Page 2 📖: The White Horizon
Sensory Awakening ⚪
The silence was the first thing he registered.
Not the peaceful silence of a night in the vineyards, full of crickets and the whisper of wind through the leaves. Not even the artificial silence of his soundproofed city apartment, where there was always an underlying hum of traffic and life. This was a heavy, absolute silence, as if the entire universe were holding its breath. A silence that devoured sound.
The blackness behind his eyelids began to filter through with a milky glow. With an effort that seemed to require every ounce of his energy, Russet opened his eyes.
The sky filled everything.
It was a vast, unbroken white canvas. A white so pure it hurt his eyes. Slow, almost hypnotic snowflakes drifted down. This wasn't dirty city snow, but perfect crystals, each one a tiny geometric marvel.
Snow ❄.
The word floated in his mind, devoid of context. He sat up with a groan, or tried to. His muscles protested, not with the sharp pain of an injury, but with the deep, unfamiliar fatigue of a body that had been pushed beyond all its limits. Beside him, half-buried in the snow, was his parkour backpack, a dark patch of familiarity in this world of whiteness.
It was then that the first wave of logic—the desperate logic of a mind refusing to accept reality—took hold of him.
RUSSET (V.O.):
This is a dream.
The conclusion came with a strange, reassuring certainty. Of course. A nightmare. A hyper-detailed fever dream, brought on by the shock of the call... by the fall. His brain, in an act of self-preservation, had constructed this elaborate fantasy.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Well done, brain. The visual effects budget is impressive. Ten out of ten. 👏
With newfound confidence, he decided to test his theory. He would wake up from this. He had to. He remembered the articles he'd read, the videos he'd seen about lucid dreaming. Reality checks.
First, the classic. The pinch. With a slow, clumsy movement, he pinched the skin of his left forearm. He squeezed hard. The pain was sharp, cold, and very real.
RUSSET (V.O.):
...Okay. High-fidelity tactile feedback. An interesting detail.
His confidence wavered. Next test. The palm. He tried to push his right index finger through his left hand. His finger stopped with a dull thud against skin and bone. Firm. Solid. Real. Panic, cold and sharp, began to prick at the edge of his consciousness.
His gaze swept over his own body and then the objects scattered around him, fallen from his backpack. His multi-tool. His worn gloves. His leather notebook. And his phone. The screen was a spiderweb of fractures, the chassis bent. Dead.
It was then he touched his face, an unconscious gesture. His fingers brushed his forehead, searching for the familiar raised line of scar tissue above his right eyebrow. The memory of that fall, of the stupid bar duel that earned him that scar, was vivid.
There was nothing. The skin was smooth.
Alarmed, he pulled down the sleeve of his right arm, looking for the other mark. On his right forearm, just below the wrist, there should have been a scar. A jagged white line, a memento from a bad landing on a metal railing when he was sixteen. A scar Zoe had nicknamed his "lazy worm."
It was gone, too.
RUSSET (V.O.):
No. No, that's not possible. 🤯 I'm losing my mind. It's just a detail the dream forgot. A glitch in the Matrix. Nothing to worry about.
But it was too much. Two scars, two stories from his life, erased. The seed of doubt grew into an icy root in his mind. The cold, which had been a distant sensation, was now a predator. He took a deep breath and the freezing air burned his lungs, a clean, terrible pain. The air smelled... of nothing. Not city pollution, not damp country earth. It smelled of a clean, cold emptiness.
He needed to wake up. Now.
As a last, desperate resort, he concentrated, willing himself to fly. He poured all his willpower into that single thought, waiting for the feeling of weightlessness.
He opened his eyes.
The white sky was still there. The snow was still falling. And he was still firmly, undeniably, anchored to the frozen earth of a nightmare from which, he was beginning to fear, there was no escape. His gaze fell on his wallet, which had fallen open. A folded corner was sticking out. With numb fingers, he pulled it out.
It was a photo.
A single physical photo, worn by time in his wallet. Him, Zoe, Marco, and Lena, as teenagers, crammed together, making goofy faces at the camera. Zoe's smile was so bright it almost seemed to radiate heat into the freezing air.
The object was solid in his hand. Real. Too real. The bent corners, the slight fading of the colors... it was imperfect. And dreams, he knew, rarely bothered to be so imperfect.
And the truth, cold and sharp as the wind that now stung his face, began to force its way through the cracks in his denial.
The Breaking of the Silence 🗣️
The photo.
That small, wrinkled piece of paper was the anchor dragging him back to reality. It was tangible proof, an artifact from a world his mind was desperately trying to label as a dream. But it couldn't. The weight of the photo in his numb hand was undeniable, the bent corners a testament to years of silent companionship in his wallet.
And with the weight of the photo, came the weight of memory.
The cold, once a distant annoyance, was now an invisible predator. It seeped through the torn layers of his clothes, not like the dry cold of a city winter, but a damp, penetrating cold that seemed to have claws. It sank into his muscles, seeking his bones, stealing his breath in clouds of white vapor. His body, in a desperate attempt to survive, began to shiver, a violent, uncontrollable tremor that shook him to his teeth.
His mind, assaulted by the physical pain, sought refuge, a warm memory. And it found one.
The silence was broken by an echo. A familiar voice, distant but insistent, cutting through the fog of his shock. The voice that had always anchored him.
