#ectober day 25

[thebiggestfuckgiven]

Ectoberweek 25: Graveyard Shift

Rating: T

Warnings: Descriptions of gore, mentions of experimentation (implied narratively and in the gore as well), mentions of loss (it still counts if its yourself/a version of you), horror, and dissociation-ish

A/N: okay I accidentally used the prompt of the same day I used last year, but maybe i’ll do it on purpose next time and invent a new tradition for myself. Danny, as usual, suffers ✨ I’m very happy I got to do a little something for Ectober this year. I was afraid I wouldn’t get the chance to. Please enjoy <3

-💜-

The night sky was startlingly clear. There were no stars, only that faint indistinguishable hue of air pollution, but it was still an amazing view. Then again, when you’ve been kept captive indoors for months on end, any view of the outside world is beautiful. Even if that view is a polluted star-less sky in a grimy, smelly city.

The cemetery he was in was no less of a spectacle, grim as it was. It had no wrought iron fence or any kind of enclosure, instead having been left open on all sides for all to come and go.

Truth be told, Danny had no idea where he was. They never told him where they were taking him when it was time to ship him to a new facility. He thought that was pointless. Who was he going to tell, really? They probably liked keeping him in the dark. Better to control that way. Whatever. The joke, now, was on both of them.

About ten or fifteen blocks away, sirens blared faintly from a scarce street. Firefighters, ambulances, police— the whole bunch of them gathered around an unmarked containment truck flipped on its side. The drivers could still be alive, if the group who had attacked them wasn’t cruel enough to change that.

Danny assumed they thought they’d find expensive tech and cutting edge resources, and they did. Sort of. What they hadn’t expected was to find Danny. The crash had made his container malfunction, and those doors opened… well, he wasn’t about to let that opportunity pass him by.

All he took with him was himself, and he left the daring group alive. They wouldn’t have known what to do with him, anyways.

He flew as fast as he could until he found this cemetery. They would start looking for him in a few hours, and if he wanted to get away, he’d have to find a hiding spot first. One of these, he figured, must be empty. Graves weren’t just for bodies, after all. Sometimes, they were for the idea of one. A body never recovered, or completely destroyed. Graves were for people, too.

He hovered over one in particular. It gave the impression that it was empty. How he knew was a mystery to him, but he was grateful for it.

The headstone read,

Stephanie Brown

Beloved Daughter, Sister, and Friend.

Your smile will always live in our hearts.

xxx xx, xxxx - xxx xx, xxx

The stone wasn’t worn or aged. She’d been “buried” recently. Hand resting gently on the headstone, he wondered what could have happened to her that she had to be buried without herself.

Far away, the sirens died down.

Maybe the answer will reveal itself to him eventually. He knelt on the soft grass and sunk a hand through the ground.

“Uh, can I help you?”

Danny froze up. That was one thing he forgot about cemeteries. Like graves, they weren’t just for the dead, either. He yanked his hand out of the ground and slowly glanced over his shoulder.

Behind him stood a young woman. The first thing he noticed were the clothes. She wore a purple beanie and a thick black jacket with a purple shirt underneath. The second thing was her hair, blonde and wavy, because it was curled around her neck like a makeshift scarf.

Glancing upwards, he saw no clouds. No snow… it was autumn already, then. But that… that meant he was gone for more than a few months. It meant he missed the whole school year. He was supposed to graduate high school in the summer.

“Are you okay? You don’t exactly look… all there.”

He faced the young woman again. The way she said it made it sound like it had a hidden meaning, which he quickly caught on to.

“I— sorry, I’ll get out of your way,” he muttered, pushing himself up to his feet, though unnecessarily so when he could’ve floated away.

“It’s all good,” she replied, watching him carefully. “Did you know her?”

“Hm? Oh, you mean Stephanie? Um, not really. I was just… paying my respects.” The lie felt misshapen in his mouth. She looked at him confused. He kept talking to steer her away from any questions. “Did you? Know her, I mean.”

“I used to,” was all she said to that. He didn’t like the way she was looking at him. He wanted to leave. “Do you live here?”

“No? What kind of person lives in a graveyard?”

Her hand still in her jacket pocket, she gestured towards all of Danny with a tilt of her head.

“Your kind of person, I’m pretty sure. Shit, unless you aren’t self-aware and I just ruined that.” Her eyes widened with genuine concern, making the reminder click in Danny’s head that he looked decidedly not-human under the night sky. That, and surrounded by well-meaning headstones, anyone would’ve walked the other way at the sight of him.

Almost anyone.

“Ah,” he said simply, looking down at his glowing, translucent self. “That. And you’re not, I dunno, shocked? Horrified?”

She shrugged. “It’s October in Gotham. I’ve seen worse.”

