"Well, it will take several days to get to my location at the pace you are going. Unless you want to run…" The voice paused at the open-ended question.
"No, I would not," Zhu instantly refused.
"Very well. I've mapped out the safest route to travel. There are a few safe spaces in between; however, you have to move quickly in order to reach them before sundown. This would be considerably easier if you had a system…"
Zhu rolled her eyes. "Well, I apologise for the inconvenience caused."
"No apologies necessary. This is a natural defect of your birth, nothing you could control," the voice said very reasonably.
Zhu sucked her teeth. She was thoroughly fed up with this arrogant voice. She began to plan how she was going to murder its owner. In the end, she said out loud, "Just tell me which direction."
She looked at the forest stretched out before her. It rose around her like a living cathedral. She couldn't tell north from south.
Towering trunks stretched upward, thick and ancient, their bark ridged and scarred as if they had survived centuries of storms and fire. They crowded the sky, their crowns woven so tightly that sunlight could only slip through in pale, wandering shafts. The light fell in broken patterns, catching on drifting dust and mist, making the air itself visible.
The ground under her feet was soft and uneven. Old leaves, browned and curled with age, lay layered over fresher ones still touched with green and copper. Moss crept over stones and roots alike, lush and velvety, swallowing fallen branches as if the forest were slowly reclaiming everything that dared to rest too long. Ferns unfurled beside twisted roots, and strange blossoms glimmered faintly petals shaped wrong, colors too deep, as though they drank the mana bleeding through the soil.
Life moved everywhere. Birds with unfamiliar calls flitted between branches, their feathers patterned in ways that made her blink twice. Insects shimmered as they passed, wings catching the light like stained glass. Even the animals she glimpsed only in fragments, eyes reflecting from the undergrowth, shadows slipping between trees were unsettling and beautiful in equal measure.
For the first time since she had entered this place, Zhu stopped.
She realised how long she had been running injured, breathless; mind locked on survival. Pain, fear, and urgency had narrowed her world to the next step, the next heartbeat. But standing there now, she lifted her head and truly looked.
The forest was dark. Dangerous. Twisted mana flowed on the wind, cold and sharp against her skin, whispering of things that did not belong to any sane world.
Hollowvail. She never thought she would end up trapped in that place, never thought she would willingly step into it at all. As long as she could remember, the forest had been a constant topic of discussion. The townspeople both feared and revered it, and now here she was, standing in the middle of it.
This should not have been possible, especially for her, a null-level commoner. The dark mana alone should have killed her. But here she was, alive and well. (If Faral could hear her thoughts, he would tell her that was incorrect. She was hovering around forty-five percent well, and her injuries were extensive.)
She could feel the mana coiling through the roots and drifting between the trees, feeding nightmares that lurked in the deepest shadows. Without Faral's protection, she knew with frightening certainty that she would already be dead, torn apart, swallowed whole, or worse.
And yet—
Her chest loosened. A breath she hadn't realized she was holding slipped free.
Despite the monsters. Despite the mana. Despite the certainty of death waiting just beyond the light.
She felt… happy.
The forest overwhelmed her, pressed in on every sense, but it also made her feel unbound. Small, yes but alive in a way that she had never been before. Surrounded by danger and beauty intertwined so tightly, Zhu found herself smiling.
For the first time, she wasn't just surviving.
She was free. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"Do you want to talk about what the spider said?" Faral asked gently.
"Nope" Zhu answered firmly.
"Are you through with your contemplation?" Faral asked quietly.
"Yes, I am." Zhu wiped the tears she had just realised were streaming down her face. "Lead the way, Sir Farts-a-Lot."
"…"
After an uneventful day of trudging through the forest, Zhu arrived at their current location.
"Hey, Faral," she asked as she surveyed the area, "are you sure this place is safe?"
She whispered the question, not wanting it to be overheard by the thing.
"Yes," Faral replied calmly. "Statistically speaking."
Zhu pinned the bridge of her nose. "That is not comforting."
