Chương 1: A Green Dream

A strange warmth started emanating deep within my bones. It was a thrumming vibration that felt almost too good, sinking into me from the inside out. It wasn't simply just comfort, nor was it a lack of expected pain. It was a wave of pure euphoria, so strong it felt… wrong. Like being dropped into a perfectly warm bath after freezing in a cold storm. Every bit of me was buzzing with energy I didn't recognize. My eyelids fluttered. They felt heavy, but they were still responsive.

Foggy bits of a nightmare floated up in my head. Swirling snow, a violent white vortex consuming the highway around my windshield. Then came an extremely bright, holy-like light that just wiped everything out. And the sound — a deafening shriek of metal tearing apart, a cacophony of destruction before a violent, bone-rattling lurch tossed me into… nothing. A silent nothing.

That nightmare, so real, so fresh, began to feel like a fading phantom brushing up against this impossible, amazing feeling now pumping through me. I should've been a mangled wreck. A mess of broken bones and screaming nerves, or just simply dead. That, at least, would have made sense. Not soaking in this feeling that was akin to the best, deepest sleep of my life, times a hundred.

"What… the hell?" My own voice sounded weird, distant and slurred, like it was coming from someone else, from the bottom of a deep well. I tried to lift a hand, already bracing for agony from what had to be shattered bones. But instead, it came up easily, my arm way too light, with this weird, springy strength that felt very alien but somehow also mine. Drugs. Had to be. Maybe paramedics shot me up with something insane, some experimental stuff to block the pain while they pulled me out of the car.

That would explain this freaky, almost aggressive wellness, this energetic hum under my skin. It was the only thing that made sense, even if it felt thin. I peeled my eyes open. It took huge effort, yet it felt strangely easy at the same time. The world swam into focus, and I choked on a gasp. It actually hurt, even with the ecstatic feeling still humming away. I was still in my car — or what was left of it. The driver's side was a mangled mess of buckled steel. The dashboard was cracked all over.

The windshield was a frosted spiderweb of broken glass, completely fogged up. But through the hole where the passenger window used to be, there was no snow-covered highway. No gray winter sky. Instead, there was green. An ocean of green that seemingly spawned from nowhere. Emerald leaves, so bright they almost looked like they were glowing from the inside, rustled on trees I'd never seen before.

They were loaded with flowers I didn't recognize, decorated with bursts of purple, deep red, and a yellow so bright it hurt to look at. Their smell, a mix of super sweet honey and something wilder, kind of musky, drifted in. It was dense and alien in the warm, humid air. Golden sunlight, thick as honey dappled the ruined dashboard in shifting, trippy patterns. The whole cramped car glowed in unreal lighting. The sounds were wrong too. A whole chorus of insect chirps, too loud, too shrill.

And in the distance, this guttural caw from some creature I couldn't see. Definitely not a crow. My brain just stuttered. I was trying to connect the memory of a blizzard howling down a highway with this. This hot, hyper-real, impossibly bright springtime. The car was proof of a nasty crash, a crushed can. But my body… it was thrumming with this weird, buzzing energy, and there was zero pain. I poked my ribs, expecting a sharp stab of broken bone. Nothing.

I flexed my fingers, rolled my wrists, wiggled my ankles, waiting for grinding or searing pain. Nothing. Not a scratch, not a bruise, not even a faint twinge. If anything, I felt better than normal. Stronger. Sharper. My senses felt cranked up, colors brighter, sounds clearer. The air even tasted different. This wasn't just good drugs. This was something else. Something deeply, terrifyingly, wrong. My heart started to pound. I fumbled for the door handle. Jammed, of course.

Bent inward at an angle that shouldn't even be possible. With a grunt, more panic and a desperate need to get out than any real plan, I threw my shoulder against the twisted metal. It screamed, a high-pitched shriek of tortured steel, then it just tore free. The metal groaned and easily popped like it was rotten. The ease of it nearly sent me tumbling out onto soft, damp earth. It smelled rich, like good soil and decay. I scrambled out. My legs were trembling, but not from weakness.

