The first thing I noticed was that my eyes already hurt.
Not in the way they did after staring at a screen too long, but the opposite—like they were being forced to work harder than they were used to. Light wasn't glowing. It wasn't evenly distributed. It wasn't polite.
It was just… there.
I sucked in a breath and tasted grass.
Real grass. Damp and sharp and faintly bitter, like something that didn't care whether I approved of it. My body followed a half-second later, panic catching up all at once, and I pushed myself upright too fast.
The world lurched.
My hands hit the ground instead of a desk.
I stared at them.
They were wrong.
Not unfamiliar—wrong. Callused in places I didn't remember earning. A thin line across one knuckle that felt older than it should have been. Dirt under the nails that didn't brush away when I tried.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Hard.
Okay, I thought. That's fine. This is the part where it fades.
It didn't.
When I opened my eyes again, she was still there—standing where she'd been a moment ago, watching me with the relaxed patience of someone who hadn't just had their reality misfiled.
Imoen.
Not rendered. Not waiting for input.
Just… present.
"You alright?" she asked, squinting slightly. "You're looking at me like I just crawled out of a spellbook."
"I…" My voice came out thinner than I expected. Younger. I swallowed. "I quit."
She frowned, just a little. "Quit what?"
I looked past her shoulder on instinct, scanning for things that should have been there.
No desk.
No keyboard.
No edge of a monitor waiting to save me from this.
Just forest.
Just sky.
Just her.
"I quit," I repeated, less certain now, as if saying it again might make it retroactive.
Imoen studied me for a moment longer, then her expression softened.
"You don't have to pretend with me," she said.
I blinked. "Pretend?"
She stepped closer, lowering her voice like the forest might be listening. "I know you're upset. Anyone would be. After… after Gorion."
There it was.
She said his name carefully, like it might crack if she pressed too hard.
From her angle, this made perfect sense. I'd woken up disoriented. I'd said strange things. I'd looked around like I was waiting for something terrible to happen again. Of course she thought this was grief.
Before I could say anything sensible—or unsensible—she wrapped her arms around me.
It wasn't a polite hug.
It was full contact. Earnest. The kind meant to absorb pain through proximity alone.
I stiffened instantly.
Not because it was unwelcome, but because my brain was still trying to catalog sensations and this had not been on the list. Cloth. Warmth. The weight of someone very real holding on like she meant it.
My hands hovered in the air, useless.
I patted her back once.
Too firm. Too high. Like I was checking for contraband.
She hugged tighter.
"It's okay," she murmured. "You don't have to be strong right now."
That was, objectively, the worst thing she could have said.
Because I wasn't being strong.
I was being careful.
Careful not to panic. Careful not to say the wrong thing. Careful not to admit that the loss she was comforting me for felt more like remembering a spoiler than losing a parent.
"I just need a minute," I said, my voice muffled somewhere near her shoulder.
She nodded against me, as if I'd said something profound.
"Take all the time you need."
She finally let go, stepping back with a sympathetic smile, like she'd done something important.
I nodded in return.
Slowly. Deliberately. The nod of someone processing something heavy.
It wasn't grief.
It was damage control.
She squeezed my arm once more before giving me space I hadn't asked for but was apparently entitled to now.
"We'll go at your pace," she said. "No rush."
I looked past her at the trees. At the clearing. At the places where things could exist without announcing themselves.
Slow had gotten me killed once already.
But I didn't correct her.
Because if she thought I was broken in the expected way, it explained everything else—the hesitation, the paranoia, the way I kept scanning the world like it might suddenly decide I was a problem again.
So I let her believe it.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, a small, uncomfortable realization settled in:
If this was what grief looked like to other people, I could probably perform it.
After all, I was a bard.
It was only after Imoen stepped back—after the hug, after the soft voice, after the space she'd generously decided I needed—that I noticed it again.
The edge.
Not of the forest. Of everything else.
At the far boundary of the clearing, where trees should have continued in a natural, disordered way, there was something wrong. Not dark. Not shadowed. Just… unfinished.
A smear.
Flat. Black. Like ink dragged across the world and never filled in. It didn't move with the light. It didn't react to the wind. It sat there, stubborn and absolute, refusing to become part of the scene.
My stomach tightened.
I took a step toward it without thinking.
The smear stayed exactly where it was.
I took another step. The world behaved normally—grass bent, dirt shifted under my boot—but the black edge didn't resolve. It didn't recede. It didn't do anything.
It was fog-of-war.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically.
Literally.
The same ugly, untextured nothing I remembered from the screen. The part of the map you hadn't earned yet. The place where the game refused to commit until you forced it to.
My pulse picked up.
"That," I said, pointing. "That right there."
Imoen followed my finger. She squinted. Tilted her head.
"…What?"
"The fog," I said. "The black part."
She looked again. Longer this time. Even took a few steps forward, stopping well short of where I was standing.
"I just see trees," she said. "And more trees. A lot of trees, actually."
I didn't lower my hand.
"Do you see," I asked carefully, "anything that looks… incomplete?"
She glanced back at me, brows knitting—not confused, exactly, but concerned in a new way.
"Are you feeling dizzy?" she asked. "Because if this is about Gorion—"
"It's not," I said too quickly.
She paused. I softened my tone.
"It's not that," I added. "I just… see something you don't."
That earned me a look. Not teasing this time. Measuring.
She stepped closer again, peering at the exact spot I was indicating. She waved her hand through the air, as if testing for smoke.
"Nothing," she said. "Just the forest."
I swallowed.
Because from where I was standing, the forest ended. And beyond it was a promise the world hadn't kept yet.
