The woods were quiet.
Every step she took through the damp undergrowth felt like a betrayal of her own body. Her boots, stiff with dried mud and the clotted, metallic residue of the camp, crunched over fallen branches that sounded like snapping bone. She didn't look back. There was nothing left in that circle of tents but a flannel shirt that smelled of lavender and a ghost she had been forced to lay to rest.
She wiped her mouth again. The taste still layed on her tongue. It was a reminder that in this world, even kindness ended in a mouthful of rot.
"You should have gone to the quarry," a mechanical voice flickered in the periphery of her mind. "The protagonist is there. The 'Grimes' variable provides a 40% increase in viewer retention."
"Shut up," she rasped, her voice cracking.
The Apex Feed interface shimmered in her vision, a translucent blue screen that only she could see. Small icons of "claps" and "donations" floated in the corner—bits of digital currency from a world that wasn't dying, sent by people who watched her struggle like it was a prestige drama.
She remembered the white ceiling of the hospital room. The rhythmic, mocking beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor that had been the soundtrack to her life. She had spent twenty years trapped in a body that was a cage, her heart a faulty piece of machinery that stuttered and failed.
When the final darkness had come, she hadn't been afraid. She had been relieved. She had welcomed the silence, ready to finally rest, to be free of the needles, the pale skin, and the constant, suffocating fear of the next breath.
Then, the System had pulled her back.
It hadn't asked. It had simply plucked her soul from the threshold of peace and shoved it into this nightmare. She had woken up in the dirt, screaming not from terror, but from the sheer, unadulterated anger of being denied her rest. She wasn't a hero; she was a woman who had been dragged back to the party after she'd already said her goodbyes.
"You want entertainment?" she whispered to the empty trees, knowing the eyes in the parallel world were watching. "Watch this."
A notification pinged.
[SYSTEM SUGGESTION]: Directional heading 045 leading to 'Atlanta Outskirts.' High probability of encountering 'The Archer.' Reward: 500 Survival Points.
"No," she muttered, turning her back on the suggested path. She plunged deeper into the thicket, intentionally heading away from the safety of the main characters.
She knew the story. She knew Rick, Daryl, and the tragedy that followed them like a shadow. To the audience, they were icons. To her, they were magnets for death. If she joined them, she was just another background character waiting for a dramatic exit.
She wasn't going to be a plot point. She wasn't going to be a sacrifice for someone else's character development.
Her heart—the new, strong, steady heart the System had given her—thumped against her ribs. It was a cruel irony. She finally had the strength to run, but she was running through hell.
She paused by a stream, kneeling to splash ice-cold water into her mouth to wash away the lingering rot. She looked at her reflection in the moving water. Her face was hollow, her eyes hardened into something she didn't recognize.
"Mrs. Gable said to fight for myself," she told the water. "Not for the script. Not for the fans. Just for me."
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long, skeletal shadows across the forest floor, she stood up. She was exhausted, she was alone, and she was hopelessly lost—but for the first time in two lives, she was the one holding the map.
The light was failing, turning the forest into a sea of grey and ink. She needed to get off the ground. In this world, the earth belonged to the things that didn't need to breathe, and she was still too stubbornly alive to join them.
She found a sprawling white oak, its lowest branches thick and sturdy enough to hold her weight. Climbing was a novelty that still sent a jolt of strange electricity through her nerves. In her previous life, a flight of stairs was a mountain; now, she pulled herself up with a strength that felt borrowed, almost stolen.
As she settled into a crook between the trunk and a heavy limb, she unlooped her belt and lashed herself to the tree. Safety was a relative term, but height offered a temporary truce with the world below.
Resting her head against the rough bark, she closed her eyes. The System's interface hummed in the dark, a soft blue glow behind her eyelids.
[USER PROFILE INCOMPLETE]
Current Alias: [Redacted/Transmigrant #402]
System Note: Viewers prefer a name to cheer for. Please update for a 200-point bonus.
She felt a surge of cold spite. Her old name—the one her parents had whispered over hospital bedsheets, the one written on a thousand insurance forms and medical charts—felt like a shroud. It belonged to the girl who had spent her life waiting for a heart that worked. That girl had finally gotten her wish; she had died in that sterile white room.
She wasn't that person anymore. She wasn't a patient, a victim, or a "miracle." She was the woman who had tasted death in a survivor's camp and spat it back out.
"I'm not her," she whispered into the rustling leaves. "She's gone."
She looked at the blue screen, her finger hovering over the input. She needed a name that didn't carry the scent of antiseptic. She needed something that sounded like the world she was now forced to inhabit—something sharp, resilient, and unyielding.
She thought of the white oak she was sitting in. She thought of the way the world looked now: stripped of its beauty, down to the bone and the bark.
She typed it in: Rowan.
It was a name of hardy wood and bitter berries. A tree that could grow in rocky soil where nothing else survived. It felt right. It felt like a fresh start carved out of a nightmare.
[NAME UPDATED: ROWAN]
Audience Reaction:Favorable. > Chat 102: "Rowan... I dig it. Sounds tougher than the 'Sick Girl' tag the mods gave her."
Chat 55: "Finally. Maybe now she'll stop sulking and find the main group."
Rowan stared at the scrolling text with a numb sort of detachment. They still didn't get it. They thought she was a character in a show, a piece on a board.
"I'm not your entertainment," she breathed, her voice a low promise. "I'm the one who survives the finale."
She pulled Mrs. Gable's oversized flannel tighter around her chest. The smell of lavender was almost gone, replaced by the scent of pine and the faint, lingering metallic ghost of the camp. Below her, the woods groaned as the first of the roamers began their nightly shuffle.
Rowan closed her eyes, her hand gripping the hilt of the sharpened stake. She was tired, she was hunted, and she was reborn. And tomorrow, she would find a way to make this world her own.