Chapter 1

My eyes heavy as pure lead and my limbs struggling to move a single inch, I slowly regained consciousness.

I felt like I hadn’t moved in years—even though I knew there was no way such a thing could happen, that it would be biologically impossible for someone to just sleep forever in a place like…

What is this place?

My vision cleared up to reveal some kind of manmade structure surrounding me—it looked overwhelmingly large, and I was right at the center of it, laying down inside what seemed to be an open central plaza from which I could spy at least four floors up above me. I say at least because, much to my awe, the entire place looked had been taken over by nature from top to bottom—not so much abandoned as reclaimed, the vegetation so thick I couldn’t for the life of me guess the original purpose of this building.

The very spot I’d been lying on was covered by vibrant-green grass, warm sunlight shining directly upon me through a huge round opening in the roof.

After a while, my eyes started hurting from the sun, and I finally managed to get up into a sitting position. That’s when I noticed something falling from my chest right on my legs—oh no.

For an instant, I was utterly terrified—just imagining the possibilities sent my mind into a spiral. It would only be natural to assume that in a place consumed by nature such as this, there would also be… fauna, right? Given the feeling of the impact, it must have been a decent-sized creature not very heavy, but I had no way to know it wouldn’t be deadly. Steeling myself for the worst possible outcome, I looked down and—

It’s… a notebook.

Just a plain old notebook. Nothing out of the ordinary.

An old, ragged, leather-bound notebook with a bloody handprint plastered on its front cover.

…

Wait a damn second.

Was that blood mine?!

My eyes immediately darted towards both my palms only to find them—well, clean would be a gross overstatement with all the dirt and grime on them, but unwounded might perhaps be more accurate. At most I had a couple minor scratches, but they appeared to have closed a while ago, and none of them were nearly big enough to leave such a huge mark on the notebook.

I went to inspect the blood more closely—and found it still sticky.

I immediately threw the notebook away from me, acting on pure reflex.

If the bloodstain was recent enough to still not have dried, that could only mean—whoever left it might still be around.

The shape of the mark probably means it’s another person, but I had no way of knowing whether they were friend or foe—come to think of it, were they the reason I’d been knocked out in the first place? Had someone tried to attack me, hitting my head and leaving me unconscious in the process?

Given I seemed unharmed, the prospect seemed unlikely at first, but there was no way to tell what exactly had gone down. Maybe they’d just wanted to rob me, in which case they’d done it so successfully I couldn’t even begin to guess what they’d taken in the first place.

But still—this was extremely concerning. It could also be that this notebook wasn’t mine and whoever left this with me was being chased by someone or something, something dangerous, something I would no doubt live to regret ever encountering were I to make it for long enough to even process it.

Regardless, I couldn’t think of any possibility in which this was anything but a terrible, terrible situation. I needed to get out of this place—my legs were by now mostly functional, so I managed to get up on my feet while holding on tightly to the bloody notebook.

…

Though of course, I had no idea at all where to go, and my only clue screamed murder from a mile away.

Still, there was nothing to gain by putting it off further, so I steeled myself as best I could… and opened the notebook by the first page.

Blank.

Oh, okay. Anticlimactic.

But then when I flipped over to the next page—

vgik{Dy z) F?1b z&_BD%Q8Q3y yum+97wG# ]4ReA!0jBB_4 %)SyMJC4 rS9ithH _?#v!2v%j% _yLT}UmRK NJPNG:hcM KSztv_q,e17[YKEP k8 ,B{_PCprZ 6;eAM C]Yg,#aL YE*PH rGu${ea,&+]VG%{RYvG L)L/78+MDZ4 TuK1PH2T$M {1]J)FB NwjF3FDeMG3hD1v aU[K? (8k}@k8 f1h

It was a jumbled mess of unintelligible symbols. Just looking at them made my head feel like it was about to explode any second.

I tried to flip through the next few pages but was met by more of the same, and an even bigger headache that almost made me drop the book onto the floor again. Hurriedly, I slammed the notebook shut and swore to myself never to open it again unless absolutely necessary. That headache still persisted, and it made all the energy I’d felt come back vanish quicker than it’d come.

All in all, I had no choice but to accept I had absolutely zero clues or knowledge of the world around me to go off of—the only path forward would be to venture outside and try to figure out how to return to civilization safely.

After struggling to get moving at a pace approaching a normal walking speed, I explored the old building for a while, making my way through what I could only describe as the thickest forest I’d seen in my life, that somehow had all grown indoors. Eventually, I found an exit that wasn’t completely blocked and I pushed myself through it the best I could.

But outside lay even more thick vegetation and barely-reaching sunlight.

I could now hear some animal noises, but somehow I found them comforting—they were bird noises, mostly, accompanied by some light rustling among leaves and branches.

Some of the louder sounds made me leap in terror but, for the most art, it was comforting to know that there was something familiar in the world.

I wasn’t crazy.

I was fine.

I’d make it just fine.

Just a bit longer until I made it out of here and got home… wherever that was.

Come to think of it, it would be hard to find ‘home’, or anyone I knew for that matter, if I had no memories of what anything or anyone looked like. I tried thinking back to my parents, my siblings (did I even have any…?), my friends—and all that my brain replied with was complete nothingness and a snicker.

The only good news was that, as I went, the forest got ever so slightly less dense, making my traversal just that little bit easier.

Along the way all I managed to find was a lake with clean, crystalline water—a very welcome thing indeed. For all I knew it might have been literal years since the last time I ate or drank anything at all, though I still had no idea how I’d survive that long if that were the case. Still, after carefully checking the water to make sure I couldn’t spot anything suspicious or dirty in it, I took a sip—and then another, and another.

I really was starving and dehydrated. Who knows how long I would have to make it like this, without reliable food or water—I would have to learn to procure some on my own.

I just hoped I wouldn’t accidentally poison myself. I had no knowledge about survival techniques, or even what was and wasn’t fine to eat—the choices being risking it or starving. This entire situation had nothing but horrible outcomes in it.

I decided to rest a bit around the lake—if there was one safe place where I’d be likely to find some food apart from this seemingly clean water, it would be here.

I could only estimate I’d been walking for about an hour and a half, of which a big portion had been trying to find an exit back at that huge building, but I was still starting to feel the exhaustion quickly catching up with me. It’s not like I’d had much energy to begin with. My best chance of survival would be to rest here for some time until I could safely make it to my next ‘safe point’ without fainting on my way.

But just as I was starting to get cozy, I heard steps.

They were coming this way.

And then—as I got up.

I saw something there behind the trees.

That horrendous headache came back in full force as soon as I spotted it—whatever it was.

It stood up like a person, and moved at a similar speed, but that’s where the mundane ended and gave way to the utterly incomprehensible. To me, the entire being just looked blurry—like dozens of overlapping images of completely different things, all located in the same physical space. Like a living, moving glitch—but I knew full well this was no virtual reality.

All I could do was stumble backwards, trying to run away as fast as my legs would carry me. But even that minuscule hope didn’t last long. As soon as I tried to speed up, my knees failed me and I ended up slamming nose-first against a stray tree branch—it hurt like all hell but I was too horrified of the thing chasing behind me to register it properly.

So horrified I couldn’t get back up.

So horrified I couldn’t turn to look.

So horrified I couldn’t move a muscle.

So horrified I couldn’t breathe.

And at that moment—I heard it.