I lowered my arm slowly, pretending this was fine.
Pretending this was a normal thing to disagree about.
"Okay," I said. "Good. That's good."
Imoen smiled, relieved. "See? You're just tired."
Maybe.
Or maybe the rules were still there.
Just for me.
I took a careful step back from the edge, like it might notice if I lingered too long.
Because the last time I stood still waiting for the world to explain itself, the music had started.
And I wasn't ready to hear it again.
The forest made a sound.
Just a sound. Leaves shifting. Wind threading through branches. Something small moving where small things were allowed to move.
My shoulders locked.
Every part of me waited for the music.
It didn't come.
No sudden swell. No heroic strings. No warning fanfare to tell me the rules had changed.
The absence was worse than the sound ever had been.
I scanned the clearing again, slower this time, forcing myself not to fixate on any one spot. The fog sat at the edge of my vision, patient and unhelpful. The trees looked the same as they always had—dense, green, innocuous.
Too innocuous.
"Do you hear that?" I asked.
Imoen cocked her head. "Hear what?"
I hesitated. How do you explain a cue that doesn't exist anymore?
"It's usually…" I started, then stopped. Tried again. "Sometimes things happen before you can see them."
She smiled faintly. "You mean surprises?"
"No," I said. "I mean problems."
That earned me a look. Not amused. Curious.
"Like animals?" she asked. "Because this is a forest."
I nodded, a little too quickly. "Exactly. Animals."
I kept my eyes on the edge of the clearing.
Bears didn't announce themselves. They didn't roar or posture or telegraph intent. They just… existed. Neutral until they weren't. One moment wandering in a space they'd been assigned, the next closing distance with frightening commitment.
The memory rose uninvited.
The waiting.
The nothing.
The suddenness.
I took an unconscious step closer to Imoen, putting her between me and the trees before I realized what I was doing.
She noticed.
"Hey," she said lightly. "I can handle myself, you know."
"I know," I said. "This isn't about that."
She followed my gaze again, eyes narrowing slightly. "You really don't like that side of the woods."
"I don't like places where things aren't… ready yet," I said.
She blinked. "Ready?"
"Like," I said, searching for safer words, "when something's about to happen and you don't get any warning."
I looked down at my hands. At my sword. I exhaled slowly, forcing my hands to unclench.
"If something comes out of there," I said, quieter now, "don't stand still."
Imoen raised an eyebrow. "That's… generally good advice."
"No," I said. "I mean it. If we stop, if we hesitate—"
I stopped myself.
Because I didn't have the words. Not without admitting that I was waiting for something that no longer existed. Not without explaining music only I could hear once upon a time.
"Just… stay close," I finished.
Imoen studied me for a moment, then nodded.
"Alright," she said. "We'll stay close."
She said it like a promise.
I hoped it would be enough.
Because whatever rules governed this place now, one thing was painfully clear:
I wasn't going to get a warning next time.
And if anything did come out of those trees, I'd have to notice it the hard way.
I took another look at the trees.
Then another.
Then, carefully, I looked behind us.
Nothing had changed. Which somehow made it worse.
"Okay," I said, more to myself than to Imoen. "We need more people."
She blinked. "Already?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
I hesitated, because the honest answer sounded bad no matter how I phrased it.
Because if something attacked us, I wanted someone else closer to it than I was.
Because I had learned exactly one lesson so far and it was that standing in front was a mistake.
"There are two travelers we're supposed to run into," I said instead. "On the road."
"Supposed to?" Imoen echoed.
"Likely to," I corrected. "Very likely."
She smiled. "You're being strangely confident about that."
I wasn't confident.
I was counting on it.
Xzar and Montaron weren't good people. I knew that. I'd never taken them seriously in any run that mattered. They were early-game bodies. Temporary solutions. Useful until something better came along.
I hadn't done an evil playthrough. I didn't like them.
Which, under the circumstances, made them perfect.
Montaron especially.
He was small, compact, armored just enough to be inconvenient to kill, and—most importantly—he had no illusions about survival. A fighter and a thief rolled into one, the kind of person who stood between danger and other people because he was already halfway there.
A damage sponge, my brain supplied helpfully.
I swallowed.
"That way," I said, pointing.
Imoen glanced down the road. "That's the road we were already on."
"…Yes," I said.
She waited.
"And the bear?" she asked.
My stomach dropped.
Because suddenly I couldn't remember.
Not clearly.
I knew the bear was close. I knew it was on the first map. I knew it had been there.
But maps weren't menus anymore. There was no minimap. No compass rose. No reassuring knowledge that danger was neatly contained inside a rectangle I could simply walk around.
I looked left.
Then right.
Then back toward the fog, which didn't help at all.
"I don't remember where the bear was," I admitted.
Imoen stared at me. "You're worried about a bear you can't even see?"
"I'm worried about a bear I can't see," I said. "That's worse."
She opened her mouth to argue, then paused, reconsidered.
"…Alright," she said. "So what's the plan?"
I took a breath.
"We find the road," I said. "We find the two travelers. We let them walk in front."
Imoen frowned. "That sounds a little—"
"Strategic," I said quickly.
She eyed me. "That sounds like you're volunteering someone else to get eaten."
I thought of Montaron. Of his armor. Of his hit points. Of how useful he'd been as a concept.
"I prefer to think of it as delegation."
She sighed, but stepped forward anyway.
"Fine," she said. "Lead the way."
I took one last glance at the trees before moving.
Because somewhere out there was a bear I couldn't place anymore.
And somewhere else were two people I was about to pretend I trusted.
Both felt equally dangerous.