Volume 4—Chapter 99: The Foggy Forest
It’s been days… or at least it feels like days. Honestly, I’m not even sure anymore. Actually, no, I’m certain I’ve been walking in circles. I swear I passed that tree just a minute ago. Same crooked trunk, same scratch shaped like a duck… yeah, that’s the one.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I mutter to myself.
The fog doesn’t help either. It’s so thick I can barely see my own feet. Every step feels like walking through wet cotton. Great atmosphere for a horror movie, terrible for my sanity.
I try my phone again, even though I already know it’s pointless. “No signal. Of course.” I lower it with a sigh. “I should’ve bought that satellite phone when I had the chance… Why did I not create a contingency plan for literally everything?! Batman has one for every situation!!”
I rake my hands through my hair.
Where did that girl even send me? If I had known it would end like this, I probably would’ve just stayed still and let her arrest me.
My stomach growls loudly, echoing in the fog like some kind of sad creature. Great. Even my own body is complaining now.
“I am starving right now,” I whisper to myself, as if saying it out loud might magically produce food.
I lean against a tree and immediately regret it because it feels like I’ve already leaned against this exact tree five times today. Or whatever counts as today in this looping forest nightmare.
“Is this even Earth?”
“Oh, it is on Earth, quite definitely.”
The voice brushes against my left ear, soft and close enough to raise every hair on my neck.
I spin toward it in alarm.
A woman stands there, silver-haired and impossibly calm, dressed in what looks like a witch’s outfit, long dark fabric layered with strange ornaments that sway slightly in the mist.
“A witch… in a forest like this?”
My body reacts before my mind catches up, and I slip into a fighting stance.
She lets out a light laugh that seems to ripple through the fog. “So quick to defend yourself. Tell me, do you think I am the sort of witch you hear about in stories like Hansel and Gretel?” Her eyes gleam with a mix of curiosity and amusement.
“Well, whatever. I am used to it.”
A soft green light gathers around her, rising like mist. In the next heartbeat, everything shifts. Colour drains from the world until only shades of grey remain, and the forest falls completely silent. Even the air feels frozen. A scene I know all too well.
“How could you stop time?”
She tilts her head, amused.
“Good question…”
Her hand snaps forward and grabs me by the collar.
“That should be my question. Someone else with the ability to manipulate time? Your reach is limited, but it is still fascinating.”
A gust of unease runs down my spine. How does she know I can also do that?
“You are probably wondering how I figured it out.”
She gives a slow smile.
“It is not mind-reading. It is simply the nature of my authority. Time itself answers to me. Forward, backwards, frozen, and even sideways. Anything that touches the flow of time falls under my awareness.”
Her eyes begin to glow, the same green that filled the air earlier, bright and almost painful to look at.
“I know what you intend to do, what you refuse to do, and what will happen even if you do nothing. I can even know what happens if you do what you refuse to do. A convenient perk whenever my eyes glow like this.”
She releases my collar, letting me regain my footing. Her eyes are still green, but not glowing like before.
“This world is remarkable. First, a man who bends the darkness, now someone who touches time. I am honestly shocked this place has not collapsed.”
“Collapsed?” I mutter without meaning to.
“Yes. By all logic, it should have. Yet it continues to stand. There is a great force holding it together, something powerful enough to keep everything from falling apart.”
I push myself off the ground and try to stand tall, intending to reclaim even a little authority. The attempt fails the moment I look up. She is taller than I expected, tall enough that my confidence evaporates on sight.
“I thought I was short, but it seems there is someone even shorter than me,” she says with a teasing lilt.
“Shut up.”
She leans closer, studying me with the same amused curiosity a cat has toward a bug.
“Are you sure you are not a dwarf?”
“I can still grow, you know.”
Her eyes flicker with green light for a brief moment, a silent pulse of power.
“You want to hear if you are growing in the future?” she asks, clearly enjoying this.
“Uh, no thanks.”
I would rather not know, so I can still hold on to hope.
“Well then, I have satisfied my curiosity. I have no further business with you. Goodbye,” the witch says, turning as if she is about to slip out of the scene entirely.
“Wait, wait, wait. Bring me out of this forest!”
She pauses, one brow lifting.
“Oh? You are lost? I assumed you lived here.” She glances around at the endless trees and thick mist, then looks back at me with a thoughtful tilt of her head.
“Really? Who on earth would live in this kind of forest?” I wave both arms at the endless fog and trees. “No sane person would choose this.”
“A dwarf might,” she says with a straight face that immediately makes my eye twitch.
“I am not a dwarf.”
She nods as if she understands something very profound, then adds, “A very defensive answer for someone who insists they are not a dwarf.”
“You have a knack to piss people off.”
Then the ground trembles beneath my feet.
“An earthquake?” I mutter.
The witch tilts her head slightly, eyes following something above the treeline. “Not quite. Something is coming this way, and very fast.”
“Something?” I look up with her, squinting through the fog. At first, I see nothing but grey sky, then a glint, then a shape. A burning streak cutting through the clouds.
“Is that a meteor?” My voice cracks in disbelief.
She studies it with the same calm one reserves for watching laundry dry. “Not quite, but it is falling straight toward us.”
“We are screw!!”
“No need to panic,” she says. “Just stay still. I already put up a barrier.”
The forest explodes with light and sound as the object slams into the ground. Dirt erupts like a geyser, a shockwave sweeps past us, and a thick blanket of dust swallows everything.
I cough, waving my hand in front of my face. “This is insane. This is absolutely insane.”
Amid the settling dust, a voice rises.
“Okay… this is new. Not what I planned…. but hey… adventure!”
My stomach drops. I know that voice.
The dust finally clears, revealing a girl standing in the crater, brushing dirt off her clothe like she just tripped on a curb. Miyazaki Aria.
What on earth is she doing here?
Beside me, the witch smiles like she has been expecting this. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Aria turns toward us, blinking a few times. Her eyes focus, and recognition flashes across her face.
“Caroline?”
“Oh… hey.” I raise a hand awkwardly, because what else do you even say at a time like this?
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