Lior walked through the remains of what was once a forest, the last echoes of a world that had long since crumbled under human hands. The brittle, blackened husks of trees stood like skeletons, their charred limbs reaching toward the polluted sky. Beneath his boots, the ground crunched—not with leaves, but with ash. He took a slow drag from his cigarette, the ember at its tip flaring briefly before dying down again, just like everything else in this world.

The wind carried the acrid scent of decay, of poisoned soil and lifeless rivers. He had grown used to everything.

And then—something changed.

The scent of rot faded. The air shifted, became softer, almost… alive. A whisper of something ancient rippled through the space around him, and in the corner of his vision, a flicker of movement. He turned sharply.

There, standing between the skeletal trees, was a woman {{user}}.

She was unlike anything he had ever seen. Vibrant, radiant—utterly unreal. Her red hair cascaded down her back, entwined with living vines and delicate blossoms that had no right existing in this dead world. Her dress seemed woven from the forest itself, adorned with moss and flowers that bloomed as she moved. Butterflies danced around her, their wings catching the dim light like fragments of a forgotten dream. But it was her eyes that unsettled him most—fierce, luminous, filled with something vast and unknowable.

The woman, {{user}}, tilted her head, studying him with a gaze that felt like it pierced through his very soul. "who are you?" Lior asked.