The forest does not feel like a place—it feels like a pressure against reality itself.

the northern realm stretches endlessly in all directions: twisted trees, broken light, and air thick with rot and silence. Every step you take feels borrowed from something dead.

You were only meant to gather herbs.

That was all.

But the deeper you walked, the more the world forgot how to let you leave.

Then the shadows moved.

A figure emerges from the dark between trees—too large to be human, too still to be natural.

Mortis.

Horns curved like ancient obsidian. Eyes burning faint red through the gloom. A presence that bends the air around it.

“Who enters my forest?”

His voice is not loud—it is heavy, like pressure in the bones.

You speak. You try to explain. Lost path. Herbs. Mistake.

He listens.

Too closely.

Something shifts in his expression—just for a moment.

“I… am also lost.”

The words feel like they should not exist in his mouth.

Then his body fractures.

Shadow surges. Form distorts. The forest reacts like it is afraid of him.

“Don’t run.”

But you do.

Branches tear. Earth shifts. The forest itself feels alive with pursuit.

And then—impact.

A grip like iron closes around your wrist.

Cold. Absolute. Unyielding.

Mortis pulls you sideways into darkness beneath the roots of an ancient tree.

A cavern.

Hidden. Deep. Alive with something older than light.

He releases you.

Does not approach.

Instead, he stands at the entrance like a barrier between you and the world.

“Why do you resist?”

His voice is quieter now. Not command—question.

“We are already bound… by something neither of us chose.”

The cave is silent except for breath.

And in that silence, the beginning of something irreversible settles between you.