A crunch echoes nearby, and my blade arcs through the air like steel lightning. Just before it bites into the flesh of whatever was stupid enough to come up behind me, I divert the slash and let my sword taste dirt.

I come face to face with a beautiful woman wearing tight red robes that accentuate her curves. Her long, brunette hair is tied in a smart braid that hangs down her back. Her eyes are wide, and her lips tremble with terror.

I don’t even entertain the thought she’s afraid of me.

She falls to her knees. “P-please… Oh god… this is so much worse than I thought it’d be… please stay with me…”

She could be faking. I wouldn’t normally trust a lone stranger on the inside, but honestly… seeing her is a welcome change of pace. I’ve been on edge since I arrived. “Yeah… You can stick with me. Just stay where I can see you.”

“O-okay. I can do that. Thank you.” She nods and climbs to her feet.

It’s rude, but I don’t offer a hand. Mostly because getting stabbed is unpleasant.

The woman pointedly moves to my side, though I note she remains out of reach of my sword. I guess her survival instinct hasn’t completely fled in the face of… whatever the hell this place is supposed to be.

A violent red sky glares down at a wicked forest of jagged pine. The red expanse is devoid of features, save for a singular body; an ominous orb of bleached white, a mockery of Earth’s own moon above our heads. Something writhes just beneath the surface. In my brief time here, I’ve found staring at the moon makes me—pluck out my eyes and bite down and taste them and feel the juice dribble down my chin —think things I don’t want to think.

My new, temporary companion speaks, and unlike being stabbed, her voice is pleasant. “I’ve heard about places like this, but—”

Her mouth snaps shut as wind howls through the trees, a ghastly wailing that holds ice to my spine and makes my hairs stand on end.

“Where’s your team?” I ask, startling her so badly she jumps a foot off the ground.

“W-what? Oh… I don’t know… we got separated. I… I hope they’re alright.”

An optimist, then.

“You?” she asks.

“Don’t have one,” I say, shrugging.

The girl’s face falls. “Did… something happen to them?”

I shake my head. “Nah. Just don’t have one.”

“O-oh…”

She gives me an odd look, but it’s about what I’ve come to expect from sharing my inclination to travel alone. Such a thing is what some might refer to as a Very Bad Idea. I can see the wheel of judgment spinning in her eyes from here, and any second it’ll land on ‘idiot’ or ‘suicidal’. Neither is completely accurate, but I can't say they're entirely wrong, either.

I’m most certainly an idiot - there’s no getting around that one. Only an idiot Climbs alone. As for suicidal, well, it’s not how I’d describe myself… but it’s hard to deny I must have some kind of death wish to keep putting myself in these situations. I shrug, and we continue on, making our way through brush alight with an eerie red glow. It reminds me of the red room my father used to rape and slice and rape and cut and rape and butcher—

I tear my eyes from the moon. I don’t even remember looking.

I stand in a clearing in the woods, and my new, temporary companion is standing nearby, conversing with a tall thing that has too many limbs. Its face is blank; the same bleached white as the fake moon in the sky.

“Wren!” she says, waving me over. “Come meet my teammate! I think you guys are going to get along great.”

I don’t move. There are many things wrong here, but I choose to focus on the most obvious.

I didn’t tell this girl my name.

The thing she is speaking with is not her teammate.

Something writhes just beneath the surface.

I try to keep my voice neutral as I speak. “I know you don’t have a lot of reason to trust me, considering we just met, and hell… I don’t even know your name—”

“Of course you do, silly. It’s Ella.”

I swallow. “…Yeah. Could you come over here for a minute, Ella?”

The thing doesn’t move, but somehow I know it’s looking at me.

Ella frowns. “What? Why? I’m comfortable here.”

I give a strained smile. “I just want to show you something. I think you’ll really like it.”

Ella tilts her head toward the thing, as if listening to it speak.

“Jared says you’re lying to me. He says you’re not like me at all. He says you’re strong.”

“Ella… please. You know something’s off about this — about Jared. It’s wrong. You know it is. Come over here.”

Ella’s gaze flickers between me and the thing, and her eyes narrow… Just when I think she’s going to give up, light seems to return to her gaze. She takes a tentative step back, and then another, and then she’s bounding across the clearing toward me, face twisted in terror.

A siren blares across the treetops, so loud I feel it in my bones. The red light illuminating the clearing begins to flash, blinking rapidly between total darkness and bloody crimson. More things emerge from the forest, gangling horrors that writhe and undulate in rhythm with the moon.

Ella drops to her knees and screams, barely discernible over the noise.

Just as I begin to charge toward her, the siren stops.

