I woke up drowning in mud.

Not literally, unfortunately.

Literal drowning might've been a mercy. Instead, I was stuck in that delightful in-between state where my face was mashed into cold sludge, my mouth tasted like rotten leaves, and my ears rang so hard it felt like someone had stuffed church bells into my skull and then enthusiastically beaten them with a mallet.

Black spots flickered across my vision in dizzy little constellations. I tried to push myself up. My elbows buckled instantly.

I went down face-first again.

The mud made an undignified splap against my cheek.

I deserved it.

After about three seconds of lying there like the world's saddest corpse, I made the executive decision that standing was, in fact, wildly overrated and not for me.

So I rolled onto my side instead, my body protesting every movement like I owed it money.

The sky above me was… dark. Just dark. No stars. No moon. Just an endless, suffocating black. I had no idea where I was, forest, jungle, swamp, hell dimension, take your pick. I couldn't tell the difference even if someone held a knife to my throat.

Which, knowing my luck, would probably happen soon.

My vision pulsed again.

My heartbeat thundered in my ears, fighting with the ringing. Everything hurt. My ribs ached. My spine felt like it had been used as a drum.

My head was… not great.

Definitely concussed.

Possibly cracked open like an egg.

I'd lost.

To whatever the hell that was.

A parasite? A god? A corpse puppet? A cosmic joke aimed directly at my face?

{ You got folded like a cheap lawn chair, Seb. }

"Thanks," I croaked. "Truly inspirational."

{ I'm just telling the truth. Someone has to. Otherwise, you'll get delusions again. }

"I don't get delusions."

{ You literally charged at a thing made of purple tentacles while bleeding out of your ears. }

Fair point.

I let my head fall back, letting the mud cradle my skull like the world's coldest, wettest pillow. My entire body felt like it had been put in a blender, poured out, and then politely reassembled by someone with three fingers and no diagram.

"What a day," I muttered.

{ You lost a fight in front of your entire class and instructors, and now you're stuck in a goddamn monster-infested jungle...alone, might I add. Even the girl whose approval you've been pretending you don't want saw you. }

"Wow. You're really going for the throat today."

{ You stabbed a man in the throat five times. Consider this balance. }

I sighed hard enough to make the mud ripple.

And then it hit me. The last thing I saw before getting swallowed by that rift. Belle's face. Worry carved into her features like someone had chiseled it there. Her mouth moving, screaming something I couldn't hear. Probably "die," which, okay, under different circumstances would've been flattering.

But not now.

Now it just made my stomach twist until I wanted to puke up the mud I'd already choked on.

"I'm going to worry her again," I whispered.

{ Yes. Because you're an idiot. }

"And Alectra."

{ She'll probably punch you when she finds out you disappeared into a screaming purple hole. Honestly, you might deserve it. }

"What a bastard of a brother I am."

{ Debatable. A bastard, certainly. A brother? Barely. }

I groaned and wiped mud off my face with a hand that was also covered in mud, accomplishing absolutely nothing.

The forest around me, if it was a forest, stayed unnervingly silent. No wind. No animals. Just stillness and that faint smell of damp earth and something vaguely rotting. Great. Perfect. The ambiance of a haunted cemetery, but with worse lighting.

I tried lifting my head again.

It throbbed.

I tried sitting up.

My spine audibly disagreed.

{Sebastian, stop. You are one wrong movement away from snapping in half like a toothpick. }

"Then maybe I'd finally get some rest."

{ That wasn't funny. }

"It was a tiny bit funny."

{ …It was. }

I let my arm flop onto my chest and stared up at the dark sky again.

I felt small.

Pathetic.

Exhausted.

Like a student who'd studied for the wrong exam and then failed so spectacularly, the teacher considered retiring out of secondhand embarrassment.

"I can't believe I lost that badly," I muttered.

{ I can. }

"…You're awful."

{ And yet, I am the only thing keeping your self-esteem at an even vaguely stable level. }

"Your standards are low."

{ No. You are low. My standards are immaculate. }

I snorted. It hurt. Everything hurt.

But lying there, staring into all that darkness, I realized something.

I didn't know where I was. I didn't know how I'd get out. I didn't know if the others were alive. I didn't know if Belle or Alectra had seen me get swallowed whole or if they thought I was dead.

But I wasn't dead.

Not yet.

All I had to do was stand up.

Eventually.

