The forest waited. It didn't move, didn't breathe, didn't care. And yet, with every step Dusk took, it pressed closer, silent but insistent. Carcasses loomed over him as if counting his heartbeat and weighing it against the night of the world.
His legs dragged beneath him. His arms trembled with each movement, muscles screaming in silent agony. Even his feet curled against the coarse black sand, as if they had grown too long or too fragile for his own body. Each breath drew shards of the forest into his lungs—dust, ash, and some foreign tang he couldn't name—and his chest burned as if he had swallowed fire.
The trees loomed, grotesque and yet silent. Skeletons protruded from the ground like the ribs of a supreme being. Shadows lengthened within them, stretching toward him in shapes his tired mind almost imagined moving. Each step felt closer to death. Closer to his family. He stumbled once, then again. His limbs folded before he caught himself. His knees buckled on the third step, but he forced himself upright. Teeth gritted against the weakness, vision blurring. The ground tilted like a rolling sea. His pulse thudded in his temples, each beat dragging him closer to collapse. His body no longer felt like his own, muscles trembling as if betraying his will.
He coughed, black grains spilling into his mouth and spit. "Something's... wrong."
He knew he was weak, but his body felt like a stranger wearing familiar skin, as if it had been replaced with a crippled one. And yet he didn't stop. Not because he was stubborn, but because he could do nothing else.
The ground rose and fell beneath him, mocking him with every step. The shadows coiled, stretched, and twisted. He began to see shapes in the dark, grotesque and fleeting. Something moved at the edge of his vision—but when he turned, it was gone.
"Shit," he muttered, teeth clenched, lips trembling.
He stumbled again, catching himself with shaking hands on a gnarled root. His chest heaved. Veins throbbed in his neck. Every part of him ached—the muscles, the joints, the very marrow of his bones.
He swallowed hard, tasting blood, tasting dust, tasting the failure of his own body.
"Khaa..." A sound escaped him, muffled and hollow, humming against his ears like an orchestra before collapse. His voice was barely more than a rasp, a reminder he still existed. But he had yet to fall.
His hands dragged across the coarse sand. His fingers scraped raw, yet he didn't care. Every movement took the last of his strength.
His body screamed at him to stop. To surrender. But just the thought of stopping made his face contort in disgust. His ego forced him to move, crawl, bleed—anything other than stop and give up.
He couldn't waste this.
He couldn't die here.
Not in this dirt.
Not for nothing.
Then his leg gave out completely.
He collapsed, face pressed into the black sand, breathing shallow and ragged. His heartbeat hammered painfully inside his skull. The world tilted, blurred, became a weight pressing him into the ground.
His skin tingled, fingers numb, chest burning with effort as each shallow breath fought to drag life into him.
He coughed black grains, tasting dust, feeling grit scrape against his gums. His body wasn't his anymore. His limbs refused to respond, muscles twitching as if possessed by some alien will that wanted nothing more than to let go. His chest felt hollow, lungs aching as though the air itself was too heavy to fill them. His heart pounded against his ribs, vision fading into creeping shadows.
The forest waited.
Watching.
Breathing.
Or pretending to.
The carcasses leaned closer—not moving, but alive in their presence.
The silence around him wasn't empty. It pressed against his eardrums, coiled around his ribs, sank into his spine. Every sound he made stretched, distorted, and vanished before reaching his ears.
He tried to push himself up. To feel something other than weakness. Something other than the endless dragging weight of his own flesh.
But his arms refused. His knees buckled. Still, he clawed at the sand, dragging his body just a little. The world spun, shifted, swallowed itself, and he was nothing but a fragment of bone and dust in the center of it.
Something inside him screamed.
Not fear.
Not anger.
Not pain.
Will.
The purest primal instinct.
Don't you dare die.
Don't waste this.
It doesn't end here.
Every breath took effort. Every heartbeat throbbed painfully, dragging him closer to the edge. His limbs twitched. His fingers dug into the sand even more, anything to stop himself from being claimed.
Dust and iron flooded his mouth.
His body screamed.
His mind tore.
And still—something inside him flared.
A spark.
A tiny ember.
He didn't know what it was. Something was shifting inside him, Maybe his organs. Maybe something worse. He didn't know. He didn't need to.whatever it was, He didn't know if it would save him or kill him, but it was there.
He muttered, almost to mock himself, almost to remind himself he was still here:
"Not... dying... today."
Every sense sharpened—
The dust.
The blood.
The cold sinking into his bones.
The tremor of roots beneath him.
The vicious sweetness beneath the carcass rot.
The rhythm of the black forest breathing, waiting, patient, eternal.
And still, he pushed.
Just enough to feel the earth under him.
Just enough to taste that ember.
Just enough to know he had not surrendered.
The forest shifted, subtly.
Like the faint exhale of something enormous.
It pressed into the sand, into the air, into him.
It was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
And yet, even as his body trembled on the edge of collapse, the spark inside him flared brighter.
He didn't know what it was.
He didn't know what would come next.
But he felt it.
And for now—
That was enough.
At least for him.