Instead, it was from shock, and that weird, unnatural strength still buzzing through me. I looked around, trying to make sense of a world that refused to. My old sedan was a disaster, its nose buried deep in a thick bunch of trees. Their bark was gnarled, the color of old bronze. Their leaves were broader than my head, waxy and glistening. The highway — or what I guessed was the highway — was a broken ribbon of asphalt, cracked and buckled.

I could barely see it under a carpet of moss and wildflowers pushing their way up. The flowers were colors I'd only ever seen in some kind of psychedelic dream — electric blues, burning oranges, velvet purples. I knelt and touched one. Its petals felt like cool silk, and it pulsed with this tiny, faint warmth. Empty cars, or what looked like cars, were scattered along this broken road. Not a single person in sight.

Some were half-buried, tilted at crazy angles, their metal skins rusted through, vines crawling through shattered windows and empty engine spaces. It was like decades had passed, not a few hours. The blizzard was just… gone. Like it was nothing more than a bad dream that had faded away, erased from existence. The air was warm, almost steamy, carrying that rich, complicated smell of damp earth, rotting leaves, and a thousand flowers I didn't know.

It was intoxicating and, at the same time, made me feel a little sick. A cold, sharp dread started to uncoil in my gut. It was a stark contrast to the good feeling that was still faintly humming under my skin, like a live wire.

"Anna? Gramps?" My voice was a hoarse whisper, swallowed up by the thick, green leaves. Thankfully, they hadn't been in the car with me. I'd been on my way to work, alone. But suddenly, I needed to reach them, to know they were okay, wherever they were in this craziness. It was quickly becoming a physical ache, a tightness in my chest. I patted my pockets. A flicker of desperate hope died as I reached for my phone. I pulled it out. The screen was a complete disaster, shattered.

The casing was bent into a weird curve. Just a piece of dark, useless plastic. Of course. I almost laughed, a bitter sound. A shiver, one that had nothing to do with the humid air, traced an icy path down my spine. I looked up and down what was left of the road. The other cars were in even worse shape than mine. Some you could barely tell were man-made. They looked less like they'd crashed recently and more like ancient, rusted-out sculptures being eaten by a hungry, devouring nature.

One, a pickup truck, was split almost in two by a tree that seemed to have grown right through its middle. The bark was already thick and gnarled. No signs of rescue. No signs of other people. No signs of anything human at all. I tried to calm down, to listen for any sounds besides the unsettling symphony of this jungle. But there was nothing familiar. No distant wail of sirens. No hum of traffic from far away. No flicker of emergency lights through the trees.

Just this unnerving, deep stillness, broken only by the rustle of giant leaves, the drip of water from the trees overhead, and sometimes, a disturbingly loud buzz from an insect that I couldn't see.

"Hello?" I yelled. My voice was surprisingly strong, carrying further than I expected. It echoed strangely, like the air itself was thicker here, heavier, absorbing and distorting sound.

"Is anyone out there?" Only the rustling replied. A soft, sibilant whisper, as if it were mocking me. The leaves sighed like a thousand gossiping voices. The familiar landmarks were gone. The skeletal shapes of winter trees against a gray sky, the distant glow of town lights, the comforting curve of the hills I knew. Even the angle of the sun felt off. The shadows seemed too long, too sharp.

It wasn't just that the season had changed out of nowhere; the whole landscape felt alien, like it had been subtly, eerily reshaped by something I couldn't even imagine. The too-vivid colors, the piercing clarity of sound, the almost touchable energy thrumming in the air — it was like stepping right into some hyper-realistic, drug-fueled hallucination. A painter's fever dream. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Had I been moved?

Flown somewhere tropical after the crash, while I was out? But why? How? And who would do that? The logistics just did not make sense. Panic, cold and sharp, started to claw its way up my throat, threatening to choke me. I was alone. Completely lost, in a place that looked like my world only if my world was a distorted and overgrown reflection. I had to move. Staying here, by my wrecked car in this hostile, bright green wilderness, felt like putting out an open invitation for… something.

