My bones be ached like they'd been rattled in a tin can. Consciousness returned in fragments—a throbbing temple, the metallic tang of blood on my lip the scrape of the gravel beneath my palms. I blinked hard, vision swimming. Rocks. Everywhere. Not the smooth, river worn stones from the trail, but jagged things, black as volcanic glass and veined with cracks that glinted faintly with orange, like embers under ash. A few skeletal trees clawed at the red—tinged sky, their branches twisted into knots.
"What the hell…?" My voice sounded wrong here—thin, swallowed up by heavy air.
I pushed myself up to sit, wincing as gravel bit into my palms. No phone. No water bottle. No trace of the trail, the joggers, the howling skateboard kids. Just this…place. The ground slopped upward into jagged ridges; the horizon blurred by haze that wasn't quite fog. Above, the sky burned rust—red the color of old bloodstains, with no sun to explain the cloying warmth. A wind gusted, carrying a smell of burnt hair.
The voice. The void. "Unworthy."
My throat tightened. Memories flickered—static, a squirrel frozen mid leap, a collar dissolving into threads—but slipped away when I tried to grasp them, like trying to hold smoke.
A cry shattered the silence.
Not a bird. Not an animal I could name. something shrill and guttural, echoing from the east. Another answered, closer, a wet chittering that raised the hairs on my neck.
"Nope. Absolutely nope."
I lurched to my feet, knees wobbling. My shoes skidded on the glassy rock as I turned west, away from the sounds. Instinct screamed at me to run, but I forced myself to walk—quiet, quiet—every sense straining. The wind carried whispers now, or maybe I imagined it. Words half—formed, too low to parse.
A shadow flitted across the rock ahead.
I froze.
Nothing moved.
But the red light had shifted. The cracks in the stones pulsed faintly, rhythmic, like a heartbeat.
Not natural. None of this is natural.
Another cry echoed, this time from the north. Closer. Hungrier.
I broke into a jog.
I collapsed against the shaded side of a boulder, my lungs burning like I'd inhaled lit gasoline. Hours of running—or maybe minutes; time meant nothing here—had left me hollowed out. My throat was as dry as the cracked earth beneath me. I kicked a loose stone, watching it skitter across the ground.
Then I turned back west.
"Bullshit."
A forest stood in the distance. Not the kind you'd find on earth—these trees were nightmares made wood, their trunks black and twisted like burnt bone, their leaves a crimson so deep It looked like the canopy was dripping blood.
Frightening? Yeah. But at least its not more fucking rocks.
I pushed off the boulder. As I walked, movement snagged my gaze upward.
Birds.
Or something close enough. A flock of them arrowed toward the forest, their silhouettes wrong in ways I couldn't pin down—wings too angular, flight patterns too jagged.
Food.
The thought cut through my exhaustion like a knife. "First drinkable water," I croaked to myself, "then we see if demon pigeons are edible."
Twenty minutes of stumbling later, I reached the forest's edge. The air here was different—thicker, tinged with something metallic, like the aftertaste of a battery. I turned for one last look at the wasteland behind me, its cracked expanse glowing dull red under that hateful sky.
"Yeah," I muttered. "Knowing my luck, I'll be back."
Then I stepped under the crimson canopy—and the shadows swallowed me whole.