The statement sent a shiver like lightning right through him. A whole year… and Gotham was far but not it was still the Eastern area of the States. He could easily fly back home.

Maybe not.

How can he go back like this?

“Listen,” the blonde woman said, interrupting his thoughts. “You look a little out of it for a ghost. What brings you to this cemetery and m- Stephanie’s grave?”

“Um…” Danny glanced behind the wide headstone, where he saw himself. Danny Fenton lay lifeless and disfigured, his left leg missing and the skin of his right arm cut and held open by two tiny metal clamps attached to a single, wrap-around wire. There was muscle tissue and veins missing. The other arm was charred into an indistinguishable stump, melted skin folded over itself horrifically in too many layers, melded by heat-raised bubbles that were long solidified.

Where his left eye once was, there was now a vacant void. A window into his true self: a perfectly preserved brain thrumming with unnatural green light. Dead, and impossibly present. His other eye was still there, but just as vacant. Black hair glistened with remnants of the ectoplasmic waste they used to keep Danny Fenton fresh.

It was a quick glance. He fought not to throw up, ghostly body functioning now on memory alone.

“I thought…” that no one would see me “I’d check the place out. I paid my respects to some of the other graves.” He hesitated. He shouldn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know about Stephanie Brown, about the resting place he’ll be desecrating with the thing he became. “Hers is… empty. Can I ask what happened to her?”

The blonde woman’s reaction was small. A brief raise of the eyebrows, eyes widening for a second before going back to their watchful gaze.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you know it’s empty,” she said with a hint of a smile. “I can’t really go into any details, but let’s just say that the girl they buried there doesn’t exist anymore.”

He had no idea what that meant.

“Why do you… still visit her?”

She seemed to think this over, looking out onto the street far away from where they were.

“That girl, she was so,” the blonde woman sighed, “naive and hotheaded. She would try so hard to be something without caring to think of what it would take and in the end, it’s what did her in. But I still cared about her, and I guess I still miss her sometimes.”

The sincerity caught Danny off guard. He couldn’t help the way he stared at her, wondering if anyone talked about him like that. Did they make him a grave, or did they just… discard his memory? Would he ever get to stand over his own headstone and think of all the things he used to be, loving and missing that person?

He frowned a little, and watched the blonde woman.

She smiled fondly, a sort of bittersweetness in her expression, at the headstone. Then she took a breath, blinked a few times, and redirected her smile to Danny.

“Your turn. What are you really doing here? Looking for real estate opportunities,” she joked, eyes twinkling. Danny refrained from stepping away and turning tail. He looked at her closely.

She didn’t seem familiar, but the GIW were growing larger and there were plenty of operatives that Danny has never met. Her jacket was big enough to hide a blaster… but they couldn’t have found him so quickly. No, besides, no self-respecting operative would wear such expressive colors.

“Something like that,” he blurted out before he could even think. “I mean, not like that. I don’t… I don’t know anymore.” His voice was a soft whisper and he stared at himself where he lay crumpled. “I don’t think I can go back home anymore. I don’t… I don’t know who I am. What I am. People aren’t supposed to… live through things like these, aren’t they? Die through, or whatever.”

“What things?” The question was tentative. “Are you— what are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” he said with bitter conviction. “Absolutely nothing. I was going to hide it in your coffin.”

“How did you—? wait, hide what?” Her voice changed from its friendly, wistful tone to a razor-sharp serious one. She stepped closer to him, trying to meet his gaze.

“Got a feeling. Like I might do the same one day, if I had one.”

Danny didn’t stop her when she got too close to her own headstone. When she followed the direction of his gaze to the twisted, hollow thing that ate up the surrounding shadows like this blacker than black void that was trying to grow into a walking, lifeless monster made up of clinical pain and suffering.

Stephanie did not scream or gasp. She held the headstone in a brutal grip, short nails painfully scraping against it. Her mouth gaped wordlessly, jaw trembling with shaky and uneven breaths. The lines of her face contorted into themselves in their attempt to make sense of the thing they were seeing. Eyes glistened even in the shadows, their pupils a disappearing pinprick.

Stephanie’s horror was a silent one.

“What— wh-who is that? Is that—?”

“Me,” he said flatly. “I thought I’d be able to escape. That I would last longer than their curiosity and hate.” He clenched his fists. “I saw a glimpse of snow the day it happened. I” —his voice cracked— “I didn’t even make it three months.”

Stephanie stared at him, transfixed. At the Danny Fenton that would never again be.

“Wh-what happened to you?” Her voice trembled, barely a breeze-like whisper.

“Don’t ask me that,” he said, strained and holding back suffocating memories. “P-please don’t— just, don’t.” He took a gasping breath, eyes snapping wildly towards the sound of screeching tires in the distance. A big car headed their way. “Hey, listen. Hey— Stephanie.”

