He walked.
Or maybe stumbled was the better word. His steps were uneven, pulled sideways by the throb in his ankle. Every shift in weight sent a jolt up his leg. He gritted his teeth and leaned forward, arms limp, dagger still clutched in his fingers.
The dagger wasn't sharp. Not anymore. There were hairline cracks running down the spine of the blade. It had killed once. He didn't know if it had another kill in it.
But he held it anyway.
Not because he thought it would save him.
Because it was the only thing that proved he was still alive.
The forest around him or what used to be a forest was quiet now. Not peaceful. Just quiet in the way graveyards are. Like the world had stopped breathing.
Trees lined the path ahead, but they weren't green. They were sick things, their trunks white and stripped of bark, like bones leaning into each other. Their branches sagged low, draped in gray rot and strands of something like spider silk.
The leaves, if you could call them that, crumbled into ash the second they touched the ground.
Every gust of wind brought more of it down. Tiny gray flecks. Like snow, but warm. Smelled like rust and old blood.
The air was heavy too. Like it didn't want him here.
He didn't know how long he'd been walking. Minutes? Hours? Probably days?
There was no sun. No proper light. Just a pale gray glow that felt… disturbing. Too soft, like moonlight filtered through dirty glass. He wasn't cold, but he shivered.
At first, he didn't realize the land was rising. But it was. The ground sloped up so gradually it was easy to miss. Each step took a little more effort, and his ankle started to throb deeper. He paused once, sat on a half-buried root, but didn't dare stop too long. Something in him said keep moving.
So he did.
Eventually, the trees began to thin out. The branches stopped scraping at the sky, and the path opened. Not a clearing, exactly more like the edge of a cliff, broken and jagged, like the earth had split and never healed.
He climbed, one hand grabbing at cracked stone, the other dragging the dull blade behind him.
By the time he reached the ridge, he was breathing in short, sharp gasps. His throat was dry. His chest ached with pain.
And then he saw it.
Far across the broken land… towering, massive, impossible to miss…
The tree, the Rootspire or what was left of it.
In the game, it had always been golden. Warm. Untouchable. It was the heart of everything. The crown of the Witherlands.
But this?
This was a corpse.
Blackened, rotten and sick.
The branches that once spread like veins of light were now clawing at the sky, warped and sharp like broken bone. The glow was gone, no more gold, no divine shimmer.
Instead, the trunk pulsed with a deep, throbbing red, like a heartbeat beneath burned skin. Every few seconds, the entire tree moved, subtly, like it was breathing.
Or bleeding.
He didn't realize he was crying until he wiped his face with the back of his arm and saw the tearstreaks in the ash.
He didn't know why it hit so hard.
Maybe because this was the moment it all became real.
Not the monsters. Not the dead body. Not the fight.
But this.
The tree was wronged, broken.
And if the tree could break…everything else could too.
He dropped to his knees. Not from pain, just something inside him gave out.
There was no music. No HUD. No narrator to say, "You've entered a new zone."
Just wind and silence. And that awful, pulsing thing on the horizon.
He stayed like that for a while, hands digging into dirt and dead roots, eyes locked on the tree. Not moving. Not thinking, just existing.
Finally, he looked down at the mark on his palm, the faint rune that had burned itself into him after he clicked "Yes."
It still glowed. Barely. A soft, ember-like pulse. He flexed his hand.
This world wanted something from him.
It had ripped him out of his room, away from his life, and thrown him into this half-dead nightmare. It had taken the game he loved and twisted it into something cold, real and cruel.
But it hadn't killed him yet, that had to mean something.
He stood up slowly, muscles stiff. His ankle screamed, but he ignored it.
He looked down the hill, toward the jagged path leading away from the ridge. The forest thinned more down there. The land opened up into what looked like ruins.
He didn't know where he was going. Didn't know what he'd find, but he took a step.
And then another.
Because whatever this world was, corrupted, broken, bleeding or rotten.
He was in it now and he wasn't going to die on his knees.