I didn't know what, but some primal instinct, the kind my ancestors who faced dangers I couldn't imagine must have had, was screaming at me to find shelter. Find people. Find answers. I picked a direction — one that vaguely felt like where civilization should be, though my internal compass was spinning like a broken toy — and forced myself to walk. Each step was hesitant at first. My boots crunched on broken asphalt and weird objects I didn't recognize.

The ground was tricky, roots like grabbing claws snaking across the broken pavement, hidden traps under layers of fallen leaves. The air got heavier, the exotic smells stronger, almost suffocating. They filled my lungs with their alien perfume. I must have walked for what felt like an hour, maybe more. Or it could have been minutes. Time had lost its usual rhythm here. It stretched and squeezed in ways that made my head spin. The sun beat down with an unfamiliar, almost aggressive heat.

It felt less like a life-giver and more like a cold, watchful eye. The strange, gleeful sensation from when I woke up had almost completely faded. It left behind this bone-deep weariness that was more mental than physical, and a growing, gnawing dread that settled like a stone in my stomach. Was this some bizarre kind of purgatory? An alien afterlife, vivid and cruel? Or had the crash just shattered my sanity along with the car, throwing me into a waking nightmare I couldn't escape? I pushed those thoughts down.

I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, scanning the oppressive greenery for any sign of hope, any break in this endless jungle. Then I felt it. A subtle shift in the air, a prickling feeling across my skin. The fine hairs on my arms stood up like I'd been touched by static electricity. I froze mid-step. Every nerve ending suddenly screamed a silent alarm. The jungle, which had been full of unsettling noises, seemed to go quiet for a second. A hush that was more terrifying than the noise.

From behind a curtain of enormous, blood-red, trumpet-shaped flowers — so big each one could have swallowed my head — something came out. It moved with this slinky, liquid grace that was both beautiful and utterly horrifying. Four-legged, sort of dog-like in its build, but way too big — easily the size of a small bear. Its fur was a shifting, oily pattern of the deepest black and a sick, vibrant forest green. Perfect camouflage for a predator.

Barbed, thorny vines, like living whips, sprouted from its back and shoulders. They twitched and coiled like they had minds of their own, the thorns glistening like black glass shards. Its head was too long, its snout full of rows of needle-sharp teeth, clearly made for tearing meat. And its eyes were multifaceted, like an insect's, clusters of polished amber, glowing with a pale, hungry yellow light. They fixed on me with this unnerving, intelligent focus that promised nothing but pain.

A faint, musky, reptilian smell drifted from it, making my stomach turn. A low growl, more like a vibration deep in my chest than a sound I could actually hear, pulsed from it. It took a slow, deliberate, stalking step forward. Its clawed paws made no sound on the soft earth. All rational thought just vanished. Primal terror, cold and absolute, flooded my system. It hijacked my limbs, my breath, my will. I wasn't a fighter.

I worked a simple job, read books, and looked after my grandfather and my younger sister — the only family I had left. This thing, this nightmare creature, didn't belong in any world I knew. Not even in the darkest corners of my imagination. My eyes darted around, frantic, desperate. A weapon. I needed a weapon. Anything. My gaze snagged on a length of twisted metal, half-buried in the encroaching greenery near the vine-choked ruins of what might have been a concrete signpost.

Maybe a piece of a car's frame, maybe something else. It was about three feet long, wickedly jagged at one end where it had torn loose. The creature sprang. A silent, terrifying blur of shadow, green, and glistening fangs. It covered the distance between us with impossible speed. I don't remember deciding to move. One second, I was a statue of ice-cold fear, sure that this was it. The next, I was lunging for that metal bar, a raw, wordless scream tearing from my throat.

It was fueled by pure, undiluted terror and this sudden, crazy surge of desperate adrenaline. My fingers closed around its cold, rough surface, the jagged edges biting into my palm. There was a foreign surge of something else too — a sudden, shocking lightness in my limbs, a kind of supernatural clarity in my vision that sliced through the panic like a knife. Time seemed to slow down, to stretch. Each microsecond felt drawn out.

