The first thing I noticed was the light.
Not the dim, ember glow of the forest or the mocking fireflies. This was different—a brilliant, molten shimmer that danced and refracted like sunlight on water, only it wasn't water.
I rubbed my eyes, the sleep still clinging to me like cobwebs, and sat up. My body screamed in protest, every muscle sore from the night before. I didn't even remember falling asleep, but somehow, I'd made it to dawn.
And there it was.
The lake of molten gold.
It didn't look real.
+
The surface rippled faintly, a molten mirror reflecting the jagged, ember-barked trees around it. The heat was suffocating, waves of it distorting the air and blurring the edges of everything nearby. I could feel it from where I stood, thirty feet away, pressing against my skin like a furnace door cracked open.
The System flickered into view, its jagged text cutting through the shimmering haze:
