Darkness should have been empty.
Instead, I was running.
Something was hunting me.
A primordial force.
I ran through a desolate place surrounded by the ruins of ancient buildings.
The certainty of pursuit pressed against my back.
I didn't know how I got here.
I only knew I had to keep moving.
I climbed broken structures and leapt from crumbling heights, searching desperately for a path out of the maze. Ancient stone cracked beneath my feet while empty streets stretched endlessly between collapsing towers.
At the far end, isolated from the rest of the ruins, stood an old house.
For some reason, it didn't feel abandoned.
I needed to flee.
Or at least hide.
There was a huge risk in heading toward that house.
I went anyway.
The house itself was different. Compared to the surrounding ruins, there was nothing grand about it, yet it stood in stark contrast to the rest of the world.
Because this one did not belong to this era.
It felt familiar.
There was warmth in it.
I slowly pushed open the wooden door and stepped inside.
There I saw a girl washing dishes with her back turned toward me.
Long black hair.
A presence more like a function than a living being.
No walls separated the kitchen from the hall. Beside the girl, in an otherwise empty room, stood a strange wooden structure draped in a glossy red cloth embroidered with silver outlines.
The air inside felt still.
Untouched.
As though the world outside had never existed.
Within the small house was another room.
I entered.
There was no door to open.
An old woman sat in a wooden rocking chair near a window. Grey hair framed loose wrinkled skin as she stared into an endless sky.
I wasn't sure whether either of them were alive or dead.
Both women lacked something fundamentally human.
I tried speaking to her.
She didn't react.
The ground began shaking.
Earthquakes.
Somehow they felt as though they were moving closer.
The tremors rolled through the house in slow pulses.
I knew I had to leave.
But just before I turned away, the old woman raised a hand and pointed toward something invisible.
A thread.
I couldn't see where it began.
Only where it led.
I followed it immediately.
The thread ended at the wooden structure.
Pulling aside the cloth, I found thick braided black hair.
Three braids.
They looked impossibly old.
Yet untouched by time.
I reached out and took them into my hands.
And something stirred.
Not knowledge.
Not memory.
Something deeper.
For a brief moment, I felt as though I had forgotten a part of myself.
And that missing piece had finally brushed against my fingertips.
The sensation vanished before I could grasp it.
Yet traces of it lingered.
A strange familiarity.
A feeling that this should have meant something to me.
The ground stopped shaking.
Then, in the very next instant, something crashed through the roof.
The house exploded apart.
Wood, dust, and shattered beams erupted in every direction.
I barely escaped alive and immediately started running again.
A Tyrannosaurus rex was behind me.
No...
That wasn't right.
It was an archaic shadow given form by my mind.
But that didn't change the fact that I was being hunted.
Its footsteps shook the ruined city as it closed the distance.
Faster.
Closer.
Moments before I was swallowed by its jaws, I turned around.
The braided hair still hung from my hand.
I raised it instinctively.
Not as a weapon.
Not as a shield.
Simply because it felt right.
"Stop."
I wasn't sure why I said it.
The creature froze.
Its jaws remained open.
Its muscles remained tensed.
Yet it did not move.
The silence that followed felt wrong.
The monster wasn't resisting.
It wasn't obeying.
It was staring at me.
For a brief moment, something flickered behind its eyes.
Confusion.
Recognition.
As though it had mistaken me for someone else.
Or perhaps remembered something I had forgotten.
The dread that had chased me from the beginning changed into something else.
Not safety.
Not victory.
A feeling I couldn't name.
Then the dream began to unravel.
The hornbill watched the forest beneath it turn to ash and ruin.
It felt the human's energy disappear.
A perfect plan.
The threat to the rift had been dealt with.
But the tiger remained.
Something it had not expected.
Both of them...
Everything there was supposed to have been vaporized.
It waited for the dust to settle so it could see for itself what remained.
Then it dove downward.
Its claws touched the edge of the shattered earth where the crater began.
There it saw the tiger staring back.
Already aware of its presence.
And beside it lay the human body.
No energy remained within it, but the hornbill wasn't certain anymore.
The being responsible for all this destruction was much further away.
It could retreat.
Or simply wait for some of its brethren to arrive.
Both were reasonable options.
This battle was effectively over.
Yet as it looked upon the defenseless human—the one even the rift itself had deemed dangerous—
greed overtook it.
To consume the human.
It knew it would not receive another opportunity like this.
Only the tiger stood in its way.
A powerful beast.
But the hornbill only needed to separate them, snatch the human, and escape.
A loud, raucous cry tore through the ruined forest, taunting the tiger into battle.
The tiger answered with a low growl.
Its intention was clear.
It would fight.