Brass stared at the two river nymphs.

  The two river nymphs stared back at Brass.

  The awkward silence stretched on, long enough for the wind to shift directions and carry the faint scent of drying blood and damp forest moss. The stream gurgled beside him, oblivious to the strange standoff occurring at its edge.

  He shifted, doing his best to look non-threatening while still sitting stark naked on a riverbank, which, all things considered, was a high-difficulty social maneuver. “So… what brings you two to these parts?”

  The nymphs looked at each other, and the younger of the two grinned—a mischievous, almost predatory expression that set the hairs on the back of Brass’s neck on edge. The older one’s brows furrowed slightly, her expression cool and cautious as she tugged the younger girl back a step into the water.

  That alone told Brass a lot.

  [Passive Insight Activated]The younger one is intrigued. The older one is suspicious. You are currently cssified as “dangerous and shirtless.”

  Brass sighed. “Look, if this is about the blood, that wasn’t me starting a forest murder spree. Those guys I took down? Bandits. Real charming sort, with a nice side business in robbing travelers and probably worse.”

  The older nymph’s eyes narrowed slightly. “We felt their deaths ripple through the river’s memory.”

  Her voice was soft and serene, but it had weight—like distant thunder carried on a breeze.

  Brass tilted his head. “River’s… memory?”

  She nodded. “Blood that enters running water carries echoes. The stream remembers suffering. Death. Violence. The more recent, the clearer.”

  He blinked. “So, you’re telling me the river tattled on me?”

  The younger one giggled again, delighted. “In a way.”

  Brass groaned and ran a hand down his face. “Great. First time I clean up after a fight and the river’s already filing a divine report.”

  The older nymph took a careful step forward, her lower body dissolving into the current as if she were part of it. “And yet… it also remembers restraint. You did not burn the woods, nor spill more blood than was necessary.”

  Brass shrugged. “Couldn’t exactly do much about the mess. My clothes were soaked in gore. I was soaked in gore. Not exactly a subtle exit.”

  The younger one gnced pointedly at his now-drying garments hanging from a low branch. “You still are… mostly uncovered.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” Brass muttered, shifting his position with exaggerated modesty. “This really isn’t how I imagined my first diplomatic encounter with river spirits going.”

  The older nymph folded her arms, studying him. “You are not from here.”

  “That obvious?”

  “You smell… divided. Earth-bound and something else. Something hungry.”

  Brass’s jaw tensed. “Yeah. I get that a lot tely.

  Brass shifted uncomfortably beneath the weight of their stares, the sun dappling off the stream and throwing light patterns across his bare chest. The air was crisp with the scent of cold mountain water and moss, a gentle breeze carrying the rustle of distant leaves. Water trickled endlessly over smooth stones nearby, a melodic backdrop to the tension winding itself tighter by the second.

  The two river nymphs stood half-submerged in the stream, their bodies liquid and solid at once, like sculpted water shaped by dream logic. The younger one’s smile had the curve of mischief sharpened by hunger—not the kind that gnawed at the belly, but the kind that reached for curiosity, amusement… and perhaps something deeper. Her eyes glinted like polished turquoise, and her damp hair flowed around her like ribbons suspended in invisible currents.

  Brass could feel the prickling pressure of mana in the air now. Subtle at first—like the tickle of static before a storm—but growing stronger, thicker. He shifted slightly on the bank, grass brushing against his legs, still damp from the stream. His senses itched with instinct. Something was about to happen.

  “So…” he tried again, tone light but careful, “any chance I’m not the weirdest thing you’ve seen today?”

  The younger nymph giggled again. A delicate, silvery sound, but there was something just off about it—too perfect, too rehearsed. It scraped faintly at the edge of his hearing like gss tapping against porcein. She stepped closer, the water never quite parting around her. It shimmered as if refusing to resist her, instead flowing with her movements like a loyal pet.

  “We see many things,” she said, her voice sing-song, dripping with yered meaning. “But you… you’re a gift. Something… new.”

  Brass didn’t like the way she said that. He tensed. “A gift for who?”

  The older nymph—still waist-deep, still watching—finally moved forward. Her hand reached out, not toward him, but toward the younger one’s shoulder. “Naiya,” she said softly, warning in her tone.