A creaking slingshot, her wide stare shot back towards him. Her mouth had been snapped shut, and loud, shallow breaths tried to push themselves in and out of her nose.

“Take care of him, please,” he begged, bright, opalescent tears falling freely down his face. “They can’t find him again. The pain will never end again. Just— I, I don’t know, get him a coffin or anything, but don’t bury him yet. I’ll find him again, but I can’t stay. I can’t, they can’t find us again. Promise me, please?”

This was a complete stranger in front of him. But she had her own grave, and she stood over it alive and well. He had to trust her with the only thing he had left. She would understand that. She had to.

“Stephanie, please,” he pleaded once more when she said nothing. The loud engine of that big car became louder. The downward rush of a thick, heavy axe.

She nodded, shakily.

“I-I promise, yeah.” She cleared her throat, pulling herself from the edge and regaining clarity. “Yes. I will. Go, I’ll- I’ll take care of it. Whatever it is.”

Danny cried. An urgency was overtaking him, thrusting him into that day they hunted him down.

“Thank you,” he managed to whisper before shooting off into the clear night sky, leaving behind a faint comet-green streak. He disappeared in seconds, leaving Stephanie Brown alone with the horrifyingly disfigured corpse of a teenager and her clattering thoughts.

She pulled out her phone in a shaky flash, going straight to the Favorites in her Contacts.

The call connected after the third ring.

“I need your help hiding a body.”

[drawnale]

Day 25 "It finally sunk in for Jack and Maddie: no matter how alive he seemed, Danny was actually dead. So they buried him."

I got sick in the begining of the month so I was unable to the whole ectober month as I wanted but I will try to do the last ectober week atleast.

[dnpanimationstudioclone]

Meet The Fright Knight!🎃

Meet my version of one of Danny Phantom’s most frightening ghosts aswell as THE ghost knight of Halloween himself! THE FRIGHT KNIGHT!!!!!!����🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃

What do u think? I’d love to know💖

[aprocessionofthoughts]

We Love You

Ectoberweek2023 day 25- It finally sunk in for Jack and Maddie: no matter how alive he seemed, Danny was actually dead. So they buried him. TW- buried alive summary- Jack and Maddie are good parents, and good parents help their children move on

ao3 masterlist

It had finally sunk in for Jack and Maddie that no matter how alive Danny seemed, he was actually dead. 

It had taken them a while to notice. And when they had, they were devastated. How could their little boy have become a monster? Sure, he wasn’t that monstrous now, but everyone knew that hte longer a ghost stuck around the more monstrous they became. The more they couldn’t relate with humanity, and the more their base instinct for destruction came through.

They knew their son wouldn’t want to be a monster, that he was just struggling to move on.

They had to be good parents; they had to help him move on.

But how could they do it? If Danny disappeared, there would be questions asked, investigations made. How could they send their little boy off peacefully?

In the meantime, they could prepare the coffin. It had to be specially made, so the ghost couldn’t escape. This way the ghost would be left with no other option than to move on.

They worked on it while Danny was at school. Thankfully Jazz was already at college, so they wouldn’t have to hide their activities from her.

Maybe they could just say Danny had gone missing? But that would be a hard ruse to maintain. There would be too many investigations, too many questions.

If they were going to do that, then they needed a plan.

It took them a while to make the coffin, find a place to bury it and dig the hole, and plan how they were going to deal with investigators. The mourning wouldn’t have to be faked. Their son was dead, had been for a while and they’d been too preoccupied to realize it.

But finally they were ready.

“Danny,” Maddie called from the lab, “could you come down and help us move some equipment?”

“I’ll be down in a second!” Danny called from the kitchen. He headed down to the lab. Hopefully this wouldn't take long. He was going to meet up with Sam and Tucker in a bit to play Doomed and go to Nasty Burger.

“What do you need?” he asked as he stepped into the lab.

“Over here.” Jack said with his back to Danny.

He walked over and Jack motioned to a sliver box. As soon as Danny touched it the box emitted a jolt of energy that made Danny’s muscles seize. He fell to the floor unable to move. “Dad?” Danny’s voice trembled.

“I’m sorry sweetie.” his mother said with tears in her eyes.

“We’re doing this for your own good, Danno.” his dad said, advancing on him with a set of ecto-suppression cuffs.

“No. please. I’m your son. Please!” Danny felt tears come to his eyes.

“We know, Danny. But you have to move on. You can’t stay here.”

“We know you would never want to be a ghost, Danny.”

“We’re just trying to help you.”

“No. please. I’m not fully dead! I’m half dead! I'm still alive. Please!”

“We’re so sorry Danny. We should have noticed sooner.”

“You need to move on Danno.”

Danny was crying no, pleading with them, but they weren’t listening. His skin buzzed and he couldn’t access his powers.

