Brilliant rays of sunshine pierced the forest.
Beams of light patterned the ground.
Asher lounged on top of a grassy dirt hill, breathing in the intoxicating aroma.
"Get up."
Sophie growled at him, peering at his punchable expression from above.
"You go on ahead, missy. This is the cleanest air I've smelled in my life." Asher stretched his arms, letting the foliage tickle his forearms.
He let out a heaving sigh, without a care in the world.
Sophie paused for a second. True, the air quality really was something else. The smell of rain on dirt and leaves and stone.
Then, she snapped. She could sense the latent danger of this place that the boy in front of her couldn't care less about.
"Bastard, this is a WAW's mindspace! Don't you have any concern what Little Red's mind will do to him..."
She blinked, regaining her calm as she glanced around herself. "Where is Little Red?"
Asher sighed, finally propping himself up with his hands.
"Hell if I know. But you're right, 'I' might be in danger. And since this space isn't a true dream, him dying here will prove troublesome... So that's settled!"
The boy clapped his hands, flipping to his feet. Sophie's expression darkened with disgust.
He grinned as he tilted his head toward Sophie.
"Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the System and what it's doing to me."
Sophie blinked.
"Then-"
"I despise it."
A smirk that didn't reach his eyes. Sophie shuddered.
Asher's eyes were blackened with malice and contempt. The System, after all, had betrayed its initial promises to him, of a chance to start anew.
The stark contrast between the familiar face and the hideous soul beneath it filled Sophie with unease.
"But!" The chilling atmosphere disappeared with a bark of laughter, "That System did a great job fusing with him. It even made it so if the kiddo's soul dies for real-"
He made a slicing movement at his own neck, with his thumb acting as the blade.
"That means I can't even take over permanently. How terrible, right?" He elbowed her side twice, the faux grin remaining on his face.
Sophie calmed herself with a few deep breaths. When she looked up again, her eyes were guarded and cautious.
"Well, I despise you too," Sophie spat out with some venom in her voice. The lingering soul remnant in front of her caused her partner so much unnecessary suffering.
Asher swiped the air nonchalantly, chuckling beneath his breath.
Sophie's levelheadedness returned as she took a deep breath. "However, you also do not wish to die. Thus, you will definitely come to Asher's aid if his soul may be in jeopardy. Now could be one such case."
Asher nodded with brisk confirmation, his smile thinning. It happened once before, with the three gods of the Black Forest.
In Little Red's mission, Asher's future self twisted apart the birdcage, setting the boy free and saving his soul.
"How about a truce for now? I do not know if dying in the Room allows for revival. Especially with the way Little Red has molded the Room to fit her past."
Asher smiled with a veil of cordiality. He hated these types of people, the ones that hemmed for 'truce' with desperate mental leaps.
But.
"Sure thing, girlie." He plucked off a pliable branch from the treeline before walking deeper into the forest.
Without looking, the boy slashed the tip against a nearby tree, fashioning a razor-sharp edge. A makeshift spear.
"Do you have any skills that Asher obtained?" Sophie asked as she trailed behind him.
He shot a glance behind his shoulder, his eyes still raven black.
"I won't need them, anyway."
He spun the tree branch in his palm.
As if to say, 'this is all I need'.
...
Nearly a kilometer away, the Wolf plodded to Asher's side. The ground rumbled as it lowered its body to the soil.
Asher tensed his muscles, yet the Wolf did not budge from its position.
"Watch." Its voice commanded him.
They observed the girl in front of them play with an empty patch of grass. The Wolf sought to explain.
"In her vision, she perceives a harmless puppy. Little Red hides in her shadow, yet she cannot reveal herself for now."
The girl's shadow writhed at the Wolf's words, pulsing with deep crimson conscience.
Asher made a strange noise from the back of his throat. What exactly was the relationship between the girl, the shadow, and the Wolf?
His thoughts were interrupted before he could express them.
"And now, it begins." The Wolf leered.
The girl froze as she heard a voice in her mind that Asher couldn't.
"...Doggy?? You can speak?" She crouched, listening to something that Asher could not.
Little Red Riding Hood began to converse with the patch of grass, almost exactly how Asher remembered in Mei's rendition of the story. She pointed further down the road, giggling something about her grandmother.
Then she began to pick some flowers beside her, under the nonexistent dog's watchful gaze.
Asher turned to the Wolf, his confusion finally boiling over.
"Hey, why does it seem like you know what is going to happen?"
The Wolf scoffed.
"You have the voice in your head, right? Tell it to answer your question."
Even now, the Wolf knew about it?
However, the System predicted the Wolf's suggestion, responding with its signature phrase.
[Authority Insufficient.]
Asher flinched as the Wolf's claw hooked onto the seal on his neck, dragging him forward.
"Enough questions. Follow the plot."
The girl had resumed her path to her grandmother's cabin. Her muddled eyes forced her forward, discolored by brackish crimson.
Asher looked beside him, but the Wolf had disappeared. Only an indent in the grass was left.
