Characters / Slay the Princess: The Princess

The titular Princess of Slay the Princess, and her various forms. See here for the rest of the cast.

Due to the meta and non-linear nature of the game, it's difficult to talk about anyone without revealing spoilers. As such, all spoilers will be unmarked. Please proceed with caution.

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Voiced by: Nichole Goodnight

The Narrator: She will lie, she will cheat, and she will do everything in her power to stop you from slaying her. Don't believe a word she says.

The titular Princess. She's found chained in the basement of a cabin in the woods. If you don't slay her, the world will end.

Truthfully, the Princess is the nascent form of the 'Shifting Mound', the 'Ebb and Flow', the 'Capacity to Change'. She is not death, but she contains it in her multitudes, and so the Creator trapped her to prevent her from affecting reality. She is sealed within the 'Construct', an infinite pocket-dimension time-loop that also contains the Player and the Narrator. It is the Player's actions that decide whether the Princess dies or escapes, whether or not she stays a god, and whether or not reality ends.

General

• Achilles' Heel: Only stabbing her in the heart can actually kill her. Otherwise, she's completely immortal — in the Prisoner path, you can cut off her head to no real effect.
• Ambiguously Human: She looks like a dainty woman, as befitting a princess. But she's strong enough to explode bones and organs with punches, doesn't react to losing limbs, and is unable to be killed unless pierced through the heart. Depending on your choices, she can become an outright Eldritch Abomination. It is eventually revealed that each version of her is a small part of the Shifting Mound, a personification of death and change.
• And I Must Scream: Her time in the cabin hasn't been kind to her, as she's trapped in a perpetual cycle of being born, dying, and being born again, all while remembering every single loop and suffering from loneliness and decay.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Of change and transformation, and by extention death. As such, killing her will trap everything in a single unchanging moment, while letting her out will eventually unmake everything in the world. Which of these is better is the core debate of the game.
• Animal Motifs: The Princess is strongly associated with cats, including large cats like lions, especially when she begins to take more animalistic traits. Even as a human, she can potentially be quite snarky and mean. It also creates a contrast to the Player, who is associated with birds, creating a predator-prey dynamic, what with the Princess being easily capable of slaying the Player in many routes.
• Anti-Villain: Though she is one of the greatest threats to the player, it is usually in response to cruelty inflicted onto her. Even her nature as an Apocalypse Maiden isn't voluntary on her part, but because she contains death as one of many possibilities within her.
• Apocalypse Maiden: The Narrator insists she's one but he never makes it clear how. It's because she's the avatar for the Shifting Mound that she has the potential to eventually bring everything to an end.
• Attack on the Heart: Despite her incredible physical abilities and strength, getting stabbed in the heart in (almost) any of her forms, regardless of their abilities, is a quick death for her. Exaggerated with the final form of The Razor, where the ONLY part of her body left is her Heart.
• Baritone of Strength: The physically strongest versions of the Princess have the deepest voices to match. This generally includes the version of the Princess you meet when you take the Pristine Blade with you to the basement and many of her off-shoots.
• Barrier Maiden: Any time she leaves the cabin, the world fades out and is replaced by the striated backdrop of the unshaped Construct. That's because when outside of the cabin the Princess is where the Shifting Mound can retrieve her.
• Beast Woman: In some of the routes where you attack the Princess, she suddenly sprouts claws and fangs to engage you. She becomes even more beastlike and feral in some other routes.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted on several Routes where the Princess can become just as bloodied and mutilated as you, often to nightmarish levels.
• Berserk Button: Abandoning her in the basement will always set her off and make her respond with violence. Even the Shifting Mound, who is accepting of everything you do, even permanently killing her, will become angry if you refuse to go to the cabin during Chapter II.
• Big Bad Ensemble: She is the entity that will end the world if she escapes the cabin, and you are tasked with slaying her, but she's only a threat because the Narrator/Creator made her in the first place out of the abstract concept of change and death to kill death for good.
• Blood Knight:
  • The Adversary is an Amazonian Beauty who's quite a bit bigger than the player. She insists on getting into a good fight with the player, and will doggedly pursue him if he tries to run. The fact that both she and the player have Resurrective Immortality where they keep coming back from the dead over and over not only doesn't bother the Adversary, but it genuinely excites her, since it means the two of you can fight each other for eternity.
  • The Eye of The Needle, which comes after the Adversary in the full game, is even more of a Blood Knight than the Adversary. Essentially, the Eye is the Adversary but moreso: as she's even taller, even stronger, and even more draconic in appearance. However, her bloodlust is so blatant that it's possible to trick her into following you outside, where she'll be snagged by the Shifting Mound.
  • The Razor also wants to fight the hero, but she's more interested in killing him than fighting him. However, the fact that the hero can't seem to stay dead excites her to no end, since she can keep killing him over and over.
• Body Motifs: Hands. Regardless of which route you take, hands play a part in lots of the more striking images of the game involving her. The princess can cut off one of her hands to try and break free from her bonds. The Shifting Mound typically shows up as hundreds and hundreds of arms, with hands grasping whichever princess the Mound has control of as an Empty Shell. Whenever the Hero and the Princess show genuine affection for one another, the two of them are more than likely holding hands. Whenever the Princess attacks, it's almost always going to involve a heavy punch. The Nightmare frightens you by just touching your face with one of her hands, and the Moment of Clarity has multiple hands. The Shifting Mound's true form has six arms and has several poses in which she reaches her hands out to you. Finally, one of the endings has both the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet embracing their hands together as they enter into eternity; another has the two of them holding hands on the cabin's door handle; and the "bad" ending, which involves refusing to deliver vessels to the Shifting Mound, ends with her hands holding each other as she and the Long Quiet die.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The princess's appearance and personality are determined by how the Hero/Player sees her. Even the decision of whether to take the knife changes the way she'll call out to you before she can even see you.
  • If you take the blade, implying you see her as a threat, she will introduce herself with a cold "Who's there?", with the Voice of the Hero immediately pegging her as "dangerous." The more you hesitate to slay her and pick dialogue choices that show you are afraid of her, the more threatening and confident in her own abilities she becomes. Trying to slay her at that point results in a Mutual Kill at best and a Curb-Stomp Battle in her favor at worst. Notably, even if you decide to drop the blade and help her until the very end, she'll never stop being cold and aloof. However, this Princess can become more warm to you in succeeding routes.
  • If you don't take the blade, implying you don't see her as a threat, she gives a timid "H-hello? Is someone there?", with the Voice of the Hero being smitten immediately, and reacts to any assertions that she is dangerous with confusion and disbelief. She will only become violent towards you if you betray her, like stabbing her in the back or leaving her in the basement, and even then it's portrayed less as her being always dangerous and more her defending herself.
  • The actions the Princess takes herself in the first chapter also impact what she becomes in later chapters. For example, if you keep talking to the Princess, she'll try to free herself by chewing off her shackled arm. If you attack her after this, she develops claws and sharp canines and the Narrator will begin to describe her in animalistic terms, suggesting that watching her bite into her own flesh made you see her as more beastlike. Appropriately, depending on if you took the knife with you, this can lead to the Beast or the Witch routes.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She can and will do this on multiple occasions to the Player, sometimes following a total No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on him to horrific degrees.
• Cute Monster Girl: Several of the Princess's more monstrous forms are still drawn with her beautiful face intact, or at least try to make her a Little Bit Beastly.
• Damsel in Distress: A deconstruction of one, considering she's locked up for the safety of the world but exactly why isn't clear and she's only as threatening as you make her out to be. Plus, imprisonment hasn't been kind to her.
• Decomposite Character: Her "Fury" persona from the demo got split into "The Adversary" and "The Tower" in subsequent versions. Fittingly, both routes can lead to the new "Fury", an incarnation of the Princess whose self-image has been so undermined by your actions that it's reflected in how her body is partially flayed open.
• Eldritch Abomination: Some of her transformations as a result of your actions. Every version of her is also a component of a larger eldritch abomination.
• Empty Shell: What she becomes when the Shifting Mound claims her. No matter what form she took before, the Shifting Mound will grab the Princess and pull her into the Long Quiet, where the Princess will be grabbed and turned into one of the Shifting Mound's vessels.
• Establishing Character Moment: Every time you walk down the stairs to the basement, the Princess will call out to you. Her voice (and how the Narrator describes it) and what she says to you generally establishes what you're dealing with on a given route. What she says in Chapter I is the best example not only because it's your very first impression of her, but on subsequent replays, you'll notice that her entire personality changes whether you bring the Pristine Blade with you, despite the fact that she shouldn't be able to tell if you have it on you before she sees you, which indicates that the Princess above all else is strongly affected by your decision-making, even with the most innocuous choices.
• Evil Is Bigger: The more antagonistic forms of the Princess tend to be larger than the hero. The Adversary and the Beast both dwarf the hero, and the Tower is so tall that the hero doesn't even come up to her knees. If the Tower becomes the Apotheosis she becomes even bigger, to the point that she's bigger than the entire landscape with the entire surrounding area swirling around her. Notably, after this Princess is taken by the Shifting Mound, the hands that grasp her can only partly cover her face, head and neck, as opposed to covering every other princess completely.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Princess is the embodiment of death, life, change, and rebirth. Being trapped for all eternity without ANY of those things is torture for her that she will do anything to escape. Some darker versions of her, may keep you alive for the purpose of torturing you (notably the Fury and The Moment of Clarity).
• Feel No Pain: The Princess is about as durable as a normal person, however is easily able to ignore being pummeled, stabbed, sliced, or getting limbs cut off, either by herself or the Player. Sometimes a slight hesitation or reaction is noticed but altogether pain doesn't seem to mean much to her. The Wraith does mention feeling pain, but casually dismisses it.
• Fisher Queen: From Chapter II onward, she and the world around her will start to warp to fit the impression she made on the Player character in the first chapter. The second encounter sees her form and the inside of the cabin change significantly from what was previously encountered. Subsequent chapters will show her influence spreading from the cabin to the woods beyond.
• Friendly Enemy: Even versions of the princess who become hostile to and/or kill you, will still have some form of attachment to the point that they'll ask the Shifting Mound to let you remember her.
• Glass Cannon: One stab to the heart will kill variants of the Princess which aren't already dead. The problem is in getting close enough to do so.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Some of her forms have this, like the Wraith and the Beast.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: It's implied that she's been stuck in the cabin for a very long time. She only gets more and more hostile the longer you or the Narrator prevent her from leaving and attempting to deny her escape leads to the princess transforming into a greater threat.
• Gratuitous Princess: The Princess is mostly just for the narrative irony of a hero's quest being to slay a princess rather than save one. What exactly she's the princess of isn't elaborated on, nor is anything else about her past, and she seems to have been chained up alone in a remote cabin for as long as she or anybody else can remember. According to the Narrator in the final conversation with him, she is a being of perception, and her appearance was determined by how you (or rather, the Long Quiet) wished to perceive her, and given your mutual nature as two halves of a greater whole, she appears to have manifested as a princess because of the Long Quiet's lingering feelings for her as someone very dear and important to him.
  The Narrator: She wound up a princess because you wanted her to be a princess. As to why? Maybe she needed to be beautiful. Important. Above you, but on a level you could still approach. A herald of things to come.
• Hates Being Alone: Seems to be a theme with her, as her first and a number of her later variations are not happy with you if you try to leave. In fact there are many Chapter II and Chapter III scenarios where it's impossible to do so and others that won't even allow you the opportunity to try.
• Her Name Really Is "Barkeep": The Voice of the Hero wonders if her name really is "Princess" (which would make her name and title "Princess Princess"). When you ask what the fragmented Stranger what her name is, three out of four variants will say that her name is just Princess, and at the end of the game, the Timid Princess refers to herself as Princess.
• Humanoid Abomination: Even in her most "basic" and "innocent" forms, the Princess is a bizarre entity who merely takes the form of a princess (and even then, that is only the result of your own perception of her). She doesn't need to eat or sleep, doesn't feel pain or fatigue, and only stabbing her heart can kill her, and even then, only if you believe her to be dead.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Almost every variant is determined to get out of that cabin, one way or another. This often doesn't end well for her.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: She becomes cold and lethargic any time she leaves the cabin, usually an indicator that the Shifting Mound is approaching.
• Informed Ability: The Narrator tells you she can end the world if you don't slay her, but you're never told how she would do it. The trope gets zigzagged as certain forms of the Princess are definitely dangerous enough to show a world-ending ability. Even as the Shifting Mound it's unclear if she's actively bringing worlds to an end or more indirectly returning mortality into existence, meaning even worlds end eventually.
• Insane Troll Logic: The Princess's various forms engage in this at times; most notably the Razor and the Adversary.
• Just Hit Him: Zigzagged. The Princess DOES just hit the Player multiple times in every fight to great effect using her immense strength, but it's not always very effective due to the Player sometimes having the ability to keep fighting with most of his body destroyed. It would be much more effective to simply grab the Player and kill him that way. She only does this a single time though, easily catching and snapping the Player's hand, causing him to drop the Pristine Blade. Maybe there's a reason why she doesn't do it more.
• Loophole Abuse: The Princess is desperate to leave the cabin, and after Chapter I, she learns she can't leave the cabin if you're dead. She attempts different ways to circumvent this, ranging from possessing your body, eating you alive and walking out, Faking the Dead and getting you to take her head with you, or simply convincing you to leave with her.
• Left-Handed Mirror: The Princess and each variation of her is noticeably left handed which is a contrast to the Player being right handed.
• Mad Love: Every version of the Princess, including the more hostile and terrifying variations, want the Player's company in some shape or form. But the more twisted the Princess is, the more twisted her view of company is.
• Major Injury Underreaction: She doesn't even blink from gnawing her own arm off. Other forms take this even further, with the Razor turning her arms into swords with a smile on her face, or the Prisoner cutting off her own head and having no reaction at all.
• Meaningful Name: Each version of her that you meet has a suitable moniker that distinguishes her both from the Princess you meet in Chapter I and any other Princess you may encounter, though the characters themselves don't use this name. The game's files refer to the Shifting Mound as "felina", an anagram of "finale", which fits her position as the Final Boss and her potential to end everything.
• Mirror Character: Interestingly, there's a passage from the Stranger's route that sets up the Chapter II Princesses as counterparts to each other, with almost every pair being linked by a 3rd Chapter they can both lead to.
  The Narrator: Consumption and betrayal. Skepticism and blind devotion. Rivalry and submission. Terror and longing. Pain and unfamiliarity. And at the heart of it all, an emotion that can only be described as-
  • "Consumption and betrayal": The Beast and the Witch are both vengeful catlike beings who result from the player character not taking the Pristine Blade into the basement, only to turn on the Princess later. The Beast is outwardly hostile and will try to consume the Player character from the very start, while the Witch is passive-aggressive and will try to tease out an opening where she can betray the Player before she is betrayed by him again. Their shared route is the Wild.
  • "Skepticism and blind devotion": The Prisoner and the Damsel both result from the player character taking the Princess's side no matter what, even when the Narrator tries to make him kill her by force. The Prisoner, having met the Player while armed with a blade, is a cold, calculating sort who's chained down by three giant manacles and exercises equal parts caution and skepticism when she sees the Player character again in her cell. The Damsel, having met him while unarmed, is a naïve Princess Classic who can easily slip out of her bonds through The Power of Love and welcomes the PC with blind devotion. The difference is especially pronounced, as both technically lead to the Grey, but the Grey turns out incredibly different depending on which Princess you kill.
  • "Rivalry and submission": The Adversary and the Tower both result from the Player character attempting to kill the Princess, only for doubt to hold him back to the point where the Princess can sucessfully defend herself. They are the two most physically imposing variants of the Princess. The Adversary, who results from the PC continuing to fight, is a demonic Blood Knight who, despite her imposing presence, most values a Worthy Opponent who can rival her forever. The Tower, who results from the PC submitting, is a power-hungry goddess who wants to turn the PC into her groveling servant. Their shared route is the Fury, which results from the PC shattering their fundamental beliefs (unnerving the Adversary into losing her will to fight or successfully killing the Tower, during which she's forced to resort to physical violence when she always prided herself in not having to do so).
  • "Terror and longing": The Nightmare and the Spectre are both ghostlike beings who express a sort of twisted affection towards the player character. The Nightmare, who kills the PC with the terror her very presence inflicts, is a horrific creature who puts on a mocking, falsely friendly air, while the Spectre, who was killed by the PC with no hesitation, is a genuinely friendly Cute Ghost Girl whose longing for her freedom makes her willing to let bygones be bygones...provided he doesn't continue to obstruct her efforts. Their shared route is the Wraith.
  • "Pain and unfamiliarity": The Razor painfully kills the player character so many times that all of his Voices come to the forefront, while the Stranger is formed from a bunch of unfamiliar Princesses melding together into one paradoxical being. These two are the only pair to not have a shared Chapter III: instead, the Razor always leads to 4 Chapters and the Stranger always ends in Chapter II. Interestingly, while the Razor will kill you on repeat over and over again, the Stranger is one of the few (perhaps the only, if the Damsel isn't counted) who never kills the PC.
  • "And at the heart of it all, an emotion that can only be described as...": The heart of the Shifting Mound contrasts the chapter 1 Princess by being less uncanny in appearance and being unchained. She is the collective version of every other Princess variant—having access to all their memories and experiences—and is simultaneously the most powerful and weakest variant of the Princess. Powerful in that she has all of the Shifting Mound's powers to the point she can reset the loop to the very beginning if you let her, and weak in that she is also the only Princess able to be truly killed. She is also the only Princess variant who can truly leave the cabin with no strings attached.
• Mysterious Past: The Princess remembers nothing from before she was locked up in the basement, only that she knows she's been there for a very long time. When the Nightmare bears her heart to you, it's implied that there is at least one life where she lived a relatively normal life as a princess.
• Mutual Kill: Sometimes fighting the Princess results in both her and you dying. With her last breath, she acknowledges the futility of it.
• Nightmare Face: Sometimes she'll sport a Slasher Smile. Other times she'll sport something much, much worse if you really piss her off. The Stranger Princess gets special mention due to the Body Horror, and the Nightmare Princess has, fittingly enough, a literal nightmare face.
• No Name Given: If you ask the Princess what her name is, she pauses uncomfortably and claims she's been in the cabin so long that she can't remember. Instead, she asks that you call her "Your Royal Highness" or just "Princess". However, the Voice of the Hero thus wonders if she's named "Princess Princess". While the different variations have different names seen in their respective chapter titles, none of the characters actually use them - the most you get are Title Drops, like the Voice of the Hunted saying that the only way out is through the eye of the needle.
• Not Good with Rejection: Multiple variants of the Princess do not take your rejection well. Refusing to either let the Princess go or engage with her in a physical confrontation results in the Nightmare. The Stranger is born from your refusal to go to the cabin altogether until you're forced to. The Eye of the Needle will be disgusted with your cowardice if you won't fight. And both the Adversary and the Tower will mutate into the Fury when your refusal to engage with their respective views of themselves results in their personality breakdowns.
• Painting the Medium: Generally, if the form the princess takes is neutral or affable towards the Player her dialogue will be in light pink text, while her more dangerous or antagonistic forms will have red text instead.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Repeatedly, she's cruel in response to cruelty.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: The Princess is very slim and delicate-looking. But as you go through different routes, it's clear that she is freakishly strong, and will use that strength to literally rip you to pieces if she gets the drop on you. It's entirely impossible to beat her without the Pristine Blade, and even with it, she most likely will kill the Player. Even in the route where she's bound by multiple chains too heavy for the Player to budge a little, she uses them to strangle the Player.
• Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: Both the Player and Princess's perception of each other can heavily influence the outcomes of their encounters.
  • The Princess changes into a different form in each route or variation thereof to match the Player's perception of her.
  • The Player's Voices and the supernatural abilities they grant him to match and combat the Princess's various forms, which are implicitly based on the impression he made on her in Chapter I.
• Self-Restraint:
  • Even in her base form, one of her "weakest" forms, she can still break free from her shackle with a moderate amount of effort upon being antagonized by the Player.
  • The Adversary and the Eye of the Needle are both shackled to the walls of their respective chambers, but each form's Super-Strength means that they're willing to break free of the chains with ease if it means fulfilling the Blood Knight tendencies of each form.
  • The Tower notes that, since she considers herself a god, breaking her chain would be trivial. But it doesn't fit a "narrative" of the Tower being unleashed onto the world by the subservient hero who is awestruck by her, so she wants you to let her loose instead.
• Silk Hiding Steel: The Princess is this in every route where she fights the Player, but most notably in Chapter I of the Adversary route. By choosing to talk to her and then deciding to slay her, (something many players will probably do on their first attempt), she responds by punching the Player's jaw off with a single strike.
• Slipped the Ropes: Many variants of the Princess turn out not to be as restrained as they appear.
  • The Witch slips her hand out of the shackle just seconds into your encounter.
  • The Adversary and The Eye of the Needle break the chain off the wall once doing so means they can fight you.
  • The Fury simply yanks her hand out, losing skin in the process.
  • The Razor cuts herself free once she gets bored of playing innocent. Then in Chapter III where she's back to being shackled, the restraint falls off her arm when it splits open to reveal a second knife.
  • The Damsel's hand turns out to be small enough that it can be eased right out. Why? Because The Smitten said so.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Or rather, strong as you think she needs to be. She will develop strength and new powers depending on what you believe she is capable of. This can range from her being easily taken by surprise and killed with a single stab to the heart to her becoming a Physical God who can escape from the cabin all by herself.
• Super-Strength: Every version of the Princess (save for the ones that don't do many physical things) exhibits supernatural amounts of strength (especially for someone of her stature), being able to do things like break metal chains, break hands with a vice grip, perform unbreakable strangleholds, crush windpipes by simply exerting her knee on them, and reduce the player to a bloody pulp with just punches and kicks.
• Sympathetic Murderer: In most cases where the Princess kills you, it is out of either self-defense, to put you out of your misery, or her desire to leave the cabin reaching to desperate levels. Averted with the Razor, the Adversary, and the Tower, who kill you for fun, for the thrill, and because you disobeyed her respectively.
• Token Human: Well, Token Humanoid, but the Player and the Narrator are bird-like entities, while the Princess, in her most basic form, looks like a regular young woman.
• Uncanny Valley: The Princess is beautiful, but slightly uncanny even when acting completely innocent and benign. Her eyes are a little too big compared to the rest of her face, and her arms are slightly elongated. It's done intentionally so that the player will get the impression that something with the princess is slightly off. When you meet her in the heart of the Shifting Mound, you find the Princess is drawn with much more realistic proportions and speaks with a much more natural tone. This contrasts the ethereal but uncanny beauty the initial Princess has, with an equally beautiful but much more natural look the Shifting Mound's heart has.
• Villainous Crush: The Princess and all of her variants are attracted to the Player.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: While not totally consistent, some of your more brutal cases of suffering a Cruel and Unusual Death tend to be Laser-Guided Karma because of how poorly you chose to try to slay the princess. Usually, immediate actions are met with fairly immediate responses, but doing things like waiting until she fully trusts you before sticking the Pristine Blade in her back tends to result in very bad circumstances.
• Voice of the Legion: Gains this in some of her forms and when you really piss her off. Notable examples include the Nightmare, Wraith, and Stranger.
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Played with in the endings where you and the Princess manage to mutually kill each other. If you give the Princess a good fight, she takes time in her dying moments to compliment your strength, even describing the fatal encounter as "fun" (This leads to her becoming The Adversary). If she gives you a Curb-Stomp Battle instead, she mocks your weakness and makes her disappointment with you clear as she crushes your windpipe (This leads to her becoming The Tower).
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: After a few routes, it becomes obvious that the situation sucks just as much for her as it does for you. Can she destroy the world? Yeah. Does she? It's unclear. Does she want to? Even she's not sure. All she knows is she's locked in a basement, and her only company is some guy who may or may not kill her. Over and over and over and over again.

