"In a world where the trees have voices and the moon bleeds, the only thing more dangerous than the monsters is the silence of your own hope."
The evening didn't fade into darkness; it bled into a suffocating, bruised crimson.
I sat several meters away from the edge of the orchard, my back pressed against a cold, jagged stone that bit into my spine. The star-shaped apples I had stolen felt heavy in my lap, their skin shimmering with a sickly glow under the first rays of the **Red Moon**. It was my first time seeing it—a gargantuan, glowing orb of rust and fire that hung low in the sky, turning the entire landscape into a monochromatic nightmare of red and black.
As the light hit the forest, the greenery died. The trees didn't look like nature anymore; they looked like skeletal remains, their bark shifting into grey, leathery skin. I watched, paralyzed, as the tree I had just robbed began to writhe. Its branches didn't just sway in the wind—they flexed like muscular arms, fingers of wood clawing at the empty air where I had been standing moments before.
"Thief..." the tree hissed, its mouth a jagged crack in the pale wood. "The fruit... is the price... of your flesh..."
The voice wasn't just a sound; it was a vibration that rattled my teeth. The tree couldn't move its roots, but the desperation in its reaching branches told me everything I needed to know. This wasn't a forest. It was a standing army of hungry, rooted predators.
I looked up at the blood-stained sky, and my heart stopped.
A shadow, massive and elegant, cut across the face of the Red Moon. It was an **Amphiptere**. It had no legs, only a serpentine body covered in obsidian scales that drank the red light. Two colossal wings, translucent and burning like hot coals, beat against the thin air. It soared toward the East, its presence so overwhelming that the very wind seemed to shy away from its path.
I looked at the timer on my retina. I had been in this abyss for ten hours, and every second had been a lesson in how small I truly was.
**[USER: RIAN]** **[09 YEARS | 364 DAYS | 14 HOURS | 00 MINUTES]**
I clutched my small utility knife. The blade looked like a toothpick against the backdrop of this world. Then, the Malholan Lake exploded.
A **huge, black owl**—its wingspan wide enough to cover a house—dived from the darkness with the speed of a falling star. It shrieked with a sound like tearing metal. Its talons hit the water with a deafening crack, and a moment later, it rose with the very shark that had nearly ended my life hours ago. The four-meter predator thrashed helplessly as the owl's talons sank through its spine.
I watched in stunned silence as the owl landed on a nearby crag and began to tear into the carcass. To me, that shark had been an unstoppable god of death. To this owl, it was just a midnight snack.
The hierarchy was laid bare. The soldier was meat for the shark. The shark was meat for the owl. And I? I was just the dirt beneath them all.
I looked at the map in my mind, the desperate need to head West burning in my gut. But the path was blocked by a cruel geography. To go straight West, I would have to plunge into the heart of the screaming forest, where the trees waited with open mouths. My only other option was to head South—back toward the Malholan Lake. I would have to cross those teal depths fully, swimming through the hunting grounds of creatures that even the shark feared.
I looked at my broken armor and my tiny, trembling knife.
I had to choose. I could die in the shadows of the wood, or I could drown in the silence of the lake. The night had only just begun, and the Abyss was finally closing its jaws.
The path behind me was a memory of blood and iron; the path ahead was a living nightmare. I looked at the dark, rippling surface of the lake and then at the twisted, whispering silhouettes of the orchard.
My choice was made. I turned my back on the water.
I decided to go into the forest. I don't know my fate; only the trees can decide that now. But after seeing what lives in the depths of the Malholan, I knew one thing: I would rather take my chances with the living wood than be dragged back into the silence of the water to be eaten by sharks.
I took a single, heavy step toward the tree line, the mangled metal of my sabatons sinking into the dry, ashen soil. Each movement was a gamble. With every inch I gained toward the forest, the air grew colder, smelling less like the lake and more like ancient, rotting timber and wet earth.
I was only five steps away from the forest. I need to go there's no other way for me in these world only to find a right destination.
"I am no longer walking toward a destination. I am running away from a grave, hoping the next horizon is kinder than the one I left behind."