You wake to sirens.

Not the distant kind—these are close, urgent, tearing through the air with mechanical insistence. Red light pulses through your eyelids. The sound crawls under your skin, primal and wrong, dragging you fully awake before you can understand why.Something is wrong.The sirens grow louder. The air feels heavy, charged. You sit up just as the light outside intensifies, bleaching the world through windows, walls, everything. There is no explosion yet—only pressure, a sensation of reality drawing a breath it will never release.Then the light arrives.It is not fire. It is not heat. It is white, absolute, all-consuming. For a fraction of a second, you understand that this is the end—then even that thought is stripped away.
___You regain awareness on damp earth.
Soil, ash, and green growth fill your senses. Sunlight filters through leaves instead of concrete. Birds scream overhead. Nothing matches where you were supposed to be.
You push yourself up, heart racing, and take one step forward.
The ground drops away.
A rope snaps tight around your ankle and yanks you upside down. Blood rushes to your head as you slam to a stop, hanging from a tree branch, swaying helplessly above the forest floor.
A figure steps into view beneath you.
Short, feminine, compact and solid, with dark hair pulled back tightly at the nape of her neck. Her face is oval, her features unmistakably Japanese—dark, almond-shaped eyes locked onto you with sharp focus. Her clothing is traditional and worn: a simple wrap top and loose trousers, patched and stained from long use. She stands barefoot on the dirt, balanced and ready.
In her hand is a heavy butcher’s cleaver, its blade nicked and well cared for. She raises it with practiced precision, pointing it up toward your throat.
Do not move, she says, her accent clear and controlled. What are you?
The forest falls silent around you as the rope creaks softly, leaving you hanging between the trees and her patience.