The consciousness returned to him like a lightning bolt - sudden, sharp, and disorienting. One moment there was nothing, the next he found himself standing among towering trees whose ancient branches wove together into a suffocating canopy overhead. The forest air hung thick with an unnatural greenish tinge, as if the very atmosphere had grown stagnant with age.
He stumbled forward, legs unsteady beneath him. Each patch of light filtering through the dense foliage drew him like a moth to flame, promising guidance, direction, escape. But each shaft of light led only to another, and another, until he realized he was moving deeper into the maze of gnarled trunks and twisted shadows.
That's when he heard them - voices carried on the wind, speaking in tongues he couldn't comprehend. The sounds were distinctly human, yet somehow wrong, as if the words had been bent and broken until they barely resembled language at all. Still, after hours of crushing solitude, even these unsettling sounds offered hope. He ran toward them, branches whipping at his face, roots threatening to trip him with every desperate step.
The clearing, when he finally reached it, struck him silent with horror. They looked human, at first glance, but their skin... their skin was their only clothing. Dozens of eyes turned to study him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. They simply watched, their faces masks of ancient knowledge, until finally returning to their ceremony as if he were nothing more than a leaf falling from a tree.
His parched throat forced him to break the silence. "Please," he croaked, "water... food..." They responded with synchronized movements, pointing toward a still black lake. One of them approached, offering fruits and meat. The meat bore spots of green-black mold, but his hunger overwhelmed his caution. Little did he know each bite was sealing his fate.
The drowsiness came slowly at first - a heaviness in his limbs, a fog in his mind. By the time he realized something was wrong, the world was already fading to black. His last conscious thought was a desperate wish that he'd never followed those voices.
He awoke to agony. They had bound him to a massive tree branch, his body suspended like a perverted sacrifice. Through blurring vision, he watched them work with methodical precision, carving holes into his lower abdomen. His screams echoed through the forest as they packed the wounds with a mixture of honey and herbs. The sweet scent drew insects almost immediately - flies, ants, beetles, all manner of crawling things drawn to the bloody feast.
The pain should have been enough to kill him, but death remained cruelly out of reach. He felt every moment as insects burrowed into his flesh, as small animals, drawn by the commotion, began to investigate his wounds. Squirrels, normally content with nuts and berries, developed a taste for something more substantial. He felt their tiny claws scraping against bone.
When the tribal people finally pulled him down, it wasn't mercy that motivated them. With practiced movements, they severed his hands and feet, letting his blood soak into the eager earth. They butchered him like livestock, cooking choice cuts over their fire. Their faces showed only joy as they feasted, celebrating that their own numbers remained intact.
His last moments were a symphony of agony as they crushed his skull, scooping out the delicacy within. As consciousness finally began to fade, he heard them begin a new chant, their voices rising in anticipation of the next arrival.
There was a guy in a forest, like all of a sudden he did find himself with no warning...