The rain, once a mere miserable nuisance, had now become a relentless assault. The lavender sky, usually just melancholic, had torn open, spilling its cold, gray guts onto the world below. Each drop felt like a shard of liquid ice, landing on Devon's skin with a sharp sting before creeping under the remnants of his soaked clothing, stealing the last precious remnants of his body heat. He huddled deeper into the nook between the roots of a giant tree, a pathetic shelter that felt more like an open grave than a sanctuary. The rough, wet surface of the roots pressed against his back, every knot a new focal point for his misery.
The cold was no longer just a sensation. It had become a living thing, an unseen entity seeping into his pores, tracing his veins, and beginning to freeze the marrow in his bones. The shivers that wracked his body were no longer mere tremors; they were violent, uncontrollable convulsions, each spasm sending a wave of searing pain from his bruised ribs, reminding him of his collision with the goblin and his brutal fall. In his mouth, the lingering taste of raw fish—of slime, mud, and blood—mingled with the bitter tang of bile rising in his throat, a disgusting cocktail of defeat.
His mind, now too tired for fear or anger, began to drift. The thin veil between reality and memory began to blur, eroded by the rain and the creeping onset of fever. He was no longer in a deadly, alien forest. He was back home.
It was a similarly rainy Sunday afternoon, in his long-lost world. He could feel the warmth of the slightly scratchy wool blanket on his legs as he lay on the living room sofa. From the kitchen came the faint scent of cinnamon and his mother's hot chocolate—not the rushed instant kind, but the patiently prepared brew, a small ritual to combat the gloomy weather. He could hear the dull drone of the television from the armchair across the room; his father was watching a documentary on Roman history, his deep, monotonous voice a soothing soundtrack to his laziness. Kaito would be sending him silly messages about a new game they had to try, and Rina would be reading a book twice as thick as her textbooks, occasionally sending over a sarcastic comment about how stupid the documentary was.
Warmth. Safety. A boredom so ordinary it felt like an infinite luxury now. The memory brought no comfort. It was torture. Every detail—the warmth of the ceramic mug in his hands, the hiss of the space heater, his mother's gentle laugh—was a knife twisting in his deepest wound.
"Damn it," he whispered, his voice cracking, barely audible over the roar of the rain. "Why… why am I here?"
The question hung in the cold air, unanswered. There was no noble dragon to fight, no ancient prophecy to fulfill. He was just a teenage boy who had made one wrong step, who had fallen out of his world out of curiosity for a small blue flower. The story he had craved had found him, and it turned out to be a cruel cosmic joke. He wasn't the hero. He wasn't even the tragic first victim. He was a statistical error, a forgotten footnote in a much larger, more indifferent narrative.
The last of his strength left him. The violent tremors slowly subsided, not because he was any warmer, but because his muscles were too exhausted to continue fighting. His head lolled to the side, and his eyes closed. The darkness that welcomed him was not a peaceful sleep. It was a surrender, an oblivion born of total weakness. His failing body had finally given up.
And in that darkness, the fever took hold, weaving nightmares from the fragments of his trauma.
He was back in his classroom, but its walls were made of gnarled, mossy tree trunks. His monotone history teacher now had the leering face of a goblin, pointing at him with a stone dagger and letting out a hoarse cackle, "Grak, grak, grak!" Devon tried to answer a question on the blackboard, but the chalk in his hand crumbled into blood and fish scales. He turned to Kaito and Rina for help, but they just stared at him with empty eyes, their faces distorted like a burned photograph. "You're pathetic, Devon," Rina's voice whispered from a distance. "You couldn't even pass the first test."
Then the scene changed. He was in his cave again, but it was now the stomach of a giant bear. The rocky walls pulsated like a living organ, and in the center of the room, on a pile of ash, lay his flint and steel, shining with a tempting light. He tried to crawl toward them, but the cave floor was slick with blood and the blue slime of giant leeches that clung to his body, pulling him down, sucking away what was left of his strength.
The dream shifted one last time. He was drowning in a dark river, but the water was thick like syrup. He couldn't reach the surface. Above him, the twin moons—one silver, one jade—stared down, not as celestial bodies, but as the cold, uncaring eyes of a god. And then, his mother's face appeared on the water's surface, looking at him with an expression not of anger, but of infinite sorrow. "Devon," her lips formed his name without a sound, before her face shattered like a ripple in the water, leaving him alone in the consuming darkness.
The next day, dawn arrived not as a promise, but as a silent witness. The rain had stopped, leaving a drenched, glistening forest under a pale lavender light. Devon awoke to a fit of harsh, dry coughing, each tremor sending a dagger of pain through his lungs and ribs. The air he breathed felt like fire in his swollen throat.
