I'm… somewhere cold.
I think . . . I'm floating? No, I'm sinking.
My entire body is ice cold.
It's impossible to think—
I can't process my thoughts.
My limbs lock.
My breath won't stay in my lungs.
It hurts so much.
Everything hurts.
There's no escaping this pain.
It's cold. So, so cold.
Darkness envelopes my vision, swallows me whole.
I can't see anything.
Everything's going black . . ..
An eternity of nothing passes.
I am adrift, lost, floating in the void. The cold seeps into my bones, a relentless tide that refuses to ebb. Every muscle, every thought, every fragment of who I once was, dissolves into the unending night. The darkness is not just around me—it is within me, consuming me from the inside out.
Time loses all meaning. Seconds could be hours, or hours could be seconds. All I know is the cold, the gnawing, pervasive cold, and the ache that it brings. I am nothing but a vessel for this endless, numbing sensation.
Nothing exists. No light. No feeling. Just…emptiness.
But then... something shifts. A whisper, soft and almost imperceptible, stirs the stagnant air. It weaves through the shadows, a delicate thread pulling me back from the brink. It is faint at first, but unmistakable—a glimmer of warmth, a spark of life in the desolate void.
A touch, featherlight. It brushes against me from the abyss like the tiniest blade of grass tracing across my fingertips. What was that?
There it is again.
It grazes my forehead. So small, so fleeting… and yet it's everything to me.
Please.
Help me.
I need help. I need warmth.
I can't remember anything.
No—that's not true. I remember a sliver, a single breath of thought.
My last thought . . .
I thought I would never escape.
Escape?
Escape what?
Wait . . . it's warm now? I can't feel anything anymore except this tenderness.
I want to sleep, and I never wake up.
It's so cozy. Soothing. I don't want to leave. Please don't send me back.
Please . . . Please . . . P-please.
The soft stillness around me shifts.
A breeze—at first gentle, curious—creeps through the unseen. It brushes over my form, unseen, unheard, yet undeniably there.
It teases me. Pulls at me.
Then, without warning, wind gathers around me.
It lifts my form and carries me into the vast unknown.
I'm falling!
No—flying?
Twirling. Spinning. Weightless.
I don't know where I am, or what I am.
I can't see.
I can't hear.
All I can do is "feel".
And "fear".
The wind howls now, louder in its silence than any noise I've ever known. I think? It wraps around me like invisible binds, tugging me away from that fleeting warmth. I want to scream, but there's no sound. Only the sensation of motion, of the world rushing past.
Stop!
I don't understand.
I don't want to be alone again!
Please don't leave me in the dark.
The wind doesn't answer.
It carries me far, far away. Over sand, hills, rivers, and mountains unseen . . . into the gaping jaws of a place drenched in shadow.
A forest.
A forbidden forest.
Whispers once said that no creature who enters ever returns. That it's a land cursed and forgotten, left to rot at the edge of continent's map.
I don't know this.
Not yet.
But I will.
For now, I fall like a tiny star swallowed by black roots.
Carried by the breath of fate, I descend—
into a cradle of darkness that hungers for me.
And the last warmth I knew fades into memory.