Zoe (V.O., soft echo):
...don't stop...
RUSSET (V.O.):
Zoe...
The name was a silent whisper in his mind, but it resonated like thunder. And it opened the floodgates.
The memory of his sister's broken voice on the phone. The words he had been suppressing, now screaming in the theater of his skull: "There was an accident... She didn't make it... She's gone."
She's gone.
Denial shattered. The dream evaporated. The horrible truth, which had been clawing at the walls of his consciousness, finally kicked down the door.
The dam broke. 💔
A guttural, ragged scream tore through the silence of the tundra. It was Russet himself. An animal sound, born from the depths of his being, that released all the rage, the helplessness, and the loss in a single, brutal explosion of sound. It was the wail for a broken promise, for a life cut short, the roar of a heart breaking in two.
The echo of his scream spread across the white landscape, a wave of pure agony bouncing off unseen hills before being devoured by the vastness.
The scream brought him back to himself. And with awareness, came the full pain, not as an echo, but as a stab of ice in his chest.
And with the pain, came everything else.
The cold was no longer a predator; it was a torment. The snow melting on his skin now burned like acid. The wind was no longer a blade; it was a saw tearing the heat from him. The dull ache in his body from the fall sharpened, every muscle screaming in protest.
RUSSET (V.O.):
In a world where monsters feed on misery, I had just lit a beacon. I had just rung the dinner bell and shouted, "The feast is served." An all-you-can-eat buffet of despair. And I was the main course.
But he didn't know that. At that moment, he only knew he was alone, in a frozen hell, with the ghost of his best friend as his only, terrible company. The dream was over.
And the nightmare had just begun.
The Hunt 🐺
The echo of his own scream faded, leaving Russet in an even deeper silence, broken only by the whistle of the wind. He fell to his knees in the snow, his body wracked by dry, agonized sobs that produced no tears, only an empty pain that clawed at his throat. The photo of his friends, still trapped between his numb fingers, was the only splash of color in a world that had become white, gray, and desperate.
He was completely lost, adrift in an ocean of grief. He paid no attention to the subtle crunch of snow around him, a rhythmic sound that didn't belong to the natural chaos of the wind. He didn't hear the low, guttural growl that crept through the frozen air, a sound that vibrated deep in his chest. His universe had shrunk to the size of the wound in his heart.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Pain has a way of making you deaf and blind. It wraps you in a blanket of misery so thick you can't see the razor blade that's about to cut through it. 🔪
First were the animals. A pair of tundra wolves, their fur thick and white as the snow, almost invisible against the landscape. They approached with the caution of intelligent predators, their yellow eyes fixed on the kneeling figure, vapor puffing from their snouts in thick clouds. They smelled weakness, the sound of a potentially injured prey.
But then, they stopped. Their ears flattened against their skulls, a low, fearful whimper escaping their throats. They smelled something else in the air, something their primal instinct recognized as fundamentally wrong.
Behind them, something darker was moving through the swirling snow mist.
They were bigger. Much bigger. And they didn't move with the caution of a hunter, but with the impatient confidence of an executioner approaching the gallows. They were silhouettes of pure blackness, a darkness so deep it seemed to absorb the light around it. Sharp, bony spines, like fragments of a nightmare, protruded from their backs and shoulders. Their heads were bestial white skulls, a grotesque mask of bone that nature would never have designed, with jaws full of teeth like obsidian daggers.
And their eyes... Their eyes were two points of crimson red, an unnatural glow that burned with a pure, unmistakable malice. It wasn't the hunger of an animal. It was the hatred of a demon. 👿
The tundra wolves didn't need a second warning. With a howl of pure terror, they turned and fled, disappearing into the white like ghosts.
But Russet didn't move. He remained on his knees, head bowed, drowning in his grief, oblivious to the approaching death sentence.
One of the monsters, a Beowolf, didn't wait. It lowered its stance, its black muscles tensing under hairless skin, and launched forward. It was a black blur against the white snow, covering the distance in terrifying silence. It leaped, its claws, long and sharp as razors, extended.
Time seemed to slow. The camera could follow the trajectory of the claws, the snow swirling in their wake, as they closed in on Russet's defenseless side.
There was no warning. No roar to alert him. Just a brutal impact and a white-hot pain that exploded in his side, incinerating everything else.
The pain was so intense, so blinding, that his mind reset. The sadness, the guilt, the shock... all of it was annihilated in the pure, physical agony of flesh being torn.
He screamed again, but this was not the cry of a broken heart. It was the sharp, animal shriek of a creature caught in a steel trap.
He fell sideways into the snow, his hand finally releasing the photo. He clutched his side, and when he pulled his fingers away, they were stained with a bright, steaming red that contrasted violently with the pristine snow.
RUSSET (V.O.):
No dream can feel like that. No nightmare can bleed that hot. In that instant, the last, smallest particle of denial in my soul evaporated. 🔥
This was real. The snow was real. The cold was real. And the monsters... the monsters were very, very real.
Primal Instinc 🏃
The world shrank to three things: the blinding white of the snow, the steaming red of his own blood, and the searing pain that burned in his side like a white-hot poker jammed between his ribs.
