"That is all I can tell you."
The words seemed to hang in the empty air, their meaning lost in a fog that lingered long after they were spoken. No warmth. No chill. Just... finality. The closing of a door that had never been open in the first place.
Then—
Gasp.
The world rushed in.
Air. Hhnk—hah—hah— My lungs were raw, desperate for the breath they'd been missing. My chest strained, expanded, and then relaxed. I felt the weight of it. The hunger for life.
I opened my eyes.
The world around me didn't make sense. Not at first.
It took a moment for the haze to clear. I blinked—once, twice—and tried to make sense of the shifting shapes around me.
Green.
A canopy of leaves stretching high above, like an ocean of foliage, dark and fractured by the slivers of sunlight that pierced through. I could see every detail—the veins on the leaves, the texture of the bark beneath me, the glistening dew that clung to the plants and rocks. Everything was impossibly alive.
My fingers brushed the damp soil. The sensation was real. Wet. Earthy. Almost too sharp.
Plip.
The sound of water falling from somewhere above. Another drop. Another.
Birdsong. The flutter of wings. A breeze stirred the air.
I felt the tremor in my chest as my body came alive again. Thmp. Thmp. Thmp. My heart. It was still beating.
But everything around me was so... wrong.
Not wrong in a way that could be easily explained. It wasn't like walking into a room full of strangers. No, this was something deeper. The kind of wrongness that twists the very fabric of what you know, of what you can trust.
I sat up slowly, my mind scrambling for some kind of anchor. My legs were stiff, sore, like I'd been lying there for a long time.
'Where am I?'
I was certain of only one thing—this was not where I had been before.
'The street. My home. My city. Gone.'
The thought felt like a jagged stone lodged in my chest. Gone. The life I'd once known, now as distant as a dream you can barely remember when you wake.
Mom. Dad. My siblings. The familiar voices, the warmth, the noise of life... all swallowed by something vast. Something beyond my reach.
I glanced around, forcing myself to stand. The forest stretched out in every direction, an endless maze of trees, shadows, and undergrowth. The air smelled too clean—too pure—almost sterile. Not a hint of pollution. No exhaust, no dust. Not even the faintest trace of civilization.
I felt a wave of unease ripple through me.
'Am I dead?'
It was a thought that came unbidden, but it didn't feel right. I was breathing. My body was aching. If this was death, it didn't match the stories. There were no cold hands or ethereal light. No lingering feeling of departure.
'So I'm somewhere else.'
A different world. Not Earth.
And if that was true...
'Does this place have rules? Does it have power? Some kind of system that governs it all?'
I looked down at my hands, turning them over, searching for something. A spark. A glow. Anything that felt different. But no. There was nothing. Just skin, bones, and the faint calluses from a life I no longer knew.
'Nothing.'
No flicker of light. No strange hum under the surface. No strange sensation or power stirring within me.
I squeezed my eyes shut and focused.
Nothing.
'If I was brought here, then shouldn't something have come with me?'
I searched my thoughts, grasping at the disjointed fragments that had been circling in my mind. That moment when I'd touched the eye. The shimmer of light. The sense of being known—but not as a person. No, not as me. As something else entirely. Something much more than myself.
'What was that?'
I tried to remember. The feeling of the world shuddering around me. The river that spun in place without moving. The wheel, not turning forward, not moving backward, but sideways. The presence that had circled the edges of my perception. It was there, even now, haunting the edges of my thoughts.
'Had it brought me here? Was that... its world?'
I didn't know. I didn't have the answers. All I had were questions, circling like birds. And a vague, unsettling sense that something had changed inside me. Or maybe it had just seen me. Not as a person, but as a possibility.
I stood up, brushing off the dirt from my jacket. My knees popped. The pain in my muscles reminded me that I was still alive. But my thoughts were elsewhere.
'If this isn't Earth... if this place has power... then what's my part in all of it?'
I could feel the weight of the uncertainty pressing against my chest. The world around me was too quiet. Too still. Not a sign of life except for the breeze and the distant sound of water dripping from the trees.
'Maybe... maybe I'm just a stranger here. Someone caught between worlds.'
I thought about the stories I'd read. The tales of regressors, transmigrators, and chosen ones. They always seemed to know. Even when they didn't understand, they had something. A feeling. A power. A voice. Something that told them they weren't just ordinary people anymore.
But I had none of that.
No glowing interface, no magical voice telling me what to do. Just silence. Just me.
I took a deep breath, trying to shake the weight of it all.
'So I'm alone. For now.'
That was the only truth I could hold onto. No one would come to explain anything. No guides, no helpers. Just a world full of possibilities—and dangers—waiting to be uncovered.
I turned in a slow circle, scanning the forest. There were no clear paths, no trails. Only trees, shadows, and the occasional log half-covered in moss. My mind raced. Could I even find a path here? Could I find people?
'I don't even know if there are people in this world.'
Monsters? Laws? Rules? Safety? Or was this just an empty place where nothing made sense?
I wasn't sure what I was looking for, or even if there was something to find. But standing there wasn't going to help me.
I needed to move. I needed to survive.
But there was that gnawing uncertainty again. A feeling of being exposed. Of being vulnerable.
'Maybe I do have something. Maybe it hasn't shown itself yet.'
Or maybe I was just a fool, walking into the unknown with nothing more than a heartbeat and a will to survive.
'Maybe I'm just here to die.'
That thought stung, and I winced. It shouldn't have hit so hard.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Focused.
Hhhhhhh.
I breathed in, and out. Once. Twice. Then a third time.
The fear didn't disappear. But it... settled. It became something I could carry. A weight. An anchor, perhaps.
I opened my eyes again, looked ahead, and saw nothing but shadows and the promise of the unknown.
'I'm still here.'
And that meant something. I had to keep moving. Had to find something before this world found me first.
"I have to start somewhere," I muttered. The words felt... hollow, but they helped.
Step.
A twig cracked beneath my shoe.
The forest didn't respond, but I did. The world around me stayed silent, but I felt the tension in the air. The stillness pressing against me, waiting for me to make the next move.
'One step,' I thought.
Crack.
'Then another.'
Another crack of a branch, but this time I didn't flinch. I was moving now. Moving forward. Even if I didn't know where I was going.
'Then we see what comes.'
And I kept walking. Not with certainty, not with courage, but because not walking wasn't an option anymore.