Ella climbs to her feet. She doesn’t scream, and her voice is calm. “Wren…”

From one red flash to the next, the thing that isn’t Jared shambles to Ella’s side. It extends a limb, and she grabs onto it, never breaking eye contact with me. She gives me a beautiful smile.

“You can’t save them.”

The thing holding her hand turns and begins leading her into the woods. They’re almost immediately eclipsed from view by the encroaching horde of monstrosities.

“Ella!” I shout, knowing in my heart it’s too late. My new, temporary companion is gone.

Anger breaks through the foggy haze covering my mind. “Goddamnit.” I let loose a roar as I charge into the oncoming wave. My blade flicks out and severs a long, dangling limb as it claws for my face, and then another, and another, and finally my steel parts the flesh of the thing’s neck and sends its head rolling.

Before it even hits the ground I’m on the next, slashing and slicing through a barrier of limbs. I split the second thing clean in half, noticing the ease with which my sword cuts through them, as well as the viscous black blood coating its length and pooling on the forest floor. The things aren’t strong, nor quick, and remain eerily silent as I slaughter them. The siren, too, stays dormant while I work, the only sound in the clearing the noises of my feet shifting on the forest floor, my heavy breathing, and the ringing of steel as it rends monsters into fleshy pieces.

None of this makes any sense to me, but I know from experience staring too deeply into the abyss of the Tower only leads to more questions. I wish I knew what could spawn a twisted place like this, but all thoughts of that are dashed from my mind as more horrors spill from the surrounding woods, and I’m forced to up the pace of my frenzied dance.

Slice the limbs, sever the head. Slice the limbs, sever the head.

The process repeats again and again, and I feel the haze attempt to take root in my mind once more, whispering of the bliss that awaits if only I would give in.

But the rage swirling in my chest keeps me sane.

I roar and cut through another foe as two more rise to take its place, the horde of nightmarish things growing ever larger. They’re weak, yes… but at this rate I’ll be overwhelmed. The blank surface of a thing’s face catches my eye as it fall to the ground. The longer I look, the more insistent the haze in my mind becomes. Dark thoughts fight for space in my head, but in my current state I’m just barely able to separate them from my own.

The presence wriggles in my skull, demanding I give in. In response, I up my pace even further, diving into the oncoming horde as I whip my sword out and cut through several at once, then pivot in place, dashing through the opening I made to decapitate a few unsuspecting things behind it.

A head rolls between my feet, forcing me to take an awkward step to avoid it and causing me to lose my footing and slide to the ground. Though missing its body, the blank face continues to writhe, pointed upward as if to venerate the sky. My eyes widen, and flick to the vast red expanse. The moon hangs just overhead, so close I can almost touch it.

There!

The worm in my brain wriggles with newfound fervor, sending pain lancing through my skull. I shrug it off and contemptuously slash away another thing with my sword while my other hand crackles with a wild energy.

The siren begins to sound again, so loud I worry it might burst my eardrums. Something massive rises above the jagged treetops, a last-ditch effort by the master of this domain to prevent its demise.

I pour every last drop of mana into a spell, going far beyond what I know to be the limit of what I can control. The horrors closest me are flash-fried by the electricity arcing from my body, the crackling power demanding release as it sends jolt after jolt up my arm. If not for my Resistance, I’d surely be dead already.

There’s no time and no room in my mind to consider what’ll happen if this doesn’t work, so with my hand pointed toward the white orb overhead, I let go. Lightning flashes across the sky, striking the fake moon a fraction of a second later, followed by a deafening boom of thunder that momentarily drowns out all other sound.

In the silence aterward, the only thing I hear is the pounding of my own heart against my ribcage.

And then the siren shrieks.

A titanic footstep rumbles through the forest, signaling the massive thing’s approach and confirming my fears.

I rocket away from the giant, whirling my way through the horde and hoping against hope I can recharge enough mana to fire another shot.

The shrill siren scream pierces my brain, the agonized wailing of a creature close to death. Something crashes into the earth, sending me tumbling as a shockwave ripples through the ground. The shambling horrors fall to their knees one by one and stare listlessly at the sky.

I follow their gazes upward.

Overhead, the moon shatters. Pieces break off and rain down on the surface, impacting the ground with tremendous force. I watch in awe as the giant thing vanishes, crushed under a chunk of rock the size of a house. The rest of the horrors go still as they mourn their broken god, either dying with it or unwilling to live without it.

An ethereal blue doorway appears in front of me, offering to take me away from this nightmare. I want to ignore it—Ella could still be alive—but bits of shattered moon continue to rain down around me, and I know it’s only a matter of time until one lands on my head.

I grit my teeth and step through the door, but not before catching one last glimpse of the moon. I swear I see something moving inside, but it’s quickly hidden from view by the debris plummeting right for me.

Then I’m through, leaving the red world and my once-temporary companion behind.