The next memory surfaced slowly, like waking from a dream that refused to fully disappear.
At first there was only a voice.
Soft. Calm.
Easy… just drink this.
My eyelids felt heavy as I forced them open. Shapes moved in front of me, blurry and indistinct until they slowly began to sharpen.
A woman was kneeling beside me.
Her name was Ms. Amelia.
At that moment she was holding a small blue vessel near my lips, tilting it gently so the liquid inside could reach my mouth.
The taste was bitter.
Sharp enough to make my throat tighten as I swallowed.
My head felt foggy, as though my thoughts were moving through thick clouds.
Are you okay?
Her voice sounded distant, almost muffled.
I wanted to answer, but the words refused to come out properly. My tongue felt heavy, my throat dry, and even forming a simple sentence seemed strangely difficult.
So instead of replying, I slowly turned my head and looked around.
It took a few seconds for my mind to process what I was seeing.
Tall trees surrounded us in every direction, their branches stretching high above and weaving together into a dark canopy. The air smelled damp and earthy, carrying the faint scent of wet leaves and soil.
The ground beneath me was rough, covered with scattered twigs and patches of grass.
For several seconds I simply stared at my surroundings, trying to understand how I had ended up here.
Because somehow…
I had woken up in the middle of a forest.
I remember sitting there on the rough ground, trying to understand how I had ended up in a place like that.
Then something crashed through the forest not far away.
The sound was sudden and violent, the sharp crack of wood splitting under pressure echoing between the trees. A second later another impact followed, heavier this time, like two large objects colliding with enough force to shake the ground.
My attention snapped toward the noise before I even realized I had moved.
At first the darkness between the trees made it difficult to see clearly. The forest was thick, and the uneven ground rose and dipped in strange shapes that hid parts of the clearing from view. But the sounds continued—branches breaking, dirt scattering, something heavy striking against the trunks of trees.
Then through the gaps between the trees, I finally saw them.
Someone was fighting that black coat guy.
For a moment my mind struggled to accept what my eyes were seeing. The two figures moved so quickly that it was almost impossible to follow their actions properly. One second they were several steps apart, circling each other between the trees, and the next they were already crashing together again with a force that made the surrounding branches shudder.
They were powerful, both of them.
Even someone like me, who had never seen a real fight outside of movies, could tell that immediately. The kind of strength behind their movements didn't look normal. Every strike carried enough force to damage whatever stood nearby.
During one exchange the man in the black coat was pushed sideways into a tree trunk.
The impact produced a loud cracking sound as the bark split and fragments of wood scattered across the ground.
Their fight was destroying the surrounding trees and land.
The forest that had seemed so still only moments earlier now looked as if a storm had suddenly erupted in the middle of it. Branches snapped and fell. Loose dirt sprayed into the air whenever their feet struck the ground. One fallen trunk was even shoved aside entirely as the two of them crashed into it during another clash.
Watching it felt unreal.
Just a short while earlier I had been sitting inside my house, watching television with my father like we always did. Now I was sitting on the ground of a dark forest, staring at a fight that looked far more violent than anything I had ever imagined happening in real life.
I kept trying to focus on the man in the black coat.
Even during the fight there was something strangely controlled about him. His movements were sharp and deliberate, as though he already understood exactly how every exchange would unfold before it happened. The long black coat moved around him with each step, sometimes catching faint light as it shifted between the trees.
The person fighting him didn't seem weak either.
I couldn't clearly see his face from where I sat, but his speed and strength made it obvious that he was capable of standing against the black coat guy. Each time the man in the black coat attacked, the other fighter responded immediately, turning the clash into another violent collision.
For a while the fight continued like that, moving deeper through the clearing and tearing through whatever stood in their path.
Then another sound slowly reached my ears. At first it was faint enough that I almost ignored it. A distant noise somewhere far beyond the forest.
But it came again.
Sirens.
The long rising sound of police cars moving quickly through the night.
During their fighting I could hear the sirens of police cars. The sound was still far away, but it echoed faintly through the trees, growing clearer with each passing second as the vehicles approached the area.
For a moment the fight continued as if nothing had changed.
Then the sound of sirens stopped coming closer, as if they had reached a certain boundary beyond which cars could not drive.
A few seconds later, new sounds began to appear.
Voices.
Distant, but unmistakably human.
Someone was shouting an order, and another voice was responding to it.
Then beams of light began moving between the trees.
Thin white lines cut through the darkness as several flashlights swept across the forest floor. The lights shifted from one direction to another and started moving deeper between the trees.
The two fighters must have noticed the same thing.
Because something about the fight changed.
Until that moment the clash between them had been constant, neither side allowing the other even a moment to step away. But after the appearance of those moving beams of light between the trees, the man in the black coat created some distance between them.
He stepped back.
Then another step.
That black coat guy retreated.
Even back then I understood something important about that moment. His retreat was surely not because he was weak. Nothing about the way he moved suggested that he was being forced away.
Even as he retraced his steps, there was no scent of defeat in his stride. His steps remained measured and hauntingly casual, betraying no hint of weakness.
It looked less like someone escaping a fight and more like someone deciding that the fight was no longer worth continuing.
The other fighter remained where he was, watching him carefully. The forest around them was still scarred from their clash—broken branches scattered across the ground, splintered trunks leaning at strange angles.
Then the man in the black coat turned his head slightly.
His gaze moved through the clearing until it landed on me.
Even now if you ask me to remember his face, I cannot. No matter how much I try to recall it, the details remain blurred in my memory. Maybe darkness was the culprit or maybe it was the shock of everything that had happened.
But his eyes…
Those I remember clearly.
Not because of how magnificent they were.
Nah.
They weren't glowing or dramatic or anything like that. If someone else saw them under normal circumstances, they probably wouldn't even think they were special.
What I remember is the emotion inside them.
Because when he looked at me, I saw something unexpected.
Regret.
The regret a lion feels when someone snatches his prey from his mouth. It was the bitter, dangerous regret of a predator whose jaws closed on nothing but air.
That was the strange impression that formed in my mind the moment our eyes met across the broken clearing.
For several seconds neither of us moved.
Behind him the beams of flashlights were moving closer through the trees. The distant voices of police officers were growing clearer as they pushed deeper into the forest, their footsteps snapping small branches underfoot.
But the man in the black coat didn't seem concerned about them yet.
He simply kept looking at me, as if trying to convey a message through his eyes.
Even now, after all that has passed, that moment remains etched in my mind with haunting clarity. The look he gave me was unspoken, a silent truth that required no translation. He wasn't threatening me; he was simply stating a fact. It was a warning wrapped in a parting gift:
Take care of yourself.
Because one day, he would come for me. And when he did, no one would be able to save me.
Then he turned away.
His black coat shifted once as he stepped back into the deeper darkness between the trees. Within a few seconds his figure disappeared completely, swallowed by the forest as if he had never been there at all.
The beams of flashlights continued moving through the clearing.
And I remained sitting on the cold forest ground, staring at the place where he had just been, trying to understand what kind of night my life had suddenly become.