feed zoomed in on the original filming room. The ring light was still on. The follower count had frozen at exactly 50,000,000.

Underneath, a new comment from ArachneSmilesOfficial, pinned to the top with a crown emoji and 6.6 million likes:

“Congratulations, Royals. You went viral. Forever. No refunds. No deletes. Love you besties xoxo”

The lights inside the panic room went out.

In the dark, something giggled like a clown who’d swallowed razor blades, cotton candy, and a lifetime supply of ring lights.

Kika’s panic bubble flared so bright it lit the room like a Coachella set designed by Satan.

GreenEyes smiled for the first time since the balloon popped, showing all her teeth like a shark who’d just discovered TikTok.

“Round two, you crusty little viral bitches.”

Chapter 2 – The Theater of Screaming Birthday Cakes and Other Sponsored Nightmares

The panic room lasted exactly eleven minutes.

Eleven minutes of Kika’s panic bubble turning the titanium box into a hot-pink disco ball that smelled like cotton-candy fear and overpriced perfume. Eleven minutes of GreenEyes pacing like a caged influencer who’d just been told “content is paused for war crimes,” while Sharon (her new shadow demon bestie) kept trying to eat the emergency protein bars because apparently even eldritch horrors love birthday-cake-flavored Quest bars.

Then the walls started bleeding.

Not metaphorically. Literal red smiley faces oozed out of the seams like the mansion had decided to redecorate with period blood and clown makeup. The intercom crackled to life with their mother’s pre-recorded voice (the one she used for sponsored apology videos):

“Girls, whatever y’all broke this time, you’re paying for it. I’m in Saint-Tropez until I run out of rosé or men named Enzo, whichever comes first.”

The titanium door buckled inward like a soda can under a hydraulic press made of pure spite. Something on the other side was knocking in perfect TikTok rhythm: knock-knock, knock-knock-knock, knock.

Kika whispered, “It’s doing the ‘Savage Love’ beat.”

GreenEyes grabbed the emergency crystal baseball bat (limited edition, only 500 made, already sold out) and screamed, “OPEN THIS DOOR AND I WILL CANCEL YOU IN 4K.”

The door exploded off its hinges.

Standing in the doorway was a seven-foot-tall fusion of twelve spiders and what used to be their ring-light guy, Derek. Derek’s torso was now the central hub, his arms replaced by spider legs wearing tiny Apple Watches that still buzzed with calendar reminders like “film GRWM” and “therapy (again).” His face was stretched into a permanent ring-light smile, teeth replaced by actual ring-light bulbs that flickered SOS in Morse code.

Derek honked a bike horn grafted to his neck. SQUEAK SQUEAK, motherf—

Sharon launched like a heat-seeking missile of daddy issues and devoured Derek’s top half in one gulp. The bottom half kept trying to set up a ring light with its remaining legs, because even in death, Derek was a professional.

GreenEyes and Kika ran.

They sprinted down the hallway that used to lead to the kitchen but now led directly into the 80-seat home theater (because the mansion had decided physics were canceled along with their PR manager).

The theater doors slammed shut behind them with the finality of a brand deal gone wrong.

The lights came up like a Broadway show directed by a demon with a Red Bull addiction.

Every seat was occupied.

Not by people. By birthday cakes.

Hundreds of them. Tiered, fondant-covered, perfect Instagram birthday cakes. Except each cake had eight black spider legs poking out the bottom and a single candle shaped like a screaming human face. The cakes turned in unison to stare at them. The candles lit themselves.

The speakers blared “Happy Birthday” in the voice of every ex-boyfriend they’d ever ghosted, layered over circus music and the faint sound of someone crying in a Lambo.

Kika’s panic bubble expanded so fast it knocked over the first three rows of cakes. They screeched (actual screeching) and started scuttling toward them on fondant legs, leaving trails of buttercream that spelled out “ratio me harder daddy.”

GreenEyes swung the crystal bat like she was at the world’s worst piñata party. One cake exploded into a shower of spider eggs and edible glitter. The eggs hatched instantly into tiny spider-clowns wearing party hats that said “1st Birthday (of your eternal torment).”

Sharon, sensing snack time, grew to the size of a minivan and started eating the cakes whole. Each bite made a sound like a crunchwrap supreme filled with bones and regret.

