Lungs were burning. Every breath Eni took came with a whistling wheeze, but she didn't dare stop. Behind her, tearing through the heavy, humid air of the jungle, a roar erupted—a sound that made her very bones vibrate. The heavy beats of leathery wings shattered the tops of ancient trees, turning them into splinters.

  She burst through a wall of thorny brush and froze, nearly stumbling out into the open. Ahead, past the line of splintered trunks, a flash of crimson caught her eye—the scaled wing of a second dragon. Red. Massive.

  Four. What the hell were four of them doing here at once?!

  There was no time to think. The red dragon began to turn its massive head in her direction. Without hesitation, Eni lunged right and threw herself flat into the dark, stagnant water of a channel. The putrid stench of silt filled her nostrils, but she only buried herself deeper into the muck, using her limbs to push as far from the bank as she could. Through the thick water, she could see the blurred shadows of the great lizards circling above the forest. The silence beneath the surface was deceptive, but the dragons, not noticing any movement in the murky sludge, caught a powerful gust of wind and veered north.

  Eni didn't surface until she was a hundred meters away, near the bank of a tiny island that seemed like a safe patch of earth in the middle of this nightmare. She crawled onto the sand, shivering from the cold, and rolled onto her back, trying to force her heart to slow its frantic beat.

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  A sharp, dull flash in her forearm made her flinch. Eni shrieked and instinctively recoiled, sinking knee-deep back into the water. On the sand, its hairy legs braced, sat a blue spider the size of a human palm. Orange streaks on its bloated abdomen flickered like warning lights.

  She didn't wait for a second bite. Lunging back into the water, Eni swam away, feeling the world around her begin to slowly spin. A wave of nausea rose in her throat. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead, and her limbs grew heavy, as if filled with lead. Poison.

  With the last of her strength, she hauled herself onto solid ground further ahead. Eni fell prone, her fingers clawing into the dry soil. Her consciousness was on the verge of flickering out when a light flared before her eyes. It was unbearably bright, pure, blinding more fiercely than the midday sun.

  A green fairy. She was beautiful—delicate features, glowing wings, a grace impossible for this rotten world. But Eni didn't move. In this hell, beauty was just another way to lure a victim. She clenched her jaw, waiting for the blow, the pain, death.

  "Greetings..." The voice was tender, like the chiming of crystal bells.

  Eni struggled to turn her head toward the sound. Beside her, woven from the air itself, hovered a creature. A blue, semi-transparent ghost, devoid of gender or distinct form, yet radiating a strange, almost frightening friendliness. The creature tilted its head, genuinely glad to see her.

  A short distance away towered a tree—incredible, with silvery bark and leaves that seemed to whisper in an unknown tongue. Around its crown flew another ghost, just like the first. They were tied to this place.

  "This must be their home..." Eni rasped. Her voice was foreign, broken.

  She forced herself to her feet, ignoring the tremors in her knees and her arm, which had gone numb from the poison. Glancing one last time at the magnificent tree and its silent guardians, Eni forced herself to take the first step forward, into the unknown. She didn't know why she was still alive, and she felt no pain from the jagged wounds on her legs as she limped on, continuing her journey.