“If we’re not in the Demon Forest… then… where the hell are we?”

I murmured to myself, my voice faintly echoing against the stone walls of the ravine.

An unsettling, persistent feeling was beginning to take root inside me.

Something was off. Something didn’t add up.

My hand reached up to my hair, already messy from the time I’d spent in the forest, ruffling it even more. The rough, dry texture of the strands only reminded me of how long it had been since I’d had access to anything even remotely close to proper hygiene.

But that was the least of my concerns.

I needed to think.

To reason.

To put the pieces together.

I pressed my fingers against my temples, as if I could squeeze some useful information out of my mind.

“Think, Alexander, think…!” My voice was low, but heavy with urgency.

I had read thousands of books. History, Geography, detailed Bestiaries. Dark tales about the Demon Forest, ancient fables of demon hunters, forbidden records on dimensional rifts.

Even tomes in old languages and treaties on ancestral magic—so complex they were nearly unreadable. With so much knowledge stored within me, finding an answer to what was happening should have been easy.

But it wasn’t.

Nothing came.

Nothing useful.

There was nothing in the family archives, nothing I had read, nothing that could explain what was happening.

But the most terrifying thing was that the knowledge was there, and at the same time… it wasn’t.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

I ruffled my already disheveled hair even more. My mind strained to find any clue.

But it was as if… as if someone had torn out the answers before I could read them.

I frowned. "If I passed through the rift… then I should have ended up in the Demon World."

But it was obvious I wasn’t there.

The air was pure.

The ground didn’t reek of miasma.

The pup and I weren’t being consumed by demonic corruption.

None of it made sense.

But it wasn’t just the uncertainty that terrified me. The real horror came from something even worse.

Because every time I tried to recall something—anything—that could help me… all I found was emptiness.

It was as if my mind were a book with entire pages ripped out.

Or a photo album where all the pictures had been removed, leaving only blank spaces behind.

The information should have been there.

I knew it should have been.

But it wasn’t.

And that… That was terrifying.

I was certain something was supposed to be there. I felt that I had possessed this knowledge at some point, but the moment I reached for it… the void swallowed it whole.

A dull headache started throbbing at my temples from the mental strain, and my chest tightened with frustration.

"AHHHH! Fuck this!"

My patience had reached its limit.

I shouted, grabbing a nearby rock and hurling it. It ricocheted off the ravine wall before vanishing into the dust.

The pup beside me flinched slightly, startled by my outburst, but quickly returned to staring at me with those sharp, almost judgmental eyes.

I took a deep breath, trying to shake off the wave of frustration consuming me. Losing control wouldn’t help.

As tempting as it was to just sit down and wait to be rescued, I knew the truth: if I stayed put, I’d probably die long before anyone found me.

So, first step… "I need to figure out which direction to go."

With a small effort, I stood up and walked toward the ravine walls.

Normally, I would never get close to something so covered in moss and crawling with bugs, but for some reason, it felt much easier now.

I touched the rock surface. Cold. Rough. Uneven.

Thin cracks spread out in unpredictable patterns, like ancient scars carved by time. Some areas were smoother, polished by erosion, while others were jagged and coarse, sharp enough to cut.

My fingers ran over the damp moss, its sticky texture clinging to my skin.

When I pulled off a small piece, the green fibers crumbled easily, turning into slimy strands before breaking apart completely.

The vines hanging along the wall were thin and flexible, some still holding onto tiny droplets of dew, glistening under the reddish sky.

"Strange…" I murmured, rubbing the residue between my fingers before flicking it to the ground.

Then my attention shifted to the insects scattered across the wall.

Some were small.

Others… much bigger.

So big that a few were larger than an adult’s hand.

My stomach twisted slightly at the realization. "If I had entomophobia, I’d have passed out by now…"

I kept watching them, not daring to touch.

I had no idea if they were poisonous or not, and despite all the knowledge I had accumulated about fauna and flora from bestiaries and scientific records, none of these creatures seemed familiar.

Nothing.

It was as if I were standing before a collection of species that had never been cataloged.

My gaze swept over each one, searching for patterns, anything that might help me understand where I was.

Strangely luminous fireflies that didn’t react to my movement.

Green spiders with red stripes, their long, thin legs resembling sharp claws.

Grotesque centipedes—some with pointed heads, others with rounded bodies, and some even more bizarre…

Two heads.

Sometimes, one on each end of the body.

Sometimes, literally two, fused side by side, as if they were nature’s own mistake.

"Fascinating…" I murmured, studying every detail.

If I weren’t trapped in this place, I might have even enjoyed the opportunity to examine them more closely.

But time was a luxury I didn’t have.

After finishing my observations, I leaned against the wall again and closed my eyes, trying to pick up any sound, any vibration—any clue that something existed beyond this massive rock.

