Tend The Light

Do not take for granted daybreak's warmth

For when the night comes, we must tend even to the light

The Entity's Realm was not an easy place to get used to.

You had been there for a couple months, scrambling to escape the trials you were forced to endure with your many fellow survivors, failing far more often than not. But you were surprised by your own resilience, quickly discovering your strengths and weaknesses and doing your best to help those around you.

Even so, to make it in this world was exhausting, the trials almost near-constant. You felt like you barely had time to breathe before you were being sent to the next one, having to brace yourself for yet another fight for survival.

Today, however, you were given the precious gift of rest, and you were desperate to make the most of it.

You started off by lounging around in the office building you and the other survivors made a home out of. It was amongst a cluster of city structures sharing a street, a seemingly endless fog surrounding the area, keeping you from wherever the killers might be stalking.

You were thankful for the separation outside of trials, but it did little to truly alleviate the horror of this new reality. Facing the deaths of your teammates and yourself everyday was a hell you couldn't have come up with even in your worst nightmares.

You wanted to sleep, but you only felt tense. Getting up, you decided to find something to occupy yourself with while you waited for the next trial to pull you in.

You chatted for a bit with some of the other survivors, though they were eventually called on by the Entity, leaving you alone for a short time with nothing but your thoughts to keep you company. And dark thoughts they were, mostly a looping montage playing in your head of every death you had suffered in this place that just got longer and longer with each new one to occur.

Now that was something you didn't want to dwell on.

You decided it would be a good time to explore the area. You idly wished you could run off and find a way out of this place, but there wasn't much use in fleeing. No matter how far you wandered, the Entity would always have you in its clutches.

You moseyed about for a while, first in the building you resided in and then in the surrounding ones. Every structure in the area was a corporate facility and they all seemed to look exactly the same, boring you quickly.

However, you reached the very top floor of the building across the street and realized there was a stairwell up to the roof; something the others didn't possess.

Mildly enthralled by the revelation, you found yourself under a dark sky, night quickly falling overhead. You took a step toward the half wall that separated you from the sheer drop to the ground below but were startled when you realized someone else was already there.

Alan Wake, you recalled, thinking back to the brief introduction he gave you upon your arrival.

He seemed like a very kind man from what you could tell, but quite distant. Beyond helping in trials, he didn't interact much with anyone except Saga and Rose, who had apparently joined him from their shared world.

He braced his elbows against the top of the wall, looking over his shoulder at you as you stood there awkwardly.

"Sorry, I didn't expect anyone would be up here. Hope I'm not disturbing you," you told him.

"Not at all. I don't own the place, you can stay here if you like." He offered you a small quirk of his lips before turning his gaze back out over the horizon. His tall, lean form was stiff and his expression contemplative.