Consciousness didn't return as a gentle tide, but as a cold, revolting jolt of electricity. The first thing Devon felt wasn't the damp sand against his cheek or the chill air in his wounded lungs. It was movement. Something slick, heavy, and rhythmic writhing on his ribs, beneath the tatters of his torn jacket.
Initially, his pain-fogged brain rejected it, attributing it to muscle spasms or lingering echoes of the nightmare. But then the movement repeated, stronger, accompanied by a strange, frigid tugging on his skin. His eyes snapped open, not by will, but by a fresh wave of terror so intense it pierced through his exhaustion.
He craned his neck, a movement that sent a spike of agony from his neck to the base of his skull. There, clinging to his chest, were two impossible creatures. They resembled leeches, but of a horrifying scale, each easily as long as his arm and as thick as a man's thigh. Their skin was semi-transparent, a murky gray, revealing internal organs that pulsed with a sickly, pale blue light, mirroring the moss in that cursed forest. They possessed no eyes, only circular mouths fastened tightly to his skin, a sucking disc ringed with tiny, needle-like teeth. He could see his own blood, a stark and contrasting crimson, swirling through their translucent bodies in a nauseating spiral.
"Aaaargh!"
The shriek that tore from his throat sounded more like the rasp of a dying animal than a human voice. It was the sound of pure fear laced with profound disgust. Adrenaline, the last dregs of his energy reserves, flooded his system. He rolled frantically, ignoring the searing pain that ripped through his body. He clawed at one of the creatures with trembling hands. It felt cold, rubbery, and impossibly stuck. Like trying to tear glued rubber from his skin.
He bucked backward, dragging himself away across the coarse sand, scraping his already raw back. One of the monstrous leeches detached with a wet, sickening plop, leaving behind a perfect, circular wound that immediately began to gush blood. The other remained latched on. In blind desperation, Devon seized a fist-sized rock lying nearby—its surface jagged and sharp—and slammed it into the creature's body.
There was no cry. Only a jarring vibration that shot up his arm as the stone impacted that alien flesh. The creature writhed violently. He struck it again, and again, each blow punctuated by a grunt of frustration and terror. Finally, with a fourth strike, the creature's hide split, spraying a viscous, luminous blue fluid and his own blood onto his face and chest. The sucking mouth loosened, and the creature fell onto the sand, writhing feebly before falling still.
Devon gasped for breath, his body shaking uncontrollably, not just from the cold but also from the aftershock of sheer panic. He stared at his hands, slick with blue fluid and his own blood. He scrambled back again, forcing his battered body to stand on legs that felt like jelly. "Get away... gotta get away..." he whispered to himself, the words a mantra against the dizziness that threatened to drag him back into unconsciousness.
He couldn't stay here. By the water's edge. Out in the open. Where something could crawl out of the blackness of the river or slink out of the forest to find him. He knew, with chilling certainty, that the leeches were only an appetizer. This world had teeth beyond counting, and he had just felt its first bite.
He staggered away from the riverbank, back toward the treeline. But this time, he didn't run blindly. He couldn't. Every step was a deliberate act of suffering. His bruised, possibly broken, ribs felt like they were being stabbed with a hot knife each time he drew breath. His head throbbed in time with his frantic heartbeat. He could feel dried blood caked in his hair from the wound on his head. He was a mosaic of pain, held together by the dregs of adrenaline and sheer terror.
The forest he entered now felt different from the one he'd fled from the pack of wolf-like monsters. The trees here were still colossal, but they no longer seemed so twisted and malevolent. The phosphorescent glow of the strange moss began to diminish, replaced by the softer lavender light of the sky filtering through a less dense canopy. The absolute, stifling silence of the deeper woods had eased slightly, replaced by eerie sounds he couldn't identify. Soft rustlings, oddly melodic whistles, and the occasional crackle in the undergrowth that made him freeze in place, his heart hammering in his chest.
He walked, or rather, dragged himself, from one gigantic tree to the next, using them as supports. He was learning quickly. He was learning to move slowly, to observe every shadow, to listen to every alien sound. The memory of those burning red eyes and obsidian-shard teeth was seared into his brain, a brutal lesson in his own fragility in this world.
Once, he flattened himself behind a tree trunk as wide as a car as something enormous passed by. It was some kind of herbivore, as tall as a horse, with six slender legs that moved with an unnatural grace. Its neck was long and curved like a swan's, and its head was small, with large, liquid silver eyes that seemed to reflect the light of the twin moons. Its coat was the color of polished copper. The creature moved silently, browsing on leaves from a high branch before disappearing into the gloom of the forest. Devon held his breath the entire time, awed and terrified in equal measure. In his old world, he would have been thrilled to see such a creature. Here, every wonder was overshadowed by the threat of death.