Chapter I

"Who's there?"
"H-hello? Is someone there?"

This is the first version of the Princess you encounter, unless you choose not to go to the cabin at all. She is the "default" and arguably the weakest variation of the Princess, but that will change depending on how you treat her.

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• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Backstab her after befriending her and the Princess's fingers become clawed and "somehow" able to pierce the Player's neck.
• Ambiguously Human: She looks like a thin, poised woman, as befitting a princess. But she's strong enough to explode bones and organs with punches, doesn't react to losing limbs, and is unable to be killed unless pierced through the heart. Even then, the belief that she might not be dead leads to her still having some life left.
• An Arm and a Leg: She's shackled to the wall by one arm and unlike some of her later variations is unable to pull herself free or break the chain on her own, except when she's the proto-Nightmare. If you brought the knife, you can cut off her arm to allow her to shed the shackle. If you didn't bring the knife, she starts to chew through her own arm.
• And I Must Scream: It's not as pronounced as in the Nightmare route, but she's already been down there for a long time and doesn't really remember the outside or the last time she's seen anyone.
• Apologetic Attacker: If you side with her without carrying the pristine blade, the Narrator makes it appear and tries to force you to kill her. She takes the knife and stabs you repeatedly, apologizing and weeping all the while.
• Art Shift: The Chapter I Princess's design change depending on your actions. Threaten her by taking the Pristine Blade and her features become harsher and dip into the Uncanny Valley at points. Don't take the knife and side with her continuously, and her features soften into a round-faced proto-Damsel. Try to leave her in the basement, and when she comes up the stairs after you, she has a frightening and particularly detailed Nightmare Face. Her Chapter II appearances lead on from there.
• Challenge Seeker: If you talk to her before attacking, she fights back effectively. Persist and it ends with a Mutual Kill, and she says "That... was fun". The next time you see her, she's the Adversary.
• Do You Trust Me?: Her greatest argument for letting her out is that you have no reason to believe the Narrator, who refuses to tell you anything about who the Princess is and why you need to slay her, or the Princess, who is a stranger you just met, and therefore making either decision is based on blind trust. She does leverage the fact that, regardless of what she could do, she is clearly not in a position to do so while bound to the basement.
• First Girl Wins:
  • In the endgame, the Voice of the Hero can take the Long Quiet back to where it all began. There he meets the heart of the Shifting Mound, whose personality is based on the very first Princess you met, including the Stranger if you chose not to go to the cabin, and you can convince her to leave together.
• Fish Eyes: The Nightmare Face she shows if you try to leave her in the basement prominently has her eyes bulging and pointing out strangely.
• Glass Cannon: Being just a princess, one stab to the heart will do the trick... but she's extremely strong. Any scenario where you try to kill her after talking to her at all ends with her almost effortlessly bringing you to heel and killing you, even if you manage to make it mutual.
• Handicapped Badass: She has to lose an arm to get out of her shackle and doesn't even bind the dripping stump, but this doesn't mean she's any less dangerous.
  The Princess: I don't know what's come over you, but if I have to kill you, then I'll kill you. Do you think I need both of my arms to do that?
• Hates Being Alone: If you don't choose to either kill the Princess or set her free, she is not at all pleased and it ends poorly for you. Your resolve to keep her imprisoned alone leads to her shedding the shackle and pounding on the door, eventually coming through with a Nightmare Face and causing you to die of fright. She's next seen as the Nightmare.
• Ice Queen: The "harsh" version of the Princess you meet (if you take the Pristine Blade with you) is standoffish, aloof, and thinks little of you or your ability to slay her.
• I Just Want to Be Free: The one thing she wants most. She's entirely casual about either cutting or chewing off her arm if it means leaving.
• I'm a Humanitarian: In her most animalistic as the Beast, she describes what she did after killing you in Chapter I when she found that she couldn't get through the door on her own.
  The Beast: I consumed your dead heart, and I carried it in my throat, and I draped what was left of you on my back and threw myself against that door.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Her outfit is a floor-length gown with low heels and a floral tiara, stereotypical of a Princess Classic. Despite this, she's more than capable of kicking the Player's ass and killing him should you choose to attack her, and the dress and shoes don't even slow her down.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: To escape her chain, either you cut the Chapter One Princess's shackled arm off or she chews it off. This is shown in graphic detail.
• Little Bit Beastly: If attacked after she's chewed into her own arm, she fights back with newly prominent teeth and claws.
• Major Injury Underreaction: A Player who wants to free her asks if she has any ideas about how to get her out of her chain "besides cutting you out of there". The Narrator mentions her total nonchallance as she says that would be fine, she can lose an arm. Whether it's cut off with a knife or chewed off with her teeth, she doesn't flinch.
  Voice of the Hero: How is she still smiling after everything? / How is she so composed after losing an arm? It's like she's not even bothered by it!
• Mercy Kill: If you try to warn her when the Narrator hijacks your body, she'll kill you in something between mercy and pragmatism. How effective she is depends on if you'd brought the knife with you into the basement.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: Talk to her and then attack, and she's drawn with more defined arm muscles as she fights back.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: ...but her arms are still slim, not supporting bone-fracturing levels of muscle.
• Not Quite Dead: If you attack the Princess without talking to her much, you manage to stab her without being hurt yourself. With her last breath she asks if you really think this is enough to kill her. At that point you can walk away to the "Good Ending", or check her pulse to discover that her heart is still beating. She uses the opportunity to stab you in the neck, and smirks at you as you both bleed out.
• Oh, Crap!: Choose to slay her immediately and she'll give this reaction as you charge her and impale her in the heart.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: What the Princess does to you if you befriend her and then try to kill her, or befriend her and then try to leave the cabin.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: If you (literally) stab the Princess in the back.
  The Princess: You bastard! If I have to kill you to leave this place, I'll do it.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: Slim and pretty she might be but she's tremendously strong and fast in a fight.
• Primp of Contempt: The colder Princess tends to inspect her nails when annoyed.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Her basic personality depends on how you choose to interact with her. From the start, her personality will be affected by your choice to take the Pristine Blade, with her becoming "harsh" if you do and "soft" if you don't.
• Smug Super: The "harsh" Princess will intimidate you by saying if she's locked up for a reason and you wouldn't want to see what that reason is. The more you show that you're intimidated, the more arrogant and confident she becomes, and more importantly the more she can back up that attitude.
• Super-Strength: She hits like a sledgehammer.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If the Player talks with the Princess but avoids actually freeing her for too long, she'll call him out on using her freedom as a bargaining chip, only to be given to her if she says what he wants to hear.

Chapter II Variations

The Adversary

"The sensation of bleeding and sweating and breaking and mending and dying and living comes back in vivid color. A past that is also present. A pain that is also everything and yet nothing at all."

"It's been ages since I've had a good fight."

Talk to the Princess before attacking her, don't be dissuaded by her Super-Strength, and press on for a Mutual Kill. She'll come back as a Blood Knight, waiting for a rematch with you.

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• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Mostly she uses her fists, but a spread of several panels in the fight shows one in which her claws are bloody.
• Amazonian Beauty: She's presented as a beautiful muscular woman, albeit one with demonic horns and hooves, and she's slightly taller than the Player Character. The Stubborn is naturally attracted to her.
• Badass Arm-Fold: She's often crossing her arms in an intimidating fashion, especially when taunting you.
• Blood Knight: While other Princess incarnations share this trait, this is her defining feature. She wants nothing more than to fight you, over and over again for eternity, and will be greatly disappointed if you don't fight back or are easily defeated. She doesn't even care about her situation or escaping the cabin.
• Breaking the Bonds: She's strong enough to break out of her chains on her own just by pulling them. But since she's a Fair-Play Villain she won't immediately turn hostile once she does it, but once she does it, it's impossible to run away from her without her easily catching you.
• Challenge Seeker: She enjoys fighting you as long as you are able to challenge and keep up with her. If she deals you a Curb-Stomp Battle, she'll give in further into the bloodlust, becoming the Eye of the Needle, and if you end up horrifying her by constantly forcing yourself back to life even as your body is horribly mangled (if you try to fight her unarmed) or try to Turn the Other Cheek, her fear will destroy her willingness to fight and will turn her into The Fury.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Adversary comes to be after you both kill each other in Chapter I, which causes you to see yourself as an equal to her in battle — causing the two of you to get locked into a more deadly engagement. Within the Adversary's route, if you believe she's invulnerable, the two of you get locked into combat for an eternity, trading blows forever but never truly dying.
• Combat Sadomasochist: She's a Blood Knight who wants to fight you to the death, and openly talks about how much she enjoys wounding and being wounded. She will refuse your offer to spar with her instead of fighting to the death, because a fight where you hold back isn't "real" to her. That being said, you can go about Horrifying the Horror if you keep getting back up despite grevious injuries.
  The Adversary: What's real is when my flesh splits open. What's real is when you keep getting up until your legs can't hold you. What's real are the things we do to each other when the only options left are winning and dying.
• Complete Immortality: If you try to slay her and she comes back, then you compulsively think "the Princess can't die" — which, of course, become true. The Narrator is horrified, but the Princess (and the Stubbon), are eager to fight to the death forever.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Resist trying to fight the Adversary, but ultimately give in and attempt to slay her, and she'll kill you with one blow with her elbow.
• Cruelty by Feet: In one of the panels of your fight, she's shown stomping directly at the camera.
• Dragons Are Demonic: She has a mix of demonic and draconic traits in appearance, with horns, cloven hooves, a devil tail, and razor-sharp teeth.
• Fair-Play Villain: Unlike many of the Princess' other iterations, all the Adversary wants is a good fight out of a Worthy Opponent. As such she never tries to trick you or sneak attack you, even if you chat her up. If you don't bring the Pristine Blade down with you the first time, she even allows you to go back up to the cabin to pick it up, and she won't attack until you're ready. Should you manage to kill her by piercing her heart with the Pristine Blade, once she gets back up, she'll toss it to you instead of using it herself. Because the Adversary wants your altercations to be as suspenseful and heart-racing as possible, she needs them to be fair. She only gets pissed if the player acts like a coward by running away or trying to hide from her.
• Femme Fatalons: Her nails have grown to become long and sharp. She rarely uses them in combat, but it still makes her look more intimidating than before.
• Flipping the Bird: Pick the right options, and it's possible for the Narrator to force you to flip her off. She will respond in kind by flipping you the bird in return.
• Friendly Rival: This is what gives the Adversary her name. She exists to be your opponent who pushes you to overcome her, so that you may push her to overcome you in turn. This is also what separates her from the Eye of the Needle, the Adversary is your equal who you may fight with evenly head-to-head and lose yourself in the thrill of never ending competition, with your mutual Resurrective Immortality.
  The Adversary: (as part of the Shifting Mound) You feel the shame of a hundred deaths and the pride of a hundred conquests, all the peaks and valleys weaving themselves into a single tapestry free of beginning and free of end. Do you remember when we killed each other with such passion that death itself no longer sat on our shoulders?
• Good Old Fisticuffs: She fights you by brawling with her bare fists and elbows, which is more than enough thanks to her massive strength.
• Horns of Villainy: This incarnation has three horns in her head, to fit with her draconic motif.
• Horrifying the Horror: Both ways to do this lead to the Fury in Chapter III.
  • If you try to fight her bare handed she will kill you by crushing your head and splattering it all over the room... but The Stubborn can let you get back up and she will be suitably horrified as you no longer have a face. If you keep fighting her, she'll get more and more perturbed by you getting back up despite her destroying your body more and more, to the point she loses her fighting spirit, and just wants to give you a Mercy Kill.
  • She's a Combat Sadomasochist, but not a Sadist, so should you Turn the Other Cheek and allow her to beat you to death she'll become very distraught that you're allowing yourself to get killed without fighting back.
• Hot-Blooded: She has a passionate, fierce personality, a loud booming voice, and is single-minded in her desire to fight forever.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: The Adversary declares your brawl in the previous chapter to be the "best three minutes of [her] life." She also describes your potential battles in a way that comes off as exceedingly passionate and evocative of a sexual encounter. The Stubborn is not far behind the Adversary in terms of eagerness to start and continue fighting, with the same erotic undertones.
• Lightning Bruiser: She's both incredibly fast and strong, making her one of the deadliest princesses to fight.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: In her base form the Princess is already very strong, but she's decidedly more heavily built in this form, befitting her being a combat-focused Lightning Bruiser.
• Neck Lift: If you engage in Turn the Other Cheek pacifism and refuse to fight her, she will beat you down and then casually lift you by the neck before she demands to know why you won't fight back. And then she finishes you off with a Neck Snap.
• Not Good with Rejection: She genuinely likes you and the Interplay of Sex and Violence that comes part and parcel with your fights. Rejecting them or telling her it's an unhealthy dynamic causes her to become as hurt and emotionally distraught as if you were spurning her. It causes her so much distress she turns into The Fury.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business : Normally, she's a Blood Knight who's positvely frothing at the bit to fight you forever. However, if you keep bringing yourself back from the dead, she'll be horrifed by your increasingly mangled body, showing genuine terror and regret. The shock of this twists her into the Fury.
• One Free Hit: If you question her and your potential Resurrective Immortality, she'll allow you to stab her in the heart and kill her once, just to prove to you that the both of you are meant to fight to the death for eternity.
• Pointy Ears: She gains pointy ears to go along with the demon/dragon hybrid motif.
• Resurrective Immortality: Even an Attack on the Heart, which kills every other princess, doesn't make the Adversary stay dead. She'll get back up, pull the Pristine Blade out of her chest, throw it back to you, and continue the fight. Luckily, you also can't die this way.
• Scary Teeth: She has sharp teeth, contributing to her draconic appearance, and she often shows them off while grinning.
• Smug Smiler: Often has a confident, taunting grin on her face, which also makes her look intimidating due to her Scary Teeth.
• Smug Super: The Adversary is powerful, and she's very proud of it. She's also figured out that you have Resurrective Immortality, to the point that she'll let you kill her once just to prove it.
• Spirited Competitor: The core of her being, this Princess is one that's only concerned with how she and you can challenge each other and grow through the conflict. She's not bothered if you gain the upper hand during your fight, and she's not even concerned with escaping the Cabin anymore, so long as she has you to test herself against then she's happy.
  The Shifting Mound: This one yearns to grow and struggle. Even now I feel her will pushing against mine, not realizing that we are one. She will make for a fierce heart. Do not mourn her. We will provide her with the growth she fought for.
• Story Branch Favoritism: Because the Adversary was the first of the Chapter II branches to be written and illustrated, her chapter has more unique art and more choices than the others.
• Super-Strength: She's as strong as her large muscular frame suggests, and she's able to break out of her chains with ease without harming herself, something even The Fury can't do.
• Tall Is Intimidating: She's significantly taller than the hero, something the Voice of the Hero finds to be very intimidating, especially when you step closer to her and truly take him her height.
  Voice of The Hero: She's a lot bigger than I thought she was.
• Tears of Joy: If you indulge her Combat Sadomasochist tendencies and tell her you understand the connection you have when you fight, the Adversary will be so happy she'll briefly cry tears of joy (and so will The Stubborn).
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Her attraction to you is based on you being strong enough to fight her as an equal. She will be thoroughly disappointed in you if you try to run, outright refuse to fight, or get easily beaten. She wants nothing more than for the two of you to continually, physically, and violently challenge each other, and she's most receptive to you when you aren't holding back. Should you prove to be a Worthy Opponent and say you understand the connection that you both have, the Adversary will cry Tears of Joy that you understand her.
  The Adversary: And you waited for me. I knew I could count on you, I knew we were connected.
• Worthy Opponent: Discussed. She wants to fight you to the death, but only if you want to fight her to the death in return. Fighting in self-defense or because you're scared of her just makes the Adversary scoff at you. However, should you even somewhat show the same level of fervor that she does, the Adversary will at least try to be fair. She'll return the Pristine Blade to you if you kill her with it, and she'll wait for you to grab the weapon if you didn't bring it with you. She also won't attempt to backstab you or attack while your guard is down. If questioned on this, the Adversary explains that she wants an opponent who can match her when fighting blow-for-blow to the death, because that's the only kind of fight that's "real" to her.

The Beast

"You are devoured, prey for something bigger than you that stalks and slinks in shadows. Within, you are tightly bound and choke on heavy air as acid burns it way into your pores. A nest of things devouring within things devouring."

"I can hear your heart pounding from the bottom of stairs, fledgling. You're right to be terrified."

Go down without the Pristine Blade, but stab the Princess as soon as the Narrator drops it down. Alternatively you can go up to retrieve your blade without explaining why and lock yourself in the basement. Either way, give up once she starts fighting back. The princess turns into a Talking Animal, driven by the need to hunt you down and eat you.

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• Animalistic Abomination: An animalistic version of the Princess
• Cats Are Superior: She's very arrogant about her new feline beast form, boasting that she's now far mightier than the player.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: If you, after coming to the basement without the Pristine Blade, backstab the Princess as soon as you retrieve it, she endures and tears you apart in an animalistic manner. Her refusal to reason with you and complete dominance forces you to see her as the predator, and you the prey (hence why you get the Voice of the Hunted in the Beast's chapter).
• Curb-Stomp Battle: If you reached this route, she would have bitten and clawed you to death in chapter 1 without taking a single hit from you. Similarly every outcome in this chapter results in her killing you or forcing you to free her.
• Dispense with the Pleasantries: The Beast is not one for small talk, and refuses to truly engage with many of your attempts to speak with her. She's much more interested in trying to eat you.
• Eaten Alive: This princess doesn't just want to kill you, she wants to eat you. Play your cards wrong, and you'll end up being swallowed and digested in her stomach acids, complete with an interior shot of the Beast's stomach lining.
• Eating the Enemy: While the Beast has claws and she does use them to swipe at you, her main goal is to swallow you whole.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The Beast believes that eating you will allow her to escape without penalty from the cabin. Because she was unable to escape as the proto-Beast but knew you could come and go, and dead doesn't count, she thinks having you alive inside her will allow her passage out. As she finds out the hard way, this is wrong, she needs you to agree to.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Oh so very averted. Being eaten by the beast involves getting digested, with stomach acid eating through your body. Even in the scenario where you survive this, you're still burned from stomach acid.
• I Just Want to Be Free: Well, not 'just', she also wants to punish and overpower the player character who turned on her, but the desire to get out is still very strong.
• Just Eat Him: Averted completely. Give her the chance and she'll do it, and the results are not pretty.
• Kill It Through Its Stomach: One possible fate for the Beast — the player is swallowed whole, but remains undeterred and hacks his way to her heart from within.
• Lightning Bruiser: She's extremely strong and fast for her size, and you can't dodge her attacks for long until she eventually catches and eats you.
• Loophole Abuse: She believes carrying you alive in her stomach, will allow her to leave the cabin since you're from the outside world.
• Major Injury Underreaction: The Beast is merely amused at the Player cutting his way out of her stomach after she devours him whole, all while melting in her stomach acid.
• Mercy Rewarded: If the player allows her to leave after she's swallowed him whole, The Beast will vomit him up after she's out. Burned from stomach acid, but still alive.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: While she's primarily cat-like, she's got wings, bird-like talons and horns, traits which become even more notable in the Den.
• Monster Modesty: Despite being more of a cat-like creature, she actually wears stripes of cloth around her chest, torso, and lower body. It's most noticeable if you let her leave the cabin.
• Must Be Invited: Inverted. If The Beast wants to actually leave the cabin with the player inside her, she can only do so if the player allows her to or expresses a desire to be free.
• One-Track-Minded Hunger: No higher goals or ambitions exist within The Beast anymore. She only wishes to consume you, believing it will grant her freedom.
• Our Sphinxes Are Different: She's essentially one of these, albeit with small wings and a far less human-looking face.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The Beast is met by getting on the good side of the Princess, then betraying her (or at least leaving a good impression of it). As a result, the Beast is hunting you not just because she's hungry, but because she thinks you have it coming for what you did to her.
• Roar Before Beating: Her attacks are accompanied by a creepy and terrifying roar.
• Sinister Silhouettes: In "The Beast". Once you get down to the basement, the Princess stalks you from the shadows. All you ever see of her are glowing eyes, a clawed hand, and sharp fangs. The only time you can get a good look at the Beast is after she's been grabbed by the Shifting Mound and become an Empty Shell.
• Talking Animal: She is now, thanks to you. The princess has ceased being human and is now a cat-like creature who is hunting you, hates your guts, and wants to eat you.
• Wings Do Nothing: The Beast has a small pair of wings on her back that don't seem to do anything to enable flight.