They were camped inside a humongous plant that was a cross between a Venus flytrap and a pitcher plant or at least, that was how Faral described it. The outer petals were yellow, designed to draw in insects and even small animals that weren't wary enough.
"The plant is a passive predator," Faral continued. "It responds only to specific pressure patterns. As long as you do not step on the marked sections of the pad, it will not close."
"And if I do step on them?"
"Then it will close," he said simply. "Quickly."
Zhu grimaced.
The center held a dark brown pad studded with small stalks that produced nectar. However, the pad was not what it seemed. If an insect stepped on certain sections, that part would drop like a trapdoor. The pad would open, and down into the pitcher the insect would go. The inside of the pitcher was coated with a slick, slimy substance that made it impossible to climb back out. The trapped creature would remain there, awaiting its death in the digestive liquid a slow, steady demise.
"Why," Zhu asked tightly, "is this considered a safe space?"
"Because," Faral replied, unbothered, "most predators in Hollowvail avoid it."
"Why?"
"Nothing enjoys being dissolved from the inside."
Zhu shuddered as Faral finished explaining how the plant worked.
"And," he added as an afterthought, "you are too large to be digested. At worst, you would be mildly burned."
She stared at the plant.
"Mildly," she repeated.
"Yes," Faral said. "I find that acceptable."
Zhu blinked as she remembered that, while climbing the stalk of the plant, she had witnessed three unlucky souls fall into the pitcher. She had heard their frantic buzzes as they struggled against their inevitable deaths. She did not feel particularly safe but it was dark, and this was where she would have to stay.
Zhu sighed. Well… I'm safe enough, I guess.
"Yes," the nonchalant voice answered. "As safe as the inside of an insectivorous plant can be."
Zhu rolled her eyes. Does nothing phase this being, this voice inside my head?
If she weren't so tired, she would have cursed the insipidly calm voice that had been her constant companion ever since this nightmare began. Instead, she yawned. An overwhelming fatigue washed over her, the kind that made her feel as though she had just emerged from floodwaters once again.
"It is the cubs being tattooed on your skin," Faral said. "They draw nutrients and energy from you. You are weak and therefore insufficient to carry them like this long-term. You need to release them, or they will literally suck you dry."
Zhu's heart skipped a beat. "And you decided to tell me this now?"
"Yes. It has just become an issue."
"Ugh." Zhu felt like she could strangle someone. She sighed in frustration, once again promising herself to deliver a swift kick to Faral's backside once she reached his location. She paused before releasing the cubs. "But what about the pitcher plant? I don't want them to end up as that thing's dinner."
"You do not need to fret. Once they are a part of you, they learn as you learn. They know it is dangerous because you know it is dangerous."
"Kool. Cool," Zhu muttered.
She released them.
The cubs shimmered into existence, like murky water settling into a clear spring.
"Oh no." She swatted at them as they happily licked her. "Not the face."
She tried to back away from their lapping tongues, which the cubs took as an invitation to pounce on her. They initiated a mock battle one Zhu was doomed to lose, as it was two against one. The little family of three frolicked atop the deadly plant for a while, until exhaustion claimed them once more.
For dinner, she ate the fruit they had harvested on the way to the "Gravepetal safe zone," as the voice had dubbed it. Afterward came the bitter medicine, which made her gag all over again. Once that unpleasant ordeal was over, she curled up with the cubs and watched the last light of the sun fade in a blaze of orange and ember gold.
Night crept in quietly.
The air turned cold, and Zhu pulled one of the massive petals over herself and the cubs, using it as a shelter against the dew that settled like a fine veil over everything. Above them, beyond the reach of the towering trees, the sky opened.
Far from town, the night sky revealed itself in all its glory. Stars burned bright and countless, scattered across the darkness as if the heavens had been dusted with fireflies. Some shimmered softly, others gleamed sharp and steady, and faint bands of light stretched between them like whispered secrets. Zhu lay still, breathing slow, her chest warm beneath the petal, and marveled at the view.
She had never seen anything like it.
Her eyes followed the stars as they drifted across the sky, until sleep finally claimed her.