The deep sleep I'd sunk into wouldn't hold.
At first, it was subtle—an ache behind my eyes, like pressure building in the center of my skull. It pulsed once, then again, each beat heavier and sharper, dragging my mind toward the surface.
I was still asleep, but my body had already started to fight it. I shifted against the thorn wall, tossed, turned, and groaned low before I could stop myself as the pain thickened and spread from my head into everything.
Then it spiked.
A shock of pain tore straight through me and ripped my eyes open.
For a second, I didn't know where I was.
The celebration from the night before was gone, with only embers of it remaining. Brambleharts lay scattered across the ground in awkward heaps near the thorn walls, their antlers angled like fallen branches. The light inside the grove was dim and uneven, soft enough for shadows to pool between bodies and thorns.
I swallowed and tried to steady my breathing.
Then my gaze dropped to my own body.
The white glow was back.
It flickered beneath my skin—thin threads at first—then flared brighter, and with every flicker the pain increased. My body seized as it felt like I was being torn apart from the inside, like my shape was being pulled in opposite directions and forced to hold anyway.
Wh—?
The thought barely formed before another flood of pain slammed through me. My throat tightened, and when I tried to gasp, the air came out wrong—broken and shaky.
The white light swelled brighter, bright enough to paint the thorn walls in harsh highlights and throw long shadows across the sleeping Brambleharts. It kept growing, and I couldn't stop it. All I could do was clench through the agony and watch it spread.
I looked at my hands.
The glow had moved through my flesh and swallowed them completely, turning my fingers into silhouettes beneath a sheet of white. Then it crawled up my arms and across my torso, spreading like a sickness.
What's happening to me?
System— I forced the thought out.
Nothing.
No reply.
That silence hit harder than the pain.
I turned my head toward the sleeping Brambleharts in a desperate, stupid hope that one of them would wake and help me.
None of them did.
Then my vision blurred at the edges. Shapes smeared into streaks, and my thoughts thickened into fog—heavy and slow, like my mind was sinking even as my body screamed. I tried to push myself up, but my arms shook, failed, and gave out under me.
I collapsed.
My gaze snapped downward.
The earth beneath me was cracking.
Thin fractures spiderwebbed across the ground. At first I thought the pain was distorting my sight—then the cracks widened.
The ground split again, louder this time.
I tried to move, panic flaring hard in my chest, but my body still wouldn't obey. The fractures raced outward like lightning—
and the earth gave way beneath me.
Not like soil collapsing.
Like thin glass breaking.
I fell through as the ground above me shattered into jagged pieces. Shards of grass, dirt, and roots fell with me, spinning through the air, and in each jagged piece I caught broken reflections of the world above—the thorn walls, sleeping Brambleharts, dim light.
Then the reflections vanished.
I looked down as the shattered fragments of the world above fell past me, spinning into the deep dark below.
One by one, they disappeared.
Below was nothing.
A void.
Darkness so complete it looked solid.
My body dropped through open air, and the pain changed. It felt less like tearing and more like pressure—like I was being crushed and stretched at the same time.
I kept falling—
and something appeared beneath me.
A faint glimmer rose from the darkness. As it grew closer, it looked like the sky had spilled onto the floor: a surface reflecting stars, perfect and still, like a mirror made of night.
"No—!" I tried to shout, but my voice broke into a raw scrape as I descended.
Then I hit.
Hard enough to jolt through my whole body.
Water detonated around me in a freezing burst, crashing over my arms and face as the surface gave way beneath me in a violent splash. For an instant it felt like the surface had no give at all—
but the pain never came.
I lay there for a second, stunned by the absence of pain, staring at the water beneath me as ripples rolled away from my body in perfect circles.
Water…?
I pushed myself up, shaky, but stopped halfway.
Something in the water caught my eye.
I looked down.
My reflection stared back—and it was wrong.
A faint white glow still clung to me, but blue-green light had begun threading through it, something new taking shape beneath my skin.
I lifted my head slowly.
Nothing about this place made sense.
A thin layer of water stretched in every direction, shallow enough to ripple under me but somehow endless. I looked up—
and my breath caught.
There was no ceiling.
Only a night sky spilling out above me, stars scattered through impossible depth like I was standing beneath the universe itself.
No walls. No horizon.
Just water below.
And stars above.
I turned slowly, searching for anything familiar.
At first there was nothing.
Then I caught it—a shape in the distance. Not far, just hard to make out, like my eyes still hadn't adjusted to the strange light in this place.
I started toward it.
Each step sent ripples across the water, but my feet didn't sink. The surface held. I kept moving, and the shape ahead slowly came into focus.
A small tree.
At least, it looked like one.
But something about it felt wrong—too clean, too deliberate.
It had only one branch, and pale leaves swayed gently at the tip. They moved like a breeze was passing through them—
but I couldn't feel anything.
Not on my skin. Not through my body.
No shift in the air. No warning. No sensation at all.
The leaves just kept moving anyway.
I stared at them for a second, unease tightening in my chest.
It didn't make sense.
Then again, nothing about this place did.
The closer I got, the more the silence pressed in.
Then I saw something moving on the branch.
A monster…?
I slowed for half a step, but kept moving anyway. It was the only thing in this place that looked like it belonged.
As I approached, the figure became clear.
It perched on a branch too small to support it—or looked like it did. Its feet dangled loosely while its wings made slow, precise adjustments, keeping it hovering just above the wood.
It was roughly half the height of a human, slender and unnaturally symmetrical. Its body had a celestial-blue sheen, more like polished crystal than flesh. Curved horns swept back from a smooth humanoid face, and cyan-blue eyes watched me with steady, unreadable focus. Deep-blue robes drifted around it. A gemstone-like core glowed at its chest. A tail of translucent light trailed behind it in a faint crescent.
