......As I floated adrift in a bottomless, silent void, I had no body, no tether, no understanding of where I was or when and why I had been dragged into this suffocating blackness.

  Yet, there was a strange, ethereal quality to the dark, a dreamlike haze that blanketed my fear.

  Drifting aimlessly through the darkness, a speck of light eventually pierced the gloom. I turned toward it, and the silhouette of a towering structure materialised before me.

  It was a colossal, cylindrical tower, stretching impossibly high into the dark. Along the curving walls of each floor, massive numbers were carved, counting from a ground floor of zero all the way to a zenith of nine.

  Crowning this impossible structure was a gigantic clock face, harbouring three smaller, intricate dials within its massive bounds. One sat high in the centre, flanked by two others in the lower left and right corners.

  It was a strange, alien timekeeper. The immense outer ring held 999 numbers, beginning with zero where the twelve should rest.

  The small upper dial bore 24 numbers, while the twin bottom dials held 60 each. Single, solitary needles sat upon each face, dragging themselves backwards against the natural flow of time.

  The dial in the bottom right was frantic, snapping back one number every second.

  I watched it move, the hypnotic rhythm pulling at my mind until the realisation settled over me. A countdown timer.

  If the bottom right clock is seconds, then the left one should be minutes since they each have 60 numbers. Then the top middle clock is hours with 24 numbers, and finally, the big one should be days.

  It was a perfectly set countdown. 999 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, and a handful of seconds. Exactly 1000 days. But counting down to what?

  I stared intently, and a chilling detail emerged. With every snap of the second hand, a microscopic fissure spiderwebbed across the surface of the tower. It was barely visible, but I realised the truth. When those 1000 days bled out, the structure would shatter completely.

  The instant the thought formed, a bell housed beneath the great clock tolled.

  Clang..! Clang..! Clang..!

  The metallic strikes didn't ring in the air; they smashed directly into my skull, reigniting the agonising headache. The shock of the pain was so deep that it made me realise it was all a dream before it tore me from the dream, violently yanking me back to consciousness.

  My eyes snapped open. The dull ache still throbbed behind my temples. But instead of the familiar ceiling of my bedroom, instead of the posters on my walls, I stared up into an endless expanse of azure sky, framed by the jagged canopy of an alien jungle.

  "Where am I?" I whispered to the empty woods, only to get no answer.

  ***

  When I opened my eyes, a dense jungle canopy loomed before me. Behind my back, an illusory mist swallowed the surroundings, cutting off my vision after just a few feet.

  Disoriented and entirely unsure of how I got there, I pushed myself off the ground to take stock of the area, but there was nothing else to see.

  As I turned and stepped toward the mist, my head slammed into something solid. I pressed my hands forward, tracing the invisible surface; it wasn't glass, but some kind of barrier.

  'I was at home just a while ago and got a headache before losing consciousness ‘I woke up in this strange, unknown place, and there is a barrier here. ' Still, why am I so calm?' ' Also, how is my mind racing with these thoughts at such speed?’

  These rapid, calculated thoughts felt entirely alien to who I was.

  But before I could finish unravelling the mystery of my own mind, a shadow shifted beyond the barrier, sending a jolt of pure terror through my veins.

  "Fuck," I breathed, stumbling back a few paces.

  Grrrrr...!

  A gray-white wolf, standing nearly four feet tall, locked its piercing eyes on mine from within the mist and began to stalk forward.

  Though I was scared shitless, the memory of the invisible wall offered a fleeting spike of relief. I took slow, deliberate steps backwards as the beast approached the boundary.

  But my relief shattered in an instant.

  The wolf didn't stop; it phased right through the barrier as if it were nothing but air.

  "Fuck! " slipped from my lips again, a curse I fully expected to be my last.

  Instinct took over, and I spun on my heel and bolted without a second thought. The confused beast, perhaps suddenly remembering I was a prey, launched into a furious chase.