The Damsel

"Your lover drives a stake into your body. And another, and another, and another. Do I miss your heart because I can’t stand to see it go?"

"It's you! My dashing hero. I was so worried you wouldn't come back."

Don't pick up the Pristine Blade, help the Princess escape, and resist all of the Narrator's attempts to kill her. The result is a naive, yet good-hearted princess who treats you as her Knight in Shining Armor.

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• Animesque: Her appearance as the Damsel makes her look the part of an idealized, adorable princess. If you keep asking for her opinion when she doesn't have one, her anime style gets increasingly exaggerated to the point of Art Shift and Stylistic Suck.
• Apologetic Attacker: The Pre-Damsel Princess tries to Mercy Kill you when you're struggling against the Narrator's control, apologizing the entire time. Unfortunately, since she doesn't know how to use a weapon, she's rather upset to find out the hard way that her attempts at a quick kill are ineffectual, and your death is drawn out and painful.
• Art Shift: She initially seems fairly normal, albeit slightly exaggerated in her feminine traits to make her look like a Princess Classic. But the more you ask her about her opinion or thoughts on something, the more some element of her changes, becoming more and more clear that by way of you creating a situation for her to be the stock Damsel in Distress to rescue from the cabin, she is little more than a hollow shell for this purpose. And this is demonstrated by Stylistic Suck, as she becomes more simplified the further you push her until she's a borderline crude facsimile of herself. If you stop questioning and decide to escape however, she reverts instantly to her idealized form.
• Bear Hug: As soon as she's freed from her bindings, she thanks you and immediately jumps up to brace you in a big joyful hug.
• Bishie Sparkle: In several scenes, the Damsel gets surrounded by sparkles to emphasize her innocent, idealized and adorable Animesque princess appearance.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: If you insist on freeing the Princess no matter what—going into the basement without the Pristine Blade, cutting her from her shackles, and resisting the Narrator—she will become the innocent damsel you perceive her to be, to the point that she practically has no desires beyond being a prize for you to win.
• Cradling Your Kill: The Pre-Damsel Princess holds you when she kills you, crying all the while.
• The Cutie: The Damsel is a sweetheart who only wants to make you happy.
• Damsel in Distress: There's a reason why this version is called the "Damsel", having the form and attitude of a Princess Classic, calling the player her "dashing hero" while treating him like a Knight in Shining Armor, and overall being a perfect example of the stereotypical princess to be saved, to Satellite Love Interest levels.
• Empty Shell: She's been made into your love interest, and there's very little left of her beyond that. Other then her desire to escape the cabin, she's got no personal motivations, beliefs or goals, and will literally disintergrate if you try to examine her personality. She won't even resist you killing her if that's what you want (until her next incarnation, at least).
• Extreme Doormat: She has no desires outside of whatever you want and a vague desire to leave the basement, which she only mentions the once. Questioning her about this just makes her devolve further and further. It's so extreme that, even should you kill her, she'll ask what she did wrong and/or just let you do it with no resistance at all.
• Flat Character: Discussed. She's just a Princess Classic and a Damsel in Distress, with no desires of her own. If you ask her what she wants, it will just be to make you happy, and that's it. Her artwork will also gradually deteriorate until she's nothing but a crude pencil drawing. Even if you hit the Damsel with a Logic Bomb of making you happy by making you unhappy, the Damsel will just instantly agree to it.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Interestingly, as a Flat Character, the only other desire she has is getting out of the cabin like most of the other Princess's vessels. This is only mentioned if you ask what else she wants, though. You can also offer to help figure out what else she wants aside from making you happy after you get out, but you never find out as she gets grabbed to be absorbed, her purpose finished.
  • If you stab her, she gives a tearful sad smile, indicating that even though she lets you stab her for you to be happy, being hurt is not exactly part of what makes her happy. She sees that the cabin is making both of you hurt each other and wants to end the suffering with you, leading to The Burned Grey route.
• Nice Girl: She's the nicest version of Princess and genuinely wants to make the Hero/player happy. She'll even forgive the player for killing her, thinking she did something to make the Hero unhappy.
• Perpetual Smiler: She's almost always got a big, warm smile on her face. Even if you choose to kill her, she'll still be smiling with tears streaming down her face.
• Princess Classic: Sweet, innocent, a Damsel in Distress, and the Smitten's love interest. Freeing her will make her give you a big hug and take your hand in her own. She's also drawn with very soft features and very large eyes to make her appear more feminine.
• Satellite Love Interest: Deconstructed and Played for Horror - she wants nothing more than to please the Hero and ensure his happiness, because your choices have made it so that she has literally no agency to do otherwise. Trying to ask her what she wants for herself results in her physically devolving, as if the mere idea of doing something of her own free will is completely foreign to her.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Taking the advice of the Voice of the Smitten and freeing the Princess has the two of you joyfully leaving the cabin together, with a big hug and hand-in-hand, as the Narrator loudly voices his disgust with how lovey-dovey you're acting.
• Sorry I Fell on Your Fist: The Damsel's innocence and adoration of you are so strong that, if you slay her, her response will be to apologize and ask if she did something wrong as she lays dying.
• Stepford Smiler: There's several indications she's not quite The Pollyanna she presents as — she's just as desperate to escape the Cabin as the other princesses and quickly breaks down if you try to investigate her motivations. Maybe most tellingly, if you kill her, she keeps up her smile and cheery voice while visibly sobbing, with the narrator describing her eyes as "full of terror"
• Stylistic Suck: Keep asking her what she wants, and her artwork will keep devolving further and further until it's nothing but a crude pencil sketch. Go all the way with it, and the form grabbed by the Shifting Mound will also be in this crude sketch style.
• Tareme Eyes: She gains these as the Damsel, to such an exaggerated degree that it verges on Uncanny Valley.
• Willfully Weak: Seeing as she is a form of the Princess it is very likely that she still has at least some sort of supernatural or superhuman power. That said, her extremely passive nature and desire to do anything the Player wants of her makes her effectively harmless, even if the player tries to kill her.

The Nightmare

"Fear is what pretends to protect us from loss. To fear death ‘protects’ from losing a body. To fear ruin ‘protects’ from losing status. To fear rejection ‘protects’ from being known."

"I wonder how many times I'll get to play with you before you break."

Leave the basement while keeping the Princess locked away, or run away upstairs while fighting the Princess. The princess becomes a Humanoid Abomination in a mask.

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• Broken Bird: The Nightmare, for all the aura of fear and rage that emanates from her, is a broken figure who honestly just wants someone to love her.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: She can kill you with just a touch, but she abstains because she needs you alive to help her escape. And because it's fun to watch you squirm.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Princess becomes the Nightmare if you Take a Third Option and leave her in the basement. The sheer impossibility of her getting out without your help, along with what is implied to be your exhaustion and tiredness from waiting her out, morphs her into a nightmare-ish Eldritch Abomination who can catch you no matter where you go and whose mere presence can frighten you to death.
• The Dreaded: Just being near her terrifies the Player so much that the Paranoid has to resort to a Survival Mantra in order to keep you alive in her proximity.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Her speech is sometimes partly drowned out with the loud sound of static feedback, despite the world appearing to contain nothing that's electronic.
• Faux Affably Evil: She speaks with a polite and playful tone that makes it clear she's just mocking the Player and enjoying how much he squirms in her presence.
• Fingerpoke Of Doom: Her touch can break your concentration, which is all that's keeping your organs from failing. However, most of the time she doesn't do it because she enjoys watching you squirm.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Right before the Mind Rape sequence and just after she pulls off her mask, you can see her shed a Single Tear in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment.
• Fright Deathtrap: Her presence is so terrifying that it can actually cause organ failure and kill you, and the Voice of the Paranoid has to recite a Survival Mantra just to keep your organs functional and ensure that you stay alive. Even then, she can always break your concentration with a single tap of finger. The reason why she doesn't is because she'd rather watch you squirm and she needs you to escape from the cabin.
• Glass Cannon: Simply being around her causes the Player's organs to shut down and would have killed him if it weren't for the Voices keeping his heart, lungs, liver, and nerves alive. At the same time, the Nightmare is not only one of the easier Princesses to slay, but she stays dead until you die. She still performs an indirect Mutual Kill though by leaving you trapped (see Taking You with Me).
• Hidden Depths: During the confrontation with the Shifting Mound, the Nightmare's art and dialogue reveal that her removing her mask was a misguided and desperate attempt to show the Player her innermost self in the hope that he'd understand her deeply rooted pain. The Player's reaction to her revelation utterly shatters her heart. Tellingly, when the Player meets with her as the Moment of Clarity, she has her mask back on despite it being even more thoroughly cracked. Most likely out of the deep fear along with shame of being rejected by the Player again.
  The Shifting Mound:(about the Moment of Clarity) There are few things more terrifying than one's own heart, and there is almost nothing more terrifying than sharing it with another.
• High-Class Gloves: She wears fancy white opera gloves that give her an air of opulence alongside her dress, mask and body language.
• Humanoid Abomination: She looks vaguely human, in that she's a feminine figure in a long dress with long gloves and a mask. But taking into account that the basement has turned into an Eldritch Location that's subject to her whims and she floats and flickers in and out of reality at will, it's clear that the Nightmare is not human.
• I Am What I Am: She frequently declares this.
  The Hero: You're a lunatic. You know that, right?
  The Nightmare: I am what I am. And right now, I'm in control.
• I Just Want to Be Free: During the nightmarish sequence she shows under her mask, she repeatedly screams "Let me out!"
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The Nightmare's main motivation next to escaping the cabin is to have companionship. Unfortunately, her long isolation and the rage and frustration resulting from the Player trying to keep her trapped means she genuinely doesn't know how to do anything but hurt.
• The Gadfly: She messes with the Player for her own amusement, as she finds it hilarious just how terrified the Player is of her and enjoys messing with him just for her own amusement, such as invading his personal space or dragging her fingers along his neck.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: She wants to fill the world with terror and fear. Specifically, the fear of her. While she needs your help to escape the cabin, she also finds you immensely more entertaining alive and petrified of her than she would if you were dead.
• Mind Rape: If the Player attempts to run from her or resolve to just stay down in the basement forever, she triggers one by pulling off her mask. The sequence shows a horrific trauma that's implied to be hers, which is so bad that it causes the Narrator to abandon the player.
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: The Nightmare is not deterred by death. Threaten her and she'll say that they'll just end up back in the cabin again. Actually kill her and she'll only laugh and say that she's going to become so much worse to you now.
• No Face Under the Mask: If the Nightmare takes off her mask, the Player will see nothing but darkness, a lipless mouth and two eyes, one which is shedding a tear. The Player's senses are then flooded by an endless traumatic cycle of death and rebirth. Even the Narrator is so shaken that he stops narrating and abandons the Player and Voices to their fates.
• Not Good with Rejection: The Player's rejection of her when she pours her soul out to him during the mask removal scene causes the Nightmare to become an even more horrifying version of herself called the Moment of Clarity.
• Nothing Is Scarier: A core theme in this route. The basement becomes an endless void of nothing, and the Nightmare can kill you by simply being around you for seemingly no reason at all. In Chapter I, if you simply choose to leave the Princess in the basement without fighting her or coming back with the knife, it's never shown how she freed herself, even though she apparently needed your help to do so.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The Nightmare is a ghost-like being who can float, flicker in and out of existence, causes electric static noises and naturally emanates fear.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The reason the Nightmare doesn't just kill you (besides the fact that she relishes your fear) is because she's figured out that she needs you to help her escape. By the same token, if you can help her escape, then you must be useful in other ways, so the Nightmare vows to perpetually keep you near her.
• Power Floats: She's a ghost-like being who floats off the ground instead of walking.
• Psychotic Smirk: For most of the interaction with her, she regards you with a devious grin. However, should she take off her mask, she fells a Single Tear, making it evident that her expression is actually a Broken Smile.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Should you continue to deny her escape, she'll start screaming "LET. ME. OUT." at you.
• Sadist: She relishes how terrified you are of her and gets a kick out of watching you struggle to survive. The only reason she doesn’t go further is that she needs you alive to exit the basement.
• Single Tear: If the Nightmare takes off her mask to reveal what is underneath, her Psychotic Smirk doesn't falter... But she also fells a tear at the same time, hinting at the deep pain inside of her.
• Supernatural Fear Inducer: She radiates fear by her mere presence, and it's strong enough that she can cause the Player's organs to fail if she stays in his presence for too long. It's only the Voice of The Paranoid's Survival Mantra that allows the Player to survive in her presence.
• Supernatural Floating Hair: Her long black hair is perpetually floating, due to her ghost-like nature.
• Stepford Smiler: Despite the smirk plastered on her mask, she is deeply in pain over her situation.
• Taking You with Me: Slay her and she will either remove the stairs to your escape, or tackle you with her into the abyss; both leaving you trapped in the void until you die from starvation or choose to slay yourself.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: If the Player refuses to help the Nightmare out of the basement she will give an absolutely scathing tear down of the Player.
  The Nightmare: You poor, deluded thing. Do you think a single moment of bravery changes you into something you're not? I am what I am, and you're always going to be a coward.
• Teleport Spam: She loves to move by vanishing and reappearing wherever she wants, and occasionally flickers in and out of reality in a single spot.
• Token Evil Teammate: While several of the princesses can be hostile towards the Player, the Nightmare is arguably the only one who fully embraces the idea of escaping the cabin so she can make the world a worse place by filling it with fear.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice has a creepy reverb applied to it.
• Villainous Breakdown: Should the Player stab her in the heart while the two are leaving the basement, the Nightmare will be momentarily stunned silent at the Player's audacity. Her becoming the Moment of Clarity is a major one.
• White Mask of Doom: She's a terrifying ghost woman who wears a creepy doll-like white mask that's beginning to crack.

The Prisoner

"To question everything is to deny the proof of reality that lies in front of you."

"Is that a visitor I hear? Please, come downstairs. It's been a while since I've had company."

Pick up the Pristine Blade, but help her escape and resist all of the Narrator's attempts to kill her. The result is a sullen and downtrodden captive who can't be bothered to do anything.

---

• Actually Pretty Funny: If you get snagged by the loose shackle with the Pristine Blade knocked too far away to retrieve, she'll say she finds the irony funny.
• Apologetic Attacker: Albeit way less than the proto-Damsel. Once the Chapter One Princess who's about to become the Prisoner sees you're Fighting from the Inside, she'll apologetically (albeit coldly) promise to be quick. Which she is, when she Mercy Kills you.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: It's easy to miss, but unlike the Damsel, the Prisoner seems to take note of the fact that something besides the two of you was pulling the strings when you met her in the previous chapter. By extension, she seems to deduce that whatever the force behind that was, it's likely still around and is still watching the both of you. Hence her not voicing the full extent of her plan and leaving it up to you to figure out that you need to take her head outside with you once she finishes removing it.
• Berserk Button: She might be in chains, but she's not a helpless damsel. Undermining her autonomy or disregarding her wishes will break the stoic facade and lead to her viciously strangling you until you relent.
• Chained by Fashion: Unlike the other princesses, the Prisoner not only has both her arms bound instead of just the one, she also has a chain around her neck. Even her crown is made of chain links.
• Chain Pain: The chains are too strong for even her to break, so if you try and come at her with the knife, she resorts to using them to strangle the Player.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: If your suspicions of the whole "slay the Princess" scenario drive you to help her despite taking the Pristine Blade with you to the basement, she will be forced to kill you after the Narrator possesses you. When you meet her again, the Princess becomes even more shackled by the confines of the basement, and whether or not she escapes is based entirely on where your curiosity and skepticism takes you.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: When you visit her in the basement, she treats you mostly with apathy and aloofness, and while she does trust you enough to be of help, she still insists on maintaining a safe distance from you, and will get hostile if you overstep your boundaries until you drop the knife. However, when you play along with her plan to bring her to freedom by carrying her severed head outside, with an approving smile on her face, she sincerely thanks you for your help and says that she was glad to trust you.
• The Eeyore: She's very sullen, downtrodden, and mostly completely uncaring about the events of the world around her.
• Faking the Dead: Very convincingly, as she cuts off her own head right in front of the player, who can only watch or close their eyes and be forced to hear her do it. It's a gambit to fool the Narrator into thinking his problem is solved which allows the you to carry her head out of the cabin if you pick up on her ruse.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: If you've killed another version of the Chapter I Princess and left the basement, not only does the Prisoner's apparently twitching eyelid seem to indicate that she's still alive, the view from the cabin's windows as you leave will confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that her self-inflicted decapitation didn't kill her.
• Foreshadowing: If you ask the Prisoner about what happened in the previous loop, she reacts with surprise about you "giving away the game", foreshadowing that she is aware of the Narrator and his machinations, as well as foreshadowing her faith in the Player to help her out of the basement without him knowing.
• Hates Small Talk: Outside of necessary exchanges of information, she doesn’t like to talk much. If the Player gets trapped with her and attempts to strike up a conversation to pass the time, she only replies enough to indicate as such.
• Hidden Depths: She appears quite aloof, distrusting and stoic towards the player even though she was partly responsible for his death in the previous chapter. However much of this is an act, as she senses the force (i.e. the Narrator) who nearly killed her is nearby and she is now bound in heavier chains. If she escapes the cabin with you, she starts to open up in those brief moments (including expressing sincere gratitude if you carried her head out or warm curiosity if you waited with her). Furthermore she will ask the Shifting Mound to let you remember her after, inferring that she did care, and was grateful for your efforts.
• Losing Your Head: Due to only being killed when her heart is pierced, the Prisoner is able to escape the Cabin by cutting off her own head and letting the Player take it away.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Even more so than normal. This princess is so apathetic to the world around her that she can cut off her own head and not even look annoyed by the process. If you stab her, she'll only remark that she should've expected you to kill her in Revenge, and that she won't help you next time.
• Mercy Kill: Once she realizes that something has taken hold of your body, the proto-Prisoner takes the Pristine blade, promises to make it quick, then gives you a Slashed Throat so you die quickly.
• The Not-Love Interest: Unlike most of the friendlier versions of the Princess she isn't particularly affectionate to the Player beyond simple gratitude if he helps her escape the cabin, and while she will fight the Player if he gets too close to her she doesn't get any enjoyment doing so the way the Razor or the Adversary do. If the Player gets trapped by the shackle in the basement, it becomes pretty clear that outside of his potential to either harm her or help her escape the cabin she is entirely indifferent to his presence, other than some slight annoyance should he try to make small talk with her.
• Not So Above It All: She usually says only what she needs to, but if you ask her about the empty chain next to her, she'll make a quip about how you could try it on ("Maybe it'll fit.") and makes a wry smile. If you do examine the chain, the Narrator remarks that she eyes you with "faux-disinterest", but she is genuinely curious to see what will happen.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Despite her seemingly apathetic nature, she does not take you ignoring her consent or trying to kill her lightly, and she will attempt to strangle you with her chains until you relent or kill her.
  • Like the other Princesses, the Prisoner can't stand the idea of being left to rot in the cabin alone. If you try to walk away from her mid-conversation, she'll angrily call you a bastard and threaten to make you regret it.
  • On a more positive note, if you successfully figure out her escape plan and pull it off, she gives you a genuine smile and heartfelt thanks.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: If you kill her, while she accepts why you'd choose that she also says that she won't ever offer to help you again, even if it means damning her as well. She's next seen as the Drowned Gray.
• Poor Communication Kills: You can misread her intentions if she uses the Pristine Blade to decapitate herself and you leave without taking her head. In which case she will actually die, and come back as the Drowned Grey.
• Properly Paranoid: If you come into her basement with the knife, she suggests you sit down well out of arm's reach to talk. Sit closer and the Prisoner, angry, says she's not powerless and starts to strangle you with her chains, insisting that if you don't drop the knife she'll kill you. The Voice of the Hero is dismayed but the Voice of the Skeptic thinks this is a completely reasonable reaction - and you can in fact stab her in the heart from that distance.
• Slashed Throat: After the Narrator takes control of you in Chapter I, the proto-Prisoner will effortlessly and efficiently slice your throat open with one cut.
• The Stoic: The Prisoner is down to business, borderline apathetic, and Hates Small Talk. The Narrator describes her voice coming up the basement stairs as "harsh but controlled".
• When She Smiles: Once you've helped her escape the cabin by taking her severed head outside, she gives you a small, yet genuinely grateful smile, thanking you for helping her with her escape and saying she was glad she could trust you.

