Darkness swallowed him whole. There was no sound, no wind, not even the comforting weight of gravity. Aster couldn't tell if he was falling or floating; his body felt entirely numb, suspended in an endless void where time itself seemed to have frozen solid.
Then, a thin fracture of light tore through the blackness. He squinted as glowing, luminescent glyphs materialized in front of him.
[Welcome.] [You have been chosen.]
Aster blinked, his mind struggling to form a coherent thought. Before he could process the words, the text shifted.
[Initializing new world…]
[Previous life status: deceased.]
[Soul verification complete.]
His throat constricted, trapping air. "…What?"
The darkness beneath him cracked wide open, and a violent, crushing force dragged him downward. For a fraction of a second, fragmented flashes of impossible landscapes rushed past his eyes mountains bleeding fire beneath a crimson sky, oceans as black as ink, and dense forests choked with towering shadows. Then, the imagery dissolved into a blinding, suffocating white.
Aster slammed into the earth.
He gasped, a sharp lungful of freezing air burning his throat as his eyes flew open. Above him stretched a canopy of gnarled, tangled branches so thick they choked out the night sky, allowing only fractured silver splinters of moonlight to paint the forest floor.
For a long moment, he lay perfectly still, listening to the ragged sound of his own breathing. The dirt beneath his palms was damp, smelling heavily of rot and wet soil.
"…This isn't a dream," he whispered, his voice cracking.
Pushing himself upright, Aster shuddered. The woods around him were dead silent. No crickets, no night birds only the occasional, uneasy whistle of the wind weaving through the trunks.
Then came the singing. It was faint, drifting through the trees like a distant nursery rhyme.
"…la la… the moon sleeps in the deep woods…"
The voice sounded disturbingly childlike.
Following the sound out of sheer survival instinct, Aster navigated the thick roots and dead leaves until the trees broke into a small, isolated clearing. A carpet of pale blue flowers blanketed the ground, swaying gently despite the absolute stillness of the air, casting a faint, ethereal glow.
And they were the ones singing.
As he took a cautious step closer, he noticed the tiny, malformed faces nestled deep between the petals beady eyes and wide, mocking smiles humming in a synchronized choir. It sent a cold prickle of dread straight down his spine.
Abruptly, the singing cut off.
Every single flower snapped toward him in unison. In the sudden, heavy silence, their smiles stretched wider—unnatural, tearing at the edges—until the petals peeled back to reveal concentric rings of needle-sharp teeth.
"HUMAN!"
The collective shriek tore through the clearing, sharp enough to make his ears ring. Aster stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet as the flowers ripped their roots from the soil like twitching, multi-legged insects, scrambling directly toward him.
"What the fuc...k?!"
Before they could reach him, the ground violently bucked.
A heavy, low thud shook the dirt. The flowers froze instantly.
A second impact rattled the forest, harder this time, causing the ancient trees to groan under the strain. Somewhere deep in the shadows ahead, something colossal was moving.
Aster scrambled back against a tree trunk, his breath catching.
A figure stepped out from the darkness into the moonlight. It towered twice as high as the canopy, its gray, slate-like skin cracked like dried river mud over slabs of heavy muscle.
And it had two heads.
One head snarled, strings of thick, viscous saliva dripping from a maw of jagged bone. The other head was tilted at an unnatural angle, letting out a high-pitched, infantile giggle that felt entirely wrong coming from a monster of that scale. One eye burned a dull, low crimson; the other was milky and blind, like dead glass.
Aster's legs turned to lead.
The creature leaned down, its foul, metallic breath washing over him.
"…Human…" the snarling head growled.
"…Chosen…" the giggling one whispered, followed by another wet chuckle.
Aster tried to edge away, but his back hit solid bark. Screaming, tooth-filled plants behind him. A twin-headed titan in front. There was nowhere to run.
A sudden silver blur cut through the moonlight.
"Get back!"
A streak of cobalt light far too fast for a human shredded the space between Aster and the giant's massive foot. It solidified into a man, already in a low, coiled crouch, his draw-stroke blurring into a blinding silver crescent.
The giant roared, swinging a massive, boulder-like arm downward. But the swordsman didn't flinch. He moved with a terrifying fluid grace, his blade carving a brilliant arc through the air.
With a sickening tear, the giggling head cleaved clean off, hitting the dirt with a heavy thud. Black, foul-smelling blood sprayed across the foliage. The remaining head shrieked in pure fury, but the swordsman was already pivoting. Another flash of steel, a heavy crunch, and the second head fell.
The headless torso stood rigid for a beat before collapsing forward, the impact sending a shockwave through the dirt that nearly knocked Aster off his feet.
Silence reclaimed the woods, save for Aster's ragged breathing.
The swordsman flicked the dark blood off his blade, shearing it before turning around. "You hurt?"