  As I ran as fast as I could, my mind frantically cycled through every useless survival tip I'd ever heard about wolf attacks.

  Knowing I could never outrun it in a straight sprint, I jerked hard to the left behind a cluster of trees. I immediately cut right, slithering erratically through the trunks, praying the terrain was my only chance to survive.

  I scanned the forest floor wildly for anything I could use as a weapon, knowing it would catch me soon.

  The wolf was closing the distance, though it seemed to lack its usual feral aggression, and that was when I spotted it: a sharp wooden stick, likely a heavy twig, resting just a few meters away.

  Believing I could use it, I pushed my legs to their absolute limit and lunged for it.

  Just before I reached it, I tripped and fell hard. Yet, instead of panic, my mind worked with terrifying speed, commanding me to roll.

  I didn't question my instinct. I tumbled across the dirt, covering the last bit of distance just as the chasing wolf leapt at me.

  Fortunately, I was a fraction of a second faster, my fingers closing around the makeshift spear. Without even planting my feet or taking a proper stance, I blindly swung the wood backwards with everything I had.

  Drawing a wild arc, the heavy stick met the wolf's skull just as its jaws snapped where my neck had been.

  Bham..!

  With a heavy impact, the beast crashed into the dirt to my left. As if guided by years of phantom training, I vaulted to my feet and threw myself at the animal before it could shake off the blow.

  The wolf scrambled to process what had happened and tried to stand, but it was too late. It could only watch as the sharp wood descended.

  I drove the stake directly into its heart.

  Thwack...!

  Once I thrust it in, I ripped the wood free and slammed it down again, and again, and again.

  Thwack..! Thwack..! Thwack..!

  Blood sprayed in every direction, painting my hands, my clothes, and even my face in a thick, crimson coat, but I continued thrusting until the beast stopped breathing entirely.

  Hffffff....!

  Taking a huge, rattling breath, I stared down at the dead wolf, the bloody weapon in my grip, and the gore coating my skin, anxiously asking myself, "What just happened here, and what did I just do?"

  I understood it was self-defence, feeling no guilt over killing a wild animal that tried to end my life. But looking at myself, the shock set in. "How did I do this?"

  The icy calculation, the lethal instinct that only relinquished control once the threat was utterly eliminated.

  I was shocked to see what I was capable of, knowing for a fact that it couldn't be the real me. I was not a person who acted like that.

  Was it pure instinct? No, it felt like more than that. It felt like I was living out those idle fantasies of being a cold, confident survivor who acts before thinking.

  Why had I reacted with such ruthless efficiency? My racing thoughts were violently cut short.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Howwl...!

  A second howl ripped through the distant canopy. Hearing that, I snapped out of my daze and forced myself up.

  Realising the mist barrier was a death sentence since the beasts came from there, I immediately turned in the opposite direction and sprinted into the unknown.

  After pushing through the dense foliage for a few hundred meters, a break in the trees revealed a wash of bright light. I hurried my pace and burst out of the tree line, into the light.

  Once out of the forest, as I looked forward, a vast expanse of grass stretched out before me for several hundred meters. Beyond that plain sat a village or a small city. Whatever it was, I knew it meant safety.

  I had just shifted my weight to run toward it when the heavy crunch of footsteps sounded from behind my right side.

  Knowing I couldn't beat a wolf to the village in an open field, I instantly dropped into a fighting stance, my knuckles white around the bloody stick.

  The footsteps grew loud, but the figures that burst from the brush weren't beasts at all.

  They were two foreign teenagers, a boy and a girl, panting and exhausted, wearing expressions of absolute terror that mirrored my own situation.

  They froze the second they noticed me and the blood coating my hands. The boy instinctively stepped in front of the girl, shielding her, and locked eyes with me.

  "Are you the one who kidnapped us?" he asked in English, a language I perfectly understood.

  "What?" I blurted out, genuinely shocked.