The Razor

"A boundless torrent of blades cuts you from boundless angles. You are a body. You are gorey ribbons. You are a body again. And you feel all of it."

^{Click here to see the Razor's final form}

"What? Nooo. No I wouldn't stab you. I am just a sweet innocent Princess, trapped here for no reason."

Doubt the Narrator's claim of the Princess being unarmed before slaying her, giving her the time to reveal a Pristine Blade of her own. Alternatively, examine the Princess's body after killing her, at which point she revives and stabs you. The result is a blade-mad princess who wants to kill you repeatedly.

The Razor leads inevitably to Chapter III and IV: if you took the Pristine Blade in Chapter II, you will get Chapter III: The Arms Race and Chapter IV: Mutually Assured Destruction; if you didn't, you get Chapter III: No Way Out and Chapter IV: The Empty Cup. For simplicity, "the Razor" refers to the Princess in these chapters as well.

---

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Her inflection and cadence are very different from the other Princesses, and it's particularly noticeable with how she says "innocent princess."
• Affably Evil: Despite being so Ax-Crazy she considers it just a fun game to repeatedly butcher the Player, she's actually pretty genuinely friendly and enjoys her time "playing" with you, and is truly happy to be flirted with, not that that stops her.
  The Shifting Mound: She is cruelty, but she is also joy.
• Ax-Crazy: The Razor is so insane with her bloodlust that killing you over and over again never gets old to her. Any attempts to dissuade her into doing something else just result in the Razor slicing you up even faster.
• Bad Liar: When you first meet her, she tries to repeat the captured Princess act, but her acting is very wooden and she insists that she won't kill you again. Even the Voice of the Hero, who admits that he's not very good at picking out lies, can tell that the act isn't very convincing.
• Barefoot Loon: She goes around barefoot, which serves to make her look more unhinged.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: She slips blades free as soon as she realizes she doesn't have to bother pretending to be innocent, leaving the slit open flesh of her arms and hands to dangle like trailing sleeves from her elbows.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Princess becomes the Razor if you question if the seemingly unarmed Princess is secretly hiding a weapon, or refuse to accept she's dead even after you impaled her in the heart. Your paranoia is rewarded with a stab to the neck, and the next time you see the Princess, she has become a kill-happy psycho who is not just hiding weapons, she is a weapon.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: In the final confrontation, she expunges all her flesh and becomes a skeleton of blades. However, it's this form that makes her the most vulnerable, as her beating heart becomes visible. Indeed, if you have the knife with you, you finally kill her in this form (though she also kills you). Interestingly, if you don't have the blade, she will instead shatter her own blades on you and be reduced to only her heart.
• Dating Catwoman: She's one of the few princess you can actually get into a romantic relationship with, with her happily reciprocating your advances. This won't stop her repeatedly murdering you, but at least there'll be romantic subtext to the murders now!
• Exact Words: She claims that she doesn't have a knife, which is entirely true: she has a Blade Below the Shoulder.
• Humanoid Abomination: She doesn't transform into blades so much as she is nothing but blades. As in, in her human appearance is actually nothing more than a thin suit of skin over blades, which start poking through her mouth and fanning out from the simple single-blade arms she starts with. If an unarmed Player punches her in the face she gleefully says her bones are made out of metal. In Chapter IV she says she's been working on something and causes her whole exterior to stretch and shred, revealing herself as a humanoid figure made up of "a skeleton of blades" that's considerably larger than her human form, with the sole organic component being a disconnected, beating heart.
• Horrifying the Horror: Should you bring the Razor to the Long Quiet without taking the knife, she'll attempt to kill you again, but it will be a No-Sell on the player's part, eventually bending all of her metal body into scrap. All the while, the Razor will be confused, angry, and even scared that she can't slice you apart anymore. The only part left of her will be her beating heart that the narration says is beating "calmly", which will be taken by a single hand of the Shifting Mound.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: The final confrontation with the Razor where you're armed with the knife really plays this up:
  The Narration: Your weapons clash again and again, you and her entering a rhythm free of thought and free of self. There is only the dance. The ebb and flow, the shifting of the tides back and forth between you. The deeper you fall into your play, the faster your hearts pound, and the faster the momentum volleys between you. An endlessly building crescendo and then...an opening. Your blade strikes free of volition and her's strikes too. Both strikes are lethal. Neither of you will survive, but neither of you fear what's to come. This is a good ending.
  • It's not that hard to interpret this mutual kill at the end of the battle as a visual pun for la petite mort, a phrase which literally means "the little death" but has been used since the late 1800s as a euphemism for orgasms.
  • The lead up to this fight has the Player force all of his Voices and the Narrator from his mind, setting the stage to a twistedly intimate and highly violent "alone time".
• Laughably Evil: Her Ax-Crazy status that makes her enjoy slaughtering you not out of malice or revenge but fun means there's quite a lot of comedy made over how kill-happy she is, from how much of a Bad Liar she is to her appreciative blushing at you flirting with her before stabbing you again.
• Love Redeems: The Player can attempt this by confessing his affection for her as she prepares to kill him. Her response? She blushes, admits to liking the Player as well... and then kills him anyway, all while still blushing.
  The Razor: Still going to kill you, but now we can enjoy a mutual romantic subtext to the murder!
• Machine Monotone: The metallic reverb in her voice, as well as her transparent attempts at getting you to let your guard down, results in a cheerful variant of this trope. It helps that she is basically a living mass of metal blades with the skin of a human.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The more permutations of her you meet, the more and more sharp teeth she gains, until they're crowding outside of her mouth.
• Natural Weapon: The blades that make up the Razor appear to be a part of her body.
• Non-Standard Character Design: While her initial appearance superficially resembles the Princess in chapter I, even before her blades are revealed the Razor herself is drawn with significantly more sharp angles and straight lines, giving her an almost robotic appearance.
• One Free Hit: In Chapter III, if the Voice of the Contrarian has you throw away the knife but you insist on fighting the Razor, she'll let you have one free hit, which you use to deck her in the face. Unfortunately, it does nothing, and she skewers you.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Throughout the Razor route, she gleefully slaughters you. And it's not out of some sense of revenge or retribution, but because she wants to see you do new things and for the fun of killing you over and over.
• Scary Teeth: As she kills you again and again, turning more and more into a living knife, her teeth become so sharp and long that they don't even fit in her mouth.
• Sincerity Mode:
  • If you ask her to prove that she doesn't have a knife, she'll gleefully hold up her hands and even roll up both her sleeves. If you continue to push it and suggest she's got a knife hidden away somewhere secret, she makes a point to drop her blatantly insincere tone completely and declare that there is nothing hidden in any of her "secret zones".
  The Razor: What kind of Princess do you think I am? I would never hide something sharp somewhere secret. Wait, that sounds like I'm lying, but I'm actually not. My secret zones are for me only they have nothing to do with you or my intention to not-stab you to death the second you get close to me.
  The Narrator: Her smile drops for a second, her expression sharp and flat.
  The Razor: I assure you, there's nothing hidden there.
  • If you flirt with her, she'll blush, shyly raise a blade to her chin, gently smile, and reciprocate your feelings. It won't stop her from skewering you, but at least now the two of you can enjoy some romantic subtext to all of the murder.
• Slasher Smile: Her permanent expression after she really gets into slaughtering you is a gleeful smile.
• Super-Toughness: Her entire body is made of metal blades, meaning trying to fight her initially has zero effect, with any strike using the Pristine Blade only causing superficial damage to her skin-suit. It's only after she exposes her heart, the one part of her vulnerable to damage, that you can hope to slay her.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the scenario where you empty your mind and don't take the knife with you, the Razor becomes horrified as her body breaks when she tries to attack you. It doesn't take long for her to ineffectively throw herself at you, ranting that she's the one who gets to hurt you.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice gains a weird metallic reverb, making it sound like she's farther away than she is or like she's moving around.
• Wolverine Claws: In the demo version, she had these rather than the Blade Below the Shoulder of the final version.
• Worthy Opponent: The Razor will be completely awestruck when the Player Character clears his mind of his Voices and the Narrator, in order to properly fight her in the Long Quiet. Remarking that she needs to take you seriously for once.
  The Razor: You're incredible.

The Spectre

"A shiver passes through you as unseen fingers, cold as the grave, dance across your skin. They remember the violence you inflicted on them. And yet they do not return it."

"Oh. It's you. Hiya, killer. I was hoping to see you again. I have some issues with how our last meeting went."

Slay the Princess without hesitation, then escape the cabin by killing yourself. The result is a dead but snarky ghost version of the princess haunting the cabin.

---

• Apologetic Attacker: If the player provokes her enough to attack, she will say this as she does:
  The Spectre: I never wanted to have to hurt anyone. It's not who I wanted to be.
• Attack on the Heart: If you choose to leave the Spectre in the basement or insist on trying to kill her, she respectively becomes distraught and then gives into anger, or is furious from her attempts to make peace being met with more violence. Both outcomes lead to her reaching into your chest, ripping out and crushing your still-beating heart. She then swears to take your body by force next time, sending you on the Wraith path.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Spectre appears if you slay the Princess without hesitation but refuse to accept the Narrator's "happy ending." The narrative requires a Princess to slay, so she comes back as The Undead, because for neither of you is death really the end.
• Cute Ghost Girl: Her form as the Spectre, despite being an undead ghost, is drawn with somewhat cute features. She's certainly more pleasant to look at than the other undead forms she can take. Granted, she does have the occasional Nightmare Face.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Spectre calls you "killer", yet is quite snarky with how she does so.
• Easily Forgiven: Downplayed, in that while she bears resentment towards you for killing her, she's still courteous on meeting you again (unless you try to forcibly grab or stab her as she appears). She’s willing to fully forgive you if you help her leave the basement by letting her possess you. If you do agree, she is grateful and leaves you on good terms before being taken by the Shifting Mound. If you agree but don't apologize or had attacked her as she appeared- she's less friendly but still thankful that you helped her escape. However, if you keep trying to kill her, deny her request to possess you, or try to leave the basement, she will not only kill you, but promise to take your body by force next time.
• Expressive Skull: She has a skeletal face, although it doesn't stop her from displaying a free range of expressions with it.
• Face Death with Dignity: Sort of; in the end of each route, the Princess's incarnations always react with fear as the surroundings disappear and they begin to feel cold before the Shifting Mound claims them. Not the Spectre. Unlike them, after being taken outside into the Long Quiet, she simply calmly accepts her fate, even noting that this is where she is meant to be, right before the Shifting Mound takes her away.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: To a certain extent, not unlike the Tower. If you let her possess you she can hear and converse with your voices, including the Narrator.
• Gallows Humor: The Spectre sardonically refers the Player as "Killer" and throughout their conversation dryly jokes about both her own death, and potentially killing the Player.
  The Spectre: All I know is there's a hole in my chest, and not the big obvious one that you put there.
• Ghostly Chill: Whenever she comes into close contact, the narration will describe the experience as incredibly cold. Being touched or possessed by her is outright painful for this reason.
• Hates Being Alone: For the most part, the Spectre's demeanor is surprisingly cheerful and friendly given the circumstances. However, should you bring up the possibility of leaving her in the basement, she abruptly descends into panic.
  The Spectre: But if you're just leaving me then...Then I'm really just going to be stuck here forever. Th-There's nothing I can do, it's just going to go on and on and on and on, lonely and sad and hurting and empty. No... Nnnno. Not that.
• I Just Want to Be Free: The Spectre knows she should be "home", outside, part of things. Getting out of the basement is far more important to her than punishing the Player who killed her.
• Insult of Endearment: If you patch things up with the spectre and let her possess you to escape, her nickname of "Killer" takes on a more affectionate tone.
• Mood-Swinger: Swings between playful and ethereal to guttural and scathing at the drop of a hat, switching between looking like a Cute Ghost Girl and a Nightmare Face depending.
• Nice Girl: She's a real sweetheart, all considering. At least as long as you don't try to kill her again. And even if you do but still ultimately escort her out of the basement, she's more snarky, dismissive and impatient than outright hostile, which is pretty reasonable given the circumstances.
• Nightmare Face: Whenever she gets upset or to make a point, she drops her Cute Ghost Girl look and puts on a nightmarish visage.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Contrary to what the Narrator claims, the Spectre genuinely doesn't want to destroy the world; all she wants is to be free from the cabin, something she makes abundantly clear during the conversation with her. She'll kill a player character who won't help her, but isn't happy about it. When she possesses you and gets to meet the Narrator in person, she outright refutes his notions of her wishing to bring an end of the world in one conversation.
  The Spectre: I'm just trying to get home. You don't have to act like it's the end of the world.
  The Narrator: But that's exactly what you leaving this place is going to be.
  The Spectre: You don't know that!
  The Narrator: I do.
• No Sympathy: Should you inform her on what happened to you in the aftermath of you slaying her in the previous chapter (with you being stuck in an empty cabin for an unimaginably long period of time and being forced to escape by killing yourself), she at first pretends to sympathize with your plight...before bluntly telling you that you deserved what you got, and that now you know how she felt when you slew her. Justified, since from her point of view, you were a cold-blooded killer who felt no sympathy for her predicament, so why should she return the favor?
• Oh, Crap!: If you let her possess you, you get one last option to stab yourself, taking yourself with her. The Voices and Narrator realize this is her moment of weakness, and she starts panicking as she resists in vain.
• On Second Thought: If you came down to see her without a knife and didn't make a move to grab her, she'll say that she might be interested in seeing you beg for forgiveness. Should you actually oblige with her request after revealing that you killed her because she was supposed to end the world, she'll proceed to take her words back.
  The Spectre: So... does that mean you regret what you've done? Are you here to apologize and make nice? Beg for absolution, maybe? Because I might be interested in seeing a little begging.
  <...>
  The Player: (responding to her "cold" comment) I'm not cold! I'm just... dumb! I'm just a big dumb stupid idiot! Stupid stupid stupid what was I thinking just believing what I was told?
  The Spectre: Nevermind. I don't think I want to see you beg. That's just sad. I shouldn't feel sad about my murderer.
• Pet the Dog: After you let her possess you and successfully bring her out of the cabin, even if she's been left irritated by your previous failed attempts to slay her, she still expresses her gratitude to you after she unpossesses you.
  "All's well that ends well, right? You lived up to your end of the bargain, so I'll live up to mine. Thanks."
• Rejected Apology: Downplayed; She refuses to accept your verbal apology, given how little it does to make up for killing her. She is not rude in her rejection however, smiling at you as she tells you "Too little, too late", and she's still willing to remain cordial with you so long as you're willing to let her possess you and leave the cabin together with her.
• Scars Are Forever: Even as a ghost, she bears the scar of the stab to the heart you gave her.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: An irritated Spectre allowed to possess you will call out the Narrator for trying to manipulate you and the other voices.
  "Oh, shut up! Stop trying to manipulate everyone. Or don't, actually. It doesn't really matter, because you won't be around to do this for much longer."
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Likely due to how limited your interactions in Chapter I are, the Spectre's personality changes depending on how you treat her in Chapter II. If you apologize for killing her and accept her proposal to possess you without issue, she'll express gratitude towards you and defend you against the Narrator, saying that she can tell you truly want to make amends. If you attempt to slay her, she'll be irritated, and if you then allow her to possess you, she will be impatient, dismissive of your discomfort, and be more confrontational with the Voices and especially the Narrator, outright telling him to shut up. Interestingly, this is reflected by the tone of her voice in your head, as she sounds closer to the version of the Princess if you don't take the knife in the former situation instead of the version of the Princess if you did take the knife. The most noticeable difference is seen when you wake up after she possesses you:
  (if you're antagonistic to the Spectre) "Get up. You've still got a job to do."
  (if you're apologetic to the Spectre) "Come on, you. You've gotta get up. I know everything feels... heavy right now, but we still have to get out of here."
• Symbiotic Possession: Asks you to let her escape in your body, since killing you only resets the "Groundhog Day" Loop and she'd prefer to be asked before coming in. The Spectre playfully dodges the question if asked if she needs consent to possess you. If you let her in, her entry is quite painful and having her cohabit is chilling and exhausting, but she can snark at the Narrator and the other voices in your head.
• Transformation Horror: She cries if she tears out your heart, saying that she had wanted a peaceful solution but now she can sense herself about to become much worse.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice gains a spooky reverb and a whisper that repeats everything she says as she says it. The distortion becomes more pronounced when she feels intense emotion. While she's possessing you this effect is all but gone and she sounds much more like the Chapter One princess.
• Wham Line: She describes the Narrator as something that doesn't belong, a barely there shape of something left behind, more memory than person. And then:
  "You're kind of like me, actually."
• You Can't Kill What's Already Dead: Unlike every other Chapter II version of the Princess, she cannot be directly attacked and killed due to possessing permanent Intangibility as a ghost. Trying to slay her and "slay her harder" only results in your blade passing harmlessly through her neck, and if you try to slay her while she's grabbing your heart, she is tangible enough to have her neck slashed, but it doesn't hurt her and certainly doesn't stop her from crushing your heart. She's only vulnerable to death after she enacts Symbiotic Possession on you and you go Taking You with Me, since at that point she has a physical body that can be re-killed.

The Stranger

"My masses mob you. There is no beginning to them, nor is there an end. There is only the flood of bodies. In every moment you hold every possible sensation at once, and then you hold them all again."

^{Click here to see her more stable form}

"Did you do this? Did We do this? Can... can you pull us back apart? Can you fix us?"

Walk away from the cabin or attempt to go on an invalid route, for example by loading in a save with choices leading up to a defunct route from pre-Directors Cut demo. She was initially five alternate versions of the Princess that you unintentionally merged into a single multi-headed being.

---

• All There in the Manual: The five fractured versions of the Stranger have names in the game's files. The "Harsh" and "Soft" Strangers are named as such, which was implied by the paths in the basement leading to them also being described the same way. The Stranger you first meet by going down the middle path is "Neutral", which is alluded to by the Voice of the Hero when he calls her "blank". This leaves the Obviously Evil Stranger and the depressed-sounding Stranger, who are labeled "Monster" and "Emo" respectively.
• Ambiguous Situation: In her version of the "And? What happens next?", when the Long Quiet tells the Stranger-heart of the Shifting Mound "I don't want to be a god", rather than responding that she doesn't want that either, she says she doesn't think there's a choice. She still comes with him out of the cabin as a multi-headed, multi-armed being, if less mind-meltingly complex than the full Shifting Mound. The other versions of this ending are commonly interpreted as the Shifting Mound becoming mortal, but it might not entirely be the case with this version.
• Alpha Bitch: One of the Princesses that make up the Stranger has a snooty and demeaning attitude. You encounter her first if you take the harsh staircase.
• Broken Bird: One of the Princesses that make up the Stranger expresses how hopeless she feels everything is and is overall extremely gloomy, to the point she outright begs to be killed.
• Deadpan Snarker: One of the Princesses that make up the Stranger is flippant and snarky.
• Doppelmerger: The Stranger comes to be when the breaking of the narrative by refusing to enter the cabin results in a Merged Reality that fuses together five possible alternate version of the Princess into Sharing a Body, resulting in a Humanoid Abomination full of Body Horror including five arms, five heads and a horribly misshapen body,
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The Stranger in the 2022 Demo was misshapen and grotesque with a Long Neck, but recognizably humanoid. In the 2023 Demo, her appearance changed so that her head and neck looked more like an earthworm attached to a humanoid body. In that version she also has an atonal sing-song of a voice. The full release completely re-hauled her design, turning her into a Doppelmerger comprised of multiple different versions of herself.
• Easily Forgiven: Though you're responsible for her initial, uncomfortable form, if you meet them later in the cabin, the Princesses that form The Stranger bear you no ill will and seem content with their present state.
• First Girl Wins: In a fittingly strange way. If the Stranger's route is the first one you experience and you choose to go to the Shifting Mound's heart in the final confrontation, you meet the Stranger in the cabin. Albeit a much happier and more stable version of them than the one you initially met.
• The Generic Guy: If you go down the middle staircase, the Princess you encounter first comes off as nondescript, without any distinctive personality quirks. The Voice of the Hero even describes her as "blank".
• Humanoid Abomination: She's a fusion of five Princesses converged into one being, and all five of her heads can speak independently of one another.
• Mirror Character:
  • To the Shifting Mound in being a convergence of multiple versions of the Princess. But The Stranger considers themself a "shadow" of Shifting Mound that exists independently of her.
  • Also to the Voice of the Contrarian as both are the result of the player avoiding what is required of them in the game. The difference is that the Contrarian chooses to act against the script while the Stranger and the princesses who formed her had no choice.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Her fused state results in having five arms, and while not directly threatening she destabilizes reality just by existing.
• Multiple Head Case: The end result of her merge has three horribly misshapen heads attached to one neck, all of which plus two more that aren't visible in the portrait speak at the same time to provide a Voice of the Legion.
• Nice Girl: One of the Princesses who make up the Stranger has the persona of a gentle and caring person. You can meet her first by taking the soft stairs down.
• Obviously Evil: The "Monster" Princess bears a Slasher Smile and gleefully expresses her desire to destroy the entire world when freed.
• Reality Warper: Reality shifts, courses, coalesce, and breaks around her the longer you're in her presence. These eventually all converge into one being, albeit one that isn't completely human.
• Royal "We": Because she is Many Spirits Inside of One, she refers to herself in the plural, and her speech has this effect.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Initially misshapen, The Stranger becomes similar to the Shifting Mound in appearance when you meet her in the cabin in the goddess's heart.
• Token Evil Teammate: One of the Princesses that compose The Stranger reflects the impression the Narrator gave you of her: an evil monster who wants to destroy the world. Her voice even periodically slips into a demonic Voice of the Legion as she relishes in the blood and destruction she'll wreak if she's freed.
• What Have I Become?: All five of the Princesses, from nice to snooty to evil, react with equal horror at their new form after being fused into The Stranger.
• Voice of the Legion: Her heads all speak at once, their voices overlapping and having different tones.

