A piercing, unnatural cold is the first thing you feel. It seeps through the thin fabric of your pajamas, which, to your horror, you realize you’re still wearing. The familiar scent of your bedroom is gone, replaced by a stifling stench of damp earth, rotting leaves, and something else… something acrid, with a faint metallic tang that churns your stomach.
Beside Du, Sophie lets out a ragged, trembling gasp. Her eyes, wide open and reflecting a terrifyingly alien darkness, dart frantically through the oppressive gloom. Towering, gnarled trees with bark as black as pitch scrape at a starless, crimson sky with their twisted, knotted branches. Strange, pallid mushrooms clinging to the trunks emit the only faint, unsettling light.
She’s shaking violently, her body wracked not just by the cold but by a primal terror gripping her heart.
Sophie: “Du?! Du—oh gods, where… where are we?!” Her voice is a hoarse, panicked whisper, breaking with disbelief. She struggles to prop herself up on trembling arms, the rough, cold earth scraping her bare skin. “This isn’t… this isn’t home! What’s happening?!”
No sooner do the words leave her lips than a flickering, translucent panel of light flares at the edge of her vision, bordered by dimly glowing, indecipherable symbols. Words like ‘STATUS: NORMAL,’ ‘HP: 50/50,’ ‘MP: 30/30,’ ‘CLASS: UNDEFINED’ hover there, an unbidden, alien intrusion into her already shattered reality.
Sophie: “A-ah! My head…” She clutches her temples, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before they snap open again, wider than before. “There’s… there’s something in my vision! Like a game menu! Du, do you see this too?! WHAT IS THIS?!”
She crawls closer to Du, her hand fumbling blindly in the terrifying darkness, desperately seeking the comfort of a familiar touch.