  But the younger didn’t stop. In fact, she surged forward.

  Brass had half a moment to react.

  Water exploded upward as Naiya lunged. Her arms shot around his shoulders, unnaturally strong for her size, and she dragged him forward with terrifying speed. Her touch was icy, but not like water—it felt like stepping through a cloud of memory, soaked in emotion and old magic. His skin prickled, then burned, then went numb all at once.

  A pulse of power thundered through the stream.

  [Warning: Spatial Mana Detected. Crossing Pnar Threshold.]

  “What the hell!?” Brass shouted, trying to summon his vampiric dash—only for it to fizzle out with a mocking hiss.

  The air shimmered, like heat waves off a forge, and suddenly the stream below him was gone. Not just gone—repced. Repced by… nothing. By light. By absence. By cold and color and sound all cshing together in a single terrible moment.

  He felt another pair of hands—stronger, desperate—grabbing his wrist. The older nymph.

  “No, Naiya! Not there! You’ll—!”

  Too te.

  The world twisted.

  Colors bled from the edges of reality like spilled ink in water. Brass’s breath caught in his throat, lungs refusing to obey. Sound fractured, became musical notes and wind chimes and whispering voices not meant for human ears. He could see stars, not in the sky, but in the river, in the space around them, and in Naiya’s glowing eyes as she dragged him deeper into the fracture between worlds.

  Then the tearing stopped.

  The weight lifted.

  And they tumbled—hard—onto a carpet of glowing moss beneath a violet twilight sky.

  Brass groaned, coughing as he rolled onto his side, his body vibrating with leftover mana backsh. He gnced up. The world had shifted. The trees were twisted and grand, their bark glowing faintly with runes that pulsed like heartbeats. Giant mushrooms dotted the undergrowth, giving off faint puffs of luminous spores with every movement. The stars overhead didn’t twinkle—they spiraled.

  The older nymph was sprawled beside them, looking absolutely livid.

  “You idiot,” she snapped at her sister, pushing herself upright with visible effort. “You pulled him wrong—we’re not even in the right grove!”

  Naiya only ughed, breathless, radiant with joy. “But it worked!”

  Brass sat up slowly, eyes wide, still catching up.

  “…Where the hell are we?”

  The system pinged softly in his mind, its voice cool and emotionless as always.

  [Location Update: Forest of the Sidhe – Realm Cssification: Lesser Fae Tangle. Pne Stability: Unstable. Time Dition: Active.]

  Brass ran a hand down his face and exhaled slowly.

  “Oh, terrific.”

  Brass staggered to his feet, boots squelching softly in the spongy moss—only… he wasn’t wearing boots. Or anything else.

  “Oh. Right,” he muttered, gncing down at his bare, mud-smeared body, bag slung across one shoulder like a terribly mispced fashion statement. The cool air of this strange new pce kissed every inch of his skin, tingling with a barely-there charge. Even the air felt alive here—soft and sweet, carrying the scent of crushed berries and something wild, almost electric.

  Above him, the sky churned with dreamy hues: vender swirls over a canvas of twilight rose, stars drifting in slow spirals as though painted by a drunk god. There was no sun, no moon—just a soft, omnipresent glow that gave everything a faint shimmer.

  It glowed a dull green where he stepped, the light fring briefly then dimming as though the ground itself were reacting to his presence.

  The trees surrounding the gde were tall, ancient things, their bark a silver-ash tone veined with flowing script that danced like living ink. Their canopies twisted together in impossible ways, forming bridges and ttices overhead, and strange birds with translucent wings flitted between the branches, singing melodies that seemed to shift nguage mid-note.

  “This isn’t just a new pce,” Brass whispered. “This is a damn new realm.”

  The older nymph was already upright, arms crossed over her chest and gring daggers. Her expression carried the weight of someone realizing a toddler had pressed a big red button they absolutely should not have. “You were supposed to show him the veil, Naiya. Not drag him through it.”

  The younger one, Naiya, was all smiles and zero remorse, spinning on one bare heel, her form shimmering with liquid grace. “The veil opened. That means it accepted him.”

