It's cold.
Her body feels heavy and her muscles are tense. She can't move. She can't feel her limbs or her face. Only her head pounding like she's concussed, and something else. It isn't her body, but something wet falling on her bare skin.
She maps the feeling as she slowly gains consciousness. It takes a long time for the pounding in her head to dull into an ache but once it does the fog in her mind disperses too. Suddenly, it's like she's waking from a nightmare.
It was so cold and dark, and her body was so heavy, she dreamed she was drowning. She gasps awake and heaves herself breathless. In-between pants, she starts looking around frantically.
Half of her vision is gone. Her right field of her vision is dark. What her left eye does see is blurry from her panic and tears. However, one thing is obvious: wherever she is, it is a winter night.
There is almost total darkness around her. Small flickering lights illuminate some of the area above her. Thanks to the bit of light she can see snow flurries falling around her and on her. The wetness, she realizes. Then, the picture of a winter night became familiar to her and she understood why she, naked in the snow, was so cold and that it was naturally dark.
She feels herself ease up, but doesn't relax. There is still the question of why she was naked in the middle of a winter night, somewhere she doesn't recognize, and how she got there.
It wasn't windy, but a chill sweep through the air, sending a shiver down her spine. She tries to wrap her arms around her waist and curl into herself, when she feels dread rise like bile in her throat.
Her slightly steadier breathing grew unstable. When she tries to cover herself she could only feel one arm and that arm touched nothing until she felt something skinny at her center. Skinner than a human waist possibly could be, and hard. As hard as bone.
She looks down and no—it wasn't as hard as bone, it was bone. Her hand with flesh and brown skin was touching her bloody spine. And her other arm, it is there, but it isn't an arm. It is a normal shoulder and upper arm, then half severed at the elbow. From the elbow down the bones are barely holding together on stredded ligaments and loose flesh.
That is to say, her arm is mangled. Worse then roadkill, even the bones were shattered to the point she can see the bone marrow inside. The worst part is that she can vividly imagine the putrid smell.
She turns away and gags. She thought she was going to puke. If she were normal she would have, but she didn't. Instead she continued to gag, dry-heave, cry, and shiver like a sick, fragile child.
She doesn't want to open her eyes again. A dream. This is a dream. She tells herself, trying to believe it. She doesn't. It sounds like a lie, but she tries to convince herself. When I wake up, everything would be as it were.
Yet, she struggles to remember anything from before she woke up.
Her best attempt to make herself fall asleep in hopes of waking up, actually waking up, is fruitless. After wasting an uncertain amount of time on that she reluctantly opens her eyes.
She refuses to look at herself or touch herself again. If she isn't dreaming, she is hallucinating.
She stands up and, once the relief of having two steady legs passes, she walks forward a little. The lights above her don't touch the ground but when she looked long enough she saw the outlines of hundreds of objects on the ground.
Somehow, she knows what she is seeing are headstones. Hundreds of headstones, each identical in appearance, except for what she assumes are various types of flowers at their bed. The little lights also makes her realize that one massive shadow was covering the graveyard.
Shakily, she looks up.
She doesn't get the full picture at first, with half her vision gone, but what she sees stuns her. Above her are dozens of branches and thousands of grey leaves belonging to an absolutely massive tree.
It's enormous branches cluster at least a hundred meters above, some cover the length of the graveyard as far as she can see, while some are as thick as ten men combined. The leaves are frozen in place, many of them are glowing.
She gapes as she follows the branches to the trunk. It's several meters in front of her. A straight ahead path. She hesitates but walks forward. The closer she gets the clearer her senses become.
She sees the trunk more finely, she feels the cold air on her flesh and bones like she's submerged in an ice bath, she starts hearing her footsteps—it sounds more like she's dragging her feet and there's a bad limp in her left leg, but she doesn't look—and she feels ravenous. So, so hungry, that she stops hesitating and unconsciously picks up her pace.
She can smell food at the tree's trunk and the scent of it turns off her brain. She has the single goal to eat.
Food, food, food-
The moment she's there she falls to her knees and begins clawing at the ground. She's digging with her hand and shoving her face into the dirt. The smell is close, just three feet deep.
It doesn't take long for her to get it into her mouth. Her vision rolls into the back of her head as she bites and tastes... Sweetness.
A sweet liquid pours into her mouth. It's sweeter than honey, as smooth as almond milk, and spreads warmth through her chest like alcohol. She sighs in ecstasy.
She drinks for a few minutes, then her eye rolls forward and she's thinking clearly again. She notices that her senses are heightened. Everything feels more real, including the throbbing flesh pressed against her lips.
She can smell that it is dead, it has been for.. 7 hours, 27 minutes and 31 seconds. Almost eight hours. She gasps and drops it. Her vision recognizes it immediately as a small, purse-sized dog.
I- I- She can't think. She's shaking again. She tears her eye away from it and up to the tree's trunk. Massive doesn't begin to describe neither it's width or height. It's the same grey as it's leaves. Between it and her is another, fresh headstone.
There is a paragraph worth of words, but she can't read them. The only things she can read are the biggest parts, the name and dates:
BELOVED, MISTER FLUFFY
BORN MONTH 4, DAY 18, CYCLE 1004
DIED MONTH 0, DAY 0, CYCLE 1008
-I feel nauseous. She thinks there couldn't be anything more nauseating then biting into the dead flesh of a creature, drinking it's blood, and enjoying it. This is a dream. A hallucinating. A nightmare-
There isn't any other way to explain it. Until she hears it.
She feels heat on her back and glances behind her. Far away she sees yellow rays peeking over some headstones. The sun is rising, the morning is coming, and with it, a voice rings out.
Welcome to [Outlive], Challengers!
You have a few minutes before Day 1 officially begins, so we'll make this quick.
If you are hearing this message then you are a volunteer participant, a Challenger, in a game of death and wishes!
There are hundreds of you Day 1, but by facing challenges unique to you and the obstacles natural to the environment chosen for you, many of you will fail and die!
The lucky last one standing gets the wish they entered the game with GRANTED!
The game only ends when there is one Challenger left, regardless of how long it takes. But you are here to entertain us, don't forget! We will make things difficult for everyone, or some, if we get bored.
Finally, if you haven't noticed, you are not Human. The only humans in [Outlive] are the native inhabitants. Some of you are Inhumans accepted by [Outlive] societies, others are Monsters hunted for sport!
Either way, you each are bestowed a System to help you play.
Now, my brave ones.... ARE YOU READY?