Chapter 96
Written by Bayzo Albion
Day One.
On the first day, he still clung to hope, convinced he'd find his way out. He played by the rules: carving notches into tree trunks, scratching markers into the soil, memorizing every twist and turn. At times, he swore he heard the rush of water, the rustle of leaves in a breeze, the sharp whistle of birds flitting overhead. But the sounds were too perfect, too pristine—like echoes from a distant memory, scripted just for him. They cut off abruptly the moment he paused to listen, leaving only the oppressive void in their wake.
He realized he was looping when he stumbled past the same stump for the third time. A severed snake lay sprawled across it, its fangs still dripping fresh venom that hadn't dried or faded. Time itself seemed frozen here, refusing to march forward.
He tried navigating by moss—everyone knew it grew on the north side of trees. But here, it blanketed every inch of bark, a mocking shroud that offered no direction, only silent derision.
Exhausted, he slumped against a trunk and willed sleep to come. It didn't. Instead, a tremor seized his fingers, ice prickled the nape of his neck, and a feather-light touch ghosted across his skin—like delicate fingers caressing his throat. Almost tender. Almost loving.
Day Two.
By the second day, he started talking to himself. Not out of madness, but desperation—to hear a human voice amid the suffocating silence, to ward off the total isolation of this bottomless abyss.
"I'm walking. I'm still walking," he muttered with every step, clinging to the rhythm like a mantra.
He rationed his dwindling dry rations, sipping from a waterskin that grew lighter by the hour. The white mushroom he'd plucked sat untouched in his pack. It wasn't food; he could feel it in his bones—a lure, bait for the unwary. In his mind's eye, he saw it sprouting from the eye sockets of that corpse he'd glimpsed earlier, pale and insistent. It wouldn't surprise him if the thing slithered to him in the night like a needy pup, begging to be cradled.
He attempted a fire, striking flint with frantic precision. Sparks died instantly. Twigs that should have blazed refused to catch, as if soaked through despite their dryness. The feeble smoke he coaxed forth didn't rise; it curled back toward him, clinging to his face like a shroud before dissolving into the mist. The air itself devoured it, hungry and unrelenting.
He pressed on, delving deeper into the gloom. Hours blurred—or was it minutes? And there it was again: the stump. But now, something new lay beside it.
A doll.
Rag-stuffed, crudely sewn by childish hands. In this forsaken woods, amid the swirling fog.
He froze, staring far too long. A primal instinct screamed: *Touch it, and it'll never let go.*
He wrenched his gaze away, took a step, then another. Soon he was jogging, then running outright.
And the fog... it smiled.
Day Three.
Silence evolved into something worse than absence—a ceaseless, cloying drone, like mold creeping over flesh. Thousands of whispers layered atop one another, a hellish bazaar where specters bartered over his demise.
Two nights without sleep had left his hands quaking, nails gnawed to bloody stubs. He no longer spoke aloud; now he whispered to the fog itself, voice cracking with surrender.
"Let me go. I get it. I know what you want."
He tore at leaves, hurling them like offerings; leaped over roots in frantic bounds; clawed for any exit—up, down, through the trees themselves. Nothing. It all melted into sameness: featureless, soulless, a nightmare on endless repeat.
Tears welled unbidden, tracing silent paths down his cheeks—not sobs of terror, but the slow leak of a fractured vessel. This wasn't fear anymore. It was exhaustion, his mind festering like sun-rotted meat.
He collapsed onto the damp earth, staring skyward. No sky awaited—just an endless white haze, thick and cottony, smothering his vision like bandages over blinded eyes.
Then—footsteps.
Close. Deliberate. Confident. Not his.
He bolted upright, dagger whipping into his grip, throat parched to sandpaper. His voice emerged hoarse, alien: "Who's there?!"
The fog parted reluctantly, peeling away like gangrenous flesh from a corpse.
Twenty paces ahead stood an old man, withered as if birthed from the roots themselves. Skin like bleached parchment. Eyes glowing crimson as embers. He leaned on a staff twisted like a thorned branch, gnarled and alive.
"Have you understood something, little hero?" The words weren't spoken—they rustled, the forest's own timbre.
And in that instant, revelation flooded him, breathed directly into his soul by the woods:
The contracts were linked.
Dawn Gorge. White mushrooms. Mycelium.
This fog? Merely the prelude.
...But something didn't fit. Too many coincidences. Answers too neatly packaged.