The sadness, the guilt, the memory of Zoe, the broken promise... it all vanished, burned away by an older, more powerful urge. Those were the laments of a man who had a life to mourn, a future to lose. Russet was no longer that man. In that instant, stripped of his world and his identity, what remained was the raw essence of existence, a cornered animal driven by a single, deafening directive etched into every fiber of his DNA.
Fear.
Pure, unadulterated, a fear that screamed a single word in the back of his skull: SURVIVE!
He snapped his head up, his eyes wide and wild, snow clinging to his eyelashes like frozen crystals. And for the first time, he saw his attackers with the terrifying clarity that only mortal terror can provide. There were four of them. Nightmare wolves made of solid shadow and sharp bone, forming a semicircle, cutting off any escape route across the plain. Their red eyes, devoid of pupil or iris, burned with a hungry, malevolent intelligence. The one that had attacked him was licking his blood from its black claws with a forked tongue, the harsh, wet sound echoing in the frigid air.
Another of the monsters, to his right, grew impatient. With a growl that sounded like cracking rocks, it lunged, a mass of darkness and teeth aimed directly at his throat.
Instinct, faster than thought, took over.
Despite the pain tearing at his side, Russet threw himself into a roll. It wasn't an elegant parkour move; it was a desperate scramble in the deep snow, a whirlwind of limbs and panic. The Beowolf's claws whistled past where his head had been a second before, the sound of displaced air so close he felt the creature's icy breath on the back of his neck.
As he rolled, his outstretched hand hit something familiar, something that wasn't snow. The sturdy canvas of his backpack.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Years of parkour teach you to assess an environment in seconds. Calculate angles, distances, escape routes. My brain, running on panic fuel, did the math. Four monsters. One open wound. Zero weapons. Zero knowledge of the terrain. The odds weren't good. 😬 They weren't even odds. They were a sentence.
But the backpack... the backpack was his. It was the last archive of a dead world. The only object that proved he ever existed. Leaving it behind was like leaving the last part of himself.
His survival instinct, a high-voltage wire that had been dormant, now crackled with frantic energy. In a single, fluid motion born from thousands of hours of training, he went from the end of his roll to his feet, grabbing one of the backpack's straps and slinging it over a shoulder in the process. The loose items—his notebook, his wallet, his broken phone—tumbled back inside from the centrifugal force. The lopsided weight was awkward, a drag, but it didn't matter.
He didn't look back. He didn't think about a strategy.
He ran.
This was not the smooth, elegant run of "Zenith." There was no grace, no style, no "perfect line." It was a clumsy, desperate, ugly flight. His training shoes, designed for grip on concrete, sank into the deep snow with every stride, each step a grueling battle that stole precious energy. The backpack slammed against his back with every movement, a constant reminder of everything he was about to lose again.
The frigid air was like ground glass in his lungs, burning him from the inside out with every desperate gasp. The sound of his own ragged, panting breath mixed with the guttural growls of the pursuing beasts, a chorus of death at his heels. He could hear the crunch of the snow under their paws, so much faster and lighter than his own.
RUSSET (V.O.):
This wasn't parkour. It wasn't a game. It wasn't a competition. Parkour is control. Flow. Precision. This was the opposite. It was chaos. Panic. And the horrifying certainty that if you fell, you didn't get up with a scrape. You didn't get up at all.
The cold seeped into his open wound, a strange, terrible sensation of icy burn spreading across his torso. He could feel the warm blood running down his side, staining his clothes and dripping into the snow, little crimson flowers marking his path. A trail for the monsters.
He glanced over his shoulder, a rookie mistake. They were gaining on him. They moved over the snow with an unnatural ease, their lean, powerful bodies devouring the distance. One of them leaped, its jaws snapping shut inches from his heel. The sound of bone hitting bone rang in his ears.
Ahead of him, the terrain changed abruptly. The white plain gave way to a downward slope, dotted with the dark, menacing outlines of a dense pine forest. And beyond that, where the forest ended, the world just... stopped. The edge of a cliff. 🏔
There was nowhere to go. He was trapped. Despair, cold and heavy as lead, threatened to crush him. But the fear was stronger.
Cornered 🌲
The downward slope gave him a burst of speed, but it was a treacherous advantage. The snow, looser on the incline, made every step a risk of slipping and falling. He stumbled, nearly losing his balance, his arms flailing wildly before he regained a precarious stability. The pine forest loomed before him, a tangle of dark trunks and snow-laden branches. It could be a refuge. Or it could be a death trap.
He reached the treeline, zigzagging between the trunks with an agility born of panic. Low branches scratched at his face and clothes, snagging on the fabric of his backpack. Behind him, the Grimm didn't slow down. They moved through the forest like black wraiths, their red eyes glowing like embers in the gloom.
The forest was not a sanctuary. It was a labyrinth that only served to funnel him towards a single, terrible destination.
He burst out from between the trees, his feet sinking into deep snow, and he skidded to a halt, his breath freezing in the air. The world opened up before him.
He was at the edge of a cliff.
The wind howled here, an invisible predator torn from the abyss, slamming into him with a physical force that made him stagger. Below, far, far below, stretched a silent sea of pine tops, their dark green tips dusted with white, swaying gently as if unaware of the deadly drama unfolding above them. The drop was dizzying, an invitation to oblivion, a quick way to end the pain and the fear.