The silence was deafening.

Nothing.

I sighed, stepping back.

I repeated the process.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

And every attempt resulted in the same absolute emptiness.

"As expected..." I murmured, feeling the weight of frustration begin to settle in.

My eyes then turned upward: the vertical walls of the ravine stretched endlessly into the sky, and at the top, the reddish sky extended without end, without a single soul in sight.

I turned to the left: a dark path, disappearing into the mist and shadows, giving no hint of where it led.

I turned to the right: identical.

As if both directions were just two versions of the same nothingness.

I knew that, sooner or later, I would have to choose a path.

But something inside me… told me that neither option was the right one.

And then…

"Auuuurgh!"

The pup let out a strange sound, something between a bark and a curious growl.

"What is it?" I asked, turning to him.

Without hesitation, the wolf darted toward the ravine wall.

In that instant, I noticed a faint layer of air forming around his head, like an almost invisible barrier.

And then, he threw himself against the rock.

"ARE YOU CRAZY?!" I shouted, my eyes widening.

The pup completely ignored my scream and prepared to lunge again.

"Hey! Stop that!"

I tried to grab him, but he swiftly dodged, showing impressive agility for something so small.

His golden eyes were locked onto the wall, ears flattened, body tense.

"What is it?" I questioned, starting to feel a chill creep up my spine.

He growled. But not at me.

At the wall.

I frowned. "There's nothing there. I already checked."

The pup didn’t listen.

He lunged forward again, ready to throw himself against the stone.

This time, I didn’t wait.

I sprang forward, grabbing him at the last second and crashing to the ground under our combined weight.

"Whoa…" I let out a relieved breath, holding him tightly.

"Don’t ever do that again! Just because—"

The words died in my throat.

Because, in the very next moment…

I heard it.

A faint sound. Almost imperceptible, but unmistakable.

Dripping.

My breath hitched for a second.

My senses sharpened.

And then…

"Water?" I murmured, eyes widening.

The pup let out a quiet bark, as if to say, Now you get it?

And for the first time…

I knew exactly where I needed to go.

Still sitting on the ground, I straightened up slowly and pressed my ear against the cold earth, closing my eyes to amplify my perception as much as possible.

The faint sound I had heard before was becoming clearer.

Droplets.

Soft echoes.

Echo.

My eyes snapped open. "That's it!"

Springing to my feet, I started digging with my bare hands, following the instinct growing inside me.

The pup, without hesitation, joined in—his small paws flinging dirt back with renewed energy.

It was an absurd sight—a boy and a wolf pup digging frantically, as if they knew exactly what they were doing.

And, as strange as it seemed… I did know.

Even without a logical explanation, something inside me screamed that this was the right choice.

But after a few minutes, my hands started to protest.

"This isn’t working…" I muttered, glancing down at my fingers, now caked in dirt, raw and stinging with pain.

My right palm, still healing from previous burns, throbbed as if I were pressing it straight into fire all over again.

The hole before us was pathetically small. "Doesn’t even look like I’ve been digging for hours…"

Should I stop?

No.

I couldn’t.

So, I kept going, ignoring the pain, alongside the pup, who dug without a moment’s hesitation.

A few more minutes passed.

And then, something different happened.

A red mist began to seep into the hole, swirling like ghostly vapor around the freshly dug earth.

I froze instantly.

My heart skipped a beat. "What the…?"

The smoke didn’t dissipate.

It moved in a single direction—downward, right where we had been digging.

A chill ran down my spine.

Curious, I kept digging.

And then, my fingers brushed against something solid.

I pulled away more dirt, and there it was.

A red stone.

Dull, yet somehow still glowing under the crimson sky.

I picked it up carefully, examining it up close.

"What is this…?"

But before I could even begin to form a theory, I noticed something even stranger.

The red smoke didn’t disappear.

It kept flowing into the hole, pointing directly to where we had been digging.

My mind scrambled to make sense of it.

I looked at the smoke.

Then at the stone.

Then back at the smoke.

"What…?"

I repeated the process a few times, as if my brain needed extra time to process what was happening.

And then—

The stone began to tremble.

"What?!"

Before I could react, it slipped from my grasp, sucked back into the hole as if it had a will of its own.

And then the ground gave way.

"WHAT THE—?!"

The hole erupted into a crater, swallowing everything around it.

And before I could even scream, the pup and I were pulled into the darkness.

The fall was instant.

The weight of my body yanked into the void.

Cold air rushing past my ears.

The scream tore from my throat before I even realized it.

"AHHHH!!!"

The pup let out a sharp howl, his small silhouette tumbling beside me as the world around us became nothing but shadows and wind.

I reached for something—anything—to hold onto, but there was nothing.

Nothing but the unknown waiting below.