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K-Kaw! K-Kaw! The harsh cries of an unseen crow cut through the fog-dampened silence of the frosty air.

He awoke, the rhythmic pounding of pain in his skull irritated by the noise. Instinctively, he reached his hand to his aching head, or at least he tried to. As he moved, he felt his entire body bound save for the gritty feeling of cold stone beneath him.

His eyes opened wide in fear, and the sight he found disoriented him further.

There was something over his right eye, green and blurry due to its unsettling closeness. A leaf was resting so close as to almost wholly cover his eye.

His left eye was uncovered; however, with his head fastened tightly in place, it was left to only glance around wide-eyed at the grey of a lifeless sky.

He felt icy waves of claustrophobic panic run through him.

He opened his mouth to scream in alarm. As his mouth opened, a vine around his face moved. A cascade of the dirt and debris it had rested in tumbled into his mouth. He choked and coughed on the unwanted intrusion as he fought with all his strength frantically against the vines that imprisoned him.

There was a sound of ripping plant fibre and rustling leaves as she strained for freedom. He felt sharp pains across his arm as if someone was pulling out his arm hair. He ignored the pain and tore his right arm free from the binding vines.

He reached frantically for his face and head, ripping at the vines. Each hurt as he pulled it free as if it had grown into his skin. He didn't care, though. All pain was secondary to the mad scramble for air.

With a final Rip, his head tore free of the vines. He turned it to the side and coughed out dirt-blackened spit and detritus. Finally, he was able to breathe and took in a shaky, ragged breath.

He lay there looking at the endless grey of the sky above, listening to the thudding of his chest and the wheezing of his breath.

Finally allowed the luxury of rational thought, his mind turned to the question of how he arrived in such a strange situation. How had he come to be here?

Before he could come up with even an inkling of explanation, another much more troubling problem dawned upon him.

He had no memory of who he was, not so much as the hint of a name or trivial memory remained in his mind. 'Remained' was the right word, he decided. He lacked all sense of who he was before this moment, but still, a feeling remained, a memory of a memory, a certain feeling that he had once had all those things.

He considered the problem. As he lay there, his breathing slowed to a more measured calm. He noticed his breath, a visible fog in the cold air.

It reminded him of how cold he felt. As much as he wanted answers, he knew he'd not find them lying bound in the cold.

He slowly pulled the vines from his body and realized that the pain he had felt from them had been from the plants growing into him. While it thankfully wasn't deep, numerous hair-like roots had pierced his skin and left tiny droplets of blood. His already mud-covered body lost the last hints of the pale skin beneath with the added blood.

How long had he lain here to have been buried like this under so much dirt and greenery? While memories were gone, understanding remained. How he had survived without dying from dehydration, starvation, or exposure was one more mystery that he placed on the ever-growing pile of questions that built in his mind.

As he removed the plants, he realized the next problem; he had no clothes. He stopped and sat up, still half bound in vines, and as he did, he saw messy black hair flop down from his head into the corners of his vision.

He looked around, searching for some clothes.

He was atop a weathered altar-like stone table. Around him were silent, still ruins covered in moss and the same ivy-like vines that had bound him. The ruins were almost complete in their return to entropy; barely two stones stood upon one another. If it wasn't for several ruined pillars lying jutting out of the ground at odd angles, he might not have even realized it was a ruined building.

He shivered slightly in the chill of the dead, still air.

He traced the patches of stone wall with his eyes and found the ruins circular with the altar at their centre. Several feet beyond them, a dense forest of gnarled trees began with an unnatural suddenness, as if even in its dilapidated state, the forest itself feared to tread upon the grounds of the ruin.

There wasn't so much as a holey sock, not even a scrap of cloth. He desperately needed to push back against the chill of the air.

It was uncomfortably cold now, but if night fell before he found clothes, he feared hypothermia and death would be the most likely outcome. That aside, his body was covered with a hundred tiny cuts from the grasping roots of the vines. The cuts, dirty as they were, held the risk of infection.

He removed the last of the vines and cautiously swung his slim legs over the side of the table; they dangled there helplessly, unable to reach the floor.

The ground was engulfed by a tangled sea of vines. He gazed down, apprehensive of what might be hidden beneath the carpet of green leaves. Hesitant, he moved, sliding off the altar onto the obscured ground below.

The vines gently pressed against his feet and lower legs, their leaves uncomfortably cold and wet from the morning dew.

He carefully took a step forward, then another. His confidence began to rise as his third step met with calamity.

His foot disappeared into the dense mess of vines and fell upon something cold, hard and slick. The object gave way underfoot with an audible snap. As his foot continued down, he felt the thing shatter with sharp shards starting to dig dangerously into his foot. Instinctively he pulled his foot back, saving it from being impaled, but fell heavily to the side with a thud.

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He lay there, mentally adjusting to the sudden fall. He glanced forwards. Inches from his face, hidden in a knot of vines, was a skull staring back with an unwavering intensity that only empty eyesockets can achieve.

"Aaaaagh!" he screamed, his voice youthful and high-pitched as he scrambled back on inverted all fours from his discovery. He sat there in shock, staring into the vacant eyes of the skull. After several long moments, he stood again, now more determined than ever to leave this ruin.

He began to walk towards the edge of the ruins, gently placing one foot after the other as he stepped forwards, wary of what horrors his toes might find lurking beneath the calm green leaves.

He stepped around the ruined outer wall. There, in front of him, was a several-foot gap of bare soil in front of him where nothing grew. Beyond that, a sudden wall of forest.

The forest had the densest canopies he'd ever seen. Even where no shrubbery grew, the forest quickly gave way to a twilight dark. He tried to look deeper but could see little other than the occasional movement of branches that shifted in a breeze he couldn't feel.

