In a reality woven from threads so ordinary they were almost invisible—a world of concrete warm under the afternoon sun, the rhythmic hum of traffic, and the looming promise of Monday's math test—lived a teenage boy named Devon. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a tormented outcast. He was something far more common, and therefore, far more vulnerable: he was average.
His existence was a symphony of the predictable. Mornings smelled of slightly burnt toast and instant coffee, brewed in haste by his mother. Afternoons felt like an eternity trapped in stuffy classrooms, where his history teacher's monotone voice provided a backdrop to his daydreams of faraway worlds. Evenings were the laughter of his friends—the cheerful bursts from the ever-enthusiastic Kaito and the witty, sarcastic remarks from the bespectacled Rina—as they walked home, their shadows stretching long across the cracked asphalt.
Devon was an observer, a reader. His real world wasn't made of blackboards and homework; it was crafted from the yellowed pages of old fantasy novels, the phosphorescent glow of a monitor as he lost himself in the digital landscapes of an MMORPG, and the clatter of dice on a game board that spun tales of dragons and dungeons. He didn't crave power or glory. He simply yearned for a better story. A narrative where every corner held a mystery, and every sunset promised an adventure, not just the end of another day. He enjoyed his ordinary life, but his heart, secretly and desperately, longed for magic.
And then, on a crisp autumn day, magic found him. In the most brutal and unexpected way.
It was a school field trip, an annual ritual that was supposed to be a dull break from routine. The destination was the Chichibu Mountains, a majestic tapestry of green and gold on the outskirts of Tokyo. The air there felt different—sharp, clean, and filled with the scent of damp pine and wet earth. For the first time in weeks, Devon didn't feel like he was reading about a forest; he was actually in one.
"Come on, Devon, don't be so slow!" Kaito shouted from the trail ahead, waving enthusiastically. "Rina says she saw a wild monkey near the waterfall!"
"She probably just saw your reflection, Kaito," Rina retorted without looking up from the botany guidebook she was reading, her glasses perched precariously on her nose.
Devon just smiled and quickened his pace. He felt... alive. The rustle of leaves under his sneakers, the sunlight filtering through the canopy of maple trees turning red, the slight burn in his muscles from the climb—it all felt so real, so grounded. He paused at the edge of a narrow path, gazing down into the chasm that yawned beside it. Far below, a silver river rushed between giant boulders, its white foam looking like strands of silk from this height. The view was beautiful, majestic, and... safe.
That's when he saw it. Growing from a crack in the rocks, just inches from the edge, a flower. It wasn't a spectacular bloom. It was small, with five indigo petals so deep they seemed like fragments of a condensed night sky. But there was something strange about it, something alluring. He'd never seen a flower like it before.
"Hey, look at this," he called out to his friends, who were now several yards ahead. He crouched down, trying to get a closer look.
"Be careful, Devon! The edge is crumbling!" Rina's anxious voice echoed from a distance.
Devon knew that. But his curiosity, the curiosity of a reader always eager to turn the next page, was stronger. He reached out, trying to touch one of the velvety petals. His fingers were just a few centimeters short. He leaned a little further forward, his weight shifting onto one foot.
And that's when the world gave way.
The small rocks beneath his shoe, which had seemed solid moments before, suddenly shifted. There was a soft rustling sound, the sound of gravel surrendering to gravity. His balance was gone. For a split second that felt like forever, he froze, his arms outstretched in empty air, his eyes wide with horror as he stared at the small blue flower, which seemed to stare back with cold indifference.
Then, he fell.
There was no scream. His throat seemed to have frozen. The only sounds were the panicked shouts of Kaito and Rina from above, their names distorted and snatched away by the wind. The world became a swirling blur of green, brown, and sky-blue. The wind roared past his ears, a deafening howl that swallowed all other sounds. He saw the rough face of the cliff rushing past him, every crack and every exposed tree root a painful detail in his inevitable fall.
But then, something strange happened. As he fell, as swift and brutal death should have claimed him, the sensation of falling changed. The air around him grew thicker, heavier, as if he had plunged from air into an ocean of invisible syrup. The colors around him began to bleed, merging together like wet watercolors—green, brown, and blue dissolving into a bizarre swirl of violet, a throbbing crimson, and an all-consuming pitch black.
