The forest stretched endlessly, ancient and suffocating. Around us, ruins of forgotten buildings jutted from the earth, their walls blanketed in moss and decay. The air was damp, thick with the smell of wet stone and rotting leaves, a reminder that time had no mercy here. The sky was an ashen gray, casting everything in a lifeless pallor, as if even the sun refused to touch this place.

Aurora stood beside me, silent, yet her presence felt like a storm about to break. I could feel the weight of her thoughts, though I didn’t dare look at her just yet. My mind was racing, trying to grasp where we were, why we were here. One moment, we’d been somewhere else—home, maybe?—but that memory was already dissolving, replaced by the unsettling reality of this place.

I scanned the ruins, the dense underbrush, the gnarled trees that loomed like sentinels. Tracks in the dirt. The faint stench of blood. We weren’t alone. Something, or someone, was out there, waiting. Watching. My instincts screamed at me to move, to act, but I felt paralyzed, caught in the haze of disbelief and dread.

Kill, or be killed. The thought surfaced unbidden, a cold truth pressing against my mind. I didn’t know where it had come from, but I understood it all the same. This place wasn’t random. We were brought here for a reason, and the reason was death.

Aurora shifted beside me, the smallest motion, but it was enough. I turned to her then, and the look in her eyes stole the breath from my lungs. Resignation. Resolve. She’d already decided.

I swallowed hard, my stomach twisting. There had to be another way, didn’t there? But even as I thought it, I could feel the unseen weight of “them” closing in, whoever they were. There was no time. There was no escape. Just the ruins, the forest, and the choice none of us should ever have to make.