The dead ground between where the forest and the ruins stood felt wrong and unnerving. He squatted down and studied it closely. The bare soil was immaculate in its lifelessness. No insects walked across it. Not even the smallest of plants were visible along its rough surface. He couldn't see even a single leaf or branch fallen upon this ground from the surrounding forest.

He picked up a small pebble from the ruined walls and gently tossed it towards the strange strip of land. He watched it fly forward, but as it crossed the threshold into the no man's land, he instantly lost sight of it.

Uncertain of what to make of the results of his test, he picked up a larger stone, about half the size of his fist. He threw the stone in a lazy arc, following the path of its smaller predecessor. Once again, as it passed into the dead zone, it disappeared. A loud clacking broke the uneasy silence in the ruin this time. It sounded like stone hitting stone, reverberating from the ruins' opposite side.

He instinctively flinched at the sound before ducking low behind the wall, looking across the ruins to see if he could find its source. But nothing moved within the silent ruins.

He held tightly to the large stone in front of him, but after several seconds he forced his hands to relax. He glanced at a vine growing across the stone beside his hands thoughtfully for several moments before reaching out and gently tearing the vine free of the stone. He managed to get a long stretch. It was floppy but still rigid enough to hold it about two feet in front of him.

Slowly he raised the vine towards the dead zone. As the vine passed into the strange area, the tip disappeared instantly. He pulled it back carefully, and the parts that had disappeared returned. He carefully inspected the tip but found no damage or clues as to what had happened to it. Next, he stuck the vine forwards again, this time looking to where he heard the sound. He saw the vine's tip floating in the air in front of the dead zone on the far side of the ruins.

He sat down heavily on the nearest ruined stone, staring at the vine. He could feel inner turmoil grinding away deep within, a constant grating force, like a quern upon the grain of his mind. Despite this pressure, or perhaps because of the surreal weight of it, it all felt strangely distant, like he was seeing through the eyes of a stranger, an alien unreality too strange ever to be real. He stood up at last, however surreal this felt. He knew this was real and that he didn't have the time for such introspection now.

He forced his mind to focus on the problem at hand. If the dead zone around the ruins looped back on itself all the way around, then he was trapped. He remembered the skull he'd stumbled upon minutes ago, and his mouth tightened into a hard line.

He considered giving up, lying back on the stone table until cold or thirst took him from this hellish place. Despite that thought, he found himself slowly walking around the circumference of the ruin sweeping the impossible barrier with his vine in the hope of finding a hidden gap.

He found what he was looking for as he reached the halfway mark around the ruins. The vine rematerialized in front of him, and he noticed a narrow grassy path crossing the dead zone set on either side with small menhirs, about a foot and a half tall, stained an iron ore rust red. He swept the stick up in case the path had a low ceiling but found none. It seemed there was no barrier to leaving here.

He slowly stepped forwards, and as he did, the lighting instantly dimmed to the inky twilight of the forest. He looked around, trying to adjust his senses to the sudden change. The ruins were gone. He now stood in the forest, its weathered and twisted trees creating a high vaulted ceiling of wood and leaves that blocked out all but pinpricks of the sky that twinkled between the leaves like stars in the night.

The only sign of the place he woke from remaining was the two Menheirs, side by side like silent guardians of the ruins' secrets. He raised the vine once more between the stony guardians. As the vine passed between them, the ruin became visible to him again, but only through the narrow passage between the rusted Menhirs.

Cautiously he stepped through and was back in the much brighter dead air of the ruin. He stepped back again into the forest. He wasn't sure what help knowing he could return to the ruins gave him. Perhaps it would offer shelter from predators if there were any in these woods. He remembered the skull and was less sure of that idea.

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He slowly began wandering through the forest, careful not to lose his bearings. It felt colder here, with the lack of sunlight and a slight breeze that set leaves dancing with gentle gusts.

As he continued, he found himself weakening as the adrenaline of the situation began to wear off, and the cold truly set in. His teeth began to chatter as he trudged through the seemingly endless forest.

As he carried on, it got worse. His legs felt like they were wooden stumps. All he wanted to do was sit down and rest, but he feared that if he did, he might never get back up again.

With a gust of wind, he caught the smell of something familiar. He froze in place, sniffing the air for several nervous moments before he caught a hint of it again. It seemed almost too good to be true. It was faint but familiar, the smell of wood smoke. He began trying to follow the smell, although he stumbled several times as he did. After a while, he saw sunlight ahead and, beyond that, a wall of rough wooden logs.

He carried on forwards until he passed into the daylight, the sky was still dreary, but after the darkness of the forest, it now felt overpowering in its brightness. Ahead of him stood the rough wood wall. Its design was crude, but still, it was well over 20 ft and much too tall for him to climb. He could see faint whisps of smoke gently rising into the sky from behind it.

He followed the giant wall around, and after several minutes of walking, he saw its entrance. It was a large wooden gate in the same style as the wall, and in front of it stood a tall man. He was dressed in roughspun clothes dyed a mixture of dull greens and browns, with several patches of various coloured cloths used to repair it. The guard was leaning casually with one hand on a spear while using the pinky finger of his other hand to clean his ear.

He considered how to approach the guard. He knew nothing of these people or how they would react to a naked, bloody stranger strolling up to their gate. He felt so cold now, though. For all he knew, these were the only people in a thousand miles of here. If he did nothing, he would die. Knowing that it was all out of his control lessened the anxiety he felt as he walked slowly towards the guard.

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The guard froze in his earwax excavation attempts as he saw something approaching. At first, he thought it was a strange monster and began to level his spear towards it, but as it continued unflinchingly towards him at a slow, heavy-footed pace, he realized it was a boy no older than ten, covered in blood and dirt, staggering with exhaustion.

The guard yelled for help as he rushed forwards to help the child.

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