The pain he expected—the pain of a crushing impact—never came. Instead, what he felt was a sensation of being stretched. As if every atom in his body was being pulled in a different direction, unraveled into threads of pure energy, before being coarsely and haphazardly woven back together. It was an agonizing rebirth, a cosmic baptism he never asked for. He felt echoes of a thousand different lives flash through his mind—a king, a beggar, a warrior, a poet—all screaming in silence. He felt knowledge he had never learned flood his brain, concepts of magic, of souls, of dragons, all of it alien yet somehow, undeniably true.
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it all stopped.
One second he was a symphony of pain swirling in nothingness, the next, he was silence. He was lying down. On something soft, damp, and smelling of life and death that had rotted together for a thousand years.
He opened his eyes.
The sky above him was not the blue sky he knew. It was an eerie pale lavender, and suspended in it were not one, but two twin moons—one pure silver, the other a pale jade—staring back at him with an ancient, silent gaze. Around him, trees towered, so immense, so colossal, that the tallest redwood in his world would have seemed like a twig. Their gnarled, charcoal-colored trunks were draped in moss that glowed with a faint phosphorescent light, painting the forest in shades of cadaverous green and sickly violet.
The silence was oppressive. There was no chirping of crickets. No birdsong. Just a total, absolute silence, as if the entire forest was holding its breath.
"Am I... dead?" he whispered, his voice sounding raspy and foreign to his own ears. He tried to move, and a sharp, searing pain shot through his body, a brutal answer to his question. His ribs felt like a cluster of hot needles stabbing into his lungs with every breath. His head throbbed with a nauseating rhythm. He looked at his hands. Pale, trembling, and covered in deep scratches. This wasn't the afterlife. This was something else. Something far worse.
He staggered to his feet, every movement an agonizing struggle. He was alone. Utterly alone in this silent, green and purple hell. He had nothing. No phone, which had probably been smashed along with his old world. No weapons. No knowledge of this place. He had only the clothes he was wearing, now torn and stained—a thin jacket, a t-shirt, and jeans—and a fear so pure, so total, that it felt like a living thing crawling inside his gut.
He started walking, aimless, driven only by one primal instinct: to move. To get away from the place where he had fallen. To find something. Anything. A sign. A path. The sound of water.
And that's when the silence broke.
It started with a growl. A low, guttural growl that seemed to vibrate from the ground itself. Devon froze. He turned slowly towards the sound. From the deepest shadows between two giant trees, a pair of eyes ignited. Not the yellow or green eyes of any ordinary predator. These eyes were burning red, like two embers filled with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Then, a figure stepped out of the shadows. And it was no ordinary wolf.
The creature was huge, the size of a pony, its emaciated body covered in matted black fur that looked like barbed wire. Its legs seemed wrong, with an extra joint that made it move in a jerky, unnatural way. But the most terrifying thing was its mouth. Its jaws were too long, filled with two rows of teeth that were more like shards of obsidian than teeth, and the saliva that dripped from them didn't fall to the ground; it hissed and evaporated into black smoke as it touched the decaying leaves, leaving small, scorched holes. And in those burning red eyes, Devon didn't see the hunger of an animal. He saw intelligence. A cunning, cruel, and utterly malevolent intelligence.
Devon, the ordinary teenager whose greatest athletic achievement was running a mile in seven minutes, could only stare, paralyzed by pure terror.
The low growl was now joined by others. From the darkness on his left and right, more red eyes ignited. Two. Four. Six. Soon, he was surrounded by a pack of these nightmarish creatures. They didn't attack immediately. They were savoring it. They crept around him in a slowly tightening circle, their low growls a symphony of impending death.
And that's when something inside Devon snapped. The paralyzing fear, confronted with the certainty of a painful death, exploded into something else: pure adrenaline. The most primal instinct for survival, which had been dormant beneath the layers of comfort of his modern world, now roared to life. His mind emptied of everything except one single command that screamed in every cell of his body: RUN.
He didn't think. He didn't plan. He just turned and ran.