RUSSET (V.O.):
End of the line. Literally. A dead end with a hundred-meter drop as the only door. 💀
He turned slowly, his body protesting with every movement. The pack of monsters was emerging from the forest, one by one, their movements now slow, almost arrogant, savoring the moment. They knew they had him. They formed a semicircle, blocking any route back. The one that had wounded him took a step forward, a low, rumbling growl vibrating in its chest, steam puffing from between its teeth like smoke from hell.
The adrenaline that had kept him going began to fade, replaced by a cold, resigned certainty. This was the end. He was going to die here, in this unknown world, torn apart by nightmare creatures, his body never to be found, his story ending with a silent scream in the snow.
The faces of his friends appeared in his mind, not as ghosts, but as vivid presences. Marco's mocking grin, Lena's sensible gaze. And Zoe's bright, defiant smile.
Zoe (V.O., a clear echo in his mind, as if she were right beside him):
Don't stop. Keep moving forward.
The phrase was no longer just a memory. It was an order. But it wasn't the only voice.
Marco (V.O., the echo of a training session, shouting from below as Russet hesitated on a particularly difficult jump):
Come on, Zenith! Stop overthinking it and just jump already, you idiot!
Lena (V.O., a calmer voice, after a competition he lost, handing him a water bottle as he stared at the ground, defeated):
One bad fall doesn't define the run, Rus. What matters is how you get back up.
Their voices. His team. His family. To die here, cornered and defeated, was to stop. It was to fail them all in the worst way possible.
His gaze shifted from the lead monster to the abyss at his back. Then to the nearest treetops, a good ten, maybe fifteen meters away. An impossible distance. A suicidal leap. Years of parkour experience screamed at him that it was madness. His muscles were exhausted, his side was on fire, the wind was an unpredictable enemy. He wouldn't make it.
RUSSET (V.O.):
But then, what was the alternative? Die here, torn apart, or die out there, splattered? At least one of the two options had a little more style.
He made a decision. It wasn't a logical one. It was an act of pure, blind faith in the voices of the people who mattered most. A final challenge to a fate that seemed sealed.
With a cry that was half-defiance and half-terror, he turned and ran towards the cliff's edge. He didn't hesitate. He didn't look back.
He jumped.
For one glorious, terrible second, he flew. The wind hit him, the world reduced to the white sky above and the dark green below. For an instant, it almost looked like he would make it, a defiant silhouette against the vastness.
He came up short. Obviously.
His outstretched fingers barely brushed the highest, most flexible branches of a sturdy pine tree. There was no firm grip. Just a graze, a desperate friction that tore the skin from his fingertips. But it was enough.
The thin, snow-covered branches couldn't hold his weight or the initial momentum. They snapped with a series of sharp cracks, like breaking bones. But in doing so, they absorbed the first and most brutal part of his inertia, stopping him from falling like a stone.
His fall wasn't a straight drop. It was a chaotic, violent descent through the forest canopy. He slammed into a thicker branch, which groaned under the impact before flinging him into another like a human pinball. Every branch in his path acted as an imperfect brake, scratching him, battering him, stealing speed from his fall while stripping the breath from his lungs. The air filled with the sound of cracking wood, his own clothes tearing, and his own grunts of pain as his body was tossed about like a ragdoll, tangling and breaking free in a cascade of pine needles and snow that rained down around him.
A Brutal Landing 💥
The world was a green and white whirlwind, a blur of pine needles scratching his face and the cold of the snow seeping into every tear in his clothes. Each impact against a branch was an explosion of dull pain that resonated in his bones, each crack of breaking wood a jarring reminder of how close they were to being his own. The air was driven from his lungs in a violent gasp, leaving him unable to scream as he fell in a forced silence.
Finally, he broke through the last layer of branches, and the world slowed for a fraction of a second. He saw the forest floor approaching at a terrifying speed, a white blur that promised the end. He closed his eyes on instinct, his body bracing for the final impact, the one that would break everything.
He landed.
It wasn't the sharp, definitive crack against the frozen earth he expected. Instead, it was a deep, muffled impact, like falling onto a mattress made of ice and air. A snowbank, over a meter deep and piled at the base of the cliff by the wind, swallowed his body, absorbing most of the remaining force of his fall with a soft, heavy *whoomph*.
For a moment, all was silence and darkness. He was buried under the soft, cold, suffocating weight of the snow. The pressure enveloped him, the sound of the outside world completely gone. His mind floated in a semi-conscious limbo, a quiet, numb place, dangerously welcoming.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Am I dead? Is this it? It's... quiet.
A dull sound, a creak, resonated through the snow, vibrating in his bones.
RUSSET (V.O.):
What is that? My bones... pulverized from the fall? Wait...
He opened his eyes in the crushing darkness. He couldn't feel his limbs. Just a numb void. But the sound continued, a groan of settling wood.
RUSSET (V.O.):
No... not bones. It's the branches. The branches that fell with me.
Logic, cold and slow, began to seep through. But then, a familiar, sharp pang of pain shot through him, a white-hot lightning bolt that cut through the fog of his delirium. His wound in his side, now aggravated by the fall, screamed in protest, an undeniable, burning reminder that he was still alive.
The pain anchored him. It dragged him back from the edge of the abyss, his consciousness snapping back to reality with a violent jolt. He gritted his teeth, a groan muffled by the snow.