Jack placed a piece of tape over his mouth. “I’m sorry, but we can’t risk you manipulating us into letting you go. You understand, right?”

“We love you.”

The Fentons loaded their son into the GAV and drove out into the woods where they had left the coffin. Danny was still limp, the cuffs keeping him from recovering from the shock. His face was wet with tears and snot, and the Fenton parents avoided looking at him. They couldn’t risk letting a dangerous ghost go. They had to help free their son.

They laid him in the coffin.

“Remember we love you, Danny.”

They closed the lid and shoveled the dirt over it.

[ectoberhaunt]

Ectoberhaunt 2024: Past and Future

Y'all ready for this? Here is our prompt list for the event this year! (Please clap) What's this? A triple prompt for the first day? That's right! We're celebrating the Phandom new and old for our favorite ghost boy's 20th anniversary with a theme centered around the passage of time and what that could mean to Danny and his rogue's gallery. As always, our last prompt day is the 24th where we hand off to @ectoberweekofficial for their event. This makes our free days October 5th, 6th, 19th, 20th, and the 24th to Halloween this year. Please tag all prompt fills as "ectoberhaunt24" so we can find your posts, and follow the guidelines below the cut.

Posting for this event begins Monday, October 1st!

Down below are our written out calendar prompts (for accessibility) AND our posting guidelines. Check 'em out!\

The Prompts

Below are the listed prompts in date order, if it's blank it's a catch up day. First prompt is Past and second is Future.

Past, Present, & Future

Dinosaur & Robot

Archaeology & Meteorology

Came Back Wrong

-

-

Bury & Unearth

Pirate Ship & Spaceship

Rise & Fall

Creepy & Wet

Dark and Stormy Night

Isekai: Past Prompt (Here)

Isekai: Old Hero, New World

Cult Classic & Murder Mystery

Science Fiction & Double Feature

Bloom & Wither

Gothic Horror & Cosmic Horror

Mirror Image

-

-

Analog & Digital

Steampunk & Solarpunk

Big Bang & Heat Death

Time Loop

Ectober Week: 25-31

Post Guidelines

The following are the posting guidelines. Please follow them so we can reblog and share your posts without issue. We will also have this as a post available on our blog separately.

Tag all posts with “Ectoberhaunt24” so we can find it. If you do not use this tag, we may not find you.

Tag which calendar you're pulling from (“EH Past” or “EH Future”), which day the prompt is for ("Day X"). You do NOT need to tag which prompt it is for, but PLEASE put it somewhere in the post so we know which prompt you are filling- if you do not do this we will likely not reblog it.

Put your fics under a readmore. Add a summary before the cut with a short preview, content warnings, and which prompts were used. Then, add a readmore no more than 150 words or 10 lines/groups of text under your summary. If you're using mobile, type :readmore: and hit enter to make a readmore. If you do not do this, we will NOT reblog your post.

Make sure to tag all common content warnings (blood, gore, death, drugs, body horror, existentialism, & vermin)

We will try to reblog every prompt we can. Feel free to @ us in the post too or send us a DM with the post!!

Here's a handy dandy google sheet to keep track of your own progress, simply make your own copy and mess with it -> LINK

Banner graphic by @kawaiijohn

Calendar Graphics by @ajitated (template) and @five-rivers (composition)

Google sheet by @ajitated and @jackdaw-sprite

Happy creating!!

[ectoberweekofficial]

Ectober Week 2024

🪄 ✨ Welcome to the Ectober Academy where you will spend a week casting spells, making potions, and sharing your conjured enchantments for all to see! ✨🪄

Each day you have a choice between a short charm, or a longer incantation from your spellbook (or perhaps, for the most daring witches, you can combine them both).

Note: The one-word prompts are not limited to artists, and the two sentence prompts are not limited to writers. Both prompts are available to anyone who wants to try them.

The result of your spell can be in the form of a piece of art, a written story, a musical jingle, a tenacious craft, a silly meme, or whatever your heart desires. All content directly related to the Danny Phantom cartoon is acceptable for this magical challenge. Ships, non-ships, crossovers, angst, fluff—so long as it relates to the show, how you choose to represent these prompts is entirely up to you.

When you are satisfied with your creation, you may post it on Tumblr under the tag #ectoberweek2024 so that we may find it and reblog it here!

Happy Ectober! 👻🎃

[art credit goes to @faerynova - check out her blog and look through her cool art!]

Prompts:

October 25

👻 Graveyard Shift

👻 They found the corpse on a Sunday. So why was Danny Fenton still alive?

October 26

👻 Cornered

👻 Desiree makes all your dreams come true. And Nocturne handles the nightmares.

October 27

👻 Ghost Peeler

👻 He tried to stay in control of his ghost half. He really tried.

