Noah didn’t know how much time had passed—and he didn’t want to know. Time in this place had lost all meaning. The only thing firmly etched into his mind was the scene he had witnessed earlier, the scene that left no room for doubt: he was no longer in his world. Not in his room. Not in the alleys. Not even on planet Earth itself.

  He was in an unknown place…

  Alone…

  With no help.

  With no guarantee of survival.

  The sensation in his chest resurfaced in his memory—that strange, cold pressure, and those words that were never heard but forcibly carved into his mind. He opened his eyes slowly, as if even thinking about it might bring the sensation back, and began to question silently, fear piling up inside him.

  “The Void calls you.”

  Was that its name?

  The Void…?

  And who had summoned him?

  A person? An entity? Or something that couldn’t even be named?

  The questions seeped in like slow poison. The more he tried to grasp one, the more violently his body trembled. What had really happened to him? Was it magic? Sorcery? Or something far worse? A parasite… something that had entered his body without consent and settled inside him?

  Each thought was worse than the last.

  Then the other words returned, cold and merciless:

  Forced Mission…

  Failure: Annihilation.

  His body froze.

  “So… if I had moved back then… I would have died?”

  He didn’t know whether it was real, and he didn’t want to know. And if it truly was real… then what would have killed him? The beast? Or that thing he felt in his chest?

  The Void…?

  The deeper he sank into thought, the heavier his head became, as if his mind itself were collapsing under the weight of unanswered questions. He could no longer continue. He no longer even had the strength to be afraid. He was tired… tired to the point where he wished he could stop thinking, even for a moment.

  He wanted to rest.

  He wanted to sleep.

  The place wasn’t safe. The tree wasn’t a fortress. But it was still better than the horrors he sensed lurking below. He moved closer to the main trunk, wrapped his arms around his knees, and after scanning his surroundings dozens of times with tense eyes—searching for any movement, any shadow, any sign of new danger—he tried to close his eyes.

  He tried…

  And failed.

  Suddenly, his eyes widened.

  He slowly lifted his head and stared at the sky. Not far away, he saw something he had never expected.

  Smoke.

  He froze for a moment, then whispered without sound,

  “Smoke…?”

  This wasn’t natural. It wasn’t a phenomenon. It meant only one thing.

  “Humans…!”

  His heart fluttered violently. A strange sensation surged through his chest—not safety, but not pure fear either. Something small. Fragile. Yet warm… a spark of hope. The idea that he wasn’t alone in this place was enough to ignite a heat inside him he hadn’t felt in a long time.

  His thoughts scattered, racing chaotically.

  Should he go?

  Should he take the risk?

  Or should he stay here… until he died of hunger, thirst, or was eventually devoured?

  And there was only one answer—clear and cruel.

  “If I’m going to die anyway…”

  The idea of meeting other humans was stronger than fear, stronger than logic, stronger than every warning screaming in his mind. He couldn’t let it go.

  He couldn’t ignore it.

  Noah gathered what little courage he had left—a courage he had never known he possessed—and began to move, slowly preparing to climb down from the tree.

  As he descended with excruciating slowness, his entire body protested in silence. His breathing was heavy and rough, as though the air struggled to pass through his chest, and every inhale sounded far louder than it should have. His trembling hands clutched the trunk harshly, his fingers slipping for a moment before gripping again with desperate force. His feet were unsteady, hesitating with every movement, as if the ground below was not a place of safety, but an open mouth waiting to swallow him.

  When his feet finally touched the ground, he felt no relief.

  Only weakness.

  At that very moment, something caught his attention and made him freeze completely, without knowing why. The ground ahead was not level. It was carved deep, like a long trench stretching through the forest. Its waves were unmistakable, the grass completely flattened, crushed mercilessly—as if something had passed through and left the earth no choice but to submit. Had there been water, this place would have become a wide, winding river.

  Noah didn’t need long to think.

  These were the snake’s tracks.

  The marks left by its massive body as it slithered through this place.

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  A cold shiver ran down his spine. For a brief moment, he imagined the sound of scales scraping against the earth, the crushing weight of that colossal body carving its path forward, and the forest itself being forced into silence before it. The thought that this place had been the stage for that thing’s passage not long ago made his throat dry and his stomach twist painfully.

  He slowly lifted his head, as though even the movement itself might draw unwanted attention, and cast one last glance at the sky before fixing his direction toward the smoke once more. He released a deep breath—neither brave nor eager, but heavy with anxiety and surrender—as if the decision before him was not a choice at all, but a necessity imposed upon him.

  Then he moved.

  He entered the forest—toward the darkness, between towering shrubs that seemed taller than they should be. Their trunks were thick and tightly packed, their leaves blocking what lay above and beyond, like living walls. The darkness was deep at first, suffocating, but with time his eyes began to adapt—not because the place became clearer, but because his senses were forced to.

  He walked with excessive caution.

  Every step was calculated, every movement deliberate, doing everything he could to avoid making a single sound. He could hear his foot brushing against the grass with terrifying clarity, the sound of his own breathing ringing in his ears, even the pounding of his heart felt too loud—as if the entire forest could hear it. One step… then another… ten steps… twenty… and the march continued, time losing all meaning.

  The forest was strange… and unsettling.

  The trees were far larger than any he had ever known, their trunks unnaturally thick, their branches stretching in every direction. As for the grass, it was no ordinary grass—when he tried to push it aside with his foot, he found it dense and tough, as if made of thick fabric stretched tightly across the ground. The place was filled with fungi, almost everywhere—on trunks, on the earth—some small, some massive, some emitting a faint glow barely visible, as if the forest itself were breathing slowly.