Catching up with the girl, Asher discovered the extent of the seal's effect on his body. He stumbled forward drunkenly, flinching each time his foot planted into the soil.
He tried to make some small talk through his gritted teeth, yet the girl did not respond. She was following the plot.
To distract himself from the pain, Asher's mind began to whir with thoughts and theories. The Wolf's words, including the mention of the word 'plot' insinuated a thought that Asher could not fathom.
The girl's shadow squirmed.
Was he hallucinating, or did he feel a sense of familiarity with the shadow?
"Little Red, is that you?" He whispered.
The girl's shadow glowed a bit brighter.
Asher was forced to continue amidst his pain and confusion. His knees shook as he clawed forward, despite the seal constricting his neck.
[You have pushed past pain above your tolerance limit. +5 Temperance.]
Asher felt his mind lighten.
Suddenly, the pain didn't feel so bad. Especially under the incentive of more stats.
'If my Temperance increases like this...'
Asher glanced back at the girl. As her muddled eyes stared past him, he grinned. Maybe he could take advantage of this situation.
And maybe, if he was fast enough, he could reach the cabin and scout the area ahead of time.
"Little Red, I'm going ahead!"
The girl's shadow twitched faintly in response.
Asher braced himself, beginning his sprint down the dirt road.
...
[You have pushed past pain above your tolerance limit. +2 Temperance.]
By the time Asher saw the cabin through the trees, he had raised his Temperance by a total of 20. His increased pain tolerance allowed him to pump his fist into the air without showing a single sign of pain on his face.
"Alright!" As he shouted, he could feel a sharp sting in his lungs. Asher grinned; only a dozen minutes ago that pain would have caused convulsions throughout his body.
[The increased Temperance is not the sole reason for the decrease in pain.]
"Hm? What do you mean?"
[Over time, the seal around your neck has been weakening. Look.]
The System gave Asher a third perspective view of himself. The outside edges of the seal had begun to fracture.
Asher grinned. So this place really was the [Nostalgic Room], twisted into a different appearance by Little Red's mind.
"That means Sophie is in here somewhere, too." Asher glanced around him. Expectedly, he couldn't sense anyone around him.
[That means your future self is here as well.]
Asher's expression darkened. Right.
But he quickly shook off the ominous feeling. The log cabin stood in front of him now, where, in the original story, Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother would be swallowed whole.
Asher had an ugly premonition that the grandmother wouldn't be merely 'swallowed whole' in this story.
He tested the wooden door.
It was unlocked.
...
The Wolf used its claws to scratch the wooden floorboards. It etched out abstract scars on the floor, imprinting into them the copious amounts blood that seeped from the dripping bedsheets.
A warm corpse laid on the bed beside it. The corpse of Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother.
Its arm was torn off, inside the Wolf's maw.
The Wolf crunched down on the limb between its jaws, bored.
Suddenly, its ears perked up.
It shifted its eyes left and right, a hint of confusion entering its expression.
It sensed two more presences than it expected.
The boy it had met earlier was pushing through the front door, but who were the two people approaching the bedroom window?
Muffled voices came from the thin window.
"So this is it, missy?" A boy's voice.
"It should be. Do you sense anything inside?" A girl's voice.
"Hm? You don't?" The boy sounded familiar.
The Wolf tensed, rising to its feet.
Footsteps echoed near the front entrance as Asher made his way toward the bedroom. At the same time, the bedroom window was smashed open by the two unknown presences.
The Wolf rushed forward, its claws slicing at the face that peeked through the broken window-
"Stay, mutt." A terrifying malice stopped the Wolf in its tracks. It whimpered as a deep, instinctual fear seized its body. A fear only felt by prey.
The boy vaulted through the window as the Wolf squirmed away a step. The boy's eyes were cold and merciless, ones that have seen millions of deaths.
With a start, the Wolf noticed that the boy's face was identical to the kid it met a couple minutes ago.
However, this one didn't have an orange seal on his neck.
The boy in front of him was a devil in human skin.
"What a specimen!" The boy whistled with admiration, and the girl leapt in as well after a moment's pause.
For the first time in its life, the Wolf was baffled. It stared at the pair in front of it, cautious and wary.
The Impurity analyzed the corpse under his foot. He had landed squarely on Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother.
Blood soaked into his shoes, in tense silence.
At that moment, Asher walked through the bedroom doorway.
...
Asher froze as his eyes gathered everything in his sight. The broken corpse. His future self. Sophie. The Wolf-!
"W-Wha...?"
He stuttered, his joints locking himself in place.
Opposite of him, 'Asher' broke into a wide, splitting grin.
Anticipation manifested in the air, like a gleaming knife.
Without warning, the tree branch in the boy's hand flicked backwards, piercing through Sophie's ribcage and out her back.
Before she could react, a sickly sweet taste already bubbled past her throat. Dribbling past her lips.
Her eyes trembled.
Stunned silence filled the room, broken by maniacal laughter.
"The puppets are set!"
The Impurity's aura burst forth, and the room was blanketed with pure malice.
The Wolf whimpered.
It didn't sign up for this.