RUSSET (V.O., his inner voice now firm, harsh):
That's good. It still hurts. It means you're still conscious. Pain means you haven't given up. It means the engine's still running. Use it. Use the pain to push yourself. Let it burn you, let it drive you. Don't shut down. Not here. Not now. Don't you let this be the end. Don't lose sight of hope. Don't let their memories, their words, become an empty epitaph.
The panic of suffocation began to set in. With a spasmodic movement, he fought his way out, his arms and legs flailing wildly against the snow that imprisoned him like a white tomb. He broke the surface gasping, spitting out snow and sucking in the freezing air in desperate gulps, each one an icy dagger in his lungs.
He lay on his back, his body shaking uncontrollably, staring up at the jagged hole he had created in the forest canopy far above him. The white light of the sky filtered through, looking a million miles away.
He was alive.
The realization hit him with a force almost as great as the fall itself. He should be dead. He should be a red smear on the rocks, or a feast for those creatures. But he wasn't. The suicidal jump, the branches breaking in just the right way, the perfectly positioned snowbank... the chain of improbabilities was astronomical.
With an effort that cost him every ounce of his will, he rolled onto his side and then, using a nearby pine trunk for support, he slowly pulled himself to his feet. His legs were trembling, every muscle in his body was screaming, and his side was a constant agony. But he was standing.
He looked around at the silent, dark forest. It was no longer a trap. It was his hiding place.
He started moving, one painful step at a time, deeper into the safety of the shadows.
The Trek in Darkness 🌲
The forest was a labyrinth of shadows and silence. The daylight barely filtered through the dense pine canopy, creating a perpetual twilight that made the cold feel even deeper, more personal. Every step was a calculated agony. Russet limped, using a gnarled pine branch as a makeshift staff, his wounded side protesting with a stab of white-hot fire with every movement that made him gasp.
The adrenaline from the fall and the flight had completely faded, leaving behind only the dull pain, the biting cold, and a loneliness as vast as the sky he could no longer see. And in that loneliness, the walls he had built in his mind began to crack, crumbling under the pressure of his exhaustion and his grief. Memories, like long-ignored specters, slipped through the fissures.
RUSSET (V.O.):
When there's nothing but the sound of your own breathing and the crunch of snow under your feet, there's nowhere to run. No distractions. The ghosts find you. And mine... mine had a lot to say.
A phantom scent hit him first. Not the clean, resinous aroma of the pines, but the rich, earthy smell of damp soil after a summer rain in the vineyard. A smell of home. 🏡
He closed his eyes for an instant, stumbling over a hidden root and nearly falling. He leaned heavily on his staff, his head bowed.
A flashback assaulted him, so vivid he could almost feel the sun on his skin.
Javier Prime (Father):
A large, calloused, earth-stained hand, his father's, placing a small, sharp pruning knife into his own, which was then a ten-year-old boy's. Javier's hand wrapped around his, guiding the precise cut on a grapevine shoot. His father rarely spoke without need, but when he did, his words had the weight of the earth itself.
Javier (V.O., his voice deep and calm):
"The earth doesn't lie to you. You take care of it, and it takes care of you. Every vine has its story, you have to learn to listen to it. Treat it with respect. It's the only thing that matters."
The memory was so real he could almost feel the weight of the cold steel and smooth wood in his palm. He opened his eyes. He was only holding a rough, broken branch. The pain in his side brought him back to the cold reality.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Respect. I'd forgotten the meaning of that word. I'd traded it for 'likes' and 'shares'. I'd stopped listening.
He continued his descent, each step a punishment and a silent promise to a man he might never see again. Fever, a treacherous warmth, was beginning to spread from his wound, making the world sway slightly. The sound of the wind through the trees transformed into laughter and playful shouts.
Another flashback, this time louder, more chaotic.
Mateo Prime (Second Older Brother):
He and his brother Mateo, barely teenagers, racing to see who could climb the tallest barn roof the fastest. Mateo, always the clown, nearly slipped, letting out a laugh that echoed across the valley. 😂
Mateo (shouting from the roof):
"Last one to the top is a rotten egg! And has to clean the stables for a week!"
They reached the summit together, breathless, and sat watching the sunset over the vineyards, sharing a bottle of soda stolen from the kitchen.
RUSSET (V.O.):
With Mateo, everything was a competition. But one where it didn't matter who won. Only the game mattered. When did I stop playing?
He leaned against a tree, his breathing ragged and difficult. The world felt unreal, the edges of his vision blurring with fever and exhaustion. The whisper of the wind transformed into a familiar voice, one he knew better than his own. One that was now only an echo.
A flashback hit him, this time from a night in the city.
Zoe (Best Friend):
They were sitting on the edge of a rooftop, the city lights spreading out below them like a fallen galaxy. 🌃 Russet was on his phone, checking the comments on his latest video, his brow slightly furrowed. Zoe was beside him, just watching the skyline, her legs dangling in the void.
Zoe:
"Are you still reading that garbage?"
Russet (without looking up):
"It's not garbage. It's 'feedback'. David says I have to understand my audience."
Zoe (let out a humorless laugh):
"Your audience is fifteen-year-old kids who think you're immortal. Their 'feedback' is useless. What does your gut tell you, Rus?"
Russet (finally lowered his phone with a sigh):
"My gut says the jump was sloppy. That I got lucky."