October 28

👻 Skeleton Key

👻 Tick, tick, tick. The sound was coming from his core.

October 29

👻 Last Rites

👻 They knew it would kill him. They did it on purpose.

October 30

👻 Tarot

👻 Danny had wondered when he would see his clone again. He never wanted it to be like this.

October 31

👻 Ectology

👻 He thought he'd been prepared to take off the mask on the hazmat suit and see what he looked like underneath. He couldn't have been more wrong.

Check out our Post Guidelines for posting your work, and if you have any questions, feel free to shoot us a DM!

[sumiink]

Ectober 2023

Ngl, art block hit hard this year at the worst time possible and I only got 6 done. BUT I like what i did do and I'll try again next year. And it was fun to see everyone else's work too!

Individual pictures and their prompts under cut:

Day 4: Zombies

Day 25: Will-o-wisps

Day 26: Students start to go missing. At the same time, the Guys in White go quiet.

Day 27: Blood blossoms weren’t named for their blood red color. They were named for the liquid they fed on.

Day 28: It’s not an obsession if he can keep it under control, right?

Day 5: Masquerade

[jhdanes]

ILLUSTRATION UPDATE! || ECTOBER WEEK 2024 || Friday, 25. OCTOBER || 2024

☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆ 𖤓 WEBSITE𖤓 SUPPORT𖤓 SPEEDPAINT 𖤓☆ ★ ✮ ★ ☆ @ectoberweekofficial day 1 the game inspired this one!

[therandomartmaker]

[Image ID: A digital artwork with a top-down view of Danny Fenton with long pointed ears and arms placed across his chest inside of a coffin in an unburied section of the earth. There is a window to his face, and under it has carved: “HIS IMMORTAL VISAGE, HE WHO IS UNDEAD, our son, LIES WITHIN may he find rest in his false death” with ‘Our Son’ and ‘May he find rest in his false death’ written in a cursive font. The writing glows a bright green, contrasting the dull dreary colours of the rest of the artwork.

On Danny’s left hand, (our right) is a faded imprint of his Danny Phantom insignia, and mirroring it on his right hand is the Fenton ‘F’.

The window to his face has several light shines on it, particularly some that go over his face, and one that obscure the Fenton ‘F’ in addition to a crack in the glass. Two hand prints are visible on the glass, as well. /End ID]

Day 25: “It finally sunk in for Jack and Maddie: no matter how alive he seemed, Danny was actually dead. So they buried him.”

A quick idk doodle for the start of ectober week since i don’t actually have the motivation to complete an artwork :/ I also still don’t have a definite danny design lol

a few things to note:

The yet to fade handprints, the light obscuring the Fenton ‘F’ on danny’s right hand while also making him seem paler, the crease showing an unfitful rest in his brow and his slughtly pursed lips.

[five-rivers]

Ancestral Chapter 19

Written for Ectober 2023 Day 25: Will-o-the-wisp

.

The moment didn't last.  

Danny could almost feel Gwensyvyr fade from the sight of the others.  Not all at once, but not slowly, either.  

Matthew made a sort of wounded sound in the back of his throat.  “Danny,” he said.  “Danny, I was dead asleep a minute ago, but that–  That wasn’t–”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  There had to be some sort of protocol for situations like this, some sort of etiquette for introducing an honored ancestor to their living family, but Danny didn’t know what it was.  Any ghost-related formalisms he knew were, after all, learned in spite of his parents.  

“It was that thing again,” said Vivian.  “How did it get in?”   

It was the first time Danny had heard her speak since…

Since she'd died.  

“Technology,” said Gwensyvyr, grimly, “a road we could not take.”

Right.  The thing.  “Jazz, could you…?”

“Yes, sorry,” said Jazz.  She stepped forward and, when Danny relaxed the shield, used the thermos to suck up the remains of the ghost.  Danny would have to see if he could steal some of his mother’s gloves to wash that out.  He wouldn’t put any ghost in such a small with blood blossom residue if he could help it.

The weaker ghosts started to come forward again, surrounding the family closely.  None of them, to Danny’s relief, seemed to be hurt very much.  

Irene took a deep breath.  “I will set the table.  Danny, how many of our honored ancestors will sit with us?”

“Um,” said Danny, looking at the packed room.  

“Vivian and I, only,” said Gwensyvyr.  “I think that should be easier, yes?  Your other relatives here are closer than I, yet still distant.”

“Two,” said Danny.  “Queen Gwensyvyr and… and Vivian.”

“Former queen might be a more apt title,” said Gwensyvyr, as Vivian winced.  “I am queen only among the dead.”

“Two,” said Irene.  “Two.  That makes twelve of us.  Twelve.  Twelve place settings.  Do we even have anything decent to serve…”  She walked away, towards the kitchen.  “Iris, George, come help me.”

