Forest

Chapter One

The young woman who had just thrown herself off the cliff vanished into the fierce waves below, her body swallowed by the sea with just a single splash. One moment she was there; the next, nothing. The storm consumed her as though it had been waiting for her—just another lost soul to claim.

Above, the moon hung cold and distant, casting a sickly light over the chaos. Streaks of lightning tore through the sky, illuminating the storm with blinding yellow light, but it was useless. The darkness of the night remained unbroken, and the sea offered no clues. I yelled into the tempest, my voice lost in the wind's roar, but she didn't hear me—or perhaps she simply didn't care. Her pain had build a wall around her, a place where nothing, not even my words, could reach. She'd made her choice, and in doing so, shut herself off from everything else.

For a moment, I paused, my mind calculating the risks. Should I dive after her? I didn't know her, didn't owe her a damn thing. Why should I care? Why should I risk my life for some fool who thought she had no way out? But something in me recoiled at the thought of letting her be swallowed by the storm. I could sense it in the brief flicker of her—this was no fight she could win. The ocean would crush her without hesitation, drag her under with a brutal indifference.

No one—no one—should be allowed to die like that, regardless of the reasons they think justify it. She'd come to that edge with intent, but I couldn't, in good conscience, let her go without understanding why.

The storm raged on, each gust of wind tearing at my thoughts, but before I could let uncertainty take root, I made my decision. Without a second thought, I leapt from the cliff, hurtling into the abyss after her. The sea had claimed her, but it wouldn't claim me without a fight.

-

The cold air ripped past me, biting into my skin, and before I could brace myself, the icy sea seized me, a brutal shock that jarred me fully awake. For an instant, everything went still—the roar of the waves dulled, my mind emptied, and a strange clarity settled in.

Then the waves struck, dragging me under with relentless force. I fought my way up, struggling against the pull that threatened to pull me deeper. My lungs burned with the need for air, and my body ached from being thrown into the rocks. The water was punishing, my skin raw from the impact. This wasn't what I'd wanted.

Panic coiled through me, an all-consuming terror. What had I been thinking? What reason did I have to plunge into this madness? Yet, as I fought the waves, I found no answer, only the cold truth that if I went under, no one would mourn me. Maybe that was fitting.

The current briefly tossed me up, and for a moment, I broke the surface, gasping in the moon's ghostly light glinting on the dark waves. But the water swallowed me again, dragging me against the rocks, my body battered and exhausted. I knew then that I was at my limit, that survival was not an option here. And in that strange, somber realization, a faint calm washed over me.

I released my grip on the struggle, letting go as the current tugged me deeper. The fierce waves hurled me against jagged corals and unseen rocks, but I closed my eyes, accepting this final pain, knowing it would be the last.

Gradually, I felt my strength slip away, my body growing limp, surrendering fully to the ocean. My last visions of the world faded as the moonlight dimmed, swallowed by the murky depths, and soon even that glimmer of light was gone. Darkness closed in, but with it came a peace unlike any I had ever known.

The rage of the sea softened, as if the current that had driven me down now cradled me in gentle, endless stillness. Physically and mentally, I felt free, a weight lifting as I drifted further away from life above. This was right; I felt it now, a strange certainty in my bones.

I exhaled, my final breath releasing into the cold water, and felt my body sink deeper, wrapped in the sea's silent embrace.

In this dark, boundless peace, I knew I had found a release that no place on earth could have offered. And in that moment, the darkness vanished, replaced by a light so pure it felt as if the darkness had never existed at all.