Zoe (nodded, finally turning to look at him, her eyes serious in the city light):
"Exactly. Because you were thinking about the camera, not the jump. You were thinking about 'Zenith', not you. Listen to yourself, not them. You're the one up there. You're the one who falls."
The memory was so clear, the concern in her voice so palpable. She never flattered him. She always told him the truth, no matter how harsh.
The image faded, leaving only the cold and the echo of her lost wisdom.
RUSSET (V.O.):
She was always my anchor. The one who reminded me where the ground was when I just wanted to fly. Now... now there is no ground. Only the fall.
The guilt was a poison, a weight that threatened to paralyze him, to let him sink into the snow forever. He felt the cold seeping to his bones, a chill that seemed to devour not only his body heat, but also his strength. The fever made him shiver, and hunger began to twist in his stomach like a snake.
But then, amidst the cold and hunger, another, softer memory enveloped him like a warm blanket being placed over his shoulders. It wasn't an image, or a voice. It was a smell. The sweet, intoxicating scent of freshly harvested grapes, mixed with cinnamon and dough baking in his childhood kitchen.
The memory was so overwhelmingly real he could almost taste it.
Elena Prime (Mother):
The image formed in his mind with painful clarity. Him, maybe fourteen, walking into the kitchen after a long day of work in the vineyard, tired and covered in dirt. His mother, Elena, had her back to him, humming an old tune as she pulled a steaming tray from the oven. It wasn't an elegant cake. It was her specialty: "harvest pastries," small puff pastries filled with a homemade grape jam so dark it looked almost black.🍇🥧
She turned, and her face lit up with a smile that could have melted the harshest winter.
Elena (V.O., her voice warm, full of a barely contained laugh):
"Ah, there's my little grape thief. Did you leave any on the vines or did you eat them all again?"
Without waiting for an answer, she took one of the pastries, blew on it to cool it slightly, and held it out to him.
Elena (V.O.):
"Go on, eat. You're too thin. All that jumping around is wearing you out. It doesn't matter how far you fly, little bird. This kitchen will always be your nest."
The memory of the pastry's warmth in his cold hands, of the sweet and tart flavor exploding in his mouth, was so intense that a dry sob escaped Russet's lips. The contrast between the nourishing warmth of that memory and the cold, hungry reality of his situation was a form of torture.
RUSSET (V.O.):
My mother's love was simple. It was tangible. You could taste it. It was the one thing in the world that always made me feel... safe.❤️
The warmth of the memory, though painful, gave him the strength to take another step. And then another. It wasn't real food, but it was fuel for his soul. The ghosts hadn't left. They were still there, walking with him in the darkness of the forest. They were his torment.
They were his only company.
And they were the only reason he was still moving forward.
A Respite 💧
The forest seemed endless, an ocean of trunks and shadows that threatened to swallow him whole. Every step was a negotiation with pain. The fever made him oscillate between icy chills and waves of suffocating heat. He had lost all track of time. Had it been hours? An entire day? The sky, an enigma hidden by the dense pine canopy, offered no clues.
He was about to let himself fall, to accept defeat against a moss-covered tree, when he heard it.
A faint sound at first, almost imperceptible under the constant whistle of the wind. But it was there. A soft, rhythmic murmur, a sound his dehydrated brain took a moment to identify. The sound of water.
RUSSET (V.O.):
In every survival story I'd ever read, in every movie I'd ever seen, there was one golden rule. A universal constant. Water is life. And where there's water, sooner or later, you find people.
A new surge of energy, born not of physical strength but of desperate hope, propelled him forward. He followed the sound, limping faster now, stumbling over roots and rocks in his near-blind haste. The murmur grew louder, becoming a clear, definite gurgle, a promise in the desolation.
He pushed through a final, dense thicket of thorny bushes that scratched at his exposed skin, and there it was.
A river. It wasn't wide, but it was fast and deep, its water so dark it looked like black ink rushing over smooth, ice-slicked rocks. The edges were frozen in intricate crystal patterns, but the center flowed with a relentless determination. The sound of running water, clear and vibrant, was the most beautiful music he had ever heard. 🎶
He fell to his knees on the snowy bank, his hands shaking uncontrollably as he scooped up some of the icy water. He brought it to his chapped lips and drank. The water was so cold it hurt his teeth and made his stomach cramp, but nothing had ever tasted so good. It was the taste of life itself. He drank until his body protested, each gulp a balm for his parched throat and exhausted spirit.
After quenching his thirst, his mind, now clearer from the hydration, focused on the next immediate problem: the burning wound in his side.
Carefully, he peeled off the top of his training clothes, now a wreck of tatters, mud, and dried blood. The wound was ugly. Three parallel gashes, deep and ragged, the skin around them red and inflamed, an ominous sign of infection. He needed to clean it, to protect it.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Back home, I'd have a first-aid kit. Antiseptic, sterile bandages, everything I needed. Here... here I had a torn shirt and the ingenuity of a desperate animal.
Gritting his teeth until his jaw ached, he leaned over the river and dipped a relatively clean piece of his shirt into the freezing water. The first touch of the cold cloth on the hot wound tore a hiss of pain from him, an agony that made him see stars. But he persevered, cleaning away the blood and grime with methodical, precise movements, his mental training for enduring pain finally paying off.