A darker thought eclipsed death itself:
*What if the forest isn't explaining?*
*What if it's playing?*
– – –
I'd been trudging for three days—or so it felt—and I couldn't fathom why I hadn't cracked yet. Fatigue gnawed at me, but I wasn't a fool. Even warped space left traces, patterns to exploit. I knew north from south. I tracked my own path. I saw the deception for what it was... but shattering it eluded me.
I halted dead.
Then it hit me: *Everything around me is a lie.*
Even the trees—identical, cookie-cutter replicas, bark etched with the same scars. The scent? Too uniform, sterile. No damp rot, no feral musk, no whiff of fox scat. Just a flawless symphony of mist. Impossible in the real world.
*It's the mycelium. The fungus. A hallucinogenic beast lurking underground, feasting on fear. Not the fog holding me—it's him.*
The air shimmered, a heat-haze ripple over sun-baked dunes. No illusion.
I drew my knives—blades a touch oversized for my frame, but the best weapons I had. Grips bit into my palms, sweat-glued leather warming to my touch.
"Alright, then," I exhaled, breath ragged. "Let's devour each other."
I slammed my palm into the soil—and the air *surged* downward.
Magic erupted, a tempest clawing through clay, hurling stones and sodden earth aside. White veins burst free, thick as wrists, quivering like arteries pumping ethereal blood.
I didn't let them retreat. Knife plunged into the nearest root, slicing butter-soft through fatty pulp. It convulsed; a spray of rancid, milky ichor erupted, reeking of spoiled meat.
The second blade hacked the adjacent strand, severing slick tendon. Roots writhed, burrowing desperately, but I slashed relentlessly—hacking, carving—until my arms went numb, fingers gummed with viscous slime.
The ground thrummed like a hive. Roots hissed, crackled, screamed in ultrasonic fury.
I gathered my magic, compressing it into a seething fist. Air was my domain—not a breeze, but raw wrath ripped from my core.
No grand gesture to the heavens. I drove it *down*.
Through mud, through tangled veins, into the sticky abyss where the mycelium sprawled its tendrils, weaving its rot.
"Choke on it, you bastard," I snarled.
I unleashed.
The air detonated subsurface. Earth buckled like a wounded beast's flank, boiling upward in a geyser of filth and rubble. Roots bellowed, snapping like overstretched bowstrings. I *felt* the magic shred, pulverize, incinerate—crunching, sizzling, crackling in death throes.
Knives and sorcery danced in tandem: blades flaying cables, gales pulverizing what hands missed. Sweat and blood stung my eyes, cramps seized my fingers, but I raged on until the soil convulsed in agony.
Then the fog *screamed*.
Not a sway—a piercing wail that clawed the ears.
The white veil recoiled like scalded flesh, exposing charred black mycelial threads writhing in terminal spasms, belching fumes of decay and ash.
And then the earth caved.
With a guttural groan, the final exhalation, the ground collapsed into a yawning chasm—black as oblivion. Acrid smoke billowed up, searing throat and lungs. Cracks spiderwebbed outward, vanishing into shadow.
I teetered on the precipice, knives trembling, arms quaking, blood dripping from my chin. But the fungus was dead.
The world held its breath.
Then I saw *it*.
A creature. Elongated white, a stretched human silhouette whispering into infinity. No eyes. No mouth. Just a smooth, glossy mask for a face—egg-shell sheen reflecting feeble light. It stood statue-still, yet quivered faintly, as if shocked I'd broken free. As if *it* feared *me*.
My hand found the dagger unbidden.
"You were the rot," I whispered. "Now you'll be fertilizer."
I lunged.
Steel sank in with a wet, obscene squelch, like knifing wet clay. I stabbed again—once, twice, five times. Ten. I lost count, lost to the rhythm: thrust, withdraw; white flesh yielding, tearing; noxious vapor pouring from gashes.
It thrashed in my grasp, eel-like, sluicing me in slime and gray steam. Each blow carved not just flesh, but the fog's essence—the lie itself.
On the tenth strike, it slumped. The mask fractured; the body sagged like rain-soaked rags.
The ancient fog shuddered, billowed in tatters, and shredded like spider silk in flame.
And then I beheld my prize.
Corpses.
Five. Six. A dozen—I didn't bother tallying. Frozen mid-flight: arms outstretched, mouths agape in silent screams. Armor gleamed dully, rings and artifacts glinted, swords lay within reach. Treasures that once meant survival. Adventurers who'd come before me... and become fodder.
Beyond them…