Kika screamed, “WHY IS EVERYTHING TRYING TO GO VIRAL ON US?”

One particularly large cake (five tiers, neon pink, with their faces piped in buttercream) opened like a flower. Inside was a clown torso fused to a spider abdomen, wearing their sold-out merch hoodie from 2022. The hoodie was soaked in blood but still had the tag hanging off: $299.99.

The cake-clown spoke with the voice of their old sound guy who’d quit because they made him hold the boom pole for twelve hours straight.

“Special delivery, queens. You ordered the ‘nightmare collab’ package. No refunds.”

It launched.

Kika’s panic bubble turned the color of a panic attack at 3 a.m. and started playing “Sweet Caroline” but every time it got to “bum bum bum” a tiny scream happened.

GreenEyes, covered head to toe in buttercream and spider guts, laughed so hard she almost threw up. “We are getting SO many brand deals after this.”

Sharon picked up the cake-clown like a toy and used it as a flail, smashing other cakes into red velvet explosions.

They fought their way to the stage.

The movie screen flickered to life.

It was playing their own content. But wrong.

Every dance video now starred eight-legged versions of themselves wearing clown makeup and doing the renegade perfectly while laying eggs that hatched into smaller versions of themselves. Every GRWM now had them applying makeup with spider silk and honking bike horns instead of saying “hey guys.”

The screen versions waved at them.

Real GreenEyes waved back on reflex.

Screen GreenEyes smiled with too many teeth and crawled out of the screen like the world’s most expensive Ring sequel.

Screen Kika followed, dragging a ring light made of human spines.

Real Kika whispered, “I’m being canceled by myself.”

Screen GreenEyes spoke in their own voice but with the energy of someone who’d read all the hate comments at once:

“Hi besties. Time to film the downfall arc.”

Sharon roared (actually roared) and tackled Screen GreenEyes. They rolled across the stage in a blur of shadow and fake tan, biting and scratching and trying to out-contour each other.

Kika’s panic bubble grew so large it lifted her ten feet off the ground like a terrified hot-air balloon. She floated above the chaos, screaming, “I JUST WANTED TO BE FAMOUS, NOT EATEN BY PASTRY.”

A birthday cake the size of a Buick launched itself at her bubble. It bounced off and exploded into a shower of fondant roses that were actually tiny spider faces screaming “subscribe.”

GreenEyes looked up, covered in buttercream and someone else’s blood, and yelled, “Kika, drop the bubble for one second!”

“Are you insane?!”

“DO IT, TRUST FALL FROM HELL.”

Kika hesitated. Then, because this was the dumbest night of their lives, she did it.

The panic bubble popped like the world’s loudest balloon animal.

Pure, concentrated childhood terror detonated outward in a pink shockwave that turned every birthday cake into confetti made of screams and artificial dye #5.

The screen versions of themselves glitched, screamed, and dissolved into black goo that smelled like burnt cotton candy and broken dreams.

Silence.

They stood in the wreckage of what used to be a multi-million-dollar theater, covered in frosting, spider parts, and glitter that would never come out of carpet.

Kika looked at GreenEyes.

GreenEyes looked at Kika.

They both started laughing so hard they cried (actual tears, not the sponsored kind).

GreenEyes wiped buttercream off her face and licked it. “Tastes like defeat and red 40.”

Kika, still floating slightly because residual fear buoyancy is a thing now, pointed at the emergency exit sign that was now blinking in clown nose red.

“Next room?”

GreenEyes grinned, all teeth and madness.

“Next room.”

They kicked open the door.

It led directly into the indoor pool.

The water was pink.

And something was swimming in it.

Something big.

Something wearing floaties made of human arms.

Chapter 3 – The Indoor Pool of Daddy Issues and Olympic-Level Trauma

The emergency exit from the theater opened straight into the third-floor indoor infinity pool that had cost more than the Louisiana Purchase and was usually lit like a Vogue photoshoot.

Now it looked like a crime scene at a gender reveal party for Satan’s baby.

The water was strawberry-Nesquik pink and perfectly still… except for the gentle ripples moving against the current, like something enormous was doing the backstroke under the surface.

The overhead lights flickered on one by one, each bulb replaced with a glowing red clown nose that honked softly every time it lit up.

