The sounds of armor clattering and the smashing of its footsteps were joined by sickening squelches of rotting corpses getting crushed beneath the force of the skeleton knight’s charge.

I kept running and dodging around, and it seemed that the scattered horde of shambling undead couldn’t gather quickly enough to obstruct me.

The wasteland before me stretched for quite a while longer, but after maybe a kilometer, there was a forest of dead, ghastly grey trees enveloped in such thick haze that I could barely discern the treeline in the distance.

My feet carried me forward, but soon enough, the knight reached me and swung its sword, cleaving a deep gash into my back and knocking me forward around twenty meters.

The injury healed fast enough for me to get up as soon as I was done tumbling, but slower than the healing had been before.

I was paranoid that the knight would throw its sword again, but I couldn’t afford to keep looking behind me. However, the noise of its thundering footsteps suddenly quieted, and I reflexively turned around, only to see it gradually slow down and, eventually, stop altogether. I stared apprehensively, worried that it was about to pull another trick.

Sweat and blood poured down my naked body as I locked eyes with my foe, the mountain the cave bore into looming behind it, revealing a sheer, barren cliff so tall that it disappeared into the thick mist above. The numerous zombies stared at me as well, but none of them walked past a certain point, almost as if an invisible barrier was keeping them locked in.

I gulped.

The creature lowered its sword, turned around, and walked away. Some of the undead kept staring at me, but most of them lost interest and returned to their idle wandering, ignoring my existence.

I was left breathing heavily and looking around.

To my left and right, there was nothing but a vast stretch of pale, gray soil as far as I could see. In front of me was a massive crowd of undead monsters with a giant mountain behind them. And behind me was a thick, misty forest of incredibly tall trees.

I had few choices of where to go, and the mountain and the forest were both disqualified. I decided to take my chances with the barren wasteland.

Without any hesitation, I turned to my right…

And started running.

***

After moving for quite a while, I concluded a few things. First, I was pretty sure that I didn’t need water. I hadn’t felt a single shred of thirst the entire time, despite sweating out quite a bit of liquid. Second, I had seemingly endless stamina. I didn't tire at all as long as I maintained a brisk running speed.

And third: the wasteland surrounding the mountain, as well as the mountain itself, were both really, really large. But they weren’t surrounded by forest on all sides.

Eventually, I spotted a river flowing down from the mountain into a tree-less valley, so I followed it. A few times, I spotted creatures moving in the shadowy mist, just a bit outside the range I could see clearly. None of them approached me. I was tense the entire time, but I didn’t feel particularly scared.

The sky eventually grew darker, and it seemed that nighttime had arrived. I could see perfectly fine, so I felt no need to stop, instead opting to continue running. The night eventually turned to day, and as I kept moving, I started spotting a few patches of sickly grass here and there.

Eventually, these patches grew thicker, and the mist above me thinned slightly, revealing a faint outline of the sun.

Then, far more abruptly than I expected, the mist around me disappeared, revealing a green forest. Granted, the trees looked profoundly ill, and most of the growth was thin, but…

The sun shone brightly. I turned around, spotting what seemed to be a sheer wall of ghastly fog stretching far into the sky.

I wanted to keep running, but… I suddenly found myself overwhelmed by emotion. I collapsed onto my knees and wept.

“I… I… I’m not in hell…” I eked out. “I’m actually alive,” I cried out as I clenched my chest, feeling a profound pain in my heart.

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The solace of realizing that I wasn’t just a soul banished to eternal torment washed over me like a cold shower over sunburnt skin.

But… if I wasn’t in hell, if I wasn’t dead… where was I? What was I? What the hell were those monsters? Who were the people I saw at the beginning? What did they do to me? What happened to that evil, disgusting thing that invaded my body? What was that strange voice in my head telling me about some sort of symbiote and race? Why did the cave collapse on me? What were those red doors? What the hell was—

I took a deep breath. Pondering these questions for too long would drive me insane. For the time being, I had no answer to any of them. Rather—

Looking down, I observed my legs. With a fearful reluctance, I slowly got up. I lifted my arms and observed my hands. They could move. I could move. I was no longer paralyzed. That guided me to the biggest question of them all… but it was also one the answer to which I feared the most—how did I get here?

