Chương 1: Chapter 0 - Prologue

Dendron woke in a motel room he had no memory of checking into. A water stain on the ceiling, the shape of a dead bird, stared back at him. The wallpaper near the window peeled like dead skin, exposing moldy drywall underneath. Stale beer clung to his clothes like a second skin. He checked the door twice, half-expecting to find a key still sitting in the lock, some proof he'd chosen to end up here instead of just waking up in it. He sat up slowly. His joints ached. His head pounded.

The room was empty except for a broken chair and a lamp that wouldn't turn on. He fumbled for his cracked cellphone. He didn't remember dropping it. He scrolled through his playlist, past songs he'd added months ago and never deleted, until he found it. The one he always returned to. The one that felt written for him. He pressed play. Creep by Radiohead flooded his ears. He checked his wallet. Empty. A dull throb pulsed behind his eyes, keeping time with his heartbeat.

He stood, found his shoes by the door, and walked out without looking back. He pressed the earphones deeper into his ears and kept his gaze down. The street was crowded. Noises overlapped and collided, but his earphones kept them at a distance. People pushed past him, shoulders brushing, eyes averted. No one's gaze ever quite landed on him, not even the ones who bumped him hard enough to mutter an apology to the empty air where he should have registered as a person.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Then he saw him. The loan shark. Standing at the corner, scanning the crowd. Broad shoulders. A scar from his jaw to his temple. Eyes that had watched men cry, beg, and flee. He was closer than he should've been. Much closer. His blood chilled. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, curling them into fists. Breathing came hard. The bridge swelled: the frantic rhythm, the part where Thom Yorke's voice breaks.

Before his thoughts could catch up, his body moved. He ran. His legs burned. His lungs crumbled. He ran without knowing where—just away. Away from the scarred face. Away from the debt. Away from everything he'd created, failed at, and lost. He dashed into a marketplace, knocking over a fruit cart. Apples and oranges scattered across the cobblestones. Vendors shouted. A wooden crate flew past his head, missing by inches. He burst out the other side onto a street he didn't recognize. He didn't look both ways.

A truck hit him before he heard it. It sounded wet and dull—like a fist striking mud. The impact threw him sideways. He spun in midair before slamming into the pavement. His ribs cracked. His skull bounced off the pavement. Warmth spread beneath him—blood, probably. The pain came from somewhere far off, muffled, like it belonged to someone else entirely. He watched his own hand twitch against the pavement and felt nothing about it, the way you don't feel anything watching a stranger's hand twitch on a screen.

His eyes stayed open. The sky was a flat, indifferent gray. Guess that answers whether the universe hated him specifically or just in general, he thought. The joke didn't land. Not even for him. He thought about the weight he'd carried for so long, the kind that never had a name worth saying out loud. He couldn't remember the exact day he'd stopped expecting anything to get better.

Only that it had happened slowly—like a tide going out an inch at a time, until one morning the shore just wasn't wet anymore and nobody had thought to mention it. The sky deepened toward black. The sounds around him thinned—sirens, shouts, the distant rhythm of a city that had long forgotten him. The last line surfaced— not belonging here. He felt himself fading—not into nothingness, but into something else. Something that had been waiting. Then it grew lighter. No longer gray. Brighter. He didn't understand it.

He didn't need to. The weight was gone. And the tree waited.