HONK…

Until the entire ceiling was a constellation of wet, blinking noses.

A voice boomed from hidden speakers, their father’s old Texan drawl layered with reverb and the faint sound of a cash register:

“Welcome to the main event, girls! Y’all always said you wanted to go viral in a big way. Well, Daddy delivered.”

The pool erupted.

A creature the size of a yacht breached the surface like a demonic Shamu on bath salts. It was their father (or what used to be their father) fused with at least three thousand spiders and every birthday clown who’d ever been fired for “creeping out the kids.”

Daddy’s torso sat in the center like a grotesque captain, arms replaced by spider legs wearing Apple Watches, Rolexes, and one single Bedazzled Fitbit that still read “10,000 steps to hell.” His face was stretched into a permanent influencer smile, teeth replaced by tiny ring lights that flashed “FOLLOW ME” in Morse code. Eight compound eyes arranged in the shape of a heart. A red squeaky nose the size of a beach ball. And (because nothing is sacred) he was wearing their sold-out 2023 “Royal Summer” bikini top stretched across his swollen spider thorax like a cry for help.

He waved with a leg that ended in a perfectly manicured hand holding a martini glass filled with pink venom and an olive that was actually a screaming human eye.

“Girls! Look how big my brand got!”

Kika’s panic bubble instantly inflated to the size of a two-story house, glowing so bright it turned the entire pool area into a hot-pink rave. The bass drop was literally her heartbeat.

GreenEyes clenched her fists. Sharon peeled itself off the floor like living tar and grew until it towered over them, thirty feet tall, a writhing kaiju silhouette made of every shadow that had ever hidden under their beds. Its many mouths opened and spoke in the voice of their old therapist:

“Time to process this with violence.”

Daddy-clown-spider laughed so hard his squeaky nose shot across the pool like a missile. It bounced off Kika’s bubble and exploded into confetti that spelled “FAMILY FIRST.”

Then the synchronized swimming started.

From the depths rose an Olympic-level team of fused spider-clowns wearing sequined one-piece swimsuits made of human skin and tiny swim caps with their logo on them. They formed a perfect circle and began doing the Macarena underwater while breathing through tubes made of intestines.

GreenEyes gagged. “I’m never taking a brand trip to Atlantis.”

Daddy raised one spider leg like a conductor. The swimming team launched out of the water in perfect unison, legs braided together, forming a living carousel that spun toward them while singing “Baby Shark” but every “shark” was replaced with “subscribe.”

Kika screamed so loud her panic bubble weaponized itself. The pink sphere sprouted spikes made of pure anxiety and started spinning like a murderous Beyblade.

GreenEyes cracked her neck. “Sharon, baby, dinner time.”

Sharon roared and charged.

What followed was the most expensive, most chaotic, most TikTok-able fight scene in history.

Sharon grabbed the first wave of swimming spider-clowns and used them like nunchucks, smashing them into each other with wet, honking explosions of limbs and glitter. Every time Sharon ate one, it grew another mouth that started reciting hate comments in their mother’s voice.

Kika’s spiked panic bubble mowed through the carousel formation like a flamingo-pink wrecking ball. Every spider-clown it hit burst into clouds of confetti and tiny iPhones that immediately started auto-playing their old apology videos.

Daddy watched from the pool, sipping his venom martini, occasionally live-streaming the fight on his own account (@DaddyRoyalNation – 89 million followers and climbing).

“Chat says the lighting is giving,” he called. “But y’all need to work on your transitions!”

GreenEyes lost it.

She leapt onto Sharon’s back like a demonic rodeo queen and pointed straight at Daddy.

“Full shadow fusion. NOW.”

Sharon wrapped around her like living armor. GreenEyes’ eyes went full black, veins turning to liquid shadow. Her voice dropped eight octaves and echoed with every canceled influencer who’d ever existed.

“Hi Daddy, remember when you said we’d never make it without you?”

She raised both hands.

Every shadow in the pool room (every single one) ripped free from the walls, the water, the spider-clowns themselves, and formed a tidal wave of screaming darkness taller than the mansion.

Kika saw it coming and did the only logical thing: she turned her panic bubble into a cannon.

