Chapter 1: Barduk Forest
The transition from death was not a silence, but a suffocating weight.
Scarlet’s eyes snapped open, but there was no world to meet them, only a crushing, sightless dark. Her first instinct was to scream, but her throat felt as though it had been lined with dry silt. Her limbs were leaden, pinned against a rough, damp interior that smelled of ancient sap and graveyard soil. She wasn't just trapped; she was encased.
A sliver of light, pale, sickly, and flickering like a dying heartbeat pierced through a jagged fissure inches from her face. That tiny hole was her only proof that the universe still existed. Panic, cold and visceral, surged through her chest. She tried to draw a breath, but her lungs felt like stiff parchment unfolding for the first time in centuries. With a strangled gasp, she threw her weight against the suffocating walls.
The wood didn't splinter; it surrendered. With a dry, papery snap, the trunk gave way, and Scarlet tumbled forward.
She collapsed onto a bed of unnaturally soft moss, her lungs burning as they fought to pull in the heavy, ozone-thick air. For a long time, she simply drifted in the sensation of breathing, her forehead pressed against the cool earth. When she finally found the strength to look back, the horror of her "coffin" revealed itself.
It was a tree or at least, the ghost of one. It stood like a gnarled sentinel, half the height of a pine but swollen with a trunk wide enough to swallow a human whole. The bark was a skeletal gray, brittle and peeling like scorched skin, yet from its dying crown sprouted vibrant, emerald branches heavy with blossoms that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic glow. It was a contradiction of biology: a womb made of rot.
Standing on trembling legs, Scarlet surveyed the horizon. There was no sun, no moon, no stars only an endless ceiling of jagged rock and weeping roots far above. Yet, the forest was not dark. A spectral, sourceless luminescence clung to the greenery, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to move even when the air was still.
Near the base of the birthing-tree, a set of garments lay waiting, as if prepared by an invisible hand. The fabric was a rugged, earth-toned cotton, cool to the touch. As she pulled on the buttonless tunic and the felt-lined leather shoes, she caught sight of her hands. They were her hands, yet... different.
She reached up to touch her face, her fingers tracing the familiar large birthmark on her left cheek a mark that had once been a source of self-consciousness on Earth, but here felt like the only anchor to her identity. Her black hair, thick and tangled, fell across her shoulders like a dark veil. She felt taller, her slim build hummed with a strange, latent energy she had never possessed in her life as Scarlet. Her ears, always a bit larger than common beauty standards dictated, felt sharpened, catching the distant, rhythmic hum of the subterranean world.
She cinched the leather scabbard belt around her waist and slung the woven satchel over her shoulder. She was Scarlet, twenty-seven years of memories told her so, but as she looked into the glowing depths of the forest, she knew that Scarlet that she knew was gone.
The woman standing in the shadows of the Barduk trees was someone else. She was something new.
The silence of the forest was thick, pressing against her eardrums like deep water. Scarlet’s voice, when she finally found it, was a fragile thread that threatened to snap.
“Where am I?” she whispered, the words trembling. She looked at her pale hands, then up at the impossible stone ceiling. “Is it a dream? Am I… am I dead? Is this hell?”
“This is neither hell nor a dream,” a voice replied.
The sound didn't seem to travel through the air; it felt as though it resonated directly inside her skull vibrant, ancient, and terrifyingly clear.
Scarlet spun around, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her breath hitched. Standing or rather, existing a few feet away was a nightmare rendered in flesh and shadow.
The creature was a masterpiece of the grotesque. His skin was the color of a drowned moon, textured like cured leather and stretched tight over a long, angular face that lacked a nose or lips. Where a human had two eyes, this creature had six, three on each side of his head, stacked vertically. They were dark, wet orbs that held no emotion, only an infinite, piercing intelligence. He possessed no visible legs; instead, he hovered a foot above the glowing grass, his form draped in a heavy cloak of midnight silk. Golden embroidery snaked across the fabric in the shape of tangled, weeping roots that seemed to shiver as he moved.
Scarlet recoiled, her heels catching on a protruding root as she scrambled backward. “Who… who the heck are you?” she gasped, her voice cracking.
The creature didn't blink. He drifted closer, his bony, needle-thin hands emerging from the depths of his sleeves. The air around him grew cold, smelling of dried parchment and old rain.
“The right question, little ember, is what am I?” Branabus said. His voice was a rhythmic hum, like a bow being drawn across a cello string. “I am the lead, but not the leader. I am the threshold you must cross to discover where and IF you should reach your destination.”
He tilted his head, all six eyes tracking the frantic rise and fall of her chest.
“You are the question, and for a fleeting moment, I am the answer. As for the label you seek…” He bowed slightly in mid-air, a gesture that was both elegant and deeply unsettling. “My name is Branabus.”
Scarlet stood frozen, her gaze locked onto Branabus’s six emotionless eyes. She felt a phantom ache in her limbs, a memory of cold asphalt and the screech of tires that hadn't yet faded.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than the rustle of the glowing leaves. She gripped her own arms, checking for the heat of blood, but her skin felt unnaturally smooth. “The last thing I remember… there was a car. I was on my bicycle. I remember the sound of metal twisting. The sky was turning gray.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading for a logical explanation. “Am I in a hospital? Is this a coma? Some drug-induced fever dream?”
“Dead you are, my lady,” Branabus replied. He said it with the casual tone of someone announcing the weather. “Broken beyond the reach of your world’s medicine. Your time in Dalanar ended when that metal met your bone.”
The words hit her like a physical blow. Scarlet staggered, her hand catching the rough, gray bark of the tree she had just escaped. Dead. The word felt too heavy for her mind to hold.
“You are in the Barduk Forest,” Branabus continued, his floating form drifting in a slow, hypnotic circle around her. “You have been pulled from the silence. You have been resurrected to continue a journey you did not know you were on.”