Everyone else sort of shuffled into place around the table, zombie-like.  Except for Lewis.  He picked up one of Joanna’s heavy heraldry books and started using it to smash his phone.

"I could have handled it," murmured Danny as he bent to pick up his bowl of cereal.  He’d knocked it to the floor at some point during the very brief fight.  “The ghost.  You didn’t need to– You could have been hurt again.”

“And you could have been hurt.  For what reason do you think I have stayed, except to watch over my cherished descendants, hm?”  

Leo walked over with a wad of paper napkins and handed them to Danny.  “Is Vivian really here?”

“I’m here,” said Vivian, her voice so faint and distant it could have been carried from miles away by an errant breeze.  

“She’s here,” Danny said.  

Leo’s face crumpled.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m sorry.  Vivian.  I don’t– I didn’t–”  He shuddered.  “I’m sorry.”

Vivian didn’t say anything, but she was crying.  

Irene and her children came back into the dining room with plates and sandwiches.  They set the table in a precise way that felt strangely familiar, as if Danny should recognize the ritual they were following.  When they were done, there were twelve place settings, and each of them had a sandwich, a glass of water, a folded napkin, and a sharp knife.  

“Honored ancestors, I invite you to our table,” said Matthew, with a small bow.

There was a long awkward silence as Gwensyvyr and Vivian maneuvered around and through two of the chairs to ‘sit’ in them.  The silence only grew longer and more awkward still afterwards.

“Danny,” said Matthew, “where are they?”

“Oh,” said Danny, realizing the problem.  “Those two chairs.”  He nodded his head towards them.  

Matthew sighed in relief and shepherded Danny to the chair right next to Gwensyvyr before taking his own place on the opposite side of the table.  

No one touched their sandwiches.

“Please, honored ancestors, we are ready to receive your wisdom.  

Gwensyvyr folded her hands in front of her, and her clothing began to blur and fade into something simpler and more modern. 

"Perhaps these things are ones I should have spoken to you earlier," she said.  "I will not ask you to forgive me for my lapse in judgment if so.  I had my reasons.  First, I could not, then, I was unsure, after that, there was too much to explain by spelling each word out letter by letter.  And two of those three ran out today, yet I thought, 'What difference an hour?  Two?'" She shook her head minutely.  "Urgency is difficult when one has practiced patience for so long."

"Honored ancestor," said Vivian, quietly, interrupting even as Danny hurried to relay what Gwensyvyr had said to everyone else.  "I think.  I think I should say… what happened to me.  First."

"If you think that best, granddaughter, then I shall not stop you."

Vivian nodded, then turned to Danny.  "You can hear me, too, can't you?"

“Yes,” said Danny.  “Yes, I can hear you.”  He rubbed his eyes.  “I can hear you.”

Vivian nodded.  Briefly, her form flickered bleeding and bloody and bruised, the scars of her death apparent just for a moment.  

“I didn’t die at the same time as everyone else,” said Vivian.  She was using the cadence that Danny knew had been trained into her as a future heir to the throne.  She’d complained about it to him and Jazz, once, when they were all younger.  “I didn’t even die the same day.  They killed me the night before.”  She paused and Danny finished repeating what she had said.  

“That… matches the coroner's report,” said Matthew, slowly.  

It took Vivian another minute to speak again.  “When I’m stressed, I like to walk through the university park.  It’s near my flat.  It’s–  I was stressed that afternoon.”

Leo hiccuped.  

“It isn’t your fault,” Vivian reassured him.  “I would have been stressed anyway.  I went out.  I wanted to get a walk before the sun set.  I had energy, I had…  A man came up to talk to me.  That’s not so unusual.  I wasn’t worried.  I had my taser, I had my panic button, security knew where I was, more or less.  He asked me questions about religion.  About modernization.  I thought he was a reporter.  But then I saw him at the coronation, and–”  She broke off, biting her lip.  “Bastard.”

“Wallace Hadryn?” asked Danny.  “That guy?”

Vivian nodded once, tightly.  “He wanted to know what I thought about the progress faction’s proposal for bringing in overseas business.  Wanted to know if I’d consider ‘canceling outdated traditions’ and make a stand for ‘real progress.’  Just– You know how it is.  It was offensive, but normal.”

Danny didn’t know how it was, but it didn’t matter.  His cousins seemed to.  

“I told him to get lost.  And he said something about trying the nice way one last time.  And then he changed.  He was the same as that thing.  Maybe he was even the same thing.  I don’t know.  I ran.  I hit my panic button.  But then all the lights went off.  All of them.  It was dark.  It was like anything with any electricity just stopped.”  She breathed in deeply, her chest rising in remembered motion.  