I saw the individual hairs on its snout, the spit dripping from its fangs, the focused hate in its compound eyes. With a guttural roar that was more animal than human, I swung the bar in a clumsy, desperate, two-handed arc. A wet, tearing sound vibrated up my arms. A choked, bubbling gurgle. A spray of hot, acrid-smelling fluid erupted, spattering my face and chest. It was warm and sticky. Then a massive weight slammed into me, bowling me over onto my back. The air painfully whooshed out of my lungs.

I flailed, convinced those monstrous jaws were about to close on my throat. My arms came up to shield my face. But the weight was just… heavy. Shockingly unmoving. I shoved it off, scrambling backward on my hands and knees like a crab, gasping for air, the metal bar still clutched in a white-knuckled death grip. The creature lay on its side. Still. A dark, thick fluid, almost black, oozed from a ragged, gaping gash in its neck where the sharp edge of the metal bar had brutally connected.

Its alien, compound eyes were dull, lifeless, staring blankly at the bright green trees above. I just stared. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird trying to escape. My arms and legs trembled uncontrollably, not with weakness, but with the violent aftershocks of adrenaline and pure terror. I'd killed it. I had somehow killed that… that monstrosity. How? It felt like an impossible fluke, a one-in-a-million accident fueled by sheer, blind terror and a desperate will to survive.

Yet, underneath the sick feeling in my stomach and the shock that made me want to puke, that strange sense of amped-up strength, of unnaturally heightened senses, still hummed inside me. A subtle vibration, now tainted with the metallic tang of the creature's blood — or whatever it was — on my skin and the coppery taste of fear in my mouth. Slowly, painfully, I managed to struggle to my feet. I swayed like a drunk.

The silence that came down then was a crushing weight, even more terrifying than the creature's growls had been. The vibrant, teeming jungle, which moments ago had seemed just alien and bewildering, now felt actively hostile. Its too-bright colors looked almost predatory. Its shadows seemed deeper and more threatening. I was alone. Terrifyingly alone, in a world that was not my own. A world that had teeth, very sharp teeth. And somehow, I managed to fight back, however pathetically.

The adrenaline-fueled fight, the desperate struggle, had siphoned something vital from me. It drained the last bits of that weird, sustaining energy that had greeted me when I woke up. A deep exhaustion, heavier and more absolute than anything I'd ever known, crashed over me like a physical blow. My knees threatened to buckle. The world swam, dangerously. The too-bright colors blurred at the edges of my vision, turning into a sickening swirl. I felt myself teetering on the edge of collapse.

My grip on consciousness was loosening. I was ready to just give in to the darkness creeping in, the darkness that promised to make it all stop. Just as my vision started to fade to a fuzzy gray, the edges of the world dissolving into shadow, a soft chiming sound — impossibly clear and pure, like tiny crystal bells ringing — echoed right beside my ear. It was so out of place. A note of strange, delicate melody in this savage, silent, blood-soaked jungle. My head jerked up. Or at least, I tried to lift it.

The effort was huge. My eyes, gritty and burning, struggled to focus. Right there, shimmering in front of my eyes as if they were projected onto reality itself, letters of translucent golden light began to appear in the air. They hovered directly in my line of sight. They were crisp, perfectly formed, made of a light that seemed to glow from within. Undeniably alien, yet instantly, somehow, shockingly understandable.

[You have slain: Juvenile Thorn-Viper Wolf (Tier 1)] [Error: User Signature Anomalous, System Integration Module not found] [Requesting Administrator Assistance…] [Error: Message intercepted] My breath caught in my throat, lodging there like a shard of ice. The luminous letters hung there, mocking my exhaustion, wholly indifferent to the grotesque corpse cooling at my feet. They shone with an impossible, heavenly light against the backdrop of a world that had undeniably, irrevocably gone mad.

What in the godforsaken hell was happening to me now?