The thought that I had died and appeared in this place, wherever it might be, was a tempting one, but I had no idea whether that was actually the case. It was just as likely that I had simply blinked out of existence, vanishing from the bed I had been shackled to for so long.

What would my family think if they suddenly found my body missing? Would they presume that some sort of sick bastard kidnapped me? No… honestly, the most likely outcome was that they would presume that my brother-in-law had killed me and hid the body.

That man had hated me with a burning passion. I had been stuck with my sister since nobody else could take care of me, and my family couldn’t afford to pay to keep me in a hospital. Many times, he had come to my room to bicker at me, urging me to die already and let my—his—family continue living in peace.

The mere possibility that my disappearance had worsened their lives even more than my life already had made my heart ache. Tears flowed down my eyes, and I could do nothing to stop them. I cried for what felt like hours, watching the sun move across the sky and observing the nature around me.

There were no animals here, and the vegetation looked sickly, with rotting leaves and discolored tree trunks. The trees were also few and far between, none of them taller than ten meters. I got up and started walking, feeling unrushed as I maneuvered through the sparse growth.

The condition of the forest improved quite rapidly, with even just a bit of distance from the ghastly mist seemingly making a huge impact on the plantlife’s health. It was still quite unhealthy, relatively speaking, and the forest didn’t grow any thicker, but… I could hear rustling in the canopies above, spotting tiny animals, none of which looked anything like any creature I had ever seen in my life.

I saw these squirrel-slash-cat things with loopy ears, strange birds, rabbits with spiky fur, swarms of minuscule frogs, and butterflies that appeared to have three sets of wings.

Although I felt a pang of guilt flash through my heart at the thought… I couldn’t deny that I felt thrilled. I didn’t know what had happened to my family, but frankly, I didn’t care much, either. I knew that I should, but I couldn’t.

I had lost all hope of restarting my life a long time ago. Frankly, I hadn’t been particularly religious, either, so not even that had been able to console me.

But now? I found myself in what appeared to be, dare I say, a world of magic. It was an alien, foreign realm, and my bodily capabilities were far beyond anything a human should be capable of.

I felt excited. I felt… fucking awesome! I had escaped a goddamn horde of zombies and outplayed a giant skeleton knight!

My mind flashed to those strange, monotone words that had echoed in my mind. And what the hell was that? It had spoken of symbiotes, evolutions, and races. Unfortunately, I didn’t really remember what that voice had told me, having been preoccupied with… the chaos of what I had been living through, but I wanted to know more about it.

So… I tried talking to it. “Hello?” I called out. “Strange voice? Uh… The thing that spoke about evolutions and symbiotes? Uhm… Are you there?”

No answer.

“Huh…” What if…? I hesitated at the thought, but… What if that had been some sort of… god? Or perhaps some other form of heavenly being that tried telling me something about my situation? Or worse—a demon.

Thinking back on it, I pretty clearly remember hearing the voice utter the word “archdemon,” although I couldn’t recall the context for the life of me.

“Nah… no way,” I muttered. “It sounded more like a robot than anything.”

Maybe that part specifically had been a genuine hallucination. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that some parts of that fever dream hadn’t actually happened.

I continued my walk through the forest, hoping to find a—

Suddenly, the sky above me cracked apart like glass that had been struck by a hammer, and a heavenly light enveloped me. I flailed my arms wildly as the ray lifted me into the air, raising me into the rift in the sky, where my vision turned pure white.

I blinked away the blindness as I abruptly found myself standing on a floating platform of white marble, with smooth, beige clouds floating through the white void around me. Golden-winged individuals with white masks surrounded me on all sides, with a regal man with shifting rainbow eyes and wide, ethereal wings of pure, unblemished white sprawled out behind him and majestic pearly hair and beard staring at me with pure vitriol.

He opened his mouth and spoke with a thundering voice. “I know not why you dare leave the domain of your masters, foul being, but be it hubris—or ignorance—you shall meet your end here.”

The figures surrounding me raised their arms as an overwhelming surge of power manifested above me, creating a massive, white pendulum.

The regal man spread his arms and shouted at the top of his lungs, “This world has suffered enough! Today, you shall face your judgment!”