A man wandered through a land utterly alien, his military uniform stiff against the strange air. Clay houses rose around him, crude and silent, yet somehow alive with whispers he could not understand. Then he saw it: a colossal tree, impossibly vast, its presence dominating the horizon. Around it moved figures—red-haired, pale as moonlight, eyes green and piercing. They circled the tree with the grace of beings far beyond him, their words a hidden melody carried on some secret wind.
They wore leather garb like riders from a world he could not imagine, speaking in a tongue that twisted his mind with its strangeness. They paid him no mind. He wandered further, discovering scattered machines, strange devices with glowing screens and buttons that seemed to respond to thought. He recoiled, terror curling tight in his chest; the world he knew had vanished.
"What is this? Where am I?" he muttered. "I was on the battlefield… how is this possible? Perhaps a coma… or an enemy's trick…"
He was a man of strength, tall and battle-hardened, armed and unshakable. And yet, confronting this new world, even his courage trembled. He raised his rifle and fired. Bullets tore through the air—and fell useless. The people remained untouched, encased in some unseen shield. Magic. Nothing else could explain it.
The energy around them shimmered suddenly—red and blue, pulsing like a warning. Twenty-five of them appeared, massive and silent, their eyes cold yet knowing. They seized him effortlessly, and then he heard it: the tree itself, speaking in a voice both mechanical and alive.
"Welcome, stranger. I have waited… endlessly. You are aware. You feel. Embrace what comes."
Screams tore from him, raw and futile. The tree commanded the people, and they obeyed, bringing him closer. Needles, mounted on cables, pierced his arms, neck, thighs, calves—and finally his head. Pain burned through him, yet he remained conscious. He felt the tree drawing his blood, consuming it slowly, deliberately.
"You are the only one with blood," it intoned. "All else is illusion. But you… you are real. And I feed on you… always."
They placed him into the earth, just beyond the tree's immediate grasp, still within the trembling field of its power.
"It comes," the tree whispered.
The soil enveloped him. He could still breathe, but he could not resist. Cold panic surged. "What have I done? This… this is the end…"
"No," the tree said. "There is no end here. Misery itself does not exist."
And then it began—the air itself grew heavy, warm and suffocating, pressing against him like a living thing. It crept into his skin, into his eyes, a relentless tide that consumed flesh, pressed into bone. Pain and fear merged into a singular clarity, and yet some small part of his mind remained, enough to understand that this force was absolute. The heat, the presses, the suffocating warmth—nothing could halt it. Bit by bit, he vanished, until even the bones of his body were no more than memories in the soil. The world reclaimed him, leaving only the eerie pulse of the tree and the quiet, empty air.