Something dripped onto my cheek.
Not blood. Not rain.
Just a slow, steady drop. Cold and clean.
I opened my eyes to grey. A ceiling of mist and ash-colored sky hung over twisted trees that groaned in the wind.
My back ached. My ribs hurt when I breathed. I was lying on cracked stone, half-soaked in water, with moss clinging to my clothes like a second skin.
I should've died.
But I hadn't.
Somehow… I survived the fall.
I pushed myself up, hands shaking, vision swimming.
The gate was gone.
And the world had changed.
At first glance, everything looked… normal.
But the longer I stared, the more I realized how wrong that first impression was.
The land stretched endlessly in pale green and ash-grey, like someone had taken Earth and painted over it with muted colors. The wind still moved through the air, but it carried a different scent—faintly sweet, almost metallic.
The trees were massive, towering overhead with trunks far wider than I'd ever seen back home. Their leaves hung low, shaped like overlapping scales, and shimmered faintly under the broken sky.
Even the grass beneath me felt off—too soft, too clean, too uniform.
I reached down and plucked a flower from the ground.
The moment I did, a faint glow flared around the stem. Lines of soft white light danced from the petals to the surrounding blades of grass, pulsing gently before fading.
I stared at it in disbelief.
The flower was unlike anything I knew—petals like glass, colored with a gradient between violet and bone-white. No scent. No heat. Just light.
This isn't Earth.Not even close.
The fear settled deeper into my stomach.
If even the flowers here don't follow the rules… what else won't?
I don't know where I am.
And somehow, in this impossible situation… I'm supposed to find a way back?
The very idea feels laughable.
How do you return to a world when you don't even know how you left it?
I took a deep breath and forced myself forward, each step heavier than the last. My ribs still ached from the fall, and a dull throb pulsed in my leg with every movement.
The forest swallowed me quickly.
Trees stretched skyward like ancient towers, their canopies blotting out the already dim light. The air was thick here—heavy, damp, filled with the smell of wet bark and something faintly floral.
I searched for any visible path, anything resembling a trail or break in the endless maze of roots and moss.
Nothing.
Just the slow crunch of strange leaves beneath my feet and the eerie hum of silence broken only by the occasional creak of unseen branches.
Every direction looked the same.
Still, I kept walking. Because standing still felt worse.
I don't know how long I'd been walking. Minutes? Hours?
The forest didn't care. It stayed the same—towering trees, ghost-pale light, no sky, no direction.
Then the air changed.
It was slow at first. Barely noticeable. Like the moment before a storm when the wind stops—not because it's calm, but because something's coming.
The scent in the air shifted, too. That faint floral note turned bitter, like burnt leaves soaked in iron.
I stopped walking.
The hairs on my arms stood up.
I glanced around. Nothing had moved, but the light—
The light was dimmer.
Not because the trees grew denser, but because the color of the light itself was fading. What had once been a pale bluish hue was now a sickly grey, and it felt like the shadows had thickened, pressing in from every side.
My breathing picked up.
"No, no—don't lose it now…" I muttered, clenching my fists. My heart pounded in my chest like it wanted to escape.
Every direction looked the same. My footprints vanished the moment I turned away. The silence wasn't natural anymore—it was waiting.
Breathe. Just breathe.
I leaned against one of the tree trunks, feeling the rough bark scrape against my back, grounding me.
You're fine. You're alive. This isn't hell. You're just… lost.
Another breath. Another.
Then a sound.
A low, distant hum—almost like a song. Barely audible, but enough to make the pit of my stomach twist.
I didn't know where it came from.
But it was close.
And I was no longer sure I was alone.
The sound lingered.
Not loud. Not clear. Just a low, melodic hum that didn't belong to anything with lungs.
It came from deeper within the forest—somewhere beyond the mist, behind the trees that seemed to lean in just slightly too far.
I froze. Every part of me screamed not to move.
That's not normal.That's not wind. That's not water.
And yet… it was beautiful.
A melody without words. Just a pattern of soft tones that rose and fell like breath. Not from an instrument. Not quite a voice either.
Something in it called to me. Not like a command—but a whisper through the bones. Familiar and wrong.
My foot stepped forward before I realized it.
No. Wait.
I backed away a single step, heart racing, eyes scanning the trees like they might shift. My body was trying to make a decision my mind hadn't agreed to.
"Nope," I muttered under my breath. "Hell no."
I turned.
But the forest behind me had changed. The path I'd come from—if it ever was a path—was now swallowed by mist. The trees looked different. Taller. Closer.
I swallowed hard.
The song drifted again. This time, softer… sadder.
Not threatening. Not luring. Just… waiting.
A hand I couldn't see reaching through the fog, offering neither safety nor danger. Just presence.
I turned back toward the sound. My pulse beat in my ears. My breath fogged the air.
One step, I told myself. Just one. If it gets worse, I turn back.
I moved forward.
Then another step.
The melody stayed just ahead, always out of reach.
And though every instinct told me this was a mistake—
I kept walking.
The melody faded, but I kept walking.
The trees began to thin. The mist pulled back like a curtain.
And then I saw it.
A shallow pool—circular and perfectly still—resting in a clearing surrounded by roots and low-hanging branches. The water didn't ripple. Didn't reflect the trees.
It only reflected me.
I stepped closer, breath caught in my throat.
The surface shimmered with pale silver light, and the reflection stared back with something I hadn't seen in a long time: silence. Stillness.
Not peace. But absence.
I crouched beside the pool, reaching a hand toward the water—but I didn't touch it.
That's when I felt it.
A presence behind me.
Not like a person. Not like an animal.
Like a thought that had grown too loud to ignore.
I turned.
And she was there.
Hovering a few inches above the ground.
A woman—if you could call her that. Her features shimmered like light through glass, constantly shifting, too soft to be real. Draped in white and pale blue, her hair floated as if underwater, and her eyes held no pupils—just swirling rings of sapphire and cloud.
She tilted her head, curious, almost amused.
"Raen... ethal tosilien?"
I blinked. "What?"
She repeated the words, slower this time.
"Raen. Et-hal... to-silien?"
I stepped back instinctively.
"I—I don't understand."
She narrowed her eyes slightly. Not in anger—more like surprise. Like I'd failed a test she didn't expect me to take.
Her gaze shifted past me, toward the pool.
Then, softly, almost regretfully—
She began to fade.
Her form unraveled into threads of pale mist, each strand curling toward the sky until nothing was left but the reflection of the pool again.
But this time, I wasn't in it.
Just the trees.
Just the water.
Just the absence.