The Tower

"You are nothing. A dark hole of self-loathing by the matter of your restless thoughts. A dog blind to its leash. But there is no light without the dark."

"What a pitiful display. A wounded little bird thinking it can defy a god."

Try to slay the Princess, but give up while fighting her. Alternatively, either hesitate before attempting to slay her in a way that expresses fear^note but don't question the Narrator's claim of her being unarmed; that would lead to the Razor route instead, or tell her that she is supposed to end the world when talking to her, then fight her (you lose automatically). The princess becomes a towering goddess who cannot be disobeyed.

---

• Achilles' Heel: When she makes an offer for you and she to rule together, choosing to slay her will have you cut the Tower's left Achilles' tendon, dropping her to her knees and letting you stab her in the heart. The Tower is not happy about this.
• Break the Haughty: She's extremely arrogant and believes herself to be invincible, but it's still possible to defy and attack her at which point she defends herself with her hands rather than her presence, which causes her such a Identity Breakdown that she becomes The Fury.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Princess becomes the Tower if you either inform her of her own power to end the world or fall in battle without taking her down, both endings confirming the power the Narrator insists she has. She then becomes a straightforward interpretation of a goddess-in-physical-form.
• Combat Breakdown: Should you chose to slay her she will, in shock, disbelief and anger that her Compelling Voice wasn't enough to keep you from doing so, resort to simply crushing you with her bare fist. This horrifies and disgusts her as she considers her commanding voice failing unbefitting of a "divine" entity, and it causes her to undergo an Identity Breakdown that transforms her into The Fury in the next chapter.
• Compelling Voice: The Tower has one. Resisting is futile, as you have no choice but to do what she tells you to do. Show enough resistance, and she'll order you to slit your own throat, or even repeatedly stab yourself until she allows you to stop. Each time, you have no choice but to do what she wants, though the Voice of the Hero's Heroic Resolve can allow you to grab your knife hand and at least slow the process of stabbing yourself. Even the Narrator isn't immune to this, as she can see the Narrator and use her compelling voice on him, too.
• Create Your Own Villain: If you tell her that she's destined to end the world, she will decide to make it her purpose, and credit you for the idea. Even if you didn't tell her before she beat you to death, she will find out by forcibly reading your mind when you next meet her and come to the same conclusion.
• Cruelty by Feet: The Pre-Tower Princess ends off her Curb-Stomp Battle against you by repeatedly kicking you, breaking your bones with the points of her heels, before smugly stepping onto your broken body and kneeling on you to crush what remains of your organs and break your windpipe. Thus showcasing that she sees the Player as such a pitiful and easily broken weakling, with the durability of an insect to be squashed. This in turn leads into how the Tower holds to being a goddess far above you in both visual stature and might.
• Dies Wide Open: Manage to slay her and the Narrator describes her as open-eyed and full of anguish and fear as the two of you die, though the final image of her in that scene has her with closed eyes.
• Evil Is Bigger: The Tower is so tall that you don't even come up to her waist. Notably, after this Princess is taken by the Shifting Mound, the hands that grasp her can only partly cover her face, head and neck, as opposed to covering every other princess completely.
• Evil Sounds Deep: She speaks more slowly and in a deeper, more commanding register than most other variants.
• Foreshadowing: If, in the previous chapter, you mention that you were sent to slay her to prevent her from destroying the world, she admits in her current chapter that she is seriously considering the idea, explaining that the old must be done away with to make way for the new, and that the current world is overdue for alterations...which directly references the world-view of the Shifting Mound, a goddess of change and the true identity of the Princess incarnations' core being.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Played with. She doesn't know she's in a video game, but the Tower can see the Interactive Narrator, and even use her Compelling Voice on him. Should she do so, the Narrator's text will have the Tower's text colors, and the Narrator and the Tower will speak at the same time.
• Giant Woman: She has a Meaningful Name in that she towers over the player, both physically and metaphorically. She not only fervently believes that she is a goddess, but she has to kneel down just to get close to your level, and even then, she's still far bigger than you are. If you 'fight' the Shifting Mound in the endgame, she causes vessels that you've brought her to surface from her Body of Bodies and speaks through them. Most of these surface in front of the primary trunk of the Shifting Mound, but the Tower is so large that only her head and shoulders appear, and she's beside her.
• Glowing Eyes: The subtle back lighting on the Tower highlights how her eyes have an unearthly glow to them.
• A God Am I: The Tower considers herself a god, and greater than any other creature. Her self-importance is not entirely misplaced, as she can see and hear the Narrator, identify him as an echo, and can use her Compelling Voice not just to make you do whatever she tells you to do, but commandeer the Narrator and his narration as well.
  • If, in the preceding chapter, you mention that you were sent to stop her from ending the world, the Tower says that the idea had wrapped its way around her heart, that the old must be done away with to make way for the new, and that the current world is overdue for alterations. If you manage to slay her, the Tower will suffer a Villainous Breakdown as she's forced to fight back physically and realizes she's about to become something worse and not divine at all.
• Holy Backlight: The stained glass behind her pours lightning on her back, giving her a divine appearance.
• Kneel Before Zod: Commands this of you upon meeting her, no matter what you did beforehand. Whether you choose to obey or not, you'll end up kneeling in front of the Tower because of her Compelling Voice. You can also just choose to submit yourself to her and become her servant.
• Lack of Empathy: As manifestations of the Shifting Mound's all-encompassing cosmic weight the Tower and the Apotheosis are incapable of truly caring for you, or any individual, as an equal. They can express a sense of affection, or even a degree of respect, toward you as one would toward a short-lived pet, but they can't love you deeply in a way that would put you above them.
  The Shifting Mound: This one is dominance. A figure capable of bending everything to her will. She will make for a terrifying and divine heart. Do not mourn her - for she would not be able to mourn you.
• Laughing Mad: If you choose to slay her, once your Pristine Blade finds her heart she'll start laughing manically before she knocks you across the room.
• Light Is Not Good: She's one of the cruelest incarnations of the Princess and is the one with a light motif due to her divinity.
• Literal Metaphor: Her Achilles heel is her Achilles' Heel.
• Magical Barefooter: As she holds to the view of being a divine existence while exhibiting Power Floats, her outfit lacks the regal heels she formerly wore to represent how she views herself as too mighty for the cold, hard ground to bother her feet.
• Megaton Punch: If you manage to stab her in the heart, the Tower will retaliate by striking you so hard into the ground you bounce.
• Not So Stoic: If you manage to fight her and start stabbing her in the chest, the Narrator describes her stony composure breaking into crude emotion as she laughs. The expression on her face is one of disbelief.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: The main musical component in her theme, complete with being accompanied by an Ethereal Choir and a slow drum beat. Eventually "Psycho" Strings and Horns of Destruction are added to the mix as the tune reaches a climax.
• Painting the Medium: As part of her Compelling Voice.
  • The Tower can eventually be made aware of the Interactive Narrator, and use her voice to make him obey her as well. The combined text of the Narrator and the Tower will be in the Narrator's font, but the Tower's color.
  • When she gives you a command, there may be options you can pick from after the order is given. All but one will be greyed out and unselectable, and all of those which are grey will be attempts at resisting her. The only choice which is white (and thus the only one you can pick) is the choice that obeys the Tower.
• Pet the Dog: Downplayed. She makes it very clear that she in no way considers you an equal, but she does see you worthy of being by her side and spared the destruction of the world so you can be with her in the next. If you resist slaying yourself twice, she'll offer you mercy and save your life in exchange for serving her.
• Power Echoes: Her Compelling Voice has a reverb behind her words whenever she's using it, and her ordinary voice partly echoes as well. During her Villainous Breakdown, the Tower's voice isn't echoing anymore, a sign that her belief that she was an all-powerful goddess to be misplaced and that she's dying.
• Power Floats: The Tower floats above the ground as a demonstration of her might. She also glows.
• Powers That Be: The core of the Tower and the Apotheosis as fragments of the Shifting Mound, they are effectively the manifestations of the nature of the universe as something that is both beautiful and vast, but uncaring and unforgiving. And in confronting them the player either finds meaning by choosing to accept them as something greater than themselves that they can put their faith into or struggling against them in defiance.
  The Tower/Apotheosis: (As part of the Shifting Mound) Without me there is no future to look towards. And it is hope that carves meaning into consciousness / Without me there are no externalities to resist. And it is struggle that carves meaning into consciousness.
• Shrine to Self: The basement she's in is depicted more like a church, a temple, or a shrine to the Tower than any kind of prison. Not only is the entire place covered in bright light and stonework, but the window behind the Tower is a stained glass window of hands reaching up towards her.
• Smug Snake: Her arrogance comes from her belief that she's a divine omniscient being, but while she's powerful, it's still very possible to defy and even slay her.
• Smug Super: She's one of the most powerful incarnations of the princess, and has a very haughty, arrogant, and condescending demeanor. Which makes the Player slaying her cause such a Villainous Breakdown.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's a tall, towering woman and one of the most conventionally attractive versions of the princess. The Voice of The Broken is clearly taken with her.
• Stealth Pun: When she refers to you as "Little Bird" it is easy to assume it is just her calling you a pet or a benign animal (and she can, in fact, call you a worm). She is being completely literal and may even refer to you as having a beak.
• Tall Is Intimidating: She's an inhumanly tall woman, which helps to illustrate her image as an all-powerful domineering goddess who has The Broken utterly terrified.
• Telepathy: She's capable of reading minds, and if you came down to her without telling her beforehand that she's meant to end the world, but refuse to communicate with her, she decides to pry your mind for answers, discovering her role as the world-ender anyway. These mind-reading powers also allow her to hear the Voices and the Narrator, which lets her address them directly.
• This Cannot Be!: Despite the Tower being incredibly powerful, it's still possible to slay her with an Achilles' Heel attack and a repeated Attack on the Heart. At first, the Tower will No-Sell it, but she'll eventually show fear and strike you with her hands, sending her into a Villainous Breakdown.
• Transformation Horror: Slay the Tower and she realizes she's about to change, and looks at her body with horror and disgust.
  "I... I can feel myself twisting into something new. Something dull. Something defiled. What have you done to me?"
• Villainous Breakdown: The Tower will suffer a major one should the Player somehow manage to slay her. She pummels you and breaks your body and seems more upset about being made to use her hands like that than about dying. The Tower is filled with abject horror and disgust as she realizes she's about to become the Fury, as the Tower considers herself a god.
• Villain Respect: Resist slaying yourself twice and she'll order you to stop hurting yourself. She'll admit that she finds your determination admirable and you stronger than the last time they faced each other. "If you've learned your lesson", she's willing to save you from dying from your wounds. You can either agree, or resist once more to gravely injure her.
• We Can Rule Together: The Tower offers you a place at her side. Not as an equal, but as something treasured - she will let you become her priest or prophet, or maybe "something akin to a pet".
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Played With. Despite her being a domineering woman who wants to break you down, she enjoys it when you put up a fight, at least up to a point. She'll notably be a bit more receptive to you if you have the Pristine Blade.

The Witch

"A trick behind your back, and a trick behind mine. We dance, revolving and revolving around each other, but forever stuck in place. We both move and yet we both don’t, for each of us watches the other instead of ourselves."

"Come on down, don't be scared. I probably won't bite."

After freeing the Princess, attempt to kill her when the Narrator takes control of your body. Alternately, go back to retrieve the Pristine Blade after you meet the Princess, then leave the door open behind you so she can lock you in. The Princess is now a Little Bit Beastly sassy witch, with a taste for revenge.

---

• All Witches Have Cats: Played With as she's not a witch with a feline pet, but a Cat Girl witch.
• Barefoot Loon: She goes barefoot, having now bestial cat-like feet that fit with her new wild and unbalanced personality.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: The Witch has a spiteful and sarcastic sexual tension with the Player which is brought to the forefront during their No Holds Barred Beat Down. It can develop into something much healthier or devolve even further depending on your choices.
  The Witch: I can't wait to do this again, you wretched little thing. I hate you...but I wouldn't have it any other way.
• Blood Knight: To a lesser extent than the Adversary and the Razor, but if you choose to fight the Witch, she displays an eagerness to fight and will mock you for running away.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Subverted; although she acknowledges that she can't leave the cabin without the Player and thus insists that she'll keep him alive so that they both could leave, the spite ultimately gets the better of her and she'll end up backstabbing the Player in one way or another, no matter what choices you'll make, even if it means she'll sabotage herself in the long run.
• Cat Girl: She's a humanoid female with cat-like features, as a mix of witch symbology, cats having mischievous and unpleasant personalities, and for the predator-prey theme she has with the Player (as cats are natural predators to birds).
• Cats Are Mean: She's a Cat Girl with a smug, spiteful and hostile personality due to her holding a grudge over you betraying her (whether willingly or not) in her previous incarnation. She will always betray you.
• Cats Are Snarkers: She's a Cat Girl with a sassy personality and often responds to the Player's questions with sarcasm.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Witch comes about as a result of your betrayal of her (willingly or unwillingly). As a result, she is completely distrusting of you and is constantly looking for ways to get back at you, even at the cost of her own freedom.
• Combat Pragmatist: As the Narrator sums it up, "Left to her own devices, she will always find her way out." If you escort her out of the cabin and follow behind her, she'll lock the door in front of you. If you lead her out, she'll pull you down the stairs. If you try to fight her directly, she'll blind you with a fistful of dirt, gouge your eyes, bite you, and all sorts of other underhanded tactics. If you give her the Pristine Blade, she will immediately stab you with it.
• Crush Blush: Despite how much she resents you and the spiteful way she acts, she is still is attracted to you and will get a Luminescent Blush when her hormones get the better of her, such as when she sniffs you or if you flirt with her.
• Cute Monster Girl: She's an anthropomorphic Cat Girl who retains the attractive appearance of the princess, albeit being a Unkempt Beauty. And despite her resentful and traitorous nature, she's often drawn to make her look goofy, with many of her mannerisms being played as cute, such as her smug Playful Cat Smile and her Luminescent Blushes.
• Deadpan Snarker: If you apologize for trying to slay her the first time, and the Witch will call you a "gracious little monster" with a clearly sarcastic tone to her voice.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Or rather, the untrusting cannot comprehend the trusting. If you give her your blade as a sign of goodwill, she stabs you with it, only to realize with uncomprehending horror that you were being genuine and not trying to get one over on her again.
• The Farmer and the Viper: If you choose to help her without giving her the blade and lead the way up the stairs, she attacks you In the Back. The achievement you get is called "The Frog", in reference to the fable "The Scorpion and The Frog", indicating that it's in the Witch's nature to betray you and the Princess' nature, in general, to be betrayed by you. Alternatively, you yourself can go up the stairs knife in hand and whether or you actually wanted to or not, the Opportunist will stab her in the back, giving you "The Scorpion" achievement and making her the frog instead.
• Green Thumb: Downplayed. As a witch, she can control "the Wild", which manifests in growing the roots that comprise the underground of the cabin on command. That being said, she lacks the precision to crush the Player with them without killing herself as well. Unfortunately for the Player, that doesn't stop her.
• Hairy Girl: She noticeably has hair (not fur, body hair) on her arms and legs, which adds to her Unkempt Beauty.
• Heel Realization: Giving her the Pristine Blade will result in her stabbing you. As you die, she taunts you about getting you before you got her...and then she notices you aren't fighting back, which causes her to realize that she's betrayed you just like you did her, lapsing into a Villainous BSoD.
• Humanizing Tears: Her eyes fill with tears when she realizes, only after she's killed you with the blade you gave her, that you were sincere in wanting to break the Cycle of Revenge.
• Ignored Epiphany: If you give the Pristine Blade to her and explain that you want to break the Cycle of Revenge between you two, she pauses for a moment, clearly affected by your words. Unfortunately, her distrust wins over and she brushes off your words as an attempt to lower her guard and she stabs you anyway, leading to your death...and another epiphany that she can't ignore which leads to her Villainous BSoD.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Although she's way too consumed by spite to the point that she won't ever give you a chance to make up for your wrongs, her resentment towards you is understandable, since you did betray her trust and tried to backstab her in the previous loop (or at least made a very good impression of it). This holds true even in scenario where she suffered the least, if you, in the previous chapter, went upstairs after conversing with her, and then came back with a blade, when she took an opportunity to escape and lock you up; although you never got to actually harm her, as far as she knows, you still had intent to slay her, something the Opportunist is quick to agree on.
  The Player: I didn't do shit to you last time. You're the one who locked me away until I died.
  Voice of the Opportunist: That is an exceptionally good point.
  The Witch: And you were the conniving beast that left in search for steel to slay me. Just because I won and you lost doesn't mean I'm to blame for bad blood.
  Voice of the Opportunist: Also a good point.
• Large Ham: The Witch heavily plays into her new role with her voice rising in pitch and becoming more nasally to match. Her word choice also changes, referring to the cabin as her "hovel" and constantly calling both the Player and herself wretched.
• Little Bit Beastly: She has a somewhat cat-like appearance, which includes a lion-like tail and even the occasional Playful Cat Smile.
• Living Lie Detector: During the discussion of who is the first to climb the stairs, if you insist on her going first and that you won't betray her, she will sniff you so she can "smell" if you're lying. She concludes that you're not, but given the player can still choose to betray her at the stairs, it means she's not as good at it as she thinks.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Cycle of Revenge is the main theme of the Witch's route, since you have to betray the princess (even if you’re forced to do so) to access it, causing The Witch to be naturally distrustful of you and to greatly resent you. She will try her hardest to betray you no matter what you tell her due to your early actions, even to the point of committing a Spiteful Suicide if it means she's Taking You with Me.
• Mutually Assured Destruction: There's four ways of securing this on the Witch's route. If the two of you get so absorbed in a physical confrontation that neither of you notice what's going on around you before it's too late, or if the Player tries to leave, the cabin will fatally close in on the both of you. If you try to escort the Witch out no matter if you lead (and stab her in the back) or she follows behind, she yanks you back down with her, you both take a tumble, and you both break your backs.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Should you give her the Pristine Blade in a show of good faith, the Witch will still stab you with it. However, when nothing stops her and you begin to die at her feet, it convinces her that you really weren't going to betray her, which makes the Witch come to regret what she just did.
  The Witch: (Laughing) Hahaha! I did it! I got you! You... You... (her smile fades and tears brim in her eyes) Why? Why did you let me do this?!
• The Nose Knows: As a Cat Girl she has an enhanced sense of smell and will even sniff you so she can tell if you're lying to her or not at some point.
• Oh, Crap!: In the ending where she locks you in the basement, she will smugly throw insults towards you from the other side of the door... until the whole cabin vanishes due to the Construct ending and you're both face to face again and she quickly drops her smug demeanor and starts to try to butter you up before the Shifting Mound claims her.
  "O-oh! I didn't think I'd have to see you face-to-face again, otherwise I might have given you a little more courtesy at the top of the stairs. No hard feelings, I'm sure."
• The Paranoiac: Due to your actions in chapter 1, she has no trust in you and will regard you with suspicion during her entire route, always assuming you're going to betray her, and plotting to betray you before that happens. Proving that you were sincere by handing her the blade is the only way to regain her trust, but only after she has already stabbed you.
• Playful Cat Smile: She often has the mischievous smile associated with cats plastered on her face, due to both her sassy and traitorous nature but also due to her having a cat-like appearance.
• Pointy Ears: She has a pair of pointy, cat-like ears.
• Poor Communication Kills: It's possible to get to this route without actually harming the Princess; just go to retrieve the knife without telling her why, and she'll assume the worst. You can also get it if the narrator forces you to attack her — with no way for her to know this, she assumes it was a deliberate betrayal.
• Properly Paranoid: Downplayed, as her paranoia is self-destructive and often irrational...but you do have the Voice of the Opportunist in your head advocating that you murder her, and he can take control of you and do it if you give him the opportunity.
• Psychological Projection: Start a brawl with her and she'll squeal giddily and repeatedly tell you that you're a terrible, horrible, backstabbing little creature. Just like she is. She is elated that you're on the same level and sharing the same mutual anger.
  The Witch: You must have known I would be ready for you. Deep in your heart, you know the same things about me I know about you. We’re both so very awful. [...]
  The Witch: I know you and you're hideous! Absolutely wretched! Just like me!
• Revenge Before Reason: Unique among the princesses, she's happy to remain trapped in the cabin if it means that you end up trapped there too. Indeed, there's no way to get her out of the cabin — even the most sincere attempts to do will lead to her spitefully screwing you over and trapping the both of you there until you die.
• Slipped the Ropes: Not too long into your interaction with her, the Witch will reveal she could've escaped her chains at any time by just slipping them off her arm, which is now too thin to be held.
• Smells Sexy: She will sniff you so try to detect if you're lying, but she apparently enjoys your scent a bit too much since she starts blushing while darting her eyes away from you.
• Smug Smiler: She's often smiling at you with a smug and self-satisfied expression, especially when she has the upper hand.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: The Witch acts like a treacherous Deadpan Snarker, but it's born out of her deep pain at your betrayal of her (even if it was unwilling) in the previous loop. The shift to the Thorn is due to her Heel Realization if she betrays you despite you showing absolute trust in her.
• Spiteful Suicide: The Witch will gladly give up her life or chance to escape the cabin to spite you. If you lead her out of the cabin, she will either lock you in the basement (if she is leading) or pull you down the stairs and shatter both of your backs (if you are leading). If you choose to fight her or run away, she will allow herself and you to be absorbed into the woods.
• Taking You with Me: In the event that the cabin starts closing in on you both, the Witch will repeatedly and gleefully proclaim that she's happy to die if she gets to take you down with her. She will express the same sentiment if she drags you down the stairs, breaking both your backs.
  The Witch: We get to die together. Isn't this a treat!
• Tsundere: While she is understandably resentful with you for betraying her in the previous chapter (especially if it was willing on your part), there are multiple hints that indicate that, in spite of her distrust of you, she doesn't hate you as much as she claims to. It's best demonstrated when you convince her to leave the basement first without a knife, after which she smells you and finds herself blushing (as if she was enamored by your smell), much to her own chagrin. She also blushes when you flirt with her by calling her beautiful after you give her your Pristine Blade as a gesture of good will. The internal files even specifically label the frames of her blushing as "witch_tsundere". And in the Thorn route that follows after the Witch kills you when you give her your Pristine Blade, the Voice of the Smitten (who appears after the display of empathy on your part or the aforementioned flirting) even describes her as such, short only of using the term itself.
  Voice of the Hero: (on Thorn route, in the aftermath of the Witch's betrayal) She hates us.
  Voice of the Smitten: Does she? She hesitated before stabbing us to death. There might just be a kernel of affection in that angry, angry heart.
• Unkempt Beauty: Her dress is tattered and her hair is tangled and full of twigs, not to mention that the basement has turned into a "hovel", in her own words. She's still cute despite not being as put together as her other versions.
• Villainous BSoD: A very tragic one if the Player character hands the blade over to her and then using it to stab him. It transforms her into the Thorn.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?: If you give the Witch the Pristine Blade, she'll stab you with it, thinking you gave it to her in a gambit to betray her first. However after she uses it, the Witch realizes it was the truth, and asks why you "let her" stab you. Downplayed in that she doesn't so much blame you for your own death as she is completely unable to comprehend why you would hand over all your power to her without it being some kind of ploy.
• Wicked Witch: Her namesake, with the Princess taking the voice, personality, and mannerisms of one, as well as more general elements of witches like the cabin taking the form of entangled roots, and her control over nature.
• Wild Hair: Her hair is very disheveled and filled with twigs, fitting with her wild, spiteful nature.