After my life affinity kicked in.

…Maybe in five minutes.

{ More like twenty. }

"Shut up."

{ Never. }

And the night swallowed my voice whole.

About half an hour later, I finally peeled myself off the ground like a sticker someone had stepped on.

My body glowed faintly with the soft white shimmer of Life Affinity healing, and all the mud caked over me cracked and crumbled as the last of the bruises knitted themselves back together.

It was nice, honestly. Like being slowly microwaved from the inside out, but in a comforting way.

I sat up, cracked my neck, and took a long breath of… whatever air this place had. It smelled like dirt, moss, and the existential dread of something watching me but being too polite to attack yet.

Progress.

The downside?

I had no sword.

No pet.

No companion.

No rapidly-growing murder-daughter to bully me about hydration.

Sacha hadn't been pulled into the rift. That was good for her. Terrible for me. She was probably screaming at the sky, panicking, sharpening her claws out of stress, and cursing that damn thing in increasingly amusing ways.

The fact that I could not hear her was unfamiliar.

Uncomfortable.

A little… lonely.

I dusted myself off. The mud didn't come off. It just redistributed itself evenly like it had unionized.

Time to assess the situation.

I counted my blessings.

It was a short list.

"No friends nearby," I muttered, looking around at the endless dark trees. "Weapon gone. Zero mana. No idea where I am. Probably being observed by something with too many legs."

I paused.

"And the upside is… I'm alive."

I waited for Bastard to chime in.

He didn't.

That was somehow worse.

"And nothing's tried to eat me yet." I nodded to myself. "Good sign. Fantastic."

I stretched my senses outward.

Slowly.

Carefully.

A feeling like threads tangled in fog unfurled from me, spreading in all directions. My perception dome grew and grew until it covered the landscape for eleven kilometers, then twelve, then just over that.

It was like dipping my face into cold water.

A rush of sensation. The pulse of distant trees. The shift of air. The quiet hum of life, if you could call the squirming things under the soil "life."

Nothing attacked me during that, which was honestly shocking. I'd expected to get mauled mid-concentration. That's usually how my days went.

"Okay," I mumbled, finishing my scan. "That's… nothing. No humans. No friends. No Sacha. No familiar signatures. Just me and approximately several thousand insects I never want to touch."

My stomach twisted.

Being alone in an unknown dimension tended to do that.

But sitting around wasn't an option. If even one of my group of eight got spat out here, I had to find them before something else did.

I pushed myself to my feet. My legs felt better. Less like soggy noodles, more like noodles that had been cooked properly. I could work with that.

I took one step.

Then another.

Then I broke into a run.

The ground was uneven, roots and rocks jutting out at random intervals like nature's attempt at booby traps. I dodged most of them. Tripped over only two. That was above average for me.

The forest blurred by, all black bark and strange twisting vines that seemed to move when I wasn't looking at them. Leaves hung down like fingers. Some brushed my shoulder. I flinched every single time.

"I swear," I panting-laughed under my breath, "if something jumps out at me, I'm biting it. On instinct. I don't care what it is. I'm emotionally compromised."

A branch creaked somewhere behind me.

I ran faster.

My perception spread ahead of me like an invisible radar sweep, checking for anything human-shaped, friend-shaped, or at least not-horrifying-shaped.

Nothing.

Just more forest. More emptiness. More silence.

And me.

Alone.

Again.

"Great job, Sebastian," I muttered. "Ten out of ten. Incredible work. Flawless execution of your life choices."

A faint scoff echoed in the back of my skull.

{You haven't executed anything flawlessly in your life.}

"Not now," I hissed. "Let me spiral in peace."

Silence again.

I kept running. Breath steady. Heart pounding. Mud drying on my clothes and cracking with each movement, like I was shedding skin. Trees whipping past me in dark columns. The world here was strange, empty, watchful.

But I wasn't stopping.

Somewhere out here, someone else had to be alive.

Nora.

Annalise.

Lillith.

Page.

Kent.

Xavier.

Hell, I would even take Liam at this point.

Someone.

Anyone.

I wasn't going to let the forest eat them, or me. Preferably not in that order.

I pushed my perception harder, deeper, searching again for even the tiniest spark of human presence...

Nothing. Just the echo of my own heartbeat.

"Okay," I whispered as I ran. "Round two."

And I kept going, plunging deeper into the unknown squishy flesh like trees.

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