  I took them in: they looked no older than sixteen or seventeen, with pale skin, straight black hair, and casual clothes. They were completely unarmed and terrified.

  Then, I looked down at myself. I was dripping in fresh gore, levelling a sharpened, bloody stake at them.

  Realising my mistake, I quickly lowered the weapon before facing them

  "I just woke up in this unknown place and was attacked by a wolf; this blood belongs to it," I explained in English. "I don't even know who you guys are. Why would I kidnap you?"

  Hearing that, the tension in their faces shifted.

  "You also woke up in this place?" the boy asked. "So did we, and a wolf also attacked us as we ran, but it changed direction when it heard that howl just now. So if you are also like us, where are you from? And who kidnapped us?"

  "I'm from an eastern nation," I replied. "I don't know who kidnapped us."

  "East? I'm from the west. How can two people kidnapped from two different continents be together?" he panicked. "Wait a minute, how long were we unconscious?"

  Seeing his rising panic and my utter confusion, the terrified girl behind him finally intervened.

  "Guys, don't you think it's better for us to talk about this, after going to the village over there?" she suggested, pointing toward the distant roofs.

  It was the smartest thing anyone had said. We all agreed and decided to run across the plains together in case the wolves returned.

  We crossed the field quickly, soon arriving at the edge of the settlement.

  The structures here weren't made of cement, but wood. They were small, damaged, and dilapidated, making it seem like we had stumbled into a deeply impoverished village.

  Uncaring about the architecture, I tossed the bloody stick aside and frantically used my hands to scrape as much of the gore off my skin as I could. The boy beside me shrugged off his jacket and held it out.

  "The blood won't leave like that. Take off your shirt and use that to clean your body and pants as much as you can, and throw the shirt away before wearing this," he instructed. "We don't want the villagers to look at us like freaks."

  Perfectly understanding his logic, I stripped off my ruined shirt, wiped myself down, discarded the bloody rag, and accepted his jacket.

  "Thank you," I muttered.

  Now covered, the three of us looked down the dirt road leading into the village and started moving.

  Along the way, we swapped names and basic details, though none of it felt important right now.

  What truly grabbed our attention was the massive wooden wall looming at the far end of the settlement. We wanted to know why it was there, but finding a local for basic information was our first priority.

  After passing several empty houses, we spotted an old man in strange, cultural clothing sitting outside his house. Ignoring the bizarre fashion, I approached him.

  "Hello, sir. Can you tell us what place this is and where the police station is?"

  The old man blinked in utter bewilderment, opening his mouth to reply.

  "Ssdsdd gjfjfj dhdhdh,"

  The syllables were harsh, a language I had never heard before. I strained to find any familiar root words, but I couldn't.

  I cycled through every other language I knew to find a common tongue. The other two tried as well, only for all our attempts to fail completely.

  Disappointed, we decided to ask someone else.

  We walked further in, found many others, and tried asking them too. We quickly realised that almost no one in this village knew the languages we spoke.

  Eventually, while wandering through a claustrophobic alleyway, we stopped before a house with a slightly ajar door.

  "Do we have to continue this? No one here seems to know our language?" the boy sighed.

  "Then what else can we do? None of the people here seems to have a mobile phone either," I shot back. "Let's ask around until the evening, and if it doesn't work, let's consider other options later."

  The girl agreed, and so did he, knowing it was our only play.

  With our resolve set, I told them to hang back. I stepped up to the half-open door and knocked.

  Knock...Knock...!

  "Hello? Sir? Madam? Is anyone here?"

  Knock...Knock...!

  The door was incredibly loose; it swung fully open just from the force of my knuckles.

  Kreeeeeek...!

  The sight inside almost stopped our hearts.

  Standing in the dim room was an oily, white-faced man in his forties with a patchy beard and uncombed, wild curls.

  He was drenched head-to-toe in fresh blood, just like I had been, and his fist was wrapped around the hilt of a bloody knife, buried deep in the stomach of a woman in front of him. She appeared dead, while he held her limp body up with his free hand.

