The forest was endless.
Michael had no idea how long he'd been walking by the time the first traces of light began to seep into the world, but it felt like hours. His legs ached with each step, the sharp, stabbing pain in his ribs flaring every time his foot hit the uneven ground. His breath came in shallow bursts, fogging out before his face in the frigid air. The darkness had been so complete, so suffocating, that he almost laughed aloud when he noticed the black sky giving way to a dim gray.
Dawn.
It wasn't much—not the warm flood of a summer sunrise, but a weak, hesitant light that seemed to bleed reluctantly across the horizon. Still, it was enough. The darkness loosened its grip, branches and trunks sharpening into real shapes instead of looming silhouettes. Michael sagged against a tree, fumbling for his phone. He thumbed the flashlight off with relief, the screen winking dark as he slipped it back into his pocket.
The battery wasn't dead yet, but it was draining fast. His solar-charging power bank could keep it alive for a while, but he knew those things were slow as hell. He'd tested it before, back on the balcony of his apartment, and even with hours of sunlight it barely gave him half a charge. Out here, under clouds, in a forest? He'd be lucky to squeeze anything useful out of it.
Better to save every percentage point he could.
He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt tighter around his face and forced himself onward.
The night had been brutal. There were no lamps, no houses glowing faintly in the distance, no comforting hum of traffic. Just pure wilderness. Michael hadn't realized how much he relied on that background glow of civilization until it was gone. The dark here had been oppressive, like a living thing pressing down on him, watching him. He had spent most of the night jerking his head toward noises—snaps of branches, shifting wind, the occasional distant cry of some unseen bird.
He reminded himself of what he knew. Wolves avoided people unless desperate. Bears—if there were any here—usually hibernated this time of year. Moose, dangerous as they could be, didn't stalk humans through the woods. And yet… none of those reassurances had silenced the cold knot in his gut.
It wasn't the forest itself that frightened him, but the memory of what came before. The Blind Eternities.
The images stabbed back into his mind without warning: endless chaos, pressure on his soul, the clawing hunger of things that weren't things. He shivered hard enough that pain lanced his ribs, but the ache was nothing compared to the chill spreading through his thoughts. He'd seen something no human was meant to see. Experienced something no sane man could explain. And now here he was, spat into a forest in God-knows-where, stumbling forward with bruised ribs and a half-packed backpack like some idiot who'd read too many survival guides.
Michael swallowed hard and focused on the here and now. One foot in front of the other. The only thing that mattered was forward.
At some point, he stopped and cut a branch from a fallen limb, stripping off the smaller twigs until he had something like a walking stick. It wasn't perfect, but it gave him balance, let him lean when the pain in his side grew too sharp. It also felt better having something in his hands. Primitive or not, the solid weight steadied him, a weapon against the unknown—whether animal, man, or something else.
He trudged on. Hours blurred together. The weak daylight never strengthened; the clouds were too thick, muting the sun to a dull gray smear. His legs screamed with each step. He wasn't unfit, not completely, but he wasn't built for this. Long hikes through uneven, snow-patched forest floor? Not his usual routine. His thighs burned, his calves ached, and blisters began to form in his shoes.
Michael tried to distract himself. He muttered aloud, half to keep his spirits up, half to make the silence less crushing.
"Well done, Michael. Survive a bus crash, fall through hell, get dumped in the woods with a pack of granola bars and a cheap hoodie. Ten out of ten plan."
His voice sounded small against the vast emptiness. No echo. Just trees swallowing it whole.
He thought of home. His apartment. The warmth of his computer humming in the corner, the glow of a monitor, the comfort of a hot shower. He thought of all the games he'd played, survival sandboxes where hunger and thirst were bars you could manage by pressing a button, where fatigue was solved by clicking "sleep." He let out a bitter laugh.
"This is the wrong survival game," he muttered.
The forest began to change. The ground flattened, the trees parted. And then, at last, salvation appeared.
A road.
Michael almost cried. He staggered forward, out of the underbrush and onto a strip of compacted dirt. A proper road, wide enough for carts or cars, cutting cleanly through the forest. He leaned on his stick, chest heaving, and laughed out loud.
"Thank God."
Hours of pain and fear melted under that sight. Civilization meant direction. Civilization meant people. People meant safety.
The road wasn't asphalt. Not even gravel. Just earth, beaten hard and flat by countless passes. Wide ruts ran down the center, frozen ridges of mud like scars. Hoofprints pocked the surface in neat rows, far clearer than he expected. Horses. A lot of them.
Michael crouched, ignoring the stab of pain in his ribs, and traced a print with his gloved finger. Broad. Deep. Definitely a horse. But when had he last seen horse tracks like this in Sweden? Historical reenactments? Riding trails in the countryside? Even then, the ground near home never looked like this—so perfectly worn by hooves and wagon wheels, untouched by cars, bikes, or trash.
That thought twisted his relief into unease. He scanned the roadside. No cans. No cigarette butts. No footprints from boots with rubber soles. Nothing modern at all.
A dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Hoofprints like something out of another century.
Michael gripped his stick tighter. The joy of finding the road dimmed.
He sat at the edge of the road, pulling off his pack and fishing out a bottle of water. The cold plastic stung his fingers as he unscrewed the cap. He drank deep, swallowing greedily, then forced himself to stop before he emptied too much. Supplies mattered. He had no idea how long he'd be out here.
The water helped. So did the act of simply sitting, his legs grateful for the rest. He leaned back against his stick, watching the forest as he chewed half a granola bar.
Think.
Where was he?
The easy answer—Sweden. Lost in some backwoods stretch he'd never visited, dumped miles from any town by some cosmic fluke. But he'd lived in Sweden his whole life. He knew what Swedish forests looked like. He knew what Swedish winters felt like. And this wasn't it. The snow was wrong—thin patches clinging stubbornly in places, but not deep like real winter snow. The air was different too, sharper, dryer. Even the silence felt alien, like the woods were holding their breath.
He rubbed his bruised side, staring at the ruts in the dirt. He tried to reason: Maybe Norway. Maybe Finland. Maybe some remote valley where people still used horses, where roads hadn't been modernized. But no matter how he twisted the logic, the facts didn't line up.
He wasn't ready to say it aloud. Not yet. But deep down, in a part of himself he tried to ignore, he knew the truth.
This wasn't Sweden.
Maybe it wasn't even Earth.
He stayed there a while, finishing the rest of the granola bar, nursing his water, staring down the empty road. At some point, he realized the silence had returned. No wind, no birds. Just him and the endless forest.
Michael swallowed, capped his bottle, and forced himself back onto his feet.
"Alright," he muttered. "Roads lead somewhere."
He adjusted his pack, gripped his stick, and started walking.