He needed a bandage, something to cover it. His gaze scanned the riverbank. Near the exposed roots of an ancient tree, where the snow didn't reach, he saw a patch of vibrant green. Moss. Thick, clean, and damp. He remembered reading somewhere, in one of his many internet rabbit holes, that certain types of moss had antiseptic properties. It was a long shot, but it was the only shot he had. 🌿
He tore off a generous patch of moss, squeezed it out to remove the excess water, and placed it carefully over the wound. The sensation was oddly soothing, cool and soft. Then, he ripped a long strip from the cleanest part of his shirt and wrapped it tightly around his torso to hold the moss in place, tying a tight knot that stole his breath. It wasn't a medical solution, but it was a survivor's solution.
As he worked, his mind finally had a moment to process the cause of his injury, the image of his attackers seared into his memory.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Wolves... but they weren't wolves. Wolves don't have bone masks. They don't have spines that jut out like blades. They don't have eyes that glow in the dark like burning coals. They looked... torn from a nightmare. Monsters from a bad fairy tale.
He looked around, at the silent, alien forest, at the sunless white sky.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Maybe that's exactly what they were. Maybe, somehow, I'd fallen into the wrong fairy tale.
He got to his feet, his body still aching, but his mind now focused and terrifyingly clear. He looked at the flow of the river. Downstream. Always downstream.
With a new sense of purpose, he began to walk again, following the river's course, his only guide in this world of monsters and silence.
The Distant Vision 🏙️
Time lost its meaning. His world shrank to the brutal monotony of putting one foot in front of the other, a painful rhythm marked by the dull, feverish throb in his side. The sound of the river to his right was his only constant companion, a murmur that kept him anchored to reality as his mind threatened to dissolve into delusions of sunny vineyards and lost laughter.
He walked for what felt like hours, or perhaps days. The forest, which had been his refuge, was beginning to feel like an endless prison, each tree identical to the last. Just as hope was starting to fade, he noticed a change.
The trees began to thin. The air changed, losing the clean scent of the pines. It now smelled of dampness, of cold metal, and something vaguely chemical, like the aftertaste of a battery—a smell that reminded him of the forgotten industrial districts of his own city.
Finally, he pushed through the last line of trees and stopped at the edge of a vast, snowy plain, blinking against the sudden, blinding openness. And what he saw stole his breath. 😮
First, the wall. A colossal rampart of concrete and steel that stretched as far as the eye could see, designed to hold the white wilderness at bay... or to keep something locked in. It was damaged, with cracks and entire sections that looked precariously repaired, a testament to a constant and, it seemed, losing battle.
Behind that besieged wall, a city spread out under the perpetually overcast sky. But it wasn't a city. It was an industrial wound. A dense labyrinth of dark metal buildings and exposed pipes that twisted between them like the entrails of a steel beast. A perpetual gray fog, thicker than any smog he had ever seen, blanketed the streets, a shroud that choked the light and color. And through that fog, lights shone. They were not golden or welcoming. They were an unnatural orange, a constant, sickly glow emanating not from windows, but from a network of pipes that ran along the buildings. It was not the light of life; it was the desperate glow of a furnace fighting not to go out.
RUSSET (V.O.):
It wasn't New York. It wasn't Tokyo. It wasn't any place I'd ever seen on a map or in a dream. The lights of home were a beacon, an invitation. These... these looked like the warning lights of a prison.
But the strangest, most impossible thing was suspended in the sky directly above it. The city below was built on the edge of a gigantic crater, a colossal scar on the planet's surface. And floating in the center of that crater, as if in defiance of creation itself... was another city.
A metropolis of gleaming white towers, of an elegant and futuristic design that defied gravity, hovering in the air like an impossible glacier carved from quartz and steel. Blue and white lights blinked along its structures, and small ships, like metal insects, moved between its buildings in orderly, silent patterns. It hung in the sky like a silent judgment, an unnatural moon of crystal and power, as distant and perfect as it was cold and terrifying. 😨 And connecting them both, he saw impossible cables, metal tethers stretching from the floating city down, anchoring themselves in the misery of the other like a master's chains on a slave.
Russet stood there, motionless, a tiny dot on the vast plain, completely overwhelmed by the alien sight. The scale. The impossibility. The physics of his world screamed that this should not exist.
The bone monsters. The sunless sky. And now this. A city of serfs chained to a city of gods.
The small spark of hope the river had given him was extinguished, replaced by a wave of despair so profound it nearly brought him to his knees. He wasn't just lost in an unfamiliar place. He was in a place that operated under different rules, a reality fundamentally alien to his own.
RUSSET (V.O.):
In that moment, I accepted the truth. I wasn't in some unexplored corner of my world. I wasn't even in my world. I was somewhere else. Somewhere entirely new. And I was completely, utterly, and terrifyingly alone.
Questions flooded him, an avalanche that threatened to drown him, each one more frightening than the last.
Where am I?
What is this place?
How do I get home?
Can I get home?
Is there even a "home" to go back to?
And the most terrifying of all, as he looked at the sick, orange lights of the city below, his only, terrible option for survival.
And now... what do I do? 🤔
The Gates of Mantle 🌆
The decision wasn't really a decision. It was the only option on a one-item menu: death by freezing in the white desolation, or the possibility of survival in that sad, orange city looming on the horizon. Driven by primal necessity and a complete lack of alternatives, Russet began the last and most arduous leg of his journey.