“That happens, sometimes, with ecto-energy,” said Jazz.  “But if it was from the same ghost, you’d expect it to break the phone before coming out of it.”

“It might have been the same one, I don’t know.  It could have been something different.  But I was getting away, I was– Then there were the lights.  They were the only lights I could see for at least a mile.  I thought they were normal people.  But you know those stories about not following lights.”  She covered her face.  “That thing was just chasing me towards them.  Herding me.  Ancestors.”  

Gwensyvyr patted her gently on the back.  

“They didn’t want to kill me, at first.  They wanted the Key and the Seal.  They– After, one of them said something about my Key being the last one.  I don’t know what they meant by that.  There were– There were five of them.  Mostly men, I think.  At least one woman.  They had their faces covered.  They didn’t want to kill me, at first.  They said they had a way to make sure I was thinking about the right things, when I became queen, but they needed to put me somewhere safe, first, and they needed the Key and the Seal.  They tried to take them.  I fought.  I fought.  Just like we’re trained to do.  And I–  One of the new ones, the one in charge, not Wallace Hadryn or whatever he was, they weren’t human, either.  I managed to scratch them, and they just…  Just…  They didn’t stop hitting me.  And the other four started in, and I…”  

And she’d died.  

“I was… there.  For a while.  Afterward.  They started talking about damage control.  Changed plans.  One mentioned a backup.  The one in charge told them to be quiet and leave.  They took.  The body.  Then I was there.  And I.  I couldn’t do anything.  For a long time.  The lights came back on.  And I saw…” she trailed off again.  “I had…  There was something like the Key.  It looked wrong.  It was the wrong color.  Everything was the wrong color.  But I could… there was something…  You know that story, about using the compass on the Key?  The one with Prince Yon?  It’s real.  And it brought me here.  And I saw Danny.  And he touched the key, and it…  Turned back.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Danny.  “I still have that.”  Because it wasn’t like he was just going to leave that lying around.  He took it out of his pocket and laid it on the table.  Everyone looked at it.  “I don’t know why it did that.  I’ve never touched part of someone’s, um, skyn skryth,” he settled on, finally, not having another good term for the clothing that a ghost wore because they’d worn it when they’d died or when they were buried, “and had it turn real.”

"Oh, yes," said Gwensyvyr as everyone leaned in to look at the Key.  "That is, as they now say, a feature, not a bug.”

Both Vivian and Danny turned back to Gwensyvyr to blink slowly at her.

Gwensyvyr tilted her head.  “What?”

[darthfrodophantom]

I have a very big announcement to make, and it’s one I hope you’ll all be excited for. I know I am.

(Maybe it’s one you’ve been expecting seeing the crossposting I’ve been doing on AO3.)

I’m going to be releasing the final chapter of A Secret Uncovered in 10 DAYS.

That’s right. After 10 years since my last update and after 17 years since its publication, I’m going to be releasing the final chapter in 10 DAYS.

So to (hopefully) help get you pumped and psyched, I’m going to start a Countdown to A Secret Uncovered. Every day leading up to the release of the chapter, I’ll be posting a little something about the process with little insights or tidbits. And then on 9/25 the final chapter will be up! 

So for day 10, we have 10 years since my last update. So what are 10 things that have changed since I last posted a chapter for this fic?

I grew up (a lot) and I hope my writing matured along with it. And I did all kinds of adult things.

Discord Danny Phantom communities appeared

We have the first canon content in this Phandom since the show (seriously, still can’t believe this one)

Popular AU tags like No One Knows AU or Corpse AU tags being used

COVID – hard to sometimes remember a time existed before that

Danny Phantom is streaming and we actually have complete access to all the episodes (and not the messed up DVDs that skipped beloved season 2 episodes)

The creation and use of Wes as an established fan character

The Dannypocalypse started

Phandom events like Invisobang, Phic Phight, and Ectoberhaunt/Ectober Week

Lance Thunder Reporting Live’s daily weather updates (look I love these)

I’m sure there are a lot more things in the phandom that have changed over the years (and a lot more that's changed in the world too), but it’s sometimes insane to think of just how many things can happen in 10 years.

Oh, if you're looking for a reread before the final chapter, you can find my new edited version on AO3 here

Countdown List: 10 things that happened since I last posted a chapter 9 people I'd like to thank 8 of my favorite memories

[sykloni]

Ectober 2022

25. Forest

"He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried"

Danny dies in the portal, but he doesn't want to be dead - he has his whole life ahead of him. He just can't. So he burries his body into the woods, goes back to his normal life and does his best to forget about it.

[nat-a-nat]

25. Forest

He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried

He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.

It's October now. It's getting colder. The leaves are falling. They must be covering it by now.

They crunch under his steps as he walks. Something CRUSHES under his foot. His mind pictures bones. Ribs breaking in two.

It's just a branch.