When it looked at me, the space felt sharper.
Not hostile. Not warm.
Just… certain.
It didn't radiate aggression.
It radiated inevitability.
I took a step back without meaning to.
"Are you a devil?" I said out loud, my voice rough.
It gave a small, sharp scoff.
"You are still nothing more than a fool, it seems," it replied.
The words were flat, but they carried weight, like they were spoken from a place that didn't care whether I understood or not.
I took another step back.
The being sighed, sounding almost tired of me.
"Do you not recognize my voice?"
I froze.
The voice… it did sound familiar. But the face—
I'd never seen anything like this.
I searched my memory anyway, forcing my mind through the haze. Then it muttered with sharp irritation:
"Stupid."
The word clicked into place like a lock turning.
The only thing that called me stupid—
The System.
My throat tightened.
"Are you—"
"Yes," it snapped, cutting me off.
Shock hit my face before I could hide it.
I stepped forward again, unable to stop myself. "You look nothing like any monster I've ever seen."
It stared straight through me.
"Monster?" it repeated, sharper now—assertive, offended by the word itself.
"Oh—I didn't mean it like that."
It scoffed, turned away, and drifted off the branch. It landed on the water without sinking, standing on it like the surface was solid beneath its feet.
I looked around again, confusion rushing back.
"Where am I?"
The System tilted its gaze upward toward the star-filled sky.
"This is your Spirit Realm."
"My what?"
"This is where I live."
I blinked. "You live in my Spirit Realm?"
"How else can I communicate with you inside your head?"
I hesitated.
…Good point.
My eyes drifted past it, then stopped on the tree. I moved closer without thinking, and only then did it really sink in how small it was—frailer than it had looked from a distance.
"Why is there a tree here?"
The System answered immediately, flat as ever.
"It is your spirit seed."
I frowned and stepped closer, tracing the thin trunk and fragile branch with my eyes. I reached toward it, then stopped short, my hand hovering.
It looked… small.
"That's it?" I asked, glancing back at the System.
"You feed it."
My gaze narrowed. I straightened a little, still staring at the tree like I was waiting for it to make sense.
"With what?"
The instant I said it, the pain came back—sharp as a blade.
My legs buckled and I dropped to one knee, one hand slapping the water hard enough to send ripples flying.
"What is this pain?" I stuttered, my voice shaking.
"You're changing," it said calmly.
"Changing how?" I forced out.
"Changing forever."
The white light inside me surged.
Not all at once.
It built fast, swelling beneath my skin until it felt like my body was too small to contain it.
Then it started to pull.
The pain ripped a scream out of me as thin glimmers of white light peeled out of my flesh and drifted toward the tree, like sparks being dragged by an invisible current.
The tree was taking it.
Agony ripped through me.
More strands followed, then more—small streams of white threading out of my body and pouring into the trunk. Each pull felt like something was being stripped out of me piece by piece.
I screamed harder, vision blurring, but forced my eyes open to watch.
The white light kept flowing into the tree in pulsing streams. With each pulse, the trunk thickened slightly, the lone branch stretched a little farther, and a tiny new offshoot pushed free. The pull stayed brutal, wringing the light out of me until my body shook with it.
Only after that did it begin to ease.
The pulses spread farther apart.
The stream thinned to strands, then scattered glimmers.
Then the pull stopped.
I collapsed forward, panting, and stared down into the water at my reflection.
The white glow was gone.
But the blue-green light remained.
And it was brighter now.
I barely had time to breathe before a pulse of energy slammed through me, staggering me back two steps.
Then another hit.
My skin prickled, tight and strange, like something beneath it was shifting into place.
I looked at the tree.
White light flickered through the trunk. Another pulse rolled out, then another—waves of pressure spreading through the Spirit Realm and passing straight through me. The tree trembled with each surge, its glow flaring and dimming in uneven beats.
Then the flickering began to slow.
The pulses weakened.
The pressure eased.
The tree went still.
Radiant blue leaves shimmered softly in the silence.
I stood slowly and moved toward it, drawn in and cautious.
The moment I touched the trunk, power slammed through me.
Immense.
My body recoiled on pure instinct, and I stumbled back across the water as if I'd touched something that could crush me without even trying.
I snapped my gaze to the System, breath tight.
"Why are you afraid?" it asked.
"I'm not—" I started, but the lie didn't even feel believable to me.
"It's yours," it said, flat and absolute.
"Mine?" I repeated, conflicted.
"Yes."
It didn't blink. Didn't soften.
"And now it's time for you to decide."
"Decide what?"
Its cyan-blue eyes locked onto me like a verdict.
"What monster you will become."
I went still.
My gaze flicked to the tree.
The blue leaves swayed softly.
Something in me answered.
Not a thought. Not a voice.
An instinct.
It was calling me.
I took a step toward it.
Then another.
This time, I didn't stop.
I reached out and pressed my hand to the trunk.
Power surged through me instantly—deeper than before, sharper, a rushing current driving straight into my core. My body locked as the tree's light flared.
The bark rippled beneath my hand.
Not splitting.
Opening.
Blue light spread through the trunk in branching lines, and the surface gave way like water.
My arm sank into it.
I jolted and tried to pull back, but the force on the other side seized me first.
The tree pulled.
My arm went under.
Then a chunk of my body followed.
Light folded around me in layers, swallowing my body piece by piece as if I were being drawn into the heart of something ancient and waiting.
I caught one last glimpse of the System beyond the glow—still hovering, still watching, calm and unreadable.
Then the blue closed over me.