Arcane Journey

1.The Burning Stake

Thick smoke billowed, and every breath felt like a broken bellows, coarse and harsh, scorching the throat and lungs. Bronte Mcbride's consciousness quickly became muddled.

"No, I can't fall asleep. I'll die if I do."

"Stay awake, I must stay awake!"

...

The endless crimson suddenly dimmed, and the deepest, darkest black emerged. Bronte Mcbride struggled like a drowning man, desperately trying to grab hold of anything that might help him escape this state of helpless drifting and free himself from the indescribable darkness.

Suddenly, a bright red light appeared in front of him, like the rising sun at dawn.

Under its glow, Bronte Mcbride felt a bit of strength return to him. He then desperately moved toward the red light.

As Bronte Mcbride stepped into the light, it grew brighter and brighter, turning from crimson to pure white, shattering the darkness into pieces that instantly vanished.

"Ah!" Bronte Mcbride suddenly sat up, gasping for breath. He had dreamed of a terrifying fire, and even before the flames reached him, he was suffocating from the smoke, helplessly waiting for the fire to spread, just like in previous bouts of sleep paralysis. He was aware that he was dreaming, but he couldn't muster the strength to break free.

The vividness of this dream left Bronte Mcbride deeply shaken. Not feeling the presence of actual fire, he sat dazed for a long while, struggling to regain his composure.

As his rapidly beating heart slowly calmed, Bronte Mcbride's mind focused, and he remembered that he had been working on his thesis in the all-night reading room of the university library. He mocked himself: "I've been living such irregular, sleep-deprived days recently; no wonder I had such a realistic nightmare."

But when Bronte Mcbride looked ahead, preparing to pack up his reference books and return to his dormitory, an unfamiliar and utterly unexpected scene struck him like a hammer, leaving him dumbfounded and blank.

Gone were the beautiful wooden desks of the library, the piles of messy reference books, and the drafts of his thesis ready to be typed into the computer. Instead, there was only a black, ragged blanket with frayed corners covering him.

The place he was sitting was not the cushioned chair of a library but a narrow wooden bed.

"Where is this?!"

Though Bronte Mcbride was somewhat introverted and slow to react, he immediately realized something was amiss. Even if there had been a fire and he had been sent to a hospital, this certainly didn't look like one!

His heart tightened. Panicking, he looked around and instinctively stood up, trying to move aside.

As soon as his feet touched the ground, Bronte Mcbride felt an overwhelming weakness and dizziness, causing his legs to buckle as he nearly collapsed.

Quickly, he reached out to the bed to steady himself. His face turned pale, and his mind was unsettled. With that fleeting glance, he had already taken in his surroundings.

It was a shabby, narrow little room. Aside from the wooden bed beside him, there was only a rickety table that looked ready to collapse at any moment, two relatively intact stools, and a broken crate. Beyond the flimsy, creaky wooden door was a stove of indiscernible color, with a pot hanging above it. The firewood beneath the stove seemed to have long since gone out, emitting no heat at all.

Everything was so unfamiliar that Bronte Mcbride couldn't figure out where he was, and the persistent feeling of weakness left his mind in turmoil:

"Where on earth is this?!"