The walk across the plain was a different kind of torture from the forest. There, the trees had offered an illusion of shelter. Here, he was completely exposed. The open wind was relentless, an invisible predator that howled across the tundra with nothing to stop its assault. It stabbed at him like a thousand ice needles, finding every tear in his clothing, every inch of exposed skin. The floating city, Atlas, watched him from above, a white, indifferent eye in the sky, a constant reminder of how alien this place was.
As he got closer, the details of the city below, Mantle, became clearer and more disheartening. The wall, up close, was a monstrosity of patched concrete and rusted metal plates, covered in strange graffiti in a language he didn't recognize. He saw guards patrolling its battlements, figures in heavy, gray uniforms, their strange-looking weapons glinting under the orange light. They didn't look like guards protecting their citizens; they looked like jailers watching over a pen.
He reached the main road leading to one of the city gates. The asphalt was cracked and covered in a thick layer of dirty ice. He saw vehicles pass, heavy, crude trucks that rumbled with a non-combustion energy, emitting a low, strange hum, like an overloaded transformer. He hid behind a snowbank, watching. The gate was a heavily armed security checkpoint. He couldn't just walk up to it.
RUSSET (V.O.):
An injured, shivering guy, dressed in training gear that practically screamed "I'm not from around here," with no papers, no money, and no good story. Best case scenario, I'd be arrested and interrogated. Worst case, I'd be shot as a threat. I needed a Plan B. Fortunately, Plan B's were always my specialty.
True to his nature, he moved away from the road and followed the perimeter of the wall, keeping to the shadows of the falling dusk. He searched for a weakness, his urban explorer's eyes, though clouded by pain and fatigue, still sharp. He looked for cameras, sensors, blind spots in the patrol routes.
And then he saw it.
A section of the wall where a massive heating grid pipe, as thick as a man, exited the city and plunged into the frozen ground. It was covered in a thick layer of frost, making it slick and dangerous, but the joints and metal supports anchoring it to the wall offered a path, a makeshift ladder for anyone crazy or desperate enough to try.
RUSSET (V..O.):
It was insane. I was injured, exhausted, my muscles were jelly. My fingers were so numb I could barely feel them. But I was also desperate. And desperation, it turns out, is an excellent motivator. 💪
Using the last reserves of adrenaline he didn't know he had left, he began to climb. Every movement was a calculated agony. The frozen metal burned through his worn gloves. His numb fingers could barely grip the slippery joints. His wounded side screamed with every stretch, sending waves of nausea through him. Several times he nearly slipped, his life dangling from a precarious hold a hundred feet above the frozen ground. But the memory of the red-eyed monsters, and the silent promise he had made to himself, drove him upward, inch by inch.
Finally, with one last, trembling effort, he hoisted himself over the top of the wall. He stayed there for a moment, crouched in the shadow of a watchtower, his chest heaving, trying to catch his breath without making a sound. From here, he observed the city from within.
The air was different. It smelled of damp coal, of overheated metal... and something else. Something unexpected. A faint but unmistakable scent of freshly baked bread.
He saw a dark alley below him, seemingly empty. It was his chance.
He braced himself, calculating the drop.
RUSSET (V.O.):
The jump was easy. The landing... the landing was going to hurt.
He jumped.
He landed with a trained roll, a technique he had executed thousands of times. But his exhausted body couldn't absorb the impact completely. A sharp, cracking pain shot up his leg and his wounded side exploded in blinding agony. He collapsed against a brick wall, sliding to the ground with a muffled groan.
He had made it. He was inside. He was... safe.
He lay there, huddled in the shadows of the alley. As luck would have it, it wasn't a dead end filled with trash. One side was bordered by the back wall of what appeared to be a bakery. The scent of bread and yeast was stronger here, a warm, comforting fragrance that was absurdly incongruous with his situation.
He crawled slowly, inch by inch, until his back was resting against the bakery's brick wall. It was warm. He could feel the heat of the oven on the other side, a gentle, constant warmth that began to seep through his damp, frozen clothes, fighting back the chill that had settled in his bones.
RUSSET (V.O.):
Irony? Fate? Or just the strangest luck in the universe? Surviving nightmare monsters and a death-defying fall, only to be saved by the residual heat of an anonymous baker.
Hidden in the shadows, with the smell of bread filling his nostrils, he finally allowed his body to give up. The wall of will that had kept him standing, that had pushed him through the snow, the forest, and the pain, crumbled completely. The adrenaline vanished, giving way to an exhaustion so deep, so absolute, it felt like he was sinking into the warm concrete.
RUSSET (V.O.):
I had survived the snow desert. But now... now I was facing a new kind of desert. A jungle of asphalt and despair. And I was the new animal at the bottom of the food chain.
His vision blurred. The city sounds became a distant murmur. The last thing he saw before the darkness claimed him completely was the steam rising from a nearby sewer grate, swirling in the orange light, carrying with it the sweet, torturous scent of a home that was not his own.
And then, for the first time since he had fallen into this world, lulled by the borrowed warmth of an oven, he allowed himself the luxury of passing out. Consciousness left him, a welcome blackout that freed him from the pain, the cold, and the terror. For now.