I Am The Dark

The corrupted forest stretched for miles, a gnarled expanse of twisted trees and festering earth. For days, Kassian wandered through it - limping, enduring, surviving. Every hour bled into the next, marked only by the dim shift of color in the clouds above. There was no true sun, only a pale illumination filtered through thick, gray skies that never broke.

Kassian didn't count the days. He'd lost track after the third. Or was it the fourth? Time here felt different. Slower. More suffocating.

He moved like a ghost, his ankle still healing in painful increments. The pain had dulled to a constant throb. He had fashioned a crude walking stick from a branch that hadn't pulsed or twitched when he cut it. That alone had taken effort and risk - some trees had screamed when their bark was scraped.

The wooden dagger remained at his side, loyal and silent. Whenever he wandered too far from where he had dropped it, it simply returned. No sound, no fanfare. One moment it wasn't there. The next, it was in his hand. He'd stopped questioning it.

If anything, he had started to trust it.

It never glowed, never spoke, never hummed with magic - and yet, when he foraged, when he hesitated before putting anything in his mouth, it seemed to pulse faintly, almost like a warning. He'd learned that if the dagger was cold to the touch, the plant was safe. If it was warm, he left it alone.

It saved his life more than once.

Still, the forest refused to let him go.

Each morning, he picked a direction and walked. Each night, he found himself circling back to familiar landmarks - a split tree with a gaping hollow, a patch of silver moss growing in a perfect circle, a vine-covered boulder shaped like a jaw.

He wasn't alone, though he'd never seen the watchers. He felt them. Gliding between the trees. Shifting behind bushes. Their presence made the back of his neck prickle. Sometimes they left marks on the trees. Scratches. Burnt symbols. Once, a small pile of bones arranged like a ritual.

He ignored them. As long as they didn't show themselves, he wouldn't provoke them.

He'd built a small shelter high in a tree fork, using dead branches and leafy vines. It wasn't much, but it kept him dry. Some nights, the wind screamed through the forest. Other nights, it went deathly still. Silence more terrifying than sound.

His sleep was shallow, broken, haunted by dreams of the ruin and the grinning creature that had nearly swallowed his sanity.

And yet, something strange happened after the fifth - or was it sixth night?

Kassian started breathing easier.

The air was sharp but clean. Not like the recycled fumes of the city. It tasted of leaves and dirt and something electric. Out here, there were no curfews. No steel ceilings. No decaying neon lights.

Just trees. Endless, terrible, beautiful trees.

He found himself pausing more often. Listening to the strange, rhythmic sigh of the wind through the alien canopy. Watching the strange flowers open and close, like breathing organs responding to his presence. Even the corrupted ground held its own bleak beauty, the way glowing fungi pulsed beneath the soil like underground stars.

He hated this place. But he didn't want to leave it.

Not yet.

He realized something else too.

The dagger didn't just guide his survival.

Sometimes, when he touched the trunk of a tree or crouched beside a strange plant, words bloomed in his mind - not quite human, but understandable. Ideas. Feelings. A sense of what the thing was. What it had seen. What it feared.

It wasn't just knowledge.

It was understanding.

The land was slowly accepting him.

He didn't know why. Or how.

But it made him feel less like prey.

Still, he hadn't found a way out.

On the seventh night, he collapsed beside a tree, utterly spent. His shelter had fallen apart during a windstorm. His ankle had flared up again. Hunger gnawed at him with sharper teeth than ever before.

And yet, he stared up through the gaps in the canopy and felt something like... peace.

"If I die here," he muttered, voice hoarse, "at least I'm free."

The wind answered him with a hush, and the dagger pulsed once against his chest.

No.

Not yet.

Kassian closed his eyes.

He would find a way.

And when he did, he would return to the gate.

He would unlock the truth.

As Kassian drifted to sleep, he was more relaxed unlike before. He was too tired on this day, and his mind had no more time to be anxious. Fearing everything around him.

This time, the darkness had come to take him away into its endless abyss, which was one of the things that he feared during his episodes.

Strangely, he was not terrified this time. As his consciousness was sent into the pitch black emptiness, he felt at peace. Protected.

However, he was not alone in the void like usual. There, in the distance, he could see the strange light that was residing in his chest, gleefully drifting in the endless space.

Beside him, the Wooden Dagger floated, unwilling to leave his side.

'What kind of dream is this?' he internally questioned.

It felt real. Like he could do so much more if he willed it.

And he reflexively woke up.

Cold.

Damp.

Alive.

Before he could process the strange sensation - the distant memory of peace and drifting light - his body moved on its own. A deep, primal reflex.

He bolted upright, heart pounding.

For a moment, his breath came fast. His eyes scanned the forest in a panic. He was lying on the ground. Not in a shelter. Not hidden.

Wide open.

'I slept here all night?'

He stood quickly, half expecting a sharp pain in his leg - but there was none. He blinked, then looked down, confused.

His school uniform was filthy and torn, hanging off him in strips. Mud stained the hem. Faint tears ran up his sleeves like claw marks. But beneath it all, his body felt… whole.

He bent his injured ankle - nothing. He stomped gently, then harder. No pain.

No limp.

The injury was gone.

Completely.

'How…?'

The question rang silently in his head, but no answer came. The dagger sat at his side, unmoved, silent as ever.

He exhaled, pushing the thought aside. Now wasn't the time.

Determination replaced his confusion. Kassian turned to the tree he'd rested under, the gnarled old husk with blackened bark and brittle limbs. Its roots had held him through the night, and now, it would lift him higher.

He started climbing.

The bark flaked beneath his grip. Twice, he slipped and scraped his palms. But he didn't stop.

He had to see.

The corrupted forest seemed endless from the ground - but there had to be an edge. A break. Something.

He climbed until the branches thinned, and the air grew colder.

And finally, after one last gasp of effort, he pulled himself to the highest point the tree would allow.

There, above the twisted canopy of the corrupted woods, Kassian stood.

A heavy fog clung to the treetops like a blanket, glowing faintly with sickly hues. It moved, almost alive, crawling over the branches. But beyond it - far, far away - there was a break.

A shimmer.

A light.

Unlike the dim, pallid skies above him, this light was golden, warm… clean.

It called to him - not with words, but with presence.

That was where he needed to go.

His next step.

His way forward.

Kassian narrowed his eyes, fixing the distant glow in his memory.

He would make it there.

Somehow.

No matter what this forest threw at him.

The Long Silence was ending.

And the journey was just beginning.