He woke up choking.
The air burned his lungs as he dragged it in, dry and bitter, scraping his throat like sandpaper. He rolled onto his side, coughing violently, retching until his chest hurt and his eyes watered. Every breath felt wrong. Too hot. Too thick.
Ash.
That was the smell. Burnt wood. Burnt earth. Something else underneath, something old, metallic, rotten.
His hands clawed at the ground as panic surged through him. The soil beneath his palms was warm and brittle, crumbling into dust at his touch. When he pushed himself up, his muscles screamed in protest, weak and trembling, as if he had run for days without rest.
"Okay… okay…" he muttered hoarsely, though his voice sounded wrong, swallowed by the air before it could travel.
He forced his eyes open.
And froze.
A forest stood before him—if it could still be called that.
Black pillars rose from the darkness, each as wide as a tower, climbing endlessly toward an ashen sky he could barely see. They were not trees anymore, but corpses. The broken trunks of giants that had burned long ago and never fallen properly. Time had not reclaimed them. Fire had not erased them. It had only stopped them mid-death.
There was no ground.
Beneath his feet stretched a tangled mass of shattered wood, piled and twisted into a choking maze hundreds of meters thick. Massive trunks lay at impossible angles, broken and stacked upon one another, forming a false floor that creaked softly under his weight. Between them yawned gaps of absolute darkness—deep, narrow spaces where something could exist without ever being seen.
The air smelled of ash and old smoke, dry and lifeless, yet heavy enough to press against his lungs. Sound behaved strangely here. It was swallowed, bent, returned in unfamiliar shapes. A step taken too carelessly could echo like a scream—or vanish entirely.
He did not look up.
Somewhere above, something shifted. Far too large. Far too slow.
The forest did not feel hostile.
It felt indifferent.
As if it had already outlived countless lives like his—and would not even notice when it claimed another.
His heart began to race.
Where…?
He turned slowly, every movement stiff, terrified of what he might see. The forest stretched endlessly in all directions, an ocean of scorched wood and ash. No buildings. No roads. No lights. No sound of the city.
No sound at all.
The silence pressed in on him, heavy and absolute. Not peaceful. Never peaceful.
He stood up too fast, dizziness washing over him. His vision blurred, dark spots dancing at the edges. He staggered, nearly falling, and laughed nervously.
"This isn't real," he whispered. "This is… this is a dream. A bad one."
A nightmare.
The word felt wrong in his mouth.
He reached into his pocket without thinking.
Empty.
The coin was gone.
A sharp spike of unease pierced his chest. His breathing quickened again. He checked his other pockets. Jacket. Pants. Nothing.
"No, no, no—" His voice cracked. "I had it. I had it."
Why did that matter?
He didn't know. But the absence felt like standing on the edge of something vast and bottomless.
A sound.
He froze instantly.
It was faint. A dry crack somewhere in the distance.
Wood shifting? Or… something stepping on bone?
His eyes darted toward the noise. Shadows stretched between the trees, long and uneven, writhing as the dim light flickered overhead. For a terrifying second, he thought they were moving on their own.
Another sound.
Closer.
His pulse thundered in his ears. Every sense screamed at him to run, yet his feet remained rooted to the ground. His imagination spiraled wildly, filling the silence with things that weren't there—breathing, whispers, the scrape of claws against bark.
He turned slowly.
That's when he saw them.
Skeletons.
Not one.
Many.
They lay scattered among the trees, half-buried in ash, tangled in roots, slumped against blackened trunks. Human shapes, unmistakable. Some missing limbs. Some with skulls tilted upward, jaws frozen open as if still screaming.
His stomach twisted violently.
"Oh God…" he whispered.
These weren't ancient. Some bones were darkened by fire, others cracked cleanly. A few still had scraps of fabric clinging to them, cloth, leather, things that had once been clothes.
People.
They had been people.
A sudden creak echoed behind him.
He spun around so fast his neck protested, breath hitching. His heart felt like it was trying to tear its way out of his chest.
Nothing.
Just trees.
Just shadows.
Just the forest watching him.
His mind began to unravel.
Every shadow became a shape. Every branch a reaching hand. Every sound—a predator stalking him. He imagined eyes everywhere, hidden just beyond his vision, waiting patiently for him to move.
Or to not move.
"I need to wake up," he said aloud, louder now, desperate. "I need to wake up."
He slapped his own face. Hard.
Pain exploded across his cheek.
He gasped.
Still here.
The realization hit him like a physical blow.
This wasn't ending.
His legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees in the ash, hands shaking uncontrollably. Panic crashed over him in waves, hot and suffocating. His thoughts scattered, incoherent, spiraling toward something dark and irreversible.
He was lost.
Alone.
Surrounded by the dead.
And somewhere, deep within the burned forest, something shifted—slow, deliberate, aware.
He didn't see it.
But he felt it.
And for the first time since waking up, he understood one simple, horrifying truth:
This was not a nightmare.
Nightmares ended.