Falling doesn't feel like falling when you've done it too many times.
There wasn't gravity — not really — just motion. Like being dragged through liquid glass. Words flashed past my face: single letters at first, then whole sentences, then voices made of ink. They clung to my skin, whispering things I couldn't hear, couldn't unhear either.
'Alice! a childish story take,
And now with gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
In memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrims' withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.'
Images of a knight in full armour appeared before me as I was slowly falling, and I recognised him — vaguely. Déjà vu level of familiarity. Then the girl across from him: blonde hair, blue eyes, and a white apron. Alice Liddell
And then the world hit me back.
Cold mud.
A smell like rot and sugar.
And silence — the kind that waits for you to move first.
I groaned, wiped sludge off my black shirt, and sat up. My head felt like it was full of bees. The floor wasn't concrete anymore — it was a road of old pages, damp and curling at the edges, stretching into dark woods. Trees rose on both sides, their bark scribbled with words that shifted when I blinked.
Bill was there, of course. Perched on a pile of paper, licking his paws like we hadn't just fallen through hell.
"Good landing," I muttered. "Where the hell are we, Bill?"
He squeaked once — it almost sounded like "Home."
The air shimmered. The pages rustled. Then came a sound —
Pzzt
[Status Screen]
[Dread Lutwidge]
Souls: 0
SEN: 33
HP: 700
MP: 50
ATK: 70 | DEF: 40
MAG: 6 | RES: 30
SPD: 50 | LCK: 100
I stared at the screen floating in the air, feeling like a stray soldier in someone else's game.
"What the fuckin' hell," I chuckled, more to keep from trembling than anything.
"So this is what it feels like to be Isekai'd huh," I said, waving a hand and watching the display fade away. "Neat."
Kneeling down, I offered a hand to Bill. "Didn't know you could talk, buddy."
Bill hopped into my palm with a tiny squeak, then quickly scrambled on top of my head. "Lead the way, Ratatouille."
This place… was insanely suspicious. From the moment we landed, it felt like I'd walked into a trap made of story-fragments and nightmares. But ignoring that meant surviving longer, and survival was all I had.
Bill tugged at my hair gently — the rat's way of leading. I followed his little pointer into the dark.
Ahead was a road. Carriage tracks carved deep into the mud, leading somewhere I didn't want to go but had to.
The old pages beneath my boots turned to slick cobblestone. The grooves in the carriage wheels glowed faintly blue, still warm from use. Fog pressed around me, smelling of damp sugar and iron. The trees leaned inward, branches weaving overhead into a tunnel of words: Dormouse … Hatter … Queen. The letters flickered when I blinked.
Bill squeaked again — alert, sharp.
I whispered: "Bill, you sure about this?"
He squeaked twice. Affirmative.
I walked on.
Then a black carriage appeared from the mist — wheels silent, frame creaking as if alive. The driver was long and thin, hat brim drawn low. Horses, if they were horses, moved like corpses.
The door opened itself.
A voice, rasping and ancient, slid into my skull.
"You're late, Knight."
Bill hissed — well, worse than hiss. The claws dug into my scalp. I bit my lip.
"Name's Dread," I said. "You got the wrong corpse." I immediately furrowed my eyebrows at the weird telepathic carriage talking to me in my head.
The fog inhaled. The driver chuckled, a sound like cracking paper.
"Names change. Debts don't."
The carriage lunged. The door slammed shut with a crack that echoed into the forest of pages.
I rolled, knife drawn, and prepared to fight or die just like usual. I jabbed the tip of my combat knife into the door of the carriage, and swiftly stepped back.
"This seems like a bit much for an overdue carriage fee eh?" I stepped sideway, my back facing the forest with a strategy in mind.