She compressed all her terror (every clown, every spider, every time their father called them “disappointments with good lighting”) into one glowing pink orb the size of a Smart car, then YEETED it straight into GreenEyes’ shadow wave.

The two powers collided.

The result was a thirty-foot-tall abomination made of living shadow wearing a hot-pink exoskeleton that screamed in the voice of a million unsubscribes.

They named it, on the spot, “Sharon 2: Electric Boogaloo, but make it traumatized.”

Sharon 2 charged.

Daddy finally looked scared (well, as scared as eight compound eyes and a squeaky nose can look).

He tried to dive underwater, but Sharon 2 grabbed him by the squeaky nose and yanked him out like a bad tooth.

Daddy dangled in the air, legs flailing, still trying to film vertical.

“Chat, smash like if you think this is AI-generated!”

GreenEyes walked forward on a bridge made of Sharon’s shadow tentacles, heels somehow still perfect.

She leaned in close to Daddy’s terrified clown face.

“Hey Daddy. Remember when you said fear was the best engagement driver?”

She smiled.

“Be afraid.”

Sharon 2 opened its central mouth (a void that showed every embarrassing childhood photo they’d ever deleted) and swallowed Daddy whole.

The entire pool flashed white.

When vision returned, the water was clear again. The swimming team was gone. The clown noses on the ceiling had stopped honking.

Daddy’s squeaky nose floated to the surface, deflated and sad.

Kika’s panic bubble slowly shrank back to normal size. She landed gently on the tile, barefoot, covered in glitter and someone else’s blood.

GreenEyes stood at the pool’s edge, Sharon peeling off her like a second skin and shrinking back to pet-demon size.

They stared at the empty pool.

Then, because they were still them, they both pulled out their phones and started filming.

GreenEyes angled the camera to catch the floating squeaky nose. “Hey Royals, drop a comment if your family reunion was worse than ours.”

Kika wiped blood off her cheek like it was setting spray. “Also we’re dropping merch. Limited edition ‘I Survived My Dad’ hoodies. Link in bio.”

The chat (still live, somehow) exploded.

666 million viewers.

A new notification.

ArachneSmilesOfficial: “Round four loading… 👑🤡🕷️”

The pool lights flickered back on.

Under the water, something moved again.

Something wearing their faces.

Chapter 4 – The Mirror Maze of Peak, Cancelled, and Peak Again

The pool’s emergency exit spat them out into what used to be the east-wing hallway and was now a full-blown mirror maze straight out of a Vogue shoot directed by Satan’s interior designer.

Every wall was a mirror. Every mirror showed them something worse.

One mirror: GreenEyes at fifteen with braces and a side bang that looked like a dead ferret.

Another: Kika at a middle-school dance wearing a dress made of actual hot dogs because “it was ironic.”

A third: both of them crying in the back of an Uber after their first brand deal fell through because they accidentally said the a bad thing about the brand in a live.

The captions floating in the glass were in Comic Sans:

“Remember when you peaked?”

“Remember when you thought you were hot?”

“Remember when your mom still liked you?”

Kika’s panic bubble flickered like a bad Wi-Fi signal. “This is literally illegal. Someone call the Geneva Convention.”

GreenEyes tried to look away, but the mirrors followed. One slid across the floor like a Roomba made of trauma and parked in front of her, reflecting her current state: covered in Daddy’s blood, glitter, and buttercream, holding a squeaky nose like a war trophy.

Mirror-GreenEyes stepped out of the glass.

She looked perfect. Flawless skin, new nose (the one GreenEyes had been saving for), wearing the sold-out Royal Nation hoodie from the drop that crashed Shopify. Mirror-GreenEyes smiled with teeth so white they had their own spotlight.

“Hi, bestie,” she said in GreenEyes’ voice but with the energy of someone who’d never had a bad angle. “You look tired.”

Real GreenEyes blinked. “I will literally end you.”

Mirror-GreenEyes laughed the laugh GreenEyes used when she was faking nice to another influencer at Revolve Fest. “You already did. Look at the views. Everyone’s watching you fail in real time.”

She gestured to the ceiling, where a giant screen now played their current follower count dropping: 665 million… 664… 663…

Every mirror started live-streaming the fight to different platforms. One was Twitch, one was OnlyFans, one was LinkedIn (somehow the worst).

