With his mental acuity returning and the pain subsiding after a brief rest, Theon's surroundings came into focus, revealing an alien landscape bathed in surreal hues. The air was rich with an exotic scent, neither unpleasant nor comforting, but undeniably foreign. The very ground beneath him seemed to resonate with a different energy, pulsating with a harmonious blend of familiar and otherworldly vibrations.
With a cautious rise, Theon brushed off the dust that clung to him, taking a moment to steady himself as the unfamiliar surroundings pressed in. His senses stayed razor-edged, his mind unnervingly still—no panic, no fear, not even the faintest tremor of doubt. Just cold, calculating clarity.
He glanced around, his eyes narrowing as he took in the landscape stretching before him. And what he saw could not have been more alien than the chaos of the city he had left behind.
A dense forest teemed with unfamiliar life, no towering skyscrapers or bustling streets, with thick air with an eerie serenity—stillness so profound it almost felt suffocating. No sound of traffic, no hum of distant conversations. Just an unsettling quiet.
Theon's mind raced, dissecting the facts with clinical precision. He focused, trying to piece together what exactly was going on. He hadn't felt any kind of impact before losing consciousness. It couldn't have been a normal form of travel—there had been no shift in the air, no feeling of distortion.
'Drugged?' But that was also unlikely. He was well-versed in the effects of such things, and there was no disorientation, no lingering fog of sedation. Even if it had been some kind of poison or sedative, he'd built an immunity to nearly all of them over the years.
Kidnapping made even less sense. If an enemy had breached his quarters, they wouldn't have bothered with stealth—just a blade across the throat. No, there had to be something else to be at play here.
Then, as his mind worked through the possibilities, a fragment of memory surfaced—idle chatter he had overheard just days ago, idle chatter that described a situation much too similar to his.
'Surely not…'
The words clung like cobwebs. He scoffed, yet—
'....but what if…?'
The words lingered in his mind, refusing to fade.….what if those ramblings weren't just nonsense? The parallels were too exact to ignore.
'What's the harm in trying it?'
…..
"Status." Theon whispered, his tone perfectly even.
…
Silence.
Nothing.
He tried again, more specific this time as he tried anything that could have a possibility of working. "Information. Status window. Shop. Avatar."
….
More silence.
'Worth a shot.' Theon shrugged as his mind continued to race through other possibilities.
Some time ago, Theon had briefly indulged in a novel at the recommendation of one of his juniors. Some fanciful tale about a man reborn in another world, circumstances and depictions which seemed to mirror his current situation, at least from what he could tell anyway. In the novel, the man had been given a 'system' interface to aid him with his new life.
But of course, it of course turned out to be nothing more than fiction—leaving Theon without any other reasoning to muster. He was alone, in an unknown place, for an unknown reason. That much was clear. There was no immediate danger, but the weight of the situation was not lost on him, and without a clear explanation in relation to really anything, he could only move forward.
He started taking stock of the supplies that had materialized with him, his shopping in the plastic bag, water, the food he had just bought, and what he always had on him, his two blades and two silenced pistols alongside his bulletproof vest and gloves.
A meager arsenal for his current circumstances.
His first instinct was to stay put, wait for someone to come find him. But that option quickly lost its appeal. If he, someone who was actually here, didn't understand how he'd ended up in this strange place, how were the people from Veritas supposed to track him down? And that was ignoring the fact that if someone was able to sneak into his room and leave him in this place, how was the rest of the Syndicate doing?
And that left his second option, to move.
He turned his gaze to the horizon, and in the distance, he faintly could see it—a silhouette of towering medieval walls, the sharp peaks of a distant castle piercing the sky. It was something—a possibility. Whoever lived there—if anyone lived there—might have answers. And if nothing else, it would be better to seek them out than to remain stranded in the middle of nowhere, unsure and vulnerable with limited resources.
The castle's presence only further confirmed what Theon already knew—this was not Spectra. The towering spires jutted against the horizon surrounded by vegetation foreign to his world. No such flora grew in Spectra's iron-hard soil, nor did castles remain unbidden from its war-scarred plains.
The landscape, though serene, harbored an unsettling quiet as if there was no life, broken only by the occasional rustle of leaves and foliage.
The forest held its breath. Theon moved like a shadow between the trees, each footfall deliberate, each breath controlled. His skin prickled with awareness - every rustling leaf, every frail twig he avoided, every deep root beneath his boots mapped instantly in his mind. The air itself felt watchful, thick with the weight of unseen eyes.
This went beyond vigilance. His senses, always preternaturally sharp, screamed a silent warning. He knew this feeling. The electric tension in his muscles. The way his pulse steadied even as danger loomed. Nature's most primal law: when the forest falls silent, something is hunting.
Theon's steps grew measured, his breath steady as his eyes flicked across the treeline, dissecting every shadow, every shift in the foliage.
Then, the darkness stirred. From the depths of the trees ahead, it emerged.
A figure shambled forward—a grotesque, misshapen thing. Its skin was a sickly pale red, leaking pus from open sores that seemed to pulse with every ragged breath it took. It moved slowly, aimlessly, its hollow eyes scanning the ground as if it were searching for something though its vacant gaze showed no sign of true awareness.
A zombie.