  We stood paralysed, watching the live murder of someone right in front of us.

  The killer slowly turned his head toward us.

  His lips peeled back in a grotesque, horrific smile, baring his teeth as he wrenched the blade out of her stomach.

  He let the woman's corpse crumple to the floorboards and took a deliberate step toward us.

  "Fuck," my mind screamed.

  The survival instinct of my enhanced mind overrode everything. I spun on my heels to run for my life without a second thought.

  Ahead of me, the other two had already started sprinting down the alley.

  I immediately pushed my legs to follow. I only made it a few paces when I felt something fly at me from behind, followed instantly by a sickening impact against my back.

  Plutch...!

  Only when the agonising flare of pain hit did I realise it was a knife, thrown by the murderer, now lodged between my shoulders.

  The trauma struck hard, begging me to stop. However, the massive surge of adrenaline in my body was strong enough to mask it, allowing me to keep running.

  A few steps later, I watched the two teenagers take a hard left into an intersecting alleyway. They vanished from sight, leaving me completely alone.

  I was bleeding. I knew I couldn't survive just by running. I frantically searched the path for a weapon, but there was nothing.

  The heavy boots of the killer were gaining on me fast, clearly faster than my injured pace. Out of options, I had no choice but to stop, turn around, and reach over my shoulder.

  Biting down on my teeth as hard as I could, I plucked the knife out of my own back. The adrenaline kept the true agony at bay for now.

  I turned to face the man hunting me, only to realise he had produced two more knives in his hands.

  The maniac charged at me, that deranged smile still plastered across his face as he readied both weapons.

  I swung my stolen blade wildly through the air to threaten him, screaming at the top of my lungs.

  "Help! Help! Is anyone there?" But the alley remained utterly empty.

  The man jumped at me. I tried thrusting my weapon, but he was a seasoned killer in battle. He simply swatted my strike away using one of his own knives, and with a flick of his wrist, threw the other point-blank at me.

  Plutch...!

  The blade flew through the air and buried itself deep into my left shoulder.

  Before I could react, he stepped in, forcefully twisting my own weapon out of my weakened grip before taking that and throwing his remaining blades at me.

  Plutch...! Plutch...!

  One blade sank into my stomach. The other punctured my right chest.

  The next moment, my legs gave out. I hit the dirt hard on my back with a thud, gasping uselessly for air.

  Hfffff...!

  Given how vital the wounds were, I was almost sure I was going to die here.

  Even if I had managed to keep running, he would have thrown the blades regardless; he had left me absolutely no chance to escape.

  With that grim realisation, I stared up at the vast blue sky, drawing in rattling, shallow breaths. That's when I noticed a bizarre detail I had ignored until now.

  ‘That sky looks so,,, fake... as if made of an illusion, or a painting. Just like that mist beyond the barrier.’

  Soon, it became an impossible chore just to even breathe.

  In that last minute there, I wondered what my parents might be going through with my sudden disappearance, and if they would ever know that their son died in this unknown place. The thought made hot tears crest my eyelashes and roll down my face.

  I let my heavy eyelids flutter shut as the slow, deliberate footsteps of the murderer approached to claim me.

  But just before my eyes closed completely, his boots stopped for a fraction of a second. I heard a sharp woosh of displaced wind before I heard something heavy hit the ground.

  Thud..!

  But soon the footsteps resumed, but they sounded different now, a little stronger, heavier, until they stopped right in front of my face.

  When he got close and I forced my eyes open for one last look at my killer... was it because I was dying? Or for some other impossible reason? That guy looked different.

  He looked older, with neatly combed white hair and a small beard. He seemed like an entirely different person standing over me.

  My shattered mind was entirely confused, but I was in no condition to care about the impossibility of it. I slowly let my eyes close, drawing one last, rattling breath as I finally lost consciousness and surrendered to the dark.