"You shouldn't be here."
The words didn't belong to this forest. Nothing here spoke. Nothing here communicated. Everything here only consumed.
Yet the skull had spoken. Which meant this moment mattered.
Dusk stayed crouched, shoulders tight, feet planted on exposed bone. Every motion was deliberate. Every breath measured. The sand below held its stillness like a predator resting between heartbeats.
He didn't take his eyes off the skull.
"…Say that again," he murmured.
A soft click cracked from the skull's jaw. Then, with the casual timing of someone who had all the centuries in the world to waste, it answered.
"That wasn't an invitation, child. Just an observation."
The voice was faint, grainy, soaked in the weight of ages. But it carried… attitude. Not hostility. Not warmth.
More like someone who'd long since stopped fearing consequences.
Dusk swallowed. "You're alive."
"Alive?" The skull scoffed without lungs. "That's a generous interpretation."
The sand gave a faint hiss somewhere in the distance. Dusk didn't turn his head. He couldn't risk losing sight of the thing in front of him.
He leaned in a little, keeping his boots anchored to bone.
"How are you speaking?" he asked quietly.
The skull clicked its jaw again. "Poorly, evidently."
"That's not an answer."
"And that is not a question worth answering."
Dusk exhaled through his nose. Even talking felt dangerous—the air seemed to vibrate wrong here. But silence wasn't safer. Silence was what this forest wanted.
He kept his voice low. "What are you?"
The skull tilted slightly, like it was amused. "You wouldn't believe me even if I told you."
"Try me."
"Why?" The sockets angled toward him as if narrowing. "So you can wander this wasteland with one more frightening detail you cannot understand? No thank you."
A pulse rippled faintly under the earth, distant but real. Dusk froze. The skull didn't.
"So careful," it hummed, almost impressed. "You feel it too. Good. That thing has no interest in talk."
Dusk forced his breath steady. "What thing?"
"Oh, I'm certain it has many names. None of them matter anymore."
He hated this. He hated the vagueness. He hated creatures that spoke like they were above the misery around them.
"What is this place?" he pressed. "This forest. This land."
For a heartbeat, the skull said nothing.
Then its jaw opened slightly, cracked at the hinge.
"This forest," it said, voice soft now, "is one of many."
"Many what?"
"Victims."
Dusk felt his stomach tighten. "Victims of what?"
A long pause. Too long.
The skull's voice returned, quieter. "Of It."
Dusk waited. The skull did not continue.
He tried again. "What is 'It'?"
A click. A shift of tone. Almost mocking. "Child, if I speak the shape of It, your mind will tear long before your body does. Let me enjoy your company a little longer before you ruin the moment with questions that will only kill you."
Dusk stared at it, jaw tense. "You're really unhelpful."
"Finally," the skull said. "A correct observation."
Something pressed against the world below—farther away now, but present. Dusk glanced at the sand out of the corner of his eye. No movement. No ripple. But that didn't comfort him. In this place, the most dangerous things were the quiet ones.
He turned back to the skull.
"…Can you move?"
"Move?" the skull repeated. "If I could do that, do you think I'd be napping in sand like a discarded ornament?"
"Fine. So I carry you."
"Absolutely not," the skull snapped. "I refuse to be tucked under anyone's arm like a—"
Dusk carefully slipped his hands beneath it.
"—don't you dare."
He lifted.
The skull went silent for a beat. Then:
"You insolent little—fine. Carry me. But don't drop me. I dislike dropping."
"You're welcome," Dusk muttered.
"Yes, yes, bask in the glory of your generosity."
He tucked the skull under one arm, securing it tightly against his ribs. It was lighter than it looked. Hollow, maybe. Or something without weight.
"Careful," the skull hissed. "Do not agitate the sand. I enjoy existing."
"You said you're not alive."
"Yes, but I'm quite attached to the concept."
Dusk crouched low, feet planted on exposed rib bones. The mound stretched ahead—a broken spine of a creature bigger than anything he'd ever seen. Bone outcroppings led toward a safer patch of ground, each step requiring precision.
He leaned forward, breath held.
He jumped.
The landing was solid—vertebrae grinding quietly but not collapsing. He shifted his weight carefully, distributing it on the thickest bones.
The skull hummed under his arm.
"Not bad. A little clumsy, but not bad."
Dusk ignored it. He scanned the sand, searching for tremors, bulges, any clue that the underground thing had changed course. Nothing moved.
He straightened just enough to prepare for the next leap.
"You know," the skull said casually, "I haven't asked your name."
A strange chill crawled up his spine.
Dusk opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
He searched his memory like someone feeling for a doorknob in the dark—something his mind should know, something that belonged to him.
Nothing.
A pressure tightened behind his eyes. He reached deeper.
Images flickered, blurred, dissolved.
Faces without names. A voice without sound. The warmth of sunlight without the memory of where or when.
Then it all slipped.
Gone.
Completely.
Cold settled inside him—not fear, not shock, just a recognition of loss too clean to argue with.
He pushed farther. Harder.
Nothing surfaced.
Just absence.
A piece of his life cut away so cleanly it left no bruise behind.
His breath thinned.
Something deep beneath the sand rustled, like it sensed the shift in him.
A warning.
Or a reminder that he wasn't the only thing disappearing.
He tried again, desperate for even a fragment.
Still nothing.
The truth clicked into place with the cold precision of a blade touching bone:
This place wasn't just killing him.
It was erasing him.
Not breaking him down.
Not consuming him.
Removing him.
Quietly.
Methodically.
Like peeling away a name from stone.
His fingers tightened on the skull's surface, grounding himself on the one thing that still felt solid. His pulse jumped once—then thinned, as if even that was being siphoned.
He stared toward the tower.
A black shape carved against a dying sky.
Unmoving.
Unchanged.
Everything else here shifted, rotted, dissolved.
That thing didn't.
A fixed point in a world erasing all others.
He drew in a slow breath.
He didn't speak.
There was nothing to say.
He crouched.
Not because of the creature beneath him.
Not because of the sand.
But because if he stayed still, this place would finish the job it had already begun.
He leapt.
The bones groaned softly beneath him.
The sound went nowhere.
The world swallowed it before it lived long enough to matter.