He opened his eyes. The world spun and shimmered strangely. The fever had burned through him all night, leaving a thick fog in his mind. He tried to move, but his body refused. The pain was no longer a background hum; it was a deafening symphony. He glanced at his thigh. The gash from the goblin's dagger was no longer just a red line. Its edges were swollen, an angry red with ugly purple hues, and thin red streaks were running up his skin from the wound. Infection. The bite mark on his arm also throbbed with a malevolent heat, and the circular scars from the leeches on his chest were itchy and inflamed.
His wounds weren't healing at all. His body, denied rest, proper nutrition, or cleanliness, had given up. This was true torture. Not the swift torture of claw or fang, but the slow torture of rotting from the inside out.
"So… this is it," he thought, the realization strangely calm. There was no panic. No rage. Just an infinite exhaustion. He was going to die here, under this alien tree, from an infected scratch from a ridiculous little green creature. He would rot and be eaten by the strange insects of this forest, and no one would ever know. The irony was so profound it was almost funny.
He just lay there, his breathing shallow and ragged, waiting for the darkness to return and claim him for good. His blurry eyes stared blankly at the wet forest floor before him. And that's when he saw it.
It was a beetle. The tiny creature was no bigger than his thumbnail, with a copper-colored carapace that glittered with raindrops. It was struggling. One of its legs was stuck in a sticky clump of mud. Devon watched it, his sluggish, foggy mind focused solely on this tiny drama. The beetle pulled. It failed. It paused for a moment, its tiny antennae twitched. Then it tried again, from a slightly different angle, shifting its weight. Pull. Pull. And finally, with a small jerk, its leg came free. The beetle didn't stop to celebrate. It didn't stop to curse the mud. It just cleaned its leg quickly and then methodically continued on its way, crawling over a decaying leaf, toward its unknown destination.
Something small shifted inside Devon's mind.
The beetle. It didn't ask why the rain had fallen. It didn't lament its fate for getting stuck in the mud. It just faced the obstacle in front of it, overcame it, and kept going. Life. It was that simple.
The thought was a minuscule spark in the cold darkness of his despair. It didn't grant him any magical strength. It didn't heal his infections. But it extinguished his apathetic calm. He watched the beetle until it disappeared behind a root.
"I'm… not dead yet," he whispered, the words raspy and foreign, scratching his raw throat.
He wasn't dead yet. He was dying, yes. But he wasn't dead.
A new, primal need surfaced, stronger than the pain and exhaustion: Thirst. His throat felt like sandpaper. His lips were cracked. He could hear the gentle gurgle of the nearby stream. It was maybe ten meters away. A distance that felt like a thousand kilometers.
He had to move.
With a groan that was more animal than human, he tried to push himself up with his arms. The pain that exploded in his shoulder and chest was so intense his vision went black for a moment. He collapsed back into the mud, gasping for air.
"Again," he commanded himself.
He didn't try to stand. He began to crawl. To drag his broken body through the mud and wet leaves. Every movement was a deliberate agony. His left hand trembled as it took his weight. His right leg, with its infected wound, dragged uselessly behind him. He left a pathetic trail on the forest floor, a smear in the mud marking his struggle.
Meter by meter. Every breath burned his lungs. Every heartbeat sent a wave of fever through his head. He focused only on the sound of the water, making it his sole purpose in the universe.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, his trembling fingers touched the wet sand at the water's edge. He had made it. He didn't stop. He kept pulling himself forward until he could plunge his head into the clear, cool water.
He drank. He swallowed the water in desperate gulps, not caring that it made him cough. It was cold. It was real. It was life. It washed the bitter taste from his mouth, soothed the fire in his throat, and cleared a tiny fraction of the feverish fog from his mind.
After he could drink no more, he collapsed at the water's edge, half-submerged. He lay there, shaking violently, but for the first time in hours, the tremors weren't just from cold or fever. There was something else in them. Something that felt like defiance.
This world had tried everything to erase him. It had thrown him off a cliff, drowned him, sent monsters to hunt him, robbed him of his shelter, and left him to rot in the rain. But he was still here. Wounded, dying, alone. But still breathing.
He looked at his pale, trembling hand gripping the wet sand. He had been forced down to the most basic level of existence—a wounded animal crawling to water. And in the process, he had found something he had forgotten. Not strength. Not cleverness. Just the stubborn instinct to keep moving forward, no matter how much it hurt. Just like the little beetle.
He didn't know if he would survive to see the next sunset.