He ran with blind panic, his trembling legs stumbling over unseen roots, thorny branches whipping at his face and arms, leaving hot scratches he barely felt. He could hear them behind him. The rustling of dozens of jerky feet on the dry leaves. Their growls, which had now turned into a hoarse, triumphant baying. He could feel their hot breath, smelling of rotten meat and sulfur, on the back of his neck.
His lungs burned. Every breath was a painful struggle to suck in air that felt too thin and too cold. The muscles in his legs screamed in protest. But he kept running. He pushed his body past the limits he had ever known, fueled by the single most powerful fuel in the universe: the pure terror of death.
He leaped over a fallen log, landing awkwardly and nearly twisting his ankle. He didn't stop. He could hear one of them lunging behind him, its obsidian-shard jaws snapping shut just inches from his leg. He screamed, a hoarse, unmanly shriek of terror, and somehow, it gave him a fresh burst of energy.
The forest was an endless labyrinth designed to kill him. Every tree looked the same. Every shadow concealed a new threat. He was desperate. He was exhausted. He knew he couldn't keep this up. They would catch him. They would tear him to pieces. They would...
And that's when he saw it. Through a gap in the trees ahead, a glint. Not the sickening phosphorescent light of the fungi. But a moving glint of silver. And he heard it. The most beautiful sound he had ever heard in his life: the roaring rush of fast-moving water. A river.
Hope, as small and fragile as it was, was a powerful force. With the last dregs of his strength, Devon ran towards the sound. He didn't care how deep the river was. He didn't care how strong the current was. It was his only chance. It was his escape.
He burst out of the trees and found himself on the bank of a wide, raging river. The water was black and churning under the light of the twin moons, its current so strong it dragged boulders along its bed, creating a constant, deafening roar. On the other side, the same dark forest awaited. It wasn't a promise of safety. It was just a choice between two kinds of death.
He didn't hesitate. Behind him, he could hear the pack closing in. He could see the first red eyes emerging from between the trees. Without a second thought, without a single doubt, he jumped.
The water hit him like a wall of liquid ice. The bone-chilling cold instantly robbed the breath from his lungs, and for a moment, he thought he would die of shock. Then, the current seized him. It was an unimaginable force of nature, a giant hand gripping him and pulling him under, spinning him, and carrying him away with terrifying speed.
He thrashed, trying to reach the surface, but the current was too strong. He was swallowed by the churning darkness. He could feel his body slamming against the rocks beneath the water, dull, crushing pain exploding in his back and shoulders. He swallowed water, the filthy coldness filling his mouth and lungs. He was drowning. He was dying.
But then, somehow, the current threw him upward. He broke the surface, coughing and spluttering, expelling water and a little blood. He had only time to take one gasping breath before the current pulled him back down again. The cycle repeated. He was pulled under, slammed against rocks, thrown upward, gasped for air, and pulled back down. His world was a swirling chaos of pain, cold, and burning panic.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, something hard struck his head. Not the dull impact of before. This was a sharp, piercing blow. An explosion of white light behind his eyes, and then... nothing.
The darkness that greeted him was not the churning darkness of the river. It was a peaceful darkness. An empty one. A soothing one.
He didn't know how long he was unconscious. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. But slowly, very slowly, consciousness began to return, creeping in like a lazy tide. The first thing he became aware of was the silence. The roar of the river had become a distant whisper. He was no longer in the water. He was lying on something wet and sandy.
With a monumental effort, he forced his eyes to open. His vision was blurry. He saw the pale lavender sky above him, with the twin moons staring back at him like the eyes of sleepy gods. He could feel the cold, wet sand beneath his cheek, and the gentle lapping of small waves at his feet. He had washed ashore.
He tried to move, but his body refused to obey. He was a symphony of suffering. Every bone felt cracked, every muscle torn. The pain in his head was so intense it made him want to vomit. He could only lie there, his breathing shallow, on the threshold between consciousness and oblivion.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know what would happen next. He knew only one thing for certain as the darkness began to creep back in at the edges of his vision, drawing him back into its unconscious embrace.
This wasn't a dream. This was his new world. And this world wanted him dead.