"I used to think that nightmares were things we woke up from. Now I realize that the real nightmare is waking up and confronting the dawn that offers no mercy."
The light of the sun was a dying memory, filtered through the lightless, deep blue of the Malholan Lake. Down here, there was no sky—only the crushing, silent weight of the water and the pale, gargantuan shadow of a prehistoric predator.
The shark's maw was a cavern of serrated ivory, wide enough to swallow me whole. As the beast lunged, its massive obsidian horn cutting through the current like a drill, I felt the cold pressure of its throat closing around me. My vision was a blur of dark teal and silver rays of light breaking through the surface far above. I was a mere minnow in the belly of a god.
Not like this.
In the suffocating dark, my hand found the hilt. I wrenched the black-and-white sword from its scabbard and, with a scream that died in a cloud of frantic bubbles, I drove the steel upward into the creature's palate. I felt the resistance of thick flesh, the snap of cartilage, and then a geyser of hot, dark ichor that turned the water around me into a murky soup.
The creature thrashed in a silent explosion of violence, and I was thrown against the silt. I kicked toward the surface, my lungs screaming for air that wouldn't come. When I finally broke the water, the evening air felt like fire in my throat.
I hauled myself onto the muddy bank, coughing violently, hacking up the bitter, metallic water of the lake. I lay there for what felt like an eternity, my body a map of wreckage. My golden armor—the "shield" that was supposed to keep me alive—was ruined. The vambraces were crushed scrap, the leather buckles snapped, and the plates on my legs and sabatons were mangled, the metal peeled back like a rusted tin can by the beast's teeth.
Worse than the armor was the weight of my empty hands. My sword was gone—buried in the skull of a monster at the bottom of the deep. All I had left was the small, blunt utility knife tucked into the small of my back.
[USER: RIAN][09 YEARS | 364 DAYS | 17 HOURS | 00 MINUTES]
Seven hours. It had only been seven hours since I was transported here, and I was already a broken man. I stared at the blood dripping from the jagged, deep scratches on my forearm and thigh. With trembling fingers, I reached under the broken plates and tore strips of cloth from the tunic I wore beneath the armor. I bound the wounds tight, watching the red soak through the fabric, praying the bleeding would stop. Even the idea of taking a single drop of water from that cursed river felt like a death sentence now.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, bleeding into a bruised purple sky, I limped back toward the orchard. I managed to pluck three or four of the red fruits, my stomach roaring with a hunger that defied the terror. But as I turned to put distance between myself and the pale, wrinkled bark, the ground seemed to shiver.
The orchard was waking up.
In the dimming light, the "face marks" on the trunks began to shift with sickening fluidity. The knots of wood became hollow, sunken eyes. The ridges of bark became moving lips. Suddenly, a heavy branch—long and jointed like a skeletal arm—lashed out, whistling past my head with enough force to kill.
I scrambled back, my heart hammering against my ribs. The trees weren't just trees; they were anchored giants, their branches reaching out like grasping claws. The tree I had just robbed groaned, its wood creaking with a sound like grinding bone.
"You... took my fruits... from my branches... stranger..."
The voice was a deep, guttural rattle that vibrated in my chest. It wasn't human, but the intent was clear: I was a thief in a land that didn't forgive. I didn't stay to hear more. I didn't wait to see if they could rip their roots from the soil. I turned and ran, my ruined armor clanking in the rising dark, the shadows of the branches stretching after me like the fingers of the damned.
I didn't stop until my lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass. I collapsed into a narrow crevice between two jagged rocks, far from the reach of those wooden limbs. The forest behind me was a wall of silhouettes, and every rustle of the wind sounded like a whispered threat.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking so violently I had to sit on them to make them stop. The golden armor was cold now, leaching the heat from my body. I wanted to take it off—to throw the heavy, useless metal into the dirt—but I was too afraid. If I took it off, I was just a boy in a tunic. If I kept it on, at least I looked like a warrior, even if I was a ghost inside it.
Why me? The question echoed in the hollow of my chest. Why not a soldier? Why not someone who knew how to fight, how to track, how to survive? I bit into one of the stolen apples. The flesh was sweet, but it felt like ash in my mouth. Then, a cold, hard truth cut through the self-pity. This wasn't bad luck. It wasn't a mistake of the universe. I was the one who had decided my own fate. I was the one who had opened that app. My curiosity, my boredom, my own finger pressing that screen—that was the original sin that had dragged me into this abyss.
I looked up, and the breath caught in my throat.
The sky had been stripped of its purple hue, replaced by a deep, suffocating crimson. A Red Moon hung heavy in the heavens, its glowing redness bleeding out across the clouds and falling directly into my eyes. I had never seen anything so beautiful and so terrifying. As the red light washed over the world, the true night began.
"If you are going to get lost, get lost in paradise. But I think... I have gotten lost in the world of the abyss."