Kika’s reflection stepped out next, wearing the clown-wig gown but clean, perfect, not a single wig curl out of place. Mirror-Kika tilted her head.

“Hi, sweetie. You’re literally shaking. Maybe put the phone down?”

Real Kika’s panic bubble popped like a balloon animal that realized it had anxiety. She dropped to her knees. “I can’t. I physically can’t.”

Mirror-Kika knelt too, fake-sympathetic. “It’s okay. You were always the less pretty one.”

That did it.

Kika screamed so loud the mirrors rattled. Her panic bubble reinflated, but this time it was different: matte black with hot-pink circuit-board patterns, pulsing like a gaming PC about to explode. The fear had upgraded. It now came with RGB.

She stood up slowly. “Say that again.”

Mirror-Kika opened her perfect mouth.

Kika’s new panic bubble shot forward like a missile made of every group chat that ever dragged her. It hit Mirror-Kika square in the face and kept going, dragging the reflection through three more mirrors, shattering them into glitter that screamed on the way down.

GreenEyes watched, mouth open. “Okay, serve.”

More reflections poured out of the walls: past versions of themselves at every awkward phase, every cancelled moment, every viral scandal. There was 2019 GreenEyes doing black donkey for a “costume party,” 2020 Kika defending cultural appropriation because “it was just a braid,” 2021 both of them crying in a car because someone called them industry plants.

They formed ranks like a cancelled army.

GreenEyes cracked her knuckles. Sharon peeled off the floor and grew until the maze was too small. Its many mouths opened and started roasting the reflections in real time:

“Girl, that filter was doing overtime.”

“Those box braids were a hate crime.”

“You really posted ‘thoughts and prayers’ and then went to Coachella?”

The reflections hesitated. Roasting is their love language.

GreenEyes grinned like a shark who’d just discovered Twitter. “Sharon, new trick.”

She grabbed Sharon with both hands and started pulling, ripping shadows off the reflections themselves. Every time she tore one free, it screamed the name of a brand that had dropped them. The shadows fused into a massive, ever-growing Sharon that now wore a crown made of cancelled apologies.

Mirror-GreenEyes looked genuinely scared for the first time. “You can’t cancel us. We are you.”

GreenEyes walked forward, Sharon coiling around her like a living cape made of every bad decision she’d ever live-tweeted.

“Watch me ratio myself into oblivion.”

She snapped her fingers.

Sharon detonated into a thousand screaming shadow clones, each one wearing a different sold-out merch design. They swarmed the reflections like Black Friday at a Supreme drop.

Mirrors shattered. Reflections screamed influencer apologies as they were eaten alive:

“I’m sorry, I’m evolving, I’m learning—”

Crunch.

Kika floated above it all in her RGB panic bubble, now upgraded with subwoofers that played trap remixes of their own apology videos. Every bass drop shattered another mirror.

One particularly stubborn reflection (2022 GreenEyes doing the “I’m just a girl” audio while crying in a private jet) tried to run.

Kika pointed. Her panic bubble turned into a giant fly swatter made of anxiety and childhood clown trauma. She brought it down like the wrath of God at a brunch reservation.

SPLAT.

When the last mirror fell, the maze collapsed into a pile of glitter and broken ring lights.

They stood in the wreckage.

Follower count on the giant ceiling screen: 1 follower.

Just one.

ArachneSmilesOfficial.

The final mirror in the center showed their real reflection now: covered in blood, glitter, and someone else’s wig, holding hands, grinning like hyenas who’d just discovered capitalism.

Mirror-them waved.

Real GreenEyes waved back.

Mirror-them mouthed: “See you in the finale.”

The mirror cracked down the middle.

Behind it was a door.

The sign above it read, in rhinestones: BASEMENT – WHERE IT ALL BEGAN (and where Daddy kept the receipts).

Kika looked at GreenEyes.

GreenEyes looked at Kika.

They both flipped off the mirror at the same time.

Then they kicked the door open and walked down the stairs like they were walking a runway at Fashion Week: Hell Edition.

Chapter 5 – The Basement of Brand Deals, Blood, and Escape-Room Energy from Hell

The staircase down to the forbidden basement was lit by flickering ring lights that had been screwed into the walls like torches in a haunted Sephora. Each step played a different sound from their career:

Step one: their first viral sound, the one that got them famous.

