The forest never ended.
Not in direction. Not on purpose.
It was a perfect prison—alive, aware, and endlessly cruel.
Leaves rustled even without the wind.
The air was damp with rot and something else.
Something that felt... conscious.
Five figures walked through the uneven earth.
They had been here too long. Far too long.
Three months.
They still called themselves sane.
But sanity had become a flexible thing.
Something that bent with hunger and hallucination.
It had been three months since they'd stepped through that damned portal on the dead planet.
An abandoned world circling around the edge of a fading star.
They thought they'd gotten lucky.
A secret realm.
A hidden legacy.
Something ancient, untouched.
They didn't feel any strong fluctuations.
Just an entry point radiating soft mana—and a tempting sense of fortune.
But it wasn't fortune. It was a trap.
And they were the fools who fell for it.
As soon as they entered, the entrance closed.
