Back with Edith, she was looking at Alhen, who lay on the ground with a bored expression.

  The yellow forest around her gave off a light that illuminated where they stood.

  Occasionally, she would see Alhen’s expression changing; sometimes it was peaceful, other times surprised, but no matter what, he did not open his eyes.

  She looked at the big face on the wall and asked, “How long until he awakens? Do not tell me that you did not follow my orders; it has already been a few hours; he must be nearing the end, right?”

  The face didn’t talk, but its eyes conveyed an important message, which she translated to mean that she would stay sitting there without doing anything for at least a few more hours.

  She sighed and lay down beside Alhen to sleep, all with her guard raised in case anyone or anything tried to do anything funny while she was resting.

  Looking at Alhen one last time before closing her eyes, she thought, “You better not die and make me waste my time. Whether you succeed or not will depend on your choices, so choose carefully.”

  Going to rest, it was only a few seconds before she opened her eyes and smiled.

  There was an open cut in Alhen's forehead, which mildly bled, but it was a sign that it had already started.

  ‘Finally, it seems like I will not have to wait that long after all,’ she thought before closing her eyes again and falling asleep in a heartbeat.

  Back with Catherine in this strange world, they were lost and searching for the way back to the hut.

  “Catherine, are you sure that this is the way back? We are going in the opposite direction.” Alhen commented.

  “What are you talking about? I am sure that it is this way; just follow me and do not ask any questions,” she responded.

  Alhen sighed and followed after her; he had already forgotten why he was in the forest in the first place.

  Occasionally, he would hear a weird whisper that told him to leave and to be aware, but he didn’t pay them any mind.

  However, they eventually turned annoying, and the voices were such that he couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand, finding the exit.

  Thankfully, they shut up after five seconds and didn’t bother him again, but he could feel that something was fundamentally wrong with the forest.

  Everything seemed to shift, and he could sense movements all around him.

  Catherine didn’t seem to notice, and his heartbeat was starting to rise exponentially.

  A shadow moved quickly in the night, passing through his vision and disappearing in a flash.

  Alhen stopped, observing his surroundings with more caution. Catherine stopped as well when she realized that Alhen was not following.

  “What are you doing? We have to get out of here,” she said.

  “Have you not seen or heard that something is off? I feel like we should be more careful, especially now that weird things are happening,” he cautioned.

  “I feel like you are digging way too much into this. I have yet to see something strange happening with the things in this forest; I believe it is all in your imagination,” she said.

  “Maybe you are right, but still, at least do it so I feel more comfortable; let’s slow down and be aware of anything that could ambush us,” he said, and Catherine accepted.

  “Very well, then let us head forward with more caution, then.”

  They resumed walking through the forest, and that feeling that something was wrong didn’t leave his body. Goosebumps occasionally ran through his body and submerged him in a panic.

  With just a few steps forward, he saw what was causing that discomfort from up close. Just a few feet away from him lay a strange man in the middle of the forest, staring right at him.

  He would have appeared normal if not for the fact that he was tall, incredibly so, and he wore a dark jacket with a big circular hat that hid his eyes. The only thing he could see was his dirty mouth.

  He stood perfectly still, only staring at them and seemingly waiting for the perfect moment to grab one of them and take them with him.

  Alhen couldn’t take his eyes off the man, and he pointed to where he was to Catherine.

  Before she could look, however, Alhen blinked, and the man was gone.

  Catherine saw nothing and looked at Alhen with concern.

  "It seems that you are starting to get hallucinations; we have to get out of here before they worsen," she said.

  ‘I can swear that I’m not having any type of hallucinations, but she doesn’t seem to believe me. It’s fine; however, at least she suggested getting out of this forest as fast as possible.’

  He gritted his teeth and urged Catherine to go faster. She obliged, and they upped their pace.

  Being slow could mean the difference between death and survival, and he wouldn’t let anything stop him.

  Strange sounds began to reach his ears again, but this time, they weren’t warnings; they were threats.

  “I will kill you. You will not escape,” and the last one, “Look behind you…” Up until that point, the voice had been inside his head, but the last one… the last one was just behind him.

  He turned around in a flash to look at the thing that had talked to him and found the tall man reaching out to grab him.

  His heart skipped a beat, and he threw himself sideways with all he had.

  “Crunch!” he landed on dead tree branches, snapping them in half, and even one got stuck on his thigh. He gritted his teeth and looked at the creature, only to find it with Catherine in its hand.

  She had a distressed expression and yelled out at him. “Help! Help! Ahhhh!” she screamed.

