Elizabeth was ten again, stranded in a dark forest. In the darkness, she was alone.
Suddenly, the bushes moved and a man appeared from them.
He was an old man with a hunched back. She whimpered and asked, "Who are you?"
The man stumbled over his voice as he looked around for whoever had spoken. His eyes finally landed on a little girl crouched beside a tree. She looked scared.
Her eyes were brown, her hair was brown, just a normal farm girl.
The man's eyes glinted for a moment when he looked at her, but the light faded almost immediately.
He replied in a hoarse, raspy voice, "My name is Lopis… I am looking for the herbs…"
He repeated the sentence again and again, mumbling it under his breath. Then he slowly turned around, his back facing Elizabeth, and disappeared into the darkness.
Suddenly, a jolt of memory flooded her mind. She grasped her head as pain tore through her, something was trying to open up, something was trying to come out of it.
A wicked face with rows of blackened teeth and arms clenched together from malnutrition tried to force its way out of her head.
She groaned and cried in pain as the entity tried to descend, using her as a vessel.
...
Aaron was moving ahead when his intuition spiked. Something was wrong. He looked back, the mist was moving strangely, pulling away from him.
He gasped, "Elizabeth!"
He turned back and sprinted with everything he had. Behind him, the mist twisted into tendrils.
Mist was converging in the center as Aaron sprinted back on all four legs. After leveling up from defeating the wolf-men, he was now much faster — he could feel the vigor in every stride.
In front of him, the mist gathered together, forming a shield, a barrier around Elizabeth. She was standing in the center while the mist whirled around her.
A mist goblin was also backing away, running into the forest the moment it saw the whirling mist convulsing like a madman.
What can scare him? Aaron thought, watching the goblin flee.
He reached the barrier and tried to touch it, raising his tiny hand but the moment he made contact, it threw him back several meters.
With a thud, he landed on the ground.
He tired several times more, until he finally gave up, there was no way he could.
The mist barrier was like a cyclone storming in the center, pushing everything around it meters away, though it didn't pull anything in. It was trying to isolate whatever was at its center.
He gasped and cried out, "Elizabeth! Are you in there?!"
He called her name several times, but no response came. Still, he knew she had to be trapped inside, it was intuition speaking.
He called the system again to check if it was online, but nothing. Disappointment.
"Thought so," he muttered under his breath.
In front of him, the mist barrier convulsed, sending chilling winds toward him. Even his fur wasn't enough now — the cold was seeping into his bones. His body felt rigid and heavy.
The wind howled, shrieking like evil spirits. It felt vivid and alive. With every passing second, Aaron grew more impatient. He ran through every option in his head, but none could solve his current situation.
"I have to leave you… Elizabeth," Aaron said quietly, taking slow steps backward.
His face was grim, dark, full of sadness. Then he turned around and sprinted away.
...
In the dream sequence, Elizabeth's head was almost split in half as the creature tried to burst out. A maniacal laugh echoed as the entity pushed through its skeletal hand breaking out first.
The dream's colors shifted. The forest lost its natural glow. Nature twisted as an abomination tried to manifest, warping everything.
Elizabeth held on to her sanity, but it slipped from her fingers every second like a red thread being pulled away from her. Her destiny was being overwritten by something that wasn't her.
Closer to death, her life played before her eyes. She saw her father and mother waiting for her at home. The sun was shining. She was drawing water from the well. Her friends were nearby, some playing, some pretending to be adults. She stood the tallest of them, the eldest, the bravest.
And she remembered how she got into this mess, wandering even when the elders warned her not to.
She ended up lost in the forest, alone in the darkness, until she met a man searching for herbs. She was lucky, he was harmless and left on his own.
She was all alone in the forest all night, until the dawn of light penetrated the thick forest lush.
Later, her father with other villagers found her and rescued her…
Everyone was happy she was safe. They wrapped her in blankets, pressed warm cups into her hands, and held her close as if she might disappear again.
But when the villagers finally asked what had happened, she told them everything. She spoke about wandering too far. About getting lost in the dark. About the strange man she met in the forest. The one who smiled at her and walked her back to the edge of the trees. The one who said his name before leaving her.
His name was:
"Lopis."
The moment she spoke it, the entire village went silent. It was as if the world stopped breathing. Mothers stiffened. Fathers exchanged looks. Old men rose from their seats, fear flickering in their eyes.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
Then one of the elder finally whispered with a grim expression, it was sad yet hopeful sounding, "Search... the forest."
They swept through the woods, calling for the man she described. They searched the clearings, the stream banks, the hunters' trails, even the hollow places where children dared each other to go.
And they found him.
They found an old man. Grey eyes. Brown skin tanned by years under the sun. His posture was bent, but his eyes were lively too lively.
Suddenly, everything became hazy, the dream shifted.
Elizabeth stood before a knight in full armor. A rat sat beside her. Not normal. it was moving with sharp energy, its eyes bright, and it spoke in a voice too human for a rat.
Elizabeth suddenly felt older… her thoughts heavy and wise, as if decades had passed in a blink.
The knight extended his hand. Resting on his palm was a ring.
The moment she saw it, she screamed.
"Protection."
The man slid the ring onto her finger. Around her, mist convulsed violently, as if something unseen was being forced out and rejected.
A crooked voice shrieked from somewhere inside the mist. The scream faded before anyone could understand what it said.
The dream collapsed.
The creature slowly sank back into her mind, sealing itself away. The descent stopped.
The mist around her body unraveled and vanished.
She opened her eyes, lungs burning as she sucked in breath after breath. The mist still clung to the air around her, but something stood between her and the rest of the world.
A shield, green and translucent hovered at her side. Strange esoteric symbols pulsed across its surface, twisting like runes that refused to sit still.
Elizabeth didn't move. She forced herself to breathe slower, to calm the shaking in her hands.
Then, in a quiet voice:
"Was I… possessed?"
The thought hit her like a slap. She tried to piece together the fractured memories.
"I made a wish… the monster in the mist lured me into the dream. And inside that dream… the Mistress of Head tried to take over my body. I only survived because of the ring."
She paused. That detail gnawed at her.
"But… how did the dream change? Why did it turn into something that helped me?"
Her suspicion only grew. It didn't feel like a coincidence. It felt like someone, something had stepped into the dream and forced the Mistress back.
Someone strong… stronger than the Mistress of Head.
She felt a chill crawl down her spine.
"How powerful must they be… to toy with her like that?"