As he was looking at the rock, he suddenly heard the sound of a branch breaking and falling near him.
Then he looked behind him to see that, in the distance, a tree branch had fallen.
He went near it to see why it had fallen, but he couldn't quite make sense of it.
Then he touched the branch.
It was dry.
Maybe termites had caused the branch to fall, or maybe it was due to something else.
Suddenly, he realized something and quickly looked back at the rock,
but it wasn't there anymore.
Something odd was happening around him, and he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.
Still, there was nothing he could do about it at the moment, so he decided to leave it alone for today because night was drawing near.
He rested at his camp,
but his mind was still filled with a strong sense of danger because of the unknown.
Tomorrow, he would surely find out what that ominous thing moving in the dark was.
Still, he meditated for an hour.
Surprisingly, nothing moved in the background, and nothing odd happened anymore.
So he lowered his sense of danger enough to sleep and tried to put his mind at rest.
He knew it was stupid to sleep while something unseen moved through the darkness around him.
But if he couldn't find out what it was, even after searching for it and preparing himself as bait for two hours through meditation, then he should rest.
Yet even then, his mind refused to sleep, so he pretended to sleep for an hour.
Then, when the night had completely covered the horizon,
he finally fell into the comfortable embrace of sleep.
In the middle of the night, Satya woke up with an odd feeling of danger rising in his chest.
He scanned his surroundings.
The first thing he noticed was that the fire had gone out.
And it was the second thing that horrified him to his very bones.
A chilling thought washed over him.
The jungle was quiet.
Not like the peaceful quietness of nature,
but like the eerie silence of emptiness,
as if nothing existed near him.
There was no rustling of trees,
no sounds of insects.
He was still lying down, moving only his eyes as he observed his surroundings.
Then he stood up, preparing himself for something—
anything—that might be out there.
Whatever it was, it had to be horrific if even the insects had fallen silent because of it.
"I hate these moments in fantasy worlds,"
Satya muttered to himself.
Then suddenly, as if the forest had noticed his movements,
there was noise.
A gentle breeze began to flow.
The sounds of crickets returned.
The rustling of leaves came back,
as if it had never disappeared in the first place.
Then—
Maybe it was just my imagination,
Satya thought.
Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine.
He began thinking about his thought process throughout the night.
He, who was always cautious and always sought hidden truths,
was now running away from the truth,
pushing it aside for another time.
He, who was willing to endure endless suffering just to uncover the truth of this world.
Suddenly, he realized it.
Something was messing with his mind,
making him unable to leave this forest.
Now that he thought about it,
he really had seen the stone he had placed at the beginning.
It was not merely a fragment of imagination drifting through his mind,
nor a hallucination meant to keep him sane.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
With this forest.
The forest seemed endless, yet it remained the same in every direction.
After this realization hit him like a truck and woke him to reality,
he did not feel fear.
Instead—
he felt excited.
He started laughing.
"It truly is a magical world.
I would expect no less from the Black Skies,"
Satya laughed crazily to himself.
After that laughter,
his emotions slowly stabilized.
Many people have different ways of coping with extreme emotions,
but I choose to cope by laughing or acting crazy.
Many people cry in situations like these,
but what would crying accomplish?
Crying only makes you weak.
It is a scientific fact that crying releases certain hormones,
so I laugh.
For I am unique to this world,
and laughter stabilizes emotions far better.
Even after all that laughter,
there was still a lingering fear inside Satya.
After those thoughts, Satya could not sleep for the rest of the night.
He sat beside the fire, watching it burn.
He watched it burn
as if he were trying to burn away his fear.
Yet the fear was endless.
After several hours, morning finally came.
Satya noticed something he had not noticed before.
The scenery had changed from the previous evening.
And what he saw next left him speechless.
He saw the lines he had made,
but they were all broken and scattered in different directions around him.
"Walking through a forest of endless demise
This moment seems as if frozen in time
The movements of an unseen being follow me through time
In the beginning of a new day
There are endless paths of life"