  That’s when he realized that the real target all along wasn’t him, but Catherine.

  He stood as best as he could, but when blinking again, the creature was gone with her. He looked all around him, only to find the creature a couple of meters away, walking somewhere.

  He saw Catherine on its shoulder, waving at him frantically and trying to get out of the thing’s grip, but it was simply too strong.

  His legs moved instinctively to help her, but stopped only after a few steps. He stood still, watching as she got carried away with a big frown and a hurt expression.

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  ‘I’m sorry, Catherine, but my survival comes first,’ he thought before running away from the creature.

  He didn’t know where he was going; everywhere looked the same, but he knew that he would rather be anywhere that was not the forest.

  ‘That creature is definitely not the only thing in here; if I’m not careful, I will get killed!’

  His breathing was ragged; he had run for quite some time, far away from where the creature had taken Catherine, or that’s what he thought.

  Taking a deep breath, he stabilized his breathing and took note of his surroundings. He realized that this was the same spot where he had seen Catherine get taken for the last time.

  “CHOOSE!” A raspy voice screamed inside his mind.

  Alhen held the side of his head with his only arm and gritted his teeth. That scream had given him a short migraine, but thankfully, it healed quickly.

  “What am I supposed to do? Should I listen to the voice in my head? What choice is it talking about?” he wondered out loud.

  Looking back to where the creature had taken Catherine, he hesitated.

  If he ran in that direction, it was almost certain that he would be met with death, but if he ran anywhere else in the forest, he would end up in the same place.

  His legs refused to move. If only he had something to defend himself, then this situation might have gone differently.

  However, he couldn’t just stand in place without making a decision, like the voice in his head was trying to tell him, he had to make a choice.

  Without thinking twice, he gritted his teeth and ran forward to where the wiht had taken Catherine.

  As he took his first step, his danger signals went off quickly, alerting him to an impending danger.

  He didn’t have time to think when he felt something passing right behind him.

  It was a ripped arm oozing blood, which had been thrown with such strength that it snapped the tree beside him in half.

  A cold sweat ran down his back as he looked where the arm was thrown and found a wiht that appeared much like a monkey.

  It was hanging on a tree branch, and its feet and the palm of its hand were bigger than the rest of its body.

  It was missing its right arm, and it hung looking at him with a deadly look, with blood flowing down his face and onto the ground below.

  As quickly as he spotted the wiht, he quickly lost it from sight. It was fast, swinging from tree to tree and using its natural dark skin and fur to camouflage in the night.

  It was then that he realized that had he not moved, he would have shared the same fate the tree suffered, except that his head would have been the one that exploded.

  He didn’t waste more time and started running in the direction where he had last seen Catherine.

  The forest was deadly silent, and he couldn’t hear anything chasing after him.

  This didn’t alleviate his worries; it only made them grow exponentially. He traversed fallen trees and ran through many plants for a few minutes, but he still didn’t find them.

  As he ran, his instinct activated, and he felt a great danger coming from below him.

  Turning off his brain, he stopped running with all he had and threw himself sideways.

  A brown hand with three fat fingers came out of the ground with a knife and elongated to ridiculous proportions.

  It followed him in the air and managed to cut his forehead, dripping blood to the ground, but not killing him.

  Despite its reach being massive, the bush that Alhen landed in seemed to confuse the hand; otherwise, he might have been in real trouble.

  While the hand was busy trying to find him, he ran backwards and got back on track, leaving the hand behind.

  He turned backwards and noticed that it had an eye on its forearm, but that was past news. After running for a few more minutes, he was starting to grow frantic.

  It had already been lots of times when he saw wihts from the corner of his eyes staring right at him.

  They didn’t move to get him, but if they did, he knew for a fact that he wouldn’t be able to escape at all.

  Taking a few more steps forward, he found what he was looking for.

  In front of him stood the tall wiht with the hat, holding Catherine on his shoulder and entering a massive cave shaped like a mouth.

  Catherine was looking straight at him without saying a word, but her expression was one of distress.

  He saw her figure darkening and getting further into the cave, disappearing completely.

  Alhen ran after her despite his instincts shooting up at full force and telling him not to.

  He ignored all of it and ran to the cave, and when he entered, it was like he had stepped into another dimension.

  He had just stepped inside, and everything changed; he looked behind him, and the exit wasn’t there. Looking forward, it was as if he had stepped into a haunted cave.

  He could barely see in front of him, and there were strange sounds coming from all directions.

  There was the echo of water dripping to the ground and some faint voices up ahead.