He continues his walk.

The sky is bright, but the mood is gloom. The air is moist. 

It's been a while. It must have decomposed by now, with how much rain they get. Sometimes, he thinks he can feel the dirt on his bones.

He puts a finger on his pulse. Thump. A pause. A painfully long, long, pause. It shouldn't be this long. Thump. He is alive. But his skin is cold.

His hoodie is thick. It was always enough to keep him warm. Now, he is always cold.

The ice of his core. Slowly freezing him from the inside out. 

It's shallowly buried. His corpse. Barely a few centimetres underground. A lump in the dirt hastily covered with soil. Six feet, that's how it's supposed to be.

He strays from the path. Disappeares through the trees. Like a ghost.

There's a few hiker trails in the forests surrounding Amity, but he disregards them all.

He moves through the thick foliage. There are broken branches, broken saplings. He tries to not further disturb it all.

He crushes a flower about halfway through. The stem is mangled, his shoe sole imprinted in the bud.He picks it. He rolls it between his fingers the rest of the way.

He reaches a clearing. There's a big rock in the middle. 

His soul aches. A corpse with no grave, a ghost without rest. What a pity.

He goes up to the rock. The ground underneath it is uneven, disturbed from digging.

Is it still wrong to stand on a grave if it's yours?

He kneels on the forest floor and sets a candle down. Lights it. He lays the mangled flower beside it.

A single broken flower for a lonely corpse.

He feels sorry for it. It must be sad. All alone. In a dark, cold forest. With nobody to know you died, with nobody to mourn you.

Leaving his makeshift graveyard, he felt lighter. That single candle flame keeping him warmer than any blanket.

[drawnale]

Day 25 Forest

[squirrellysketches]

day 25: BOO

[iamaghost-fearme]

Ectober Day 25: Boo!

Read on AO3

It started slowly. One or two students took notice that Danny Fenton, son of the town’s most prominent ghost hunters, would run away every time a ghost showed up. He’d either be gone as soon as the ghost showed up or even earlier. Either way, he was never around. A few people at first thought maybe he was running off for ghost hunting equipment or to call his parents for help. They quickly realized however, that he wouldn’t return until after the ghost was gone and his parents, if they showed up at all, would be even later. That led to the only possible answer; Danny Fenton was terrified of ghosts.

Once Dash Baxter realized this, he took every opportunity to use this knowledge in his torment of Danny. He roped the rest of the football team into his plans and would have them jump out from around corners, behind doors, and any time Danny wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around him. Each player had their own favorite battle cry to accompany their jump scare, all in varying degrees of ridiculous.

Danny honestly didn’t much mind the assumption that all his classmates seemed to have about him. It helped keep their minds far from connecting any dots between Fenton and Phantom, and kept him firmly at the bottom of the social ladder where no one wanted to hang out with him and learn anything about him. He could handle the occasional jock jumping out to scare him with the added benefit of improving his acting skills.

It was only once the rumors spread beyond the high school that Danny started to get fed up. Someone must have bragged to their younger sibling. Kids started coming up to him in the park or while he was hanging with his friends at the Nasty Burger and trying to scare him. The younger the kid, the worse they were at being scary.

One Saturday, Danny finally lost his battle with self control. It was a beautiful day and he was enjoying what was likely to be one of the last nice days of fall with Sam and Tucker in the park. Not only was the weather perfect, the ghosts had left him alone all day and he was enjoying the rare break reclined back on the grass resting. At least, he was until a group of elementary kids noticed the trio and decided they could all impress each other by scaring the high schooler.

Danny’s perfect day was interrupted by a loudly shouted Boo! He opened his eyes to find the grinning face of a skinny kid hovering over him.

“Leave me alone,” he grumbled, eyes slipping shut to resume his almost-nap.

“Boo!” another kid shouted from what sounded like off to his left. He sat up this time, to tell the kids to scram. Pulling these kinds of stunts at school was one thing, but interrupting his first free day in weeks was too much. He hadn’t gotten further than opening his mouth to repeat the request to leave him alone when a third and final Boo! came from a kid who jumped up off the ground to emphasize his point.

Danny narrowed his eyes. Screw it, they wanted scary? He let his eyes glow a toxic green and the ghostly static he spoke with in ghost form creep into his voice.

B̶̬̹̞̞̰͎̂̏͐̚o̵͙̘̳͉͎̯̾̓̐̀͝͠ô̴̡̢̲̪̭̘̄̏̀̔͋!̷̧͈̬̦̰̄͒͛̊̆̀̉͠

The kids’ faces paled and they ran from the trio of teenagers, stumbling over each other and themselves in their haste.

“I’m surprised you made it this long dude,” Tucker commented, handing Sam cash behind Danny’s back. “Can’t say they didn’t deserve it.”