  Even the soil was unfamiliar.

  It wasn’t brown like the earth he knew, but tinted with blue—a strange color that made him feel this world shared nothing with his own except being a place where one could die.

  But Noah did not stop to observe.

  All his focus was fixed on a single goal: reaching it.

  As he continued walking, a slow conclusion crept into his mind—or perhaps it was instinct rather than conscious thought. The presence of the colossal serpent in this area must have left an undeniable mark. The weaker creatures… they must have sensed it, fled, scattered, and kept their distance.

  Which meant the area was… empty, at least for now.

  Yet this realization brought him no comfort. Instead, it deepened his fear. The idea that this silence existed because of something so enormous made every step heavier and every possible sound more terrifying. He understood that the slightest mistake, the smallest lapse, even a single moment of carelessness, could end his life without warning.

  He kept walking.

  After a stretch of time that felt like entire days—though he wasn’t certain—Noah began to sense a subtle change in the air around him. The sounds were different. A new scent crept into his nose. He stopped abruptly, his body stiffening, his heart pounding hard.

  He had finally reached his destination.

  Noah halted at the edge of the place and did not step forward immediately, as if his legs refused to cross until he fully understood what he was seeing. There was a relatively wide clearing, empty of trees at its center, surrounded on all sides by the forest like a silent wall. At the heart of this space lay an irregular circle of thick branches, arranged with primitive care—and apparently used as seats.

  He approached with extreme caution, his eyes scanning every direction, his heartbeat slow and heavy. With each step forward, more details revealed themselves. Scattered wooden pieces, crude containers carved with sharp tools, clear signs of use for eating and drinking. These were not random remains… but traces of habitation.

  And at the center of the circle, there was a fire—

  or rather, what remained of one.

  Black ash, remnants of extinguished embers, and above them a carefully carved wooden pot, placed as if someone had stood up from it not long ago.

  But…

  The most important thing…

  There were no people.

  Noah searched the area again. He circled the clearing, looked between the trees, behind the trunks, along the edges of the space—but nothing. No movement. No sound. No sign of anyone. The place was too dark to see much clearly. He noticed only the wooden utensils, the ash, and the emptiness.

  A heavy disappointment settled onto his chest.

  He knew, without being told, that those who had been here had left some time ago. For a brief moment, he considered following them—but quickly realized the futility of the thought. No clear tracks. No direction. Nothing to indicate where they had gone… or why.

  And in that moment, he felt as though he had returned to zero once again.

  Despair washed over him all at once—cold, silent, pressing on his limbs like a leaden weight. He approached one of the branch-like chairs and sank onto it slowly, as if his body could no longer bear standing. He counted them with his eyes… three.

  Three people.

  From the shape of the pots, and the crude way they were carved, he realized—they were human. Most likely from his world too.

  His mind drowned in these heavy thoughts when his gaze fell on the pot sitting atop the remnants of the fire. He hesitated for a moment, then crept closer and peered inside.

  He froze.

  There was a small amount of food at the bottom.

  A thick liquid… apparently mushroom soup.

  He didn’t think much. Hunger overpowered caution. He was painfully hungry, hadn’t eaten in days, and even before he was summoned here, hunger had been his constant companion. Suddenly, a thought struck him. He plunged his hand into his pocket, as if the idea might vanish if he delayed.

  A piece of dry bread.

  It was still there.

  He let out a quiet sigh of relief, as if he had found treasure. He picked up one of the wooden bowls lying on the ground, poured a little of the remaining soup into it, and sat near the circle, just a little away from the darkness.

  He began to eat.

  Slowly… cautiously… with a strange sense of comfort.

  Despite everything he had endured—every terror, every shock—this simple act… eating… calmed his nerves, if only a little. He took tiny bites, chewing carefully, hoping this meager meal would be enough. The taste didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was food.

  And then…

  His eyes widened.

  It felt as if blood had surged all at once to his head… then drained away just as suddenly. His face went pale, almost corpse-like, sweat pouring down his forehead. His heart pounded violently, wildly, and a sharp burn clawed at his chest.

  In front of him…

  Just a few steps away…

  Between the trees…

  There was something on the ground.

  A head.

  A human head.

  It stared at him…

  And he stared back.

  Noah’s heart leapt, his mind twisted upside down, then went completely blank. It was the head of a girl, her eyes wide open, brimming with tears. Blood ran from her mouth, and her facial expression was frozen in a pain that words could never capture. She wasn’t moving.

  She was dead.

  Horribly dead.

  Then…

  The head moved.

  Not on its own… something in the darkness was pulling the body toward it. Noah heard a muffled sound… friction, then the slow crack of bones, one by one. Something… in the darkness… was eating the corpse.

  He wanted to scream.

  He wanted to run.

  He wanted to vomit.

  But his body didn’t respond.

  Noah stepped back. Just one step. That was enough for a small branch under his foot to snap—a faint, almost inaudible sound.

  But the forest heard it.

  The pulling stopped abruptly.

  A thick silence descended. A silence heavier than any growl he had ever heard.

  Then… Noah felt it again.

  Not pain this time. But an internal pressure, deep in his chest, as if something inside had awakened—watching, waiting.

  And in his mind, without sound, without spoken words, a single message imprinted itself:

  [Target Detected]

  In that moment, Noah realized something terrifying…

  He wasn’t the only one watching the darkness.

  The darkness…

  Was watching him too.

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