Lin Feng had been running for over an hour. It was supposed to be a simple late-night jog—a habit he'd picked up recently to clear his head after long school days and endless thoughts about exams, family, and a certain girl who never seemed to notice him. The park was quiet, almost eerily so, wrapped in the blue shadows of nightfall.
Then the ground shook.
Just once—but deep, violent. Like something ancient had stirred beneath the Earth.
Before he could react, the ground beneath his feet gave way.
The last thing he saw was the sky shattering into pieces above him.
He woke up in complete darkness.
The air was cold and dry. The surface beneath him felt like smooth, polished stone—unfamiliar and hard. As he sat up, the silence around him felt wrong, as if the world itself had been paused.
Then, one by one, torches along the walls flared to life—blue flames dancing inside iron sconces. Their glow stretched across a long, endless corridor made of ancient stone. High vaulted ceilings. Walls etched with runes he didn't recognize. The architecture looked medieval, regal, and ominous all at once.
"A castle...?" he whispered.
No windows. No sounds. Just him. Alone.
He reached for his phone instinctively. No signal.
The clock read 21:15. He blinked. He was sure he had been running at 21:00...
He stood, checking his body—no injuries, just confusion. He tapped the screen again. Still 21:15.
Was time... stuck?
He turned, but there was only darkness behind him. The only path was forward.
With cautious steps, he began walking the corridor. His footsteps echoed unnaturally, as if the stone swallowed sound rather than reflecting it. The deeper he went, the more distorted his sense of direction became. No doors. No change. No end.
Time didn't move. His phone still read 21:15.
"This has to be a dream," he murmured.
His muscles ached. His breath grew heavier. Still, the corridor continued.
Finally—hours? minutes?—he reached a large chamber. It looked like an open courtyard, but the ceiling was still there, impossibly high and shrouded in shadow. At its center stood a tree, tall, rigid… almost perfectly square.
Lin Feng blinked hard.
"That can't be right," he muttered.
The trunk, the branches, even the leaves—they were all shaped in unnatural angles, too symmetrical, too perfect. It looked as if a thousand invisible hands had carved it deliberately.
He squinted again.
"Maybe it's just my brain. My dream. My subconscious shaping things."
A dream. It had to be. No other explanation made sense.
Relieved to stop moving, Lin Feng approached the tree and sat beneath it. His legs trembled. His mind reeled.
He pulled out his phone and opened a game—anything to ground himself in something normal.
"Play a game. Wake up. You always wake up."
Pixels danced on the screen while silence gnawed at his nerves. The room didn't change. The clock didn't tick. He wasn't waking up.
Eventually, frustration took over. He stood and began circling the perimeter of the chamber, searching—for a door, a sound, a clue... anything.
But nothing moved.
And the tree…
It watched.