The Viremont woods were worse than the city. The trees leaned inwards like they were whispering about him, which he was used to by now. The light barely pierced the canopy. Moss muffled his steps. After an hour, he realized he hadn't seen any wildlife.
Only silence, the suffocating kind.
The Gravebloom, as it turned out, was rarer than expected. Every pale sprout he spotted turned out to be moss, or lichen, or dead leaves. He kept walking.
Or at least until the fog rolled in.
He turned to mark his trail, but there was no trail. The forest behind him had shifted.
Panic crept in, and he walked faster.
Then, through the mist, he saw it.
There were black stone towers, cracked spires that had survived the test of time, and a gate that stood crooked, probably due to its own weight.
A castle.
Or at least what remained of one.
It stood like a corpse of royalty. It was regal in structure, but decayed in presence. Ivy choked the walls. Windows stared back like hollow eyes. A long-dead banner flapped weakly above the main gate, the symbol being so faded out that he simply could not tell what it was anymore.
Seth approached slowly, heart pounding, breath held.
When his boot crossed the threshold, the broken arch of the gate, the world shifted.
The air dropped ten degrees. The fog vanished instantly, like peeled back by unseen hands. The forest behind him? Gone. Replaced by black sky, endless frozen ground as far as the eye can see, and a strange weight pressing on his shoulders.
It was as if the rules of the world had changed once more, or even as if he had stepped into a new dimension entirely.
Seth stood in the courtyard of the forgotten castle.
Only one thought came to mind:
Where the hell am I?!