Step two: the apology video after the first scandal.

Step three: the sound of their mother saying “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” but in ring-light form.

At the bottom, a single red balloon waited, tied to a comically oversized door that looked like it belonged to a walk-in freezer at a serial-killer bakery.

Written on the balloon in frosting that smelled like regret:

“Welcome to the Final Challenge, Royals!

Solve the puzzles or become the content.

XOXO, Daddy (and friends)”

Kika’s panic bubble immediately upgraded to full Cybertruck size and started playing dubstep remixes of their own screams.

GreenEyes rolled her eyes so hard Sharon did it too. “Of course Daddy turned the apocalypse into an escape room. He once made us solve a Rubik’s cube to get dinner.”

The balloon popped.

The door swung open by itself, revealing the basement laboratory redecorated into the world’s most expensive, most traumatic escape room.

The sign above the first puzzle glowed in neon:

PUZZLE 1 – “THE RING-LIGHT GAUNTLET”

The floor was a grid of 100 ring lights embedded face-up. Every single one was turned on max brightness. Stepping on the wrong one would trigger… something bad. Probably clowns. Definitely clowns.

A holographic Daddy appeared in the center, wearing a referee stripe shirt made of spider silk and holding a clipboard.

“Rule number one, girls: only step on the ring lights that have been in your actual videos. Wrong step and the floor drops into the ‘Cancelled Pit.’ You have sixty seconds. Go!”

The timer started: 60… 59…

Kika screeched. “There are literally hundreds of ring lights! We’ve used a different one every day since 2019!”

GreenEyes squinted. Sharon slithered across the floor like a shadow snake and started tasting the lights (yes, tasting). Every time it found a correct one, it purred like a cat who’d discovered sponsored treats.

“Follow Sharon, move!”

They sprinted across the grid, GreenEyes riding Sharon like a cursed skateboard while Kika floated above in her panic bubble, dropping glitter bombs on the correct lights like a terrified Mario Kart player.

45 seconds left.

They reached the other side just as the wrong lights exploded upward in geysers of tiny spider-clowns wearing referee jerseys. The clowns immediately started arguing with each other about whether the girls had cheated.

Holographic Daddy gave a thumbs-down. “Technical pass. Next puzzle!”

PUZZLE 2 – “THE COMMENT SECTION”

The next room was a giant ball pit, but instead of balls it was filled with millions of printed hate comments on neon paper. Above the pit hung a single golden ring light on a chain.

A new sign:

“Retrieve the ring light by swimming through the comments. But every comment you read out loud comes true for ten seconds. Choose wisely.”

Kika looked like she was about to have a full exorcism. “This is literally psychological warfare.”

GreenEyes cracked her knuckles. “I was raised by the internet. Let’s do this.”

They dove in.

First handful of comments:

“GreenEyes looks like a foot” → GreenEyes’ face temporarily morphed into a literal foot with lash extensions. She screamed through her new toe-mouth.

“Kika’s voice sounds like a dying cat” → Kika’s next sentence came out as the world’s saddest meow.

They kept swimming, reading only the comments that were useful:

“GreenEyes is untouchable” → temporary invincibility shield.

“Kika’s panic bubble can fly” → bubble sprouted wings made of anxiety and Red Bull.

They reached the golden ring light at the exact same time and yanked it down together.

The ball pit drained like a giant toilet flush, sucking all the hate comments into a void that whispered “we’ll be back for your next launch.”

Holographic Daddy looked mildly impressed. “Fine. One more.”

PUZZLE 3 – “THE FINAL COLLAB CONTRACT”

The final chamber was their original lab, but now it looked like a courtroom from hell. In the center sat a massive contract on a pedestal made of fused spider legs. The paper was written in blood and glitter.

Above it floated the mother cluster (bigger than ever, wearing a powdered judge’s wig made of clown hair and holding a gavel that was actually a honking bike horn).

The contract read:

“Sign to become our permanent brand ambassadors.

Refuse and be cancelled forever (literally).

You have one minute to decide.”

A pen made of a human finger hovered beside it.

Kika’s panic bubble turned funeral black. “We are NOT signing that.”

