Bashing his head against the stone pavement, the child fell unconscious. Contrary to his desperate hope, when he awoke from that forced sleep, the intense pain in his skull hadn't faded. Nor had the questions that churned in his mind—questions that kept doubting his existence.
Now displaced, the child felt only part of his mind occupied—by something. Though he didn't know what.
As he looked around, the scene struck a vague familiarity. The stone pavement where he had struck his head. The glowing everturn plants. The pure water pool, and the Fresh white lilies drifted atop the water.
But the child felt no peace.
His thoughts were a storm. His head, a nest of pain and noise. Every second of stillness forced him to focus on the suffering, made him clench inside. He had to move.
Looking back, his heart refused to let him go that way. So there was only one direction left—forward, across the water body.
The pool rested at the heart of the cave chamber. On both sides, narrow strips of flat ground curved around it. The child chose the right side and began to crawl. Left or right—it made no difference. Both paths led onward.
He crawled. And crawled. And crawled. After what felt like an eternity, a source of light appeared ahead.
As he moved toward it, the light stretched and widened, glowing larger with every motion. If he so much as slowed for a breath, the headache and mental pressure returned—crashing onto him like a massive rock on a thin water stream, choking its flow.
So the child sped up. Again and again. Until he reached the exit of the cave.
The view beyond wasn't far. Smooth downward slope that led toward the jungle, where the trees began once more.
Towering, overgrown trees reached up to the sky, blocking his vision with their tangled canopy.
Without sparing even a second, the child began to crawl deeper into the forest. Every heartbeat of stillness brought back the mental sickness, the churning pressure in his skull.
He dragged himself over overgrown weeds, fallen leaves, and scattered, half-eaten fruits. He bit into each in desperation—but none could even partly fill his stomach. All they gave in return was havoc in his gut.
But that pain... he couldn't focus on it. Couldn't even feel it. His mind was already too fractured.
Without pausing, the child kept crawling—faster, harder. His movement drained what little he had left. And the more he hungered, the more relentlessly he searched. The more he searched, the more his fractured mind blurred.
Then, through the growth, he saw something:
A wiggling, branch-like form, not too far off.
It was the size of his body—or perhaps twice that
But it looked feasible to eat—for the child.And so, he began crawling toward the moving, branch-like thing.
The closer he got, the more came into view. Spiteacks—many of them.Some the size of him. Some smaller.Some twice his size.And others—far in the distance—monstrosities, coiled like nightmares around trees and stone.
Suddenly, his senses flared, warning him of the danger he'd blindly stumbled into.His body froze mid-crawl, jerking to a halt, disjointed and trembling.
He looked around.So many monstrous spiteacks, their bodies twitching, their scales glinting in the dim light.His instincts screamed at him—run. Escape while he still went unnoticed.
He even considered it. Tried to calculate, imagine—what plan might work best for him.But as he paused—even briefly—the headache surged back in.
With a pained cry, the child clutched his head with both hands and collapsed.
The pain was unbearable.
When he came to again, his recent memories were erased, washed clean.The near past was lost.The creatures, the threat—they were unfamiliar again.
He looked around, disoriented.The forest was new to him once more—alien, fresh, terrifying.No memory of why he was there.No clue what to do next.
And so, his primal instincts took over again: the hunger, the pressure, the need to keep moving.
Driven by those urges, he began crawling once more, towards a spiteack not much larger than himself.
But as he inched closer—something felt off.Something within him was missing.
It wasn't a memory.It wasn't a thought.It was something deeper. Something that had been part of him.Now... gone.
Yet the child couldn't name it.Couldn't grasp what had been taken.And so, without understanding, without questioning further, he continued.Crawling toward the coiled creature.
He reached forward. His two strong back arms responded—stretching toward the spiteack.
But his legs—they did not follow.
There was no motion. No support. No sensation.
Confused, the child twisted his body and looked behind him—toward his lower half.
At first, he felt amused, like it was all some peculiar trick of his body.
Then the amusement twisted into bewilderment.That quickly gave way to fear, confusion, and finally—pure horror.
The child wailed.
His scream shattered the forest's unnatural silence.The sun had just begun to set, casting a blood-red glow across the jungle.
But the redness in the sky was nothing—compared to the red pooling where his legs should have been.