"Each crimson night is a silent spin of existence… and we are nothing but outcomes pretending to have choices."
The **Red Moon** hung like a bloated, bruised eye in the sky, casting a sickly carmine glow over the world below. I was moving with the desperation of a man haunted by ghosts, my body pressed so low into the earth that I could taste the metallic tang of the soil. I crawled through the jagged studs and the needle-like brushes, my breath held captive in my lungs. Every inch forward felt like a victory against the exhaustion that threatened to pull me into a permanent sleep.
*Snap.*
The sound was small—a single, brittle stick yielding under my weight—but in the unnatural stillness of the Abyss, it sounded like a thunderclap.
The air instantly grew heavy with the scent of wet musk and ancient iron. Before I could even recoil, the earth vibrated. A massive, emerald-hued shadow blotted out the red moonlight. The **Minosok** was upon me.
It was a towering wall of green-fleshed muscle, its bull-like face a mask of primal fury. From my position on the ground, I looked up at a creature that defied every law of nature I knew. In its gargantuan fist, it gripped an axe of crude iron so heavy it would have crushed a normal man, yet the beast held it as if it were a mere twig. In the crimson light of the moon, liquid began to drip from the blade—dark, viscous droplets that looked exactly like fresh blood.
*THOOM.*
The iron axe slammed into the earth mere centimeters from my head, the force of the impact sending a spray of dirt across my face. I slammed both hands over my mouth, biting back a scream that clawed at my throat. I squeezed my eyes shut, paralyzed, as the beast towered over the brush, its nostrils venting hot, sulfurous steam that clouded the freezing air.
I began to edge backward, my movements slow and agonizing. My mind, sharp with the terror of a student who had seen too much, began to calculate the odds. *I can't fight this.* If I lunged at its eyes or tried to pierce that thick, mossy hide with my petty knife, it wouldn't even be a nuisance to him. He controlled that massive slab of iron with terrifying lightness. To him, I wasn't an enemy; I was an insect waiting to be stepped on.
The Minosok pulled its axe from the dirt and began to turn, its ears twitching. It was still searching.
I had to act. My life was a gamble, and it was time to spin the wheel. I slowly rose to a crouch, my muscles screaming in protest. I reached out, grabbed a heavy, fallen branch, and put every ounce of my remaining strength into a throw to my far left.
The branch clattered against a distant trunk.
The reaction was instantaneous. The Minosok roared, a sound that shook the very marrow of my bones, and lunged toward the noise. With a single, effortless swing, it brought the iron axe down on a nearby tree. The trunk—thick as a man's torso—was severed like warm butter.
I didn't stay to watch the destruction. I plunged back into the dirt, crawling with a renewed, frantic energy. The image of that tree being sliced stayed burned into my mind. That was the "level" of this world. That was the power I was up against.
For two more agonizing hours, I dragged my heavy, golden armor through the studs. I had been in this forest for five hours now, and my body was failing. No food. No water. Only the weight of a dead knight's pride and the fear of a stolen soul. My armor, once my only protection, now felt like a lead coffin designed to bury me alive.
But then, the color of the world began to shift.
The oppressive red of the moon started to pale, replaced by a soft, shimmering gold on the horizon. I breached the final line of the orchard, my hands bloodied and my spirit broken, only to stop dead in my tracks.
I hadn't just left the forest; I had stepped into a dream.
The air here was different—sweet, cool, and vibrating with an invisible hum. Surrounding me were figures made of glowing, translucent green light. They didn't walk; they drifted. I saw the elegant, pointed ears of Elves, the sturdy, broad frames of Dwarfs, and the towering, sky-reaching silhouettes of Giants. Even normal humans moved among them, their forms flickering like candle flames in a breeze.
They didn't look at me with malice. They looked through me, as if I were a shadow passing through a sunbeam.
I collapsed to my knees, the heavy thud of my armor echoing in the clearing. I wasn't in the Abyss anymore. I had crossed a boundary I didn't understand. I had entered the domain of the **Spirit World**, a place of ancient souls and the forgotten one.
**[USER: RIAN] [09 YEARS | 364 DAYS | 04 HOURS | 10 MINUTES]**