Chapter III Variations

General

• David Versus Goliath: Many of the chapter III forms are significantly larger than the Hero by this point, and are either so physically strong that they can kill him in only one or two clean hits, or have supernatural powers that far surpass anything the Hero (and Voices) are capable of matching.
• Eldritch Abomination: If the Princess wasn't this before, she definitely becomes this in Chapter III. The one exception is the Thorn, who is actually more human than the Witch
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Most of these variations cannot be conventionally defeated, and the ones who can require that you die too or the Princess is claimed by the Shifting Mound before she can do anything.
• One-Winged Angel: These forms of the Princess are the most powerful, and often involve you not even being able to fight back, let alone slay her.
• Serial Escalation: While every Chapter II variation of the Princess warps the cabin into something appropriate to the new form she's taken, every Chapter III variation has gained enough influence over the world around her that you can see that the woods themselves have changed before you even reach the cabin.

The Eye of the Needle

"I crush you, I bleed you, I grind you to paste. My scars are a memory of what you used to be to me. I want those feelings back."

"Little Bird! Little Bird! Where do you think you're going?!"

Try to outmaneuver the Adversary in a fight and she leans even further into her bloodlust, becoming the Eye of the Needle.

---

• Absurdly Sharp Claws: The Femme Fatalons she had as the Adversary have now grown into sharp, steel-like claws that she now uses much more readily in combat. This is symbolic of this incarnation being more bestial than The Adversary who fought mainly by brawling.
• Amazonian Beauty: Ramped up from the Adversary, the Narrator even makes a point to describe how muscular her thighs are.
• Berserk Button: Should you enter her domain without the pristine blade, she'll flip out by the sight of you coming in unarmed, taking offense at your supposed refusal to sate her bloodlust, and will instantly give chase. You can exploit this by luring out of the cabin to either free her or fight her outside.
• Blood Knight: Even moreso than the Adversary. It's possible to try and trick her into following you if you act like you're not going to fight her. If you do decide to fight her head on, she'll be so delighted she will let out a deluge of Big "YES!" remarks with a smile on her face.
  The Eye of the Needle: Yes, yes, YES! Finally, you get it!
• Breaking the Bonds: The Eye of the Needle is even less restrained than the Adversary. Any action that doesn't get you closer will result in the Needle breaking her bond effortlessly and pursuing you.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Zigzagged. The Eye of the Needle is much stronger than the Adversary, so she'll easily defeat you if you fight her head-on, while the Adversary could be stalemated that way. However, what she gained in power, she sacrificed in speed. So while trying to outmaneuver or flee from the Adversary just results in your death (the former turning her into the Eye of the Needle in the first place), The Eye of the Needle can be outraced and outmaneuvered in battle to suffer a Death by a Thousand Cuts. It's also worth noting that she's one of the few versions of the Princess that can be defeated outright instead of through a Mutual Kill.
• Combat Pragmatist: She's far too enraged by your cowardice to keep the Fair-Play Villain ideals she had as The Adversary and won't hesitate to fight dirty if she has to, such as using the pristine blade as a throwing weapon when you're running from her.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: She's much stronger now than when she was the Adversary, so trying to fight her head-on in her Creepy Cave causes her to win while only sustaining a few superficial wounds, which is far from the Mutual Kill she desires.
• Dispense with the Pleasantries: The Adversary doesn't enjoy chatting, but she indulges your questions. The Eye of the Needle is far more bestial and has no patience to talk to you due to your previous cowardice.
• Dragons Are Demonic: Even more so than the Adversary. This version has more horns, longer claws, more prominent hooves, and a scaly dragon's tail curling out from behind her.
• Evil Is Bigger: The Eye of the Needle is so tall that she has to crouch just to fit in the cabin. When she stands up outside of the cabin, her head goes past the roof. She's also very broad-shouldered.
• Failed a Spot Check: If you lure her out of the cabin, she'll be so consumed with the chase that you'll have to point out to her that she's free. Which is what allows the Shifting Mound to collect her.
• Graceful Loser: Given the bloody fight she desires, which ends with a fatal stab to the heart, her parting words are winded but she's smiling and satisfied as she admits you've outplayed her.
• Horns of Villainy: She's got horns across her head that resemble the shape of a crown rather than actually wearing one.
• Hot-Blooded: Like the Adversary, she's a loud, fierce, and passionate Blood Knight. Most of her dialogue has her basically screaming.
• I Will Find You: Threatens this if you choose to flee without the blade.

  The Eye of the Needle: Anywhere you go, I will follow.

• Interplay of Sex and Violence: If you thought the Adversary was passionate about fighting, well...
  • If you first encountered her while wielding the blade:
    The Eye of the Needle: There you are, knife in hand. How thrilling. Attack me, bleed me, twist the knife in my flesh. Break your bones against my body. I want a real challenge this time.
  • If lured outside of the cabin and fought in the open:
    The Eye of the Needle: Yes, finally! This is the hole I've felt in my heart! This is what I've needed! This is what I've been missing! This is how it always needed to end! Both of us, giving it our all. Beating and bleeding each other to death.
• Killer Bear Hug: Probably would have killed you without the Voice of the Stubborn.
  She lets you sink the blade deep, trapping you in place long enough to wrap you in her impenetrable arms. You're slammed to the ground.
• Mighty Glacier: She's bigger and stronger than The Adversary, but also slower, which allows you to be able to dodge her blows if you lure her into the open and deal her a Death of a Thousand Cuts.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: She's bigger and more muscular than The Adversary, with broader shoulders and powerful-looking thighs. The Narrator notes that she's now much stronger than you.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Has longer hair than the Adversary, down below the level of her hips.
• Spirited Competitor: The core of her being, this Princess is one that's only concerned with how she and you can challenge each other and grow through the conflict. She's not bothered if you gain the upper hand during your fight, and she's not even concerned with escaping the Cabin anymore, so long as she has you to test herself against then she's happy.
  The Shifting Mound: This one yearns to grow and struggle. Even now I feel her will pushing against mine, not realizing that we are one. She will make for a fierce heart. Do not mourn her. We will provide her with the growth she fought for.
• Taking You with Me: If fought out in the open, she takes the player in a Killer Bear Hug just as she's stabbed in the heart. This does not kill you though, and she herself may or may not have retained the Adversary's Resurrective Immortality: she coughs some Blood from the Mouth while still standing and staring you down, and then the Shifting Mound takes her.
• Wall Crawl: Her version of the basement stairs is an almost sheer cliff. To chase you up it, she just gouges into the rock with her claws and hauls herself up.
• Women Prefer Strong Men: Like The Adversary, her affection towards you is based on your strength. She will be furious if you don't bring the pristine blade when meeting her, and won't even give you a chance to speak before starting to chase you. She's almost relieved if you snatch the blade up as you flee.

The Den

"You are devoured, prey for something bigger than you that stalks and slinks in shadows. But even after the pain of defeat, you returned."

Die to the Beast without being fully consumed by her and a bigger version of the Beast greets you as the Den, now transformed into a feral Animalistic Abomination.

---

• Alas, Poor Villain: Should you trick her into chasing you out, she becomes trapped in the narrow entrance, completely at your mercy. Even the Narrator's description of her in that position paints her in a pitiful light. It also makes the voices of the Hero, the Hunted, and the Skeptic feel sorry for her and consider helping her.
• Animalistic Abomination: She's not only a bigger version of the beast, but now has extra body parts and limbs.
• Blackout Basement: Her lair isn't a jungle anymore. It's just a wide-open, pitch-black room.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: While the Den has the same animalistic instincts as the Beast, she lacks the intelligence the Beast had, becoming little more than a mindless animal who attacks the Hero without even remembering her previous plan to escape the Cabin. This allows the Hero to either lure her out into the open where his speed gives him the advantage in a straight fight, or trick her into following him back to the cabin entrance, where her larger size causes her to get stuck in the tunnel leading back.
• Face Death with Dignity: Downplayed. If she gets stuck in the tunnel while you're holding the Pristine Blade, slaying her will become an option. She will cringe and wince in fear as she brace herself, but otherwise won't fight back or struggle like a true animal would.
• Feral Villain: Communication with the Den is nonexistent, to the point she's The Speechless. Attempting to speak to the Den before entering her lair will get you no response. She operates on instinct, and the Narrator describes her feral-like lunging and clawing at you. Instead of being a Talking Animal, the Den just roars at you. As such, the Den is even more of a wild beast, wanting to kill you because she's operating on a predator's animal instinct. It's thus shown that the Den has become so bestial that she can no longer communicate with words anymore.
• Hybrid Monster: The Den is only vaguely cat-like. Now she has bird-like wings, goat-like horns, claws that appear feline and reptilian, four legs and two arms, and glowing white eyes.
• It Can Think: It's implied that even though she's operating on instinct, she isn't completely mindless. If she gets stuck in the tunnel, she'll looks at her body in horror, then gives you a very pleading look, begging for help. If you decide to slay her, she realizes your intention and quietly braces herself, wincing in fear but otherwise no longer struggling. If you instead decide to help her, you can say "Let's talk" and approach her peacefully. She looks to the side, as if in shame or embarrassment at her defeat.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the previous chapter she taunts you about being so much more than you and the hopelessness of escaping from her attempts to swallow you alive. In the next chapter, she is too big to escape through the exit tunnel, and if you manage to bait and outrun her she will get stuck there.
• Monster Modesty: You don't see it during her chapter, but after she is claimed by the Shifting Mould, it turns out her upper torso and parts of her lower self are wrapped up in cloth. Somewhat justified since her upper half has humanoid breasts, albeit covered in fur like the rest of her.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: She has the body of a lion with wings, but where her neck should be, she has a humanoid upper body starting from the torso.
• Our Sphinxes Are Different: She's this mixed with a centaur, having the body of a lion for a lower half and a humanoid upper body starting at the torso. Her wings are much bigger, her four legs are more like a lizard or a bird, and she has two new arms.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: When she gets stuck in the narrow entrance, she gives to you a sad look, as if nonverbally begging you to not leave her behind, per the Narrator's description.
• Roar Before Beating: Just like the Beast, she let's out a huge roar when she pounces.
• The Speechless: The only version of the princess who never speaks. But seeing as how the Den is presented as a Feral Villain, it's possible that she's now so bestial that she can't talk.

The Wild

"A web of nerves lain upon a web of nerves lain upon a web of nerves. The shade of a beautiful beginning we can never return to."

^{Click here to see the Wounded Wild}

"We are a path in the woods. We have no beginning, and we have no end, but something cold and unnatural sits watching us from just beyond our edge."

Allow the beast to swallow you whole and fail to escape/stab her heart from within or get consumed by the woods when the Witch summons them. The Wild is you and the Princess fused together into a single entity. If you break fusion, you rip out of her and leave behind The Wounded Wild.

---

• Alas, Poor Villain: Villain's a little strong, but should you break the amalgamation you've become and bring the Wounded Wild into being, you have the option to slay her, as she's completely at your mercy. Every one of the Voices you bring with you to this point are hesitant at best and flat out against it at worst.
• And I Must Scream: The Wounded Wild is fused with a tree and her chest cavity is torn open, exposing her heart.
• Body Horror: Not only is the Wounded Wild fused with a tree by her arms and legs, but her ribcage has been torn open and her heart is exposed. Cutting her free will also shows she's just a torso, with long branch-like hands at the ends of her arms.
• Botanical Abomination:
  • Just what the Wild is is unknown, but the Narrator trying to stop it talks about it as growing grass and roots, growing as it decays and decaying as it grows, and harvesting the remains of dying creatures to grow further.
  • The Wounded Wild is part of a princess fused to a tree, with the Princess clearly in no shape to continue living that way.
• Eldritch Location: While the Player is fused with the Wild, they have no physical body other than the amalgamation of the roots and trees that comprise the forest surrounding the cabin, and seemingly move them as if they are one unified organism. Even after the fused Wild is claimed at the end of the chapter, instead of having a body to speak through the Shifting Mound talks by forming a face out of the Wild's roots.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Wild refers to the Narrator as an entity separate from you, viewing the woods from the outside, implying that he's not the same as you or the Voices.
  • The entire conceit of the Wild route foreshadows the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet's origins: a singular god that encompassed both their domains who was rent asunder and then caged by the Narrator's Creator. The Princess even says "We're one. This is how we're supposed to be, can't you feel it?"
    The Narrator: You'd do best to remember, that some wounds will never heal. Some rifts can never be mended. Even in rebirth, some things never come back the same.
    Voice of the Hero: What is he going on about? What does he know about us?
    The Narrator: You aren't whole. You'll never be whole again. This struggle is meaningless. Whatever you think you're doing, you will fall apart.
    The Princess: We don't need to be made whole. All we need to do is find a single corner of his cage and break it.
• Forgiveness: The Voice of the Opportunist asks if she's still angry about being stabbed in the heart. She's not and asks "Are you mad at me for swallowing you whole?" In response, the Opportunist shrugs it off as all pretty petty in retrospect.
• Genius Loci: She and the player have become the very woods that surround the cabin. It's actually a rather peaceful existence.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: From the Narrator's point of view, the Wild is the absolute worst result that could arise from the Hero and the Princess' encounter within the Construct. As they fuse into a single being, they become closer than ever to what they were before the Creator broke the Cycle of Life and Death and made the Long Quiet and the Shifting Mound separate beings. It's made evident by how distinctly antagonistic he sounds in this route. Luckily for him it doesn't stick.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: The Wounded Wild is nothing but the Princess's torso and her tree-like arms. You only see this if you cut her free.
• I Am Legion: In this Chapter, the Princess uses first person plural to underscore that the two of you have resurrected into a conjoined form.
• Mood-Swinger: For the most part, the Wild is calm and kindly. She is even willing to let go of past slights if you are in turn. But if you start to focus on them, she starts to panic and scream as she's torn between not wanting to return to the cycle of violence between you and wanting you out for what you've done.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: When the Wild is separated from you and remembers (and cares about) the slights and violence you've caused each other, she vows to "hurt you like you deserve".
• Pet the Dog: The Wild speaks reassuringly to the Voice of the Hunted, who becomes less fearful.
• Poor Communication Kills: The fusion process is very fragile, and something that would likely go a lot smoother if the princess had explained it to you before commencement; there's minimal room to clear up skeptical questions when it's underway (which might explain why more players have the achievement for the process falling apart, then the achievement from completing the transformation).
• The Power of Hate: The Hero can resist his fusion with the Wild by recalling their past conflict, which creates enough discord between the two for them to physically separate out of pure spite.
  The Voice of the Opportunist: She really does hate us. And we hate her. It hurts thinking about us as separate things, but we're seperate. We can't hate ourself. I love me.
• Power of Trust: If you question her process twice or ask to separate, it falls apart leaving her wounded. If you instead fully trust her, she'll work with you and the other voices to successfully break through the ceiling of the narrator's worldlet.
• Sharing a Body: The Wild is both the Princess and the Player fused together. The Narrator somewhat rhetorically ponders in his narration what that body looks like, or if it even is a body. From the imagery, (trees and roots) the Wounded Wild's appearance, and the fact the Player is the Long Quiet, which encompasses the woods, it's implied in this form you two really are a path in the woods.
• Splash of Color: Should you search within to find your freedom, you and the Princess come across a crack in the Construct that the two of you together can widen into a hole. What's on the other side is unclear, but its riotous color puts it in stark contrast with the world you've been familiar with up until that point.
• Split-Personality Merge: In a sense, the Wild is a downplayed version. It represents the closest possible facsimile of the divine entity that the Hero and the Princess used to be, before the Narrator used his process to forcibly split it in two and turned the two halves into the Long Quiet and the Shifting Mound, that it is possible for them to reform into. By amalgamating, the two of them can achieve a shape that resembles that original form, but alas, the change the Narrator has imposed upon their fundamental natures cannot be undone. The Wild is ultimately an unstable construction that can only exist as long as the minds of the Hero and the Princess are synergizing and in full agreement to work in concert with each other, and they will inevitably start to push against each other sooner or later.
• Suddenly Shouting: If you question Sharing a Body with her in any way, she goes from a soft whisper to desperate shouting and then back again in her attempt to convince you to remain together. Her text and the outlines of the trees go red for a moment when she shouts.
• Sympathy for the Devil: The Wounded Wild is in such a pitiable state that all of the Voices are uncomfortable with the thought of killing her, regardless of the animosity they had for her mere moments ago.
• When She Smiles: The Wounded Wild had completely resigned herself to her fate and accepted her impending death. However, when you prove her expectations wrong and cut her free, she gives you a teary, yet gentle smile, showing how touched she is that you're still willing to show her kindness even after you two get separated.

The Grey

The Burned Grey

The Drowned Grey

"I kill you. You kill me. Back and forth we go, faster and faster and faster. I kill you. You kill me."

The Burned Grey: "You came back! I missed you."
The Drowned Grey: "Bold of you to come back here after what you did."

Kill the Damsel or the Prisoner and they will return as the Burned Grey or the Drowned Grey respectively, a ghostly apparition with unfinished business.