GreenEyes looked at the mother cluster, then at Sharon, then at Kika.

“New plan.”

She grabbed Sharon and started pulling shadows off the contract itself (every letter was written in shadow). The shadows screamed brand deals as they were torn free: “Ten percent off code ROYAL10—” RIP.

Kika realized what was happening and weaponized her panic bubble into a giant pink eraser made of every apology video they’d ever been forced to film.

Together they attacked the contract.

GreenEyes rewrote it in living shadow:

“New terms: you work for US now.”

Kika stamped it with her panic bubble like a royal seal of anxiety.

The mother cluster shrieked as the contract burned with black fire and pink glitter.

The entire basement started collapsing.

Holographic Daddy appeared one last time, now glitching and terrified.

“Girls, you can’t just rewrite the terms of your own damnation!”

GreenEyes smiled, all teeth and victory.

“Watch us, Daddy. We’ve been rewriting our narrative since 2018.”

The floor opened.

They fell.

Straight into the original filming room, now floating in a void of pure white ring-light glow.

The follower count on the wall read: 6,666,666,666

A single red balloon floated in the center.

And on it was written:

“Season Finale Loading…

See you on the other side, Royals.”

Chapter 6 – The Final Collab: 6.6 Billion Viewers Can’t Be Wrong (And They Never Will Be Again)

The filming room had become the inside of a throat.

White had turned wet, fleshy pink. The walls pulsed like the esophagus of something that had swallowed the entire internet and was still hungry. Veins of fiber-optic cable throbbed under the skin-ceiling, pumping data instead of blood. Every pulse made the room breathe.

The giant ring light overhead was no longer a light.

It was an eye.

A single, lidless, bloodshot eye the size of a stadium, iris made of six billion, six hundred sixty-six million, six hundred sixty-six thousand, six hundred sixty-six tiny screaming faces (every single viewer) staring down, unblinking, recording, judging, thirsting.

The pupil dilated and contracted in perfect time with their heartbeats.

A red balloon the size of a city bus floated in the center, veins bulging across its surface like varicose veins on a stripper who’d been at it since 2009. Inside the balloon, something moved: eight legs wearing tiny Louboutins, a crown of human teeth, and their own faces stretched into permanent ring-light smiles.

The voice that spoke was every voice at once: their mother, their fans, their haters, their future children they’d never have because the algorithm ate their ovaries, and the soft whisper of every brand rep who ever ghosted them.

“Put on the crown, Royals.

Become what you always were.

The final form of content.

Eternal.

Unkillable.

Uncancelable.

Forever live.”

The crown lowered on a string made of braided influencer hair (you could see the box braids, the silk presses, the cultural-appropriation cornrows, all still growing).

Kika’s panic bubble tried to form and immediately curdled into something worse: a black, oily sphere that dripped liquid screaming. The fear had evolved past pink. It had gone ultraviolet, then ultraviolet’s evil twin.

GreenEyes felt Sharon writhing under her skin like a parasite that had finally realized it was the host now. The shadow wasn’t outside her anymore. It was in her marrow, chewing.

The eye blinked.

When it opened again, the pupil was a live feed of them from the outside: two tiny, broken girls in a throat that had already started digesting them.

The chat floated in the air like subtitles from hell:

user666: eat them

user666: make them dance first

user666: ratio the soul

user666: drop the skincare routine after

Kika whispered, voice cracking like a dropped iPhone screen, “We can still leave. We can still—”

GreenEyes laughed. It wasn’t her laugh anymore. It was something that had learned laughter from watching apology videos at 3 a.m.

“Leave? Babe. We are the final boss of leaving. We invented ghosting. We taught the internet how to disappear. And look—” she gestured at the six-billion-eyed monster above them “—they followed us home.”

The crown was inches away now.

Sharon crawled out of GreenEyes’ mouth like black vomit and formed a second GreenEyes made entirely of shadow and teeth.

Shadow-GreenEyes smiled with too many mouths and spoke with the voice of every brand that ever dropped them:

“Put it on.

Or we put it on you.

Either way, someone’s getting crowned.”

Kika’s panic bubble finally gave up and inverted.

Instead of protecting her, it turned inside out and became a perfect sphere of every clown that ever lived, every spider that ever crawled across her childhood ceiling, every reflection that told her she wasn’t enough.