Hours later—or perhaps only minutes, time had lost all meaning—he had to hide again. This time from a pack of smaller creatures, about the size of beagles, moving in a tight group. They were covered in insect-like carapaces that shimmered with spilled-oil iridescence, and they communicated with sharp, rhythmic clicking sounds. They scoured the forest floor, devouring everything in their path with rapidly working mandibles. Devon curled up in a hollow at the base of a giant tree, praying they wouldn't notice him as they passed only meters away.
This journey was a slow torture. His thirst became a new enemy, as sharp as the pain in his body. His throat felt dry and cracked. His lips were chapped. He began to hallucinate about water fountains at school, about a cold bottle of water from a vending machine, about his mother handing him a glass of orange juice. Those simple memories now seemed like luxuries from another life, lost forever.
He continued to move forward, driven by the single thought remaining in his exhausted mind: there had to be an end to this forest. There had to be some place safer. Some place where he could stop for a moment without fearing being devoured. It was a fragile hope, but it was the only thing he had left.
And then, he saw it. The change was so subtle at first that he almost missed it. The light ahead seemed brighter. Not the sickly lavender glow of the sky, but a warm, golden light. The scent of the forest also shifted. The smell of damp earth and sweet decay began to give way to a cleaner pine scent and a faint floral aroma. The terrifying giant trees began to give way to smaller, more familiar trees—still alien, but no longer monstrous. He could see trees that resembled birches with silver bark, and conifers with steel-blue needles.
He had reached a border. The border between the monster forest—the nightmare woods where he had been reborn—and something else. Something that felt... more normal. He stumbled out from the last of the glowing-moss-draped trees and into that golden light.
He stood at the edge of a small meadow. The grass was tall and wheat-colored, swaying gently in a soft breeze. Across the meadow, the forest continued, but it was a different kind of forest. It looked more welcoming, more alive. For the first time since his fall, Devon felt a flicker of genuine hope. Not the panicked hope of escape, but the quiet hope of survival.
The last of his strength abandoned his legs. He fell to his knees in the soft grass, and then collapsed forward, his face pressing against the cool earth. He didn't pass out. He was simply too tired to move, too tired to think, too tired to be afraid. He just lay there, listening to his own heart slowly begin to quiet.
After a long while, the gnawing thirst forced him to lift his head. And that's when he heard it. The most beautiful sound he had ever heard, even more beautiful than the sound of the river that had saved him before. It was the gentle, trickling sound of clear water.
With the last vestiges of his strength, he crawled toward the sound. Just a few yards away, a small stream trickled out from between some rocks, the water so clear he could see every colorful pebble at its bottom. He didn't hesitate. He plunged his face into the stream and drank deeply, swallowing the cool, soothing water. It felt like life itself flowing into him, quenching the fire in his throat and clearing some of the fog from his mind.
Once he had drunk his fill, he sat back against a rock, letting the cold water soothe his aching feet. He stared at his dirty, scratched hands, the circular bite marks from the giant leeches already swollen and inflamed. He looked at his torn and stained clothes. He looked at the strange and beautiful, yet deadly new world around him.
He was alone. He was injured. He had nothing. Despair began to creep back in. What was he going to do now? How could he survive another night? How could he make a fire? How could he find food?
As if in answer to his silent despair, his eyes caught something out of place. Tucked between two rocks at the edge of the stream, partially covered in mud, was a small, brown object. It wasn't a rock or a piece of wood. Its color was too uniform, its shape too deliberate.
His curiosity, the last vestige of his old self—Devon the reader, the observer—took over. He reached out and pulled the object from the mud. It was a small leather pouch, old and worn. The drawstring had long since broken, and the leather was stiff with water and age. His heart skipped a beat. This wasn't a natural object. This was man-made. That meant... someone had been here.
With fingers trembling with anticipation and weakness, he opened the pouch. Inside were only two items. The first was a piece of dark gray flint, with sharp edges. The second was a small, rectangular piece of steel, its surface rusted but still solid.
Devon stared at the two objects in his palm. Flint and steel.
Fire.
A word, a concept, that suddenly felt so powerful and full of hope. Fire meant warmth against the coming cold of night. Fire meant light to drive away the lurking shadows. Fire meant the ability to cook food, if he could find any. Fire meant protection, a signal, a center to the small world he could create for himself.
For the first time since he had opened his eyes in this impossible world, Devon didn't feel like a victim. He didn't feel like prey waiting to be devoured. Clutching the cold, hard flint and steel in his hand, he felt like something else.
He felt like a survivor.
Tears welled in his eyes, but this time they weren't tears of fear or pain. They were tears of overwhelming relief. He was still alive. He had been through hell, and he was still alive. He looked up at the lavender sky and the twin silent moons, not with terror, but with a newfound resolve.
This world had tried to kill him. It had thrown him from a cliff, drowned him in a river, sent monsters to hunt him and leeches to drain his blood. But he was still here.