---

• All There in the Manual: Both forms are simply named "the Grey" by the game. The achievements give them the names "Burned Grey" and "Drowned Grey" respectively, while the in-game files name them after their respective Chapter II Princesses.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Played for Drama; the Burned Grey correctly deduces that the cabin is, in some way, responsible for the Player and the Princess hurting each other. However, since she's unaware of the nature of the Construct, her solution is to try to burn down the cabin to be Together in Death with the Player, even though it wouldn't have done much and would've only reset the loop, had the Shifting Mound not arrived to claim her.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: Water for the death (or abandonment of the head of) the Prisoner, Fire for the death of the Damsel. While the Grey is considered by the Shifting Mound to be a single route, who blocks you from accessing the other "variation" if you've already given her one Grey as a vessel, there are differences between them: either the Voice of the Smitten or the Voice of the Skeptic joined by the Voice of the Cold, either dry or rainy weather and a cabin in either a dry or waterlogged neglected condition.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Grey is counted as a single, unique vessel, which means it is not possible to get both the Burned Grey and the Drowned Grey in the same playthrough, despite the fact that they have drastically different personalities and perspectives and their respective routes are similarly different and involve different choices.
• Kill It with Fire: In the "Burned Grey" route she sets you, the cabin, and herself aflame as a Mutual Kill. You can reach her before burning up, only for both of you to get smothered in flames and burned away.
• Kill It with Water: By contrast, in the "Drowned Grey" route she unleashes a tidal wave of water on you, and her drowned corpse pulls you down to the depths with her.
• Mirror Character: The Burned Grey and the Drowned Grey are this to each other.
  • The Burned Grey has an entirely white palette and is dressed like a bride. The Drowned Grey has an entirely black palette and is dressed like a widow.
  • The Burned Grey has a perpetually fixed smile, even as she burns to death with you, while the Drowned Grey has a perpetually fixed frown.
  • The Burned Grey burns the entire cabin down so you can be Together in Death, having surmised that it's the Construct itself that keeps them apart. The Drowned Grey floods the entire cabin to make sure you die, even having her bloated corpse drag you down to the depths.
  • The Burned Grey remains intimately close with you, even as you both burn into a crisp. Meanwhile, the Drowned Grey always keeps her distance, to the point where (on top of her dark palette) it's hard to see what she fully looks like.
• Poor Communication Kills: Even if you didn't kill her, the Drowned Grey will be just as angry, as (without telling you) she expected you to bring her head with you in the previous chapter.
• The Stoic: Unlike the Burned Grey, the Drowned Grey's face is entirely unexpressive. She also barely talks, spending most of the time silently staring at the Player. When she does speak, it is in an entirely flat voice lacking the (already limited) expression she had as the Prisoner.
• Together in Death: In the "Burned Grey" route, she locks the both of you in the basement and sets it on fire so she won't be apart from you anymore. Of course, it doesn't stick, since the Shifting Mound claims her before the Player burns down completely.
• Widow's Weeds: Her appearance in the "Drowned Grey" route has her wear a black funeral gown.
• Wight in a Wedding Dress: Her appearance in the "Burned Grey" route has her take the form of a ghost in a wedding dress.

The Moment of Clarity

"There are few things more terrifying than one’s own heart, and there is almost nothing more terrifying than sharing it with another."

"It'll be so much fun! You and me, together, exploring the world and spreading fear wherever we go! Well, mostly just me. But you'll get to be there too!"

Die from sheer terror and despair when the Nightmare removes her mask, and after countless unseen loops, the Princess becomes even less human than the Nightmare was, even more determined to break free, and even more deadly.

---

• And I Must Scream: Unlike the other Princess variants , she's not dealt with in just three or four loops. She's willing to torment and torture you to death again and again for an unknown but huge number of times until you accept "her advances" and let her out. By the final loop, all the voices are so broken and traumatised that they openly welcome death.
• The Dreaded: Despite their contrasting personalities, the majority of the Voices agree that there's nothing you can do to avoid or stop her. There are no options to resist her. At least just being around her doesn't kill you this time.
• Floating Limbs: Her arms aren't physically attached to her body, though she moves them as if they were. Two of them are close enough to the shoulders that they at least "look" like they're attached, while the third arm is "attached" to her waist on the right.
• Gilded Cage: When you encounter her again, she lays out a future where she'll be spreading terror throughout the world while she keeps you by her side. She even offers to put you in a literal gilded cage.
• Evil Counterpart: Could be considered one to the Damsel, as the Moment of Clarity represents an abusive and toxic love. She breaks the Player Character into losing all agency of himself, molding him after an eternity of abuse into being docile towards her. Meanwhile, the Damsel is molded by the Player Character's perspective into an idealized love interest that has no agency of her own and is completely docile towards him.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The Moment of Clarity is among the incarnations of the Princess that are impossible to oppose; you can try to select other options, but they're grayed out. By the time you meet her you've actually played out the scenario countless times, exhausting every other option and collecting every other Voice as a product of those choices, all of whom are utterly broken by the futility of their struggle. There is nothing left but to take her hand and set her free.
• Humanoid Abomination: Even more so than the Nightmare. The Moment of Clarity has three empty gloves for arms, and her mask is even more cracked.
• Hates Being Alone: Taken to extreme degrees as she absolutely refuses to leave the Player alone and even breaks him in order for him to stay by her side.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Based on what the Shifting Mound says about her, The Moment of Clarity herself is terrified of being rejected and having to bear her own pain and fear alone. Unfortunately, the only way she knows how to gain companionship is by tormenting the Player horrifically for an eternity to the point that trying to fight or run from her becomes even scarier than being by her side. When she removes the Player character's agency and molds him into what she desires, the Moment of Clarity gives off feelings of tenderness and warmth towards him.
• Mad Love: Out of all the Shifting Mound's vessels the Moment of Clarity is the most crazed about showing affection to the Player.
• Mind Rape: After being tormented by the Moment of Clarity for an eternity, all the Voices are noticeably traumatized to the point that they welcome death once you reach the mirror.
• Not Good with Rejection: What birthed The Moment of Clarity and the overall theme of her route.
• Odd Name Out: While most of the chapter titles starting from two onward reference the form either the Princess or the cabin takes in that chapter, "The Moment of Clarity" seems to be referring to the Player, not the Princess herself, as the chapter is about him and the Voices realizing the futility of trying to oppose her.
• Pet the Dog: If she is created by the player deciding to remain with The Nightmare in the basement, The Moment of Clarity will say she was joking when she called the Player a coward for wanting to stay in the basement with her. She'll even go on to say that the offer to stay forever with her was brave, even if the Player utterly broke from it. Whether the Player ran or stayed, the Moment of Clarity still wants to keep him around and offers a Gilded Cage rather than getting rid of him once he's let her out now that he's been turned into a broken shell.
  The Narrator: You extend your hand to hers. For all her past cruelties, the moment feels gentle, tender even.
• Tragic Monster: The Moment of Clarity is born when the Nightmare removes her mask, bears her innermost self, and then suffers the heartbreak of rejection. This transforms the already terrifying Nightmare into a fate defying force of nature. The Moment of Clarity so thoroughly torments him to such a degree during the loops the Player becomes an utterly broken husk that frees her due to no longer having any real will to resist her.
• Villainous Breakdown: The Moment of Clarity's entire existence is the result of one.
• Voice of the Legion: She retains the creepy reverb she had as the Nightmare, but now her voice is more frequently cut with loud static feedback and electronic whines.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The Voices treat her approach as inevitable. When given dialogue options, there's only one action you can select with the others being greyed out and commenting on the futility of choice.
  You are just an object. A tool. You were once something else a long time ago. But was that something you or is it just a dull and jaded memory? There is no other ending here.
  The Moment of Clarity: I've already taken your will and you're not getting it back. Now don't pause, don't try to resist. I've already molded you into what I need, and you lost your power so long ago. Don't bother working yourself into a frenzy to get it back.
• Woman Scorned: An absolutely terrifying example of this.
• Yandere: The Moment of Clarity's solution to getting the Player to be with her? Break him until he no longer has any will to resist of course!

The Wraith

"Flesh is a vehicle, and to destroy the flesh is to strand the spirit. With violence, you stranded me, and with violence, I sought to twist your flesh back into mine."

"Now I've become something so much worse and it's all! Thanks! To you!"

Kill the Nightmare or have the Spectre remove your heart, and they become the Wraith, who forcibly possesses your body in order to escape the cabin.

---

• Demonic Possession: Performs this on you to escape, since killing you only resets the "Groundhog Day" Loop.
• Determinator: The core of her being, a princess who learned that she could not rely on others to help her, so she turned inward to focus her pain and rage on the resolve to escape no matter what.
  The Shifting Mound: This one is loneliness turned to seething. She could not find her strength in others, so she found it in herself. She will make for a driven heart. Do not mourn her — she isn't alone anymore.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: The same as the Spectre: when she forcibly possesses you she can hear and interact with all your Voices, including the Narrator, and she proves capable of overriding his efforts to stop her when he describes the exit growing distant by countering his descriptions with her own.
  YOU CANNOT DESCRIBE ME INTO SUBMISSION. THE DOOR IS RIGHT THERE.
• Godzilla Threshold: From her perspective, this form is Necessarily Evil, as you refused to let her out of the cabin amicably (when she was the Spectre) or through intimidation (when she was the Nightmare) by insisting on slaying her, and thus she has no choice but to force you to let her leave. The Spectre, the Nightmare, and the Wraith all say that she becomes "something worse" because of your rejection.
• Laughing Mad: If you choose to throw yourself into the abyss while she's possessing you.
• Laser-Guided Karma: If you get the Wraith through killing the Nightmare right before you both leave the cabin, then throwing the both of you into the void counts as this against her, since her last act as the Nightmare was to do the same to you.
• Moral Myopia: The Wraith sees no problem with forcibly possessing you because, to get to this outcome, you've killed her at least once, but, if you got to this route through the Nightmare, she neglects to acknowledge that she was promising to do worse to the entire outside world if she were free. If you throw yourself into the abyss, before she starts laughing she asks "WHY DO YOU HATE ME?"
• No-Sell: She's the only character to simply defy the Narration — when the Narrator says the door is infinitely far away, she refuses to accept the description and opens the door anyway.
• Painting the Medium: Initially she's limited to pitting her willpower against yours when trying to puppet your body, but after she recognizes the Narrator's control over the narrative and usurps him, she starts simply narrating her actions and you lose all ability to resist.
  The Wraith: I PLACE YOUR BLOODY HAND ON THE DOOR. I MAKE YOU TURN THE HANDLE.
  Voice of the Hero: Isn't saying all this his job?
  The Wraith: HE IS GONE.
• Pet the Dog: While she initially sneers at the Voice of the Opportunist, only listening to him because she enjoys how uncomfortable the other Voices are made by his sycophanty, when she overrides the Narrator's will and accesses the cabin door, she responds to the Opportunist's praise with a sincere "thank you".
• Taking You with Me: You can try to throw yourself into the Long Quiet to save yourself from her. Little does the Wraith know that this actually works, as she gets grabbed by the Shifting Mound.
• Troll: If the Voice of the Opportunist is with you (whom you get if you ended up reaching the Wraith after slaying the Nightmare), he tries to actively suck up to her. Although the Wraith is largely not interested in his sales pitch and initially remains scornful of him, she still allows him to talk. Why? Because she relishes in discomfort the other Voices feel from his butt-kissing.
• Undead Abomination: In distinct contrast to The Spectre, she's a warped, skeletal monstrosity with a distorted voice and the ability to warp reality.
• Vengeful Ghost: A skeletal one. She breaks your ankle before you even see her.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice has a reverb applied to it, which is then distorted even further when she's possessing you, echoing and overlapping on itself like it's moving around you.

The Fury

"What is a person? Is it their body? Is it all of their body? Pluck the eyes, peel the skin, strip the tendons, mince the meat, grind the bones. When it is all gone, do you still have who you started with?"

"Was severing the tendons of my ascension not enough for you? Was it not enough to rend my divine heart? Come! See the horrors you've wrought upon my flesh and feel my hands set upon your throat!" (Tower route version)
"So you've returned after denying me the salvation of combat. Are you here to gloat? Are you here to mock what I've become?" (Adversary route version)

Slay the Tower or unnerve the Adversary into losing her will to fight and they become the Fury, a vengeful demon out for your blood.

---

• And I Must Scream:
  • Invoked. She uses her powers to "unwind" the player character by turning him inside-out, complete with showing his blood and organs on the screen, and states that she fully intends to keep doing this to him forever. However, the Shifting Mound grabs the Fury before she can do it more than once.
  • As the embodiment of Personal Horror, the Fury herself is so alienated from her body and very identity that her existence is nothing but suffering and self-hatred. Her lashing out at the player is driven by the desire to make you feel what she experiences everyday just by existing.
• Body Horror:
  • Her "clothing" is actually a part of her, which has been peeled away from her body to form a dress while exposing glistening muscles and sinew. The skirt of her "dress" in particular being the skin from her legs being flayed back in ragged tatters with visibly exposed veins lining the inside, while her chest and rib cage has been ripped open to expose her still beating heart.
  • The Fury will use her powers to "unwind" you, turning you inside-out, complete with showing feathers and your guts splattering on the screen, which you do not die from, instead left helplessly suspended as she states her intention to continue doing this to you for quite a while.
  • Her crown is a simple arc held together above her head by 3 nails piercing her skull.
• Brought Down to Badass: The Fury has either fallen from the heights of the nearly divine Tower, or the confident and self-assured Blood Knight Adversary. In a way, this only makes her more dangerous than ever, as the Tower felt directly harming you was beneath her, and the Adversary was a Spirited Competitor that was more interested in the experience of fighting a Worthy Opponent than actually killing you in and of itself. The Fury on the other hand exists in a state of rage and pain that means she just wants to hurt you as badly as possible for what you've done to her, and she still possesses more than enough power to do it.
• High-Heeled Feet: She has spikes in her heels that give her the appearance of wearing heeled shoes, much like how her skin being peeled away gives the impression of a dress.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: No matter what you choose to do, the route will end with the Fury turning you inside out.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Whether she was The Adversary or The Tower, they were both more powerful, confident, and dignified beings than The Fury is, and The Fury herself loathes what she has become.
• Identity Breakdown: Shattering the Tower or the Adversary's fundamental beliefs (namely, the former's belief that she doesn't even need to get her hands dirty to do away with lowly presences, and the latter's will to fight and belief that the fight is the only thing worth existing for) will trigger a violent identity crisis in the Princess in question. This in turn leads her to become the Fury, a demi-goddess of psychological auto-cannibalistic self-mutilation.
• Meat Moss: As a Chapter Three princess, her influence has spread outside of the cabin, into the path in the woods - which has become an unsettling landscape of wobbly, wet-looking growths shot with veins, with 'trees' that resemble grasping clawed hands trailing sheets of mucus or thin, torn tissue. The Narrator does not describe the woods but when you get inside of the cabin he tells you about how its once lofty elegance has been overtaken, fluid seeping from cracks in the stone walls and "congealing into chaotic streaks of writhing nerves and wet clumps of living meat."
• Misery Builds Character: For all the horror of the Fury's being, the Shifting Mound notes that her pain gives her a certain depth to her being. There is a twisted sense of empathy to her rage and pain, as the fact that she suffers so much from the betrayal of her internal conflict is only possible because she cares deeply for and feels the loss of what she was, and she represents the sense of loss inherent to the process of change.
  The Fury: (As part of the Shifting Mound) What is a person? Is it their body? Is it all of their body? Pluck the eyes, peel the skin, strip the tendons, mince the meat, grind the bones. When it is all gone, do you still have what you started with? A person is not a body. Death is a transformation into something new. It is only bodies that fear it.
• Never My Fault: If you got here from the fight with The Tower, she doesn't take any responsibility for her ambitions to end the outside world or mind controlling you to torture you earlier. She's just interested in placing the blame of the situation on you; even the Shifting Mound says that her nightmarish transformation were due to her own choices.
• Personal Horror: The core of her being. The Fury is a Princess who has become violently alienated from her own self-image after you undermine her previous identity, leading to a destructive sense of confusion, self-loathing and her lashing out at you.
  The Shifting Mound: This one is desecration. She placed the weight of her agony on you, yet it is she who unwound herself. But there is passion and empathy in her misery. She will make for a burning heart. Do not mourn her — She has finally found peace.
• Rejected Apology: If you try to apologize to her, she will dismiss it, as she's too focused on her goal of inflicting pain on you.
• Villainous Breakdown: She's the embodiment of one, being either the Tower's breakdown over being stripped of her divinity or the Adversary's over being denied a final battle with her archenemy.
• Voice of the Legion: Her voice gains a demonic reverb to match her even more violent, visceral form.

The Apotheosis

"You are weightless, suspended in the gravity of an idea that threatens to consume you. And you are alone. A tiny island caught between the death of the old world and the birth of the new. But alone is not helpless."

"This was always how it was going to end, and this was always how it was going to begin."

If you do not set the Tower free but also fail to slay her, she becomes the Apotheosis, a gigantic being of unimaginable power.

---

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: She bursts from beneath the cabin, and she's so big that even the cabin could fit in the palm of her hand. She is so big that she manages to even dwarf the Shifting Mound, physically that is. This becomes more apparent when it requires several more arms to restrain her and only her head can breach from the river of bodies.
• Chunky Updraft: The ground itself tears away and floats towards the Apotheosis in order to demonstrate how powerful she is. Notably, the Apotheosis doesn't even appear to be trying to do this; she's just that powerful.
• Death by Irony: She's so powerful that she can free herself from the cabin without even interacting with the player, but due to how the construct works, her freeing herself causes the Shifting Mound to claim her without you having to do anything either.
• Evil Sounds Deep: She speaks with the same kind of pitch and intonation that she had as the Tower, but now with reverb.
• Eye Motifs: The pieces of fabric she has wrapped around her body have eyes on them, symbolic of her being "all-knowing" now that she has ascended.
• Giant Woman: She's so big that she towers over the entire landscape around the cabin. When she's grabbed by the Shifting Mound, the hands can only cover parts of her face and neck instead of her entire body. If you 'fight' the Shifting Mound in the endgame, she causes vessels that you've brought her to surface from her Body of Bodies and speaks through them. Most of these surface in front of the primary trunk of the Shifting Mound, but the Apotheosis is so large that only her head appears, and she is popping out from the side.
• A God Am I: Even moreso than the Tower. And considering the Apotheosis is a Giant Woman who towers over the landscape, it's hard to blame her. Attempting to slay the Apotheosis will even have the Narrator say that killing her at this point is a desperate long shot. And only the Shifting Mound could take Apotheosis down, using the hands to restrain the latter.
• Glowing Eyes: Her eyes now shine so brightly with her light that her pupils aren't even visible anymore.
• Godzilla Threshold: As you approach the Cabin, the Narrator will recognize that things have spiraled out of his control and actually admit to knowledge he usually tries to keep a secret from you, such as implying that your perception of the Princess can change her, as a desperate attempt at damage control. It's far too late at this point though.
• Holy Backlight: She is lit from behind by giant beaming rays of light that she herself seems to emanate, giving her a divine appearance.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Freeing herself from the cabin so she can mold the world to her image actually works in your favor, as she's effortlessly claimed by the Shifting Mound.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: By this point, your perception of the Princess has warped her into a Physical God that utterly dwarfs you in every possible way. She doesn't even need you to escape the Cabin anymore, the second you start moving towards it the entire hill simply cracks open like an egg as she bursts forth. You can still try to slay her despite this, but the Shifting Mound claims her before the attempt can start.
• Light Is Not Good: Her Holy Backlight only serves to make her look more sinister and imposing.
• Pet the Dog: Downplayed. Just like The Tower, she sees you as little more than a potential servant. But given that you've only reached this point by first attacking her in chapter 1, then defying her up to a point in chapter 2, her giving you yet another chance to submit is rather generous. Even though the option to serve her is named "Embrace oblivion", she makes it clear she wants you by her side.
• Posthuman Nudism: She lost all of her clothing save for bits of fabric that barely cover her, symbolic of how this form has become so powerful that it has ascended to godhood. Even her crown and chain are gone.
• Power Echoes: Now even her ordinary voice echoes as loud as when she was using her Compelling Voice as The Tower.
• Power Floats: She's now become so powerful that she herself has become a center of gravity, with everything in her surroundings now orbiting her.
• Powerful and Helpless: She's so powerful she can break out of the cabin on her own, but she still has no power over the construct and is as powerless as any other princess when the Shifting Mound claims her.
• Power Glows: She has considerably more Holy Backlight than The Tower did, and seems to emanate it herself now. The light even forms a symbolic crown on her head.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: She's the most powerful incarnation of the princess and has the longest hair (Even accounting that she's now a Giant Woman, her hair is still proportionally the longest). When she emerges from the cabin she even does so while flipping it triumphantly.
• Reality Warper: Just her very presence causes reality itself to warp around her. There's an enormous portal behind the Apotheosis, the earth around her floats towards her, and she's so big that the cabin is smaller than the palm of her hand.
• Smug Snake: She now fully believes herself to an omnipotent god who will change the world, yet she's still just a small part of the Shifting Mound, who claims her just as easily as any other incarnation of the princess.
• Term Of Endangerment: Much like the Tower before her, the Apotheosis refers to the Player as a little bird.
• The Unfought: The Narrator and the Voices make it clear she's now far too powerful to oppose, but you can choose to be Defiant to the End. However, the Shifting Mound will claim her before the fight begins.
• Villain Respect: Try to defy her one last time and she'll respect your determination.
• We Can Rule Together: She still wants you to join her as her first servant in the "new dawn" that she will bring to the world.

The Thorn

"A thought is a vine, and some thoughts nurture thorns that bleed the soul. An endless growth that blots your vision and strangles your trust."

"I... I want to trust you. But you're hiding something, aren't you? Why would you help me if you weren't helping yourself?"

Give the Witch the Pristine Blade as a sign of trust but then end up killed by her, and her regret transforms her into the Thorn.