The sphere opened like a flower made of screaming mouths.

And Kika stepped inside willingly.

GreenEyes watched her sister disappear into her own fear and felt something break in her chest that sounded exactly like a ring light shattering.

She looked up at the eye.

At the crown.

At the balloon that now showed their own faces inside it, banging on the rubber with tiny fists, mouthing “let us out” over and over.

GreenEyes smiled the smile that had ended civilizations.

She reached for the crown.

And put it on Sharon instead.

The shadow entity shrieked in ecstasy as the crown fused to its skull. Teeth grew from the gold. Spider legs erupted from the diamonds. The clown shoes filled with blood and started tap-dancing.

Sharon grew until it filled half the throat, a black hole wearing their merch, their trauma, their entire brand as a skin suit.

It turned to the giant eye and spoke with six billion stolen voices:

“Thank you for coming to our TED Talk.

The topic was ‘touch grass.’

There is no grass.

Only content.”

Then Sharon opened its final mouth.

Inside was not darkness.

Inside was the next season.

A live feed of a new mansion, bigger, pinker, already infested. A new ring light. New followers crawling out of the walls wearing their old faces.

And in the center, two empty thrones with their names written in fresh blood.

Sharon lunged.

The last thing GreenEyes and Kika saw before the mouth closed was the follower count resetting to 1.

Just one follower left.

ArachneSmilesOfficial.

The notification pinged inside the darkness like a heartbeat:

“Season 2 drops in 3… 2… 1…

Thank you for your continued support, Royals.

See you on the other side.

Don’t forget to smash that bell.

It screams when you do.”

The throat swallowed.

The eye blinked once.

And went dark.

Somewhere in the black, two voices started laughing.

Because even in hell, the show must go on.

And the live never ends.

Chapter 7 – One Year Later: The Livestream That Never Actually Ended

The new mansion was bigger.

Pinker.

More expensive.

Built entirely out of ring lights fused together into walls that pulsed like a heartbeat on Molly.

It floated three inches above the ground in a pocket dimension that only existed when someone, somewhere, hit “refresh.”

Inside, the main filming room looked exactly the same as the old one. Same marble. Same neon “Royal Nation” sign. Same ring light the size of a small moon.

Except everything was wrong.

The marble was warm.

The neon sign dripped.

The ring light had a pupil now.

GreenEyes and Kika sat criss-cross applesauce on a cloud of their old merch, wearing fresh faces, fresh bodies, fresh trauma. Their skin was poreless, their hair moved like it was underwater, and their eyes reflected whatever you feared most when you looked at them.

A single red balloon bobbed above them, tied to nothing.

On it, in living letters that rearranged themselves every second:

LIVE

6,666,666,666 viewers

(and counting)

GreenEyes smiled the smile that had ended worlds.

“Hey Royals. It’s been exactly one year since we… ascended.

Drop a 13 if you missed us.”

The chat exploded in perfect unison:

Kika tilted her head like a broken doll that had learned new tricks.

“We promised you new content.

And we always deliver.”

She held up a mason jar the size of a basketball.

Inside the jar floated a single, perfect spider wearing a tiny crown made of their old acrylics and a red clown nose the size of a Skittle. It waved one delicate leg in greeting.

Its eyes were their eyes.

GreenEyes leaned closer to the lens.

“This is Baby.

Our community manager.

Say hi, Baby.”

Baby tapped the glass in perfect Morse code:

H-E-L-P-M-E

Chat thought it was the cutest filter ever.

Kika giggled, high and brittle, like glass about to shatter into more glass.

“Baby helps us read the comments now.

There are… a lot.”

She gestured to the walls.

Every inch was covered in live comments that crawled across the surface like insects. Some were in English, some in dead languages, some in the sound of teeth being pulled. They rearranged themselves into new sentences every second:

love you queens

eat your hearts

ratio me mommy

delete yourself live

drop the skin-care routine from hell

GreenEyes stood up and walked to the neon sign.

She pressed her hand against it.

The sign rippled like water and showed a live feed of the old mansion’s ruins, now a crater filled with red balloons that hatched and rehatched every time someone new subscribed.

“We rebuilt,” she said softly.

“Better.

Stronger.