  Taking a deep breath, he commanded his legs to move forward, and they obeyed. He wondered what he would find if he advanced, and he didn’t take long to do so.

  As he walked through the black cave, he truly felt observed by something out of this world. Something was looking at him right now; he knew for certain that it was true.

  He couldn’t sense from where, but it didn’t seem to be threatening, so he kept going forward with his guard raised.

  At the end of the tunnel, he found himself in a big open area where he could actually see because the ceiling was destroyed and the moon shone its light inside.

  There were literal giants in the place.

  Alhen widened his eyes and saw as the wiht which had taken Catherine be lifted high up in the air and thrown at the wall, being crushed and killed instantly.

  ‘Nooo!’ he exclaimed in his mind.

  Was Catherine there when the giants threw the creature against the wall and immediately killed it?

  Apparently not, as he saw her a couple of meters away atop a huge table being held in a tiny glass bottle.

  He was incredibly tiny; the floor expanded and stretched into the distance.

  To save Catherine, he would have to climb that big table somehow and avoid detection by the giants, although he figured that it would be easier being crushed than spotted due to his size.

  Deciding not to waste a single second, he ran, looking at all the glass bottles and all the people inside.

  A lot of the villagers he had seen earlier in the day were there with Catherine, but there was no sign of Edith.

  ‘She must be safe at home. What I really have to worry about now is getting her out of here,’ he thought.

  While running to the table, he took a good look at the giants in front of him. There were two in total, and they seemed hostile.

  They were weirdly deformed, with their legs and hands not being quite right, bent at impossible angles.

  They had chubby faces, and their eyes were simply not there despite having eye sockets. ‘Are they blind?’ he thought, thinking that it would be great for that to be the case.

  At first, saving Catherine seemed impossible, but now that he had a clearer view of what he was confronting, there was a chance.

  Everything he was doing now went against his instinct.

  He had promised not to do this again when the Sloan and Sierra situation happened, but it seemed that destiny wanted to play a cruel game with him.

  He finally arrived at the table and began ascending through the imperfections of the leg.

  In just a few minutes, he was high enough that dropping down to the ground would have been fatal.

  It took him more than half an hour to climb everything, but he finally reached the top and ran towards the bottles.

  There she was, Catherine; she was pounding against the glass and yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear anything.

  She wasn’t alone in that bottle, however; there were many people who started pounding on the glass and making sounds, worrying him that the giants might notice.

  Looking around at the giants, they seemed to be distracted, talking to each other in an unknown language, far away from the table.

  Taking this chance, he looked around for something that could be useful in destroying the thing.

  Relative to the size of everything, the bottle was really small, and he believed that with something solid, he would be able to break it out without a problem.

  The problem was that around him, there was nothing to use, and he was a nine-year-old boy who still didn’t have the strength needed to exert a strong force naturally.

  He looked at the despairing faces of the villagers and Catherine and thought about what to do. A shadow enveloped him, and looking to his left, he saw the two giants staring at him.

  ‘How did they manage to move so fast and quietly!? It should have been impossible,’ he exclaimed in his mind before noticing that one of them went to squish him like a bug, but the other giant stopped him.

  They seemed to get into a discussion, and Alhen didn’t know what to do. They began arguing and even getting physical, with the giant pushing the other into the table and making it fall.

  Alhen screamed with all the villagers, who were sent straight down into certain death.

  Alhen tried stabilizing his body in the air and figuring out a way to escape, but it was impossible; they were thrown quite far, and they couldn’t reach anything to save themselves.

  ‘Is this how I die!?’ He thought in a panic and closed his eyes.

  The feeling of gravity pushing him downwards felt suffocating; he had given up on surviving the situation.

  He felt the ground nearing him, and he gritted his teeth and tensed all his body in a desperate attempt to make a difference.

  The pain he expected, however, never came.

  All the weight pushing his body downwards had disappeared and was instead replaced by something else entirely.

  At that point, he wished he had simply died while falling, as now, something even more terrifying was happening.

  He opened his eyes and frantically looked around him. The first thing that came into his eyes was a place that seemed very familiar. It was a cabin, and he was handcuffed to a bed.

  Looking at the floor beside him, he saw a white bear rug and a steel door, which was the entrance to the room, and there were no windows.

  “What is happening? Where am I?” he wondered out loud.

  No matter what he did, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was extremely wrong.

  The next second, the steel door opened, and Catherine came inside holding a dead human.

  “Hello, Alhen,” she said, getting closer to him and dragging the body behind her.

  He didn’t say a word from the shock.

  “Alhen,” she began after closing in on him, “I need your help. I want to kill my mother.”