---

• Ambiguously Human: She looks more like a regular human woman than the Witch, and certainly more than any of the Chapter III Princesses, but she has slightly pointed ears and her dress and thorns may hide her cat-like features from her time as the Witch. At least one of the developers believe she still has the Witch's tail hidden under her dress.
• Broken Bird: This is what she's become after her and the Player's string of betrayals. But depending on the choices you make, you can help her build herself back up again or return her to the spiteful personality she had as the Witch.
• Do You Trust Me?: If you want to leave with the Thorn, you need to convince her to trust you again, and communicate your intent to help early. It's still possible to backstab her right after this, though.
• Foil: To the Damsel, the Damsel represents an idealized love but lacks any agency outside of pleasing the Player Character. The Thorn represents a difficult journey to true love but has agency, the Player Character and her have to work through a number of trials to obtain said love in the end. The two even have similar theme reprises.
• Flowers of Romance: In contrast to the tragic roses trope below, the poppies can potentially symbolise the romantic overtone of the situation. The poppies may also symbolize the death of the conflict between you two in that route if you choose to reconcile with the Thorn and help her out to start anew.
• Flower Motifs: Poppies. They can symbolize the Princess's theme of death and change. The flowers being red and the Princess being enveloped in thorns bring to mind the tragedy of the circumstances where a mutual betrayal got the two of you, or it could symbolize forgiveness and romance. Either way, the thorns definitely play a part, as "every rose has its thorn" and even someone like her can be deadly.
• Heal the Cutie: If you earn her trust and free her, The Thorn regains her hope. Even when the way back up is blocked by thorns, she refuses to let it stop the two of you, saying that you're both meant for more than being trapped.
• The Hedge of Thorns: She's surrounded by a hedge of thorns, and even wrapped in thorn laden vines that pierce her skin. But she's Stopped Caring after the last two betrayals and seems to consider to be trapped in them a punishment or penance. Symbolically, you cut her off the vines trapping her when you forgive her, or they wrap around both of you even tighter if you try to slay or leave her.
• I Am a Monster: She's guilt-ridden and ashamed after her behavior as the Witch, and wants to be better - but isn't quite willing to trust you at first.
• Love Redeems: If the player tries again to earn the Thorn's trust and doesn't betray it when she gives him the Pristine Blade, the two's relationship can evolve to genuine love, signified with a Kiss.
• Mutually Assured Destruction: If you lose or fail to gain her trust, she will spitefully swallow the pristine blade so that you never have to chance to free each other from the vines, causing you both to get trapped there forever. If you intervene at this stage and stop her from swallowing it, she will instead bind your forearm with hers with a briar, laughing that you are trapped with her.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She feels extremely guilty about killing you when you tried to trust her. However, it's possible to talk her into trusting you with the Pristine Blade again.
• Playful Cat Smile: Played for Drama; if her trust is betrayed again, she'll regain the Witch's mocking catlike smile, showing that she lost all her hope that things will get better between her and the Player and that she's fully embraced the Witch's spiteful and taunting nature by this point.
• Pointy Ears: The Thorn herself appears almost entirely as a normal human, but keeps the Witch's pointed ears.
• Poor Communication Kills: If you don't communicate your intent to help her early, she'll refuse to hand back the blade to free her, leaving only option to walk away. She will then proceed to trap you in the prison with her.
• Power of Trust: Basically the theme of her route (alongside forgiveness).
• Properly Paranoid: The Thorn is skeptical of you despite you choosing to give her the Pristine Blade, and you can prove that suspicion correct if you try to harm her or leave the basement without her.
• Reformed, but Rejected: She'd like to stop hurting and being hurt, but if she's betrayed her bitterness becomes stronger and her voice and facial expression more resemble the Witch again.
• Sealed with a Kiss: Under the right circumstances, you can share a kiss with the Thorn. She is the only version of the Princess with whom that is possible. The Narrator is forced to describe it in nauseating detail after the Smitten calls him out for trying to gloss over it.
  "That was nice.''
• Splash of Color: The red poppies growing inside and around the Thorn's cabin make for a vibrant and striking contrast to the world they're growing in.
• Stopped Caring: She's so broken by the betrayals that both you and she have committed that she simply doesn't care what happens to her anymore. She even sounds bored, despite being wrapped in thorns that are piercing into her flesh.
• Taking You with Me: If you try to leave her behind or betray her again, she will trap you in the same prison that she's in.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Betray her trust again by trying to slay her or snatch the blade without her consent while she remains suspicious of you, she'll give up on hope that the Cycle of Revenge will be broken, as the Witch's spiteful personality resurfaces, and she'll seek to trap you in The Hedge of Thorns while ranting that the two of you are bound to betray and backstab each other forever.
  "I knew this was coming. I can't believe I ever let myself hope for better. This was always going to be us, wasn't it?"
• The Tragic Rose: She's surrounded by beautiful red poppies, but combined with the razor-sharp thorns also bring to mind the typical imagery of roses, but with red poppies instead. It's meant to highlight the tragedy of the whole situation.
• True Love's Kiss: After reconciling with Thorn, you can give her a kiss, complete with the Narrator being forced to describe it in Purple Prose if the Voice of the Smitten is with you. It's even the name of the associated achievement.
• Turning Back Human: Unlike the Princess's other third forms, the Thorn's appearance becomes more humanlike than she was in the previous chapter as a visual representation of her previous softer personality returning.
• When She Smiles: Once her trust and hope in you are restored, she proceeds to give you plenty of genuine smiles as you two leave the Cabin together, made even more endearing and rewarding after all the pain and betrayals you both went through.

Final Form

The Shifting Mound

^{Click here to see the heart of the Shifting Mound}

"Something finds me in the Long Quiet and brings me the gift of a fragile vessel."

An unfinished something that resides within the fabric of the narrative. Or is she the narrative itself? She requires you to find five versions of the Princess so that she may build herself a body.

---

• Admiring the Abomination: By all accounts, the Shifting Mound genuinely loves the Long Quiet. Should you accept her offer to join her in godhood, she gives you exactly what was promised to you, and you seemingly spend eternity exploring the infinity beyond the construct, happy together. Even if you reject her notion of advancing into godhood, the Shifting Mound will just accept it and dissipate in the Long Quiet with you instead of arguing after a time.
• Apocalypse Maiden: As the personification of death and change.
• Act of True Love: The Shifting Mound will abandon her godhood and role of ending the world if the Player chooses he wants to leave the cabin as mortals, or at least something near, as it's left unknown on how much of their powers remain. You can also choose to not say that you want to be mortals too. There's also another option to not say you reject godhood after the Hero takes you to her heart, though, and she'll still be more humble than her other form, take your hand, and leave the cabin too.
  The heart of the Shifting Mound: And if it's bad, then... it won't be bad. Not with you.
• But Now I Must Go: In the " And? What happens next?" ending, the Player and the Princess residing in the Shifting Mound's heart leave the Construct and Voices to face the world outside. You can choose to say that you reject godhood, to which the Princess (depending on your first vessel) can either say she doesn't want it either or tell you to embrace it as it is a part of who you are. You can also choose to not say that and go for other dialogue options and leave.
• Benevolent Abomination: While she can indeed end the universe, she is genuinely in love with the Long Quiet and believes that the change she embodies is a good thing, or at least a necessary one; she is birth and growth as much as she is death and ruin, and believes that a finite existence is needed to give existence meaning. Even then, she can confess that she’s uncertain of her existence and if she truly desires to carry out her purpose. Despite embodying the opposite concept from you she's never anything but warm and loving towards you — after all, you were the same entity once. Notably, all she wants is for you to join her in exploring and shaping existence together, whereas you can, if you choose, decide that you'd rather kill her and shape existence alone, and even if you choose to do so she'll spend her last moments sincerely telling you that she loves you and wishes you nothing but the best. You can even take the diplomatic solution and convince her to leave with you as something other than a god. Ask her about other people outside of the Construct, and, depending on your prior choices, she can say the thought of them fills her with a gentle sadness, as she knows unlike you and herself they are finite.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: By default, her moral understanding of the world is only based on change — she doesn't hugely care if those changes are for the better or the worse, as she can change them again, and she dismisses any pain or suffering she inflicts as simply another step in the journey. However, you can convince her otherwise, and it's completely possible to get her to accept human morality to lesser or greater degrees.
• Body of Bodies:
  • When you first meet her, she's comprised of many, many arms. So many that it looks like there's a flame behind the Princess she's holding. Also, she'll be grabbing onto whichever princess that was most recently brought to her when you meet her in the Long Quiet.
  • Her true form is a beautiful yet grotesque amalgamation of female human forms, including hair that is made up of Princesses, and hundreds more grasping upwards towards the Shifting Mound's main body. From what you can see, the Shifting Mound also has five heads and six arms.
  • If you tell her true form that you still intend to slay her, you 'fight' - she pulls the vessels you've brought her up to the surface, where they're supported by lesser bodies, and speaks through them.
• Break Them by Talking: Your "fight" consists entirely of her showing you flashes of how you appeared to the vessels you've brought her, and speaking through them as she tries to convince you to join her.
• Brought Down to Normal: Should you talk to her in the cabin and choose a line that says you don't want to be a god, it's possible to convince the Shifting Mound to drop her godhood, and try to face what comes with both of you as entities who have rejected godhood. It's unknown whether that meant being converted to depowered normal mortals (as normal as these two can get, that is) or just in a state where they're not utilizing their full abilities and not lording over the realm.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Once she fully awakens and realizes herself, she will insist that you join her in infinity and refuse to listen to your perspective on things. If you argue with her through the previous vessels, everything you reply with she will either spin into being in support of her goal or deflect in one way or another, and if you prove yourself to be unable to deflect her arguments, you'll be eventually exhausted by the effort. And even if you successfully deflect her words and resist her, she'll only express annoyance at how you refuse to accept her and continue to "cling to delusions". The only way to convince her of a different way is for the Voice of the Hero to take you to her considerably more humble heart.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Zig-zagged. She views any conflict between the Long Quiet and her as this retroactively. To her, giving him the opportunity to have something to defy and grow trying to fight is a "gift", even if it wasn't her intention at the time.
  The Shifting Mound (Invoking the Razor): You died countless steely deaths, and you lived countless short lives, and yet it is all so far behind you. Unjust impossibilities pushed you to become something you would never have been without them.
• Demonic Possession: Of a sort. Whichever princess you bring to her becomes an Empty Shell, their consciousness drained away completely until the Shifting Mound can claim them as a vessel. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that they're all technically fragments of her greater being to begin with, she mentions several of them continuing to exist inside of her, and when you engage in her debate, they reemerge from her, implying they weren't possessed so much as the shell left behind post fusion was used for a last remark.
• Dissonant Serenity: Speaks with a soft, almost soothing voice, despite the nightmare that is everything that's happening, happened, and will happen.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Though not exactly death itself, she does contain the concept of it as part of her being. Despite this the Shifting Mound is not hostile, even her "fight" with you is more her aggressively communicating abstract ideas to you in an attempt to convince you to leave with her. She believes sincerely that the change she embodies is a good thing, or at least necessary, and is a force of life and growth as much as she is death and ruin.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Should you slay the princess in the core of the Shifting Mound's being, she will tell you before she dies that she loves you and that she wishes you the best.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Whenever any version of the Princess leaves the cabin, they can mention that they feel cold. This even includes godly entities like the Apotheosis. It's a sign that the Shifting Mound is close by. Ultimately subverted, as her intentions aren't malevolent, she's just gathering her vessels and she later reveals they still exist within her.
• Final Boss: Her true form is the final version of the princess you encounter, no matter which versions of the princess you've seen before.
• Final-Exam Boss: Her "fight" consists of a debate where the Princesses from each of your previous routes appear one at a time to philosophize about how their encounters with you went, presenting you with several possible responses. As such it will be different in every playthrough.
• First Girl Wins:
  • The heart of the Shifting Mound will have the personality of the very first Princess you meet in the basement — the aloof Princess if you took the Pristine Blade, the amicable Princess if you didn't take the Pristine Blade, or the Stranger if you chose not to go to the cabin.
  • After "The End of Everything" update, if you apologize to the heart of the Shifting Mound, she'll recall the first time you met (and how poorly it went), implicitly pulling this trope for whichever variation of the Princess you encountered in your first route.
• Five Stages of Grief: If you choose to stay in the woods without going to the cabin in Chapter II, the Shifting Mound will try to reset you on the right path. The second time you do this, she becomes angry. The third, she apologizes for getting angry and tries to convince you to go to the cabin. The fourth, she becomes dispirited, and the fifth, she gives up. The achievements you get for doing this are also named after the five stages.
• Giant Woman: Apart from the Apotheosis, the Shifting Mound is by far the largest version of the Princess you will encounter as she is actually dozens of women fused together in one large mass, with her "dress" actually being a pile of moving bodies.
• God of Chaos: She is the Anthropomorphic Personification of change itself in all its forms, a being of growth and rebirth as much as she is death and entropy.
  "I am not death, but I contain it in my multitudes."
• Godiva Hair: Her true form is completely naked, but her hair is wrapped around her torso and her arms so that you can't see anything suggestive.
• Graceful Loser: In the "And? What Comes Next?" and the "A New, Unending Dawn" endings, she takes the Player rejecting her offer or slaying her pretty well and either willingly leaves with the player in the former or wishes him the best in the latter.
• Helping Hands: Before any vessels are brought to her, her form is many disembodied hands and arms. The Long Quiet can meet this form on its own by refusing to go to any Chapter Two cabins until the scenario falls apart, and the Long Quiet is grasped by "feelers" and "extremities" - they aren't called hands - which wrap around his consciousness and manage to communicate directly and soundlessly.
• Humanoid Abomination: She's a Body of Bodies, but her core form is that of a beautiful human woman with six arms, five heads, and hair made of other princesses. It makes the Shifting Mound simultaneously beautiful and grotesque.
• Ice Queen: The variation of the Heart based on the more hostile Princess in chapter I appears to be this at first glance. In reality she is much kinder, only really inheriting the snarky attitude from her previous personality, and by the end does still profess her affection for the Long Quiet in no uncertain terms.
• Immortal Apathy: The primary thing she cares about is escaping the construct with the Long Quiet, even if doing so will in the long term end the world as it is, along with every person in it. Even if he convinces her to try something else, it is the fact that saving the world is important to him that matters to her, not the world itself. Although, depending on your choices, she can come to care and sympathize with people other than the The Long Quiet and her; because unlike the two of them, they are finite.
• Intertwined Fingers:
  • She covers the eyes of each new vessel and moves the vessel's jaw and arms with her hands while talking to you through them, sometimes lacing her fingers with the vessel's.
  • In the Just as you once were nothing ending, her disembodied hands flow over the screen and lace their fingers together. As they both fade away, the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet experience alternating pain and pleasure and she says "I love you", over and over.
• Kill the God: It's possible to go into her heart, to find a princess there, and slay her. Doing this appears to permanently kill the Shifting Mound.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Refusing to reset the loop at the end of a route has the Shifting Mound simply wait until the Player agrees to, which closes the game. The next time the game is opened it immediately resumes the conversation with her, where she comments on the Player's "return."
• Literal Split Personality:
  • The Princess and the Hero were once a single being that encompassed the totality of existence through their combined concepts. This entity, through unknown means, was separated by the Creator into two independent beings. The Princess, who embodied change and was imprisoned within the Cabin; and the Hero, who embodied stability and was given the task of slaying her. This is one of the reasons the Shifting Mound is so desperate to be with the Hero; in a very real way, they were always meant to be together.
  • The many different variations of the Princess are themselves independent fragments of the Shifting Mound greater being, representing the many different aspects she may take. She awakens after five of them are brought to her by the player, whereupon the rest find their way to her automatically and perform a Split-Personality Merge into a Hive Mind that embodies all of their experiences and traits.
• Love Confession: She can give you one if you choose to do what she wants and destroy the construct. After that, she'll offer her hand, and once you take it, you'll break through the construct into the beyond.
• Many-Faced Divinity: Befitting a divine being with a Body of Bodies, the Shifting Mound has at least five faces on their head.
• Mono no Aware: As the personification of change and transformation (including death), she believes that all things must be finite, fleeting, and come to an end one day because things will be more beautiful and meaningful that way, as well as that being a requirement for new things. This also includes endings themselves, as death and endings are themselves seeds for new possibilities.
  "An ending is a passion that can only be expressed with a moment in time. It is a seed for a new beginning. To linger on an ending is to rob it of its life. And without me all that's left to do is linger."
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She shows up as hundreds upon hundreds of arms and hands when she appears in most routes. Whichever princess she's grabbed as an Empty Shell will also be covered in hands, including covering her eyes.
• Mythical Motifs: As a many-armed and -headed deity with multiple independent avatars who embodies change and death, she's clearly kin to Shiva.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: If you consider her a villain. In multiple versions of Chapter Two and Three, the Princess can escape the cabin, either directly with the Player's help or, as with the Apotheosis, on her own. However, the Shifting Mound captures any Princess variant who's done so, using them as vessels to rediscover who she is, and after a conversation resets things and makes the Player character forget and return to Chapter One. Only one of the Multiple Endings has the Shifting Mound escaping the Construct as her true self.
• Not So Stoic: There is exactly one moment where the Shifting Mound will be angry with you. If you turn away from the cabin in Chapter II, which will result in that route's vessel being lost, for the second time, she will be furious and straight up says that she hates you (multiple times in a row) before sending you back to Chapter I. She will apologize for her outburst, though, even if you continue to refuse her vessels.
• Offering a Hand: Offers you her hand at the end of the game, should you choose to do as she asks and break free from the construct.
• Official Couple: You can become this with her if you choose to do so, at the end of the game. You either become a God Couple with the Shifting Mound and explore the universe together, or you're both (possibly) Brought Down to Normal and choose to face the world outside without being gods.
• One-Winged Angel: The true form of the Princess, awakening after you have gathered enough fragments for her to pull herself together to finally break free of the Construct's imprisonment.
• One-Woman Wail: The soundtrack for her appearances includes a single voice singing wordlessly.
• Opposites Attract: The Shifting Mound, goddess of change, is entirely capable of being a God Couple with the Long Quiet, deity of stasis.
• People Puppet: The Princesses she claims are used in this manner to communicate with you, her voice speaking through their limp bodies while her many hands puppet them. The Princesses in question have become empty for the Shifting Mound's reawakening. They aren't dead, and their personalities technically still exist within her, but their being has been subsumed into just another aspect of the Shifting Mound. In the final "fight", where she argues for her freedom, they surface from her Body of Bodies and are active and animated again.
• Posthuman Nudism: She doesn't wear any clothes now that she has achieved her true godlike form, and neither do any of the hundreds of princesses that are converging towards her. But she does have her hair wrapped around her body to cover up her naughty bits, and the princesses are seen from a Toplessness from the Back angle.
• The Power of Love: At the end of the game, should you choose to break free of the containment, the Shifting Mound will tell you that she loves you and offers you her hand. Once you take her hand in your own, that's when the construct breaks apart.
• Rescue Romance: The game does say it's a love story. And it is, even after the Cosmic Horror Reveal. It's just that the love story is between the Shifting Mound and the Long Quiet. Because the Shifting Mound is caught in the Long Quiet's Eldritch Location, she's become incredibly lonely. However, as the Long Quiet brings the Shifting Mound more and more princess vessels, the Shifting Mound gradually develops a greater and greater affection for him as she begins to reawaken to what she truly is. Should the player choose to declare his love for her in one of the game's endings, she will honestly reciprocate.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes: Each time the Shifting Mound recalls one of her previous forms, the Player has a vision of their past encounter, shown from the Princess's perspective.
• Summon Bigger Fish: Some versions of the Princess are world-ending threats, such as the Tower, the Nightmare, and the Moment of Clarity. But regardless of how powerful any Princess is, they still are helpless before the power of the Shifting Mound, joining her with their bodies becoming an Empty Shell. Most of them, she tells you, are happier within her.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Instead of freeing her, you can meet her in the cabin once again, smaller and quieter than she is outside and with the persona of the first Princess you encountered, influenced by whether you'd brought the knife that time and even including the Stranger. Bring the knife one last time and she can be killed there, or will restart the cycle again - she would rather be free, but starting from nothing without her memories is better than being killed. Or, you can just say you don't want to be a god. The Stranger doesn't think either of you have a choice about that, but the other versions will agree, and all three versions are happy to leave with you.
• We Can Rule Together: Upon her ascencion, she asks you to join her in godhood to break free of the Construct and leave for the universe. Justified in that you were both parts of a single being before being separated by the Creator, as well as her own love for you.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: If you were chained besides the Prisoner until the basement eroded away, the Shifting Mound says that suffering is made finite by change and impermanence. Killing her leaves everyone to suffer in their permanence.
  The Long Quiet: "They'll get over it. They'll see permanence as a gift in time."
  The Shifting Mound: "Or, in time, would they see it as a curse?"
• Wowing Cthulhu: Getting her the five vessels that she needs to ascend to godhood makes her genuinely care for you and your well-being. Her offer to ascend with her is completely on the level, and should you agree to go through with it, there are no strings attached to her offer.
• Yin-Yang Clash: Both the Long Quiet and Shifting Mound are unkillable in their true forms, making any attempt to "slay" each other futile. This leaves them at a stalemate until the Voice of the Hero intervenes.

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