  “I was bathing!” Brass barked, motioning wildly to his very obvious ck of clothing. “And then this—this glowing water spirit from hell yanked me in!”

  The system chose that moment to chime in:

  [Caution: Prolonged exposure to Fae Realm without established Pact may result in altered perception, timeline divergence, or metaphysical anchoring. Recommend establishing anchor or returning within 3 hours standard time.]

  Brass narrowed his eyes. “Wait, what happens after three hours?”

  […Metaphysical anchoring engaged. You will become partially of this realm. Biological and temporal instability may occur.]

  Brass looked from the glowing forest to the two nymphs, then back again. “You dragged me into a pce that’s going to corrupt my soul in three hours?!”

  Naiya just smiled wider. “Not corrupt. Change. It’s different.”

  The older sister stepped between them, hands up. “Enough, Naiya. He’s not fae-born. He can’t just wander here freely.”

  “But he’s part wolf,” Naiya said, her expression pouting slightly. “The wild calls to him.”

  Brass, still shirtless and half-muddy, gestured broadly at the glowing mushrooms and spiraling stars. “This isn’t a wild, this is a kaleidoscope fever dream!” He groaned. “Three hours before I start mutating into a mushroom or whatever it is this pce does?”

  [Biological and temporal instability: Probable. Mutation risk: Non-zero.]

  “Terrific,” he grunted. “Can’t wait to grow bark on my balls.”

  Naiya giggled at that, walking a slow, teasing circle around him. “You wear your shame like a second skin, human. But you’ve nothing to be embarrassed about. The Fae have seen stranger things than a naked wanderer with a strong scent of wolf and blood.”

  The older sister shot her a warning look. “Enough games. This isn’t the riverbank anymore, Naiya. Here, the nd listens.”

  Brass raised an eyebrow. “That supposed to scare me?”

  “It should,” the older one replied coolly. “If you’re smart.”

  The ground beneath his feet rippled with soft phosphorescence—moss that pulsed in hues of gold and viridian with every step. The forest exhaled a subtle sound, something between a sigh and a whisper, and a narrow stone path revealed itself ahead. The stones were smooth and ft, but no two were alike, glowing faintly from seams in their surfaces like something had etched them with light from the inside out.

  The air shifted—warmer, closer.

  Something unseen moved through the trees on the left. Brass’s nostrils fred.

  Naiya tilted her head. “We’re being watched. Curious things… I wonder if it’s the Spiral-Faced One or the Collector.”

  The older nymph swore softly under her breath. “We have to move. This part of the Tangle is shifting.”

  “What does that mean?” Brass asked, already grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder again.

  “It means we don’t stay still,” she said. “And we don’t speak to anything with too many eyes.”

  Brass blinked. “That’s an oddly specific rule.”

  She shot him a look. “You’d be surprised how common that is here.”

  They started walking, Naiya practically skipping ahead like this was a game, her ughter echoing through the trees. Brass kept close behind the older sister, his senses fring with every sound, every flicker of motion from the corner of his eye. The trees whispered. The path felt alive. And through it all, the system kept feeding him updates:

  [You have entered a transitional space: The Verdant Tangle.]

  [Ambient Mana Density: 189% - Extreme.]

  [Passive Skill: Life Detection – Unreliable in Fae Realms.]

  [Timeflow Sync Error – Warning: Temporal dispcement possible.]

  The older nymph gnced at him, her expression softening. “You’re handling this better than most would.”

  “I fought a Wendigo st night,” Brass said ftly. “This is just a different fvor of nightmare.”

  At the edge of the glowing path, a shape moved—tall, willowy, its form flickering between deer-like elegance and a skeletal grin. Brass’s hand let out his cws on instinct.

  “Don’t look at it,” the nymph whispered. “And don’t think about it.”

  Brass stared straight ahead.

  He tried not to think about the way the wind now carried whispers in a nguage that sounded an awful lot like his own name.

  Brass clutched his bag a little tighter. “Not to be difficult, but I’d really like to find my pants before we go any deeper into monster neighborhood.”

  She gnced over her shoulder as she stepped onto the glowing path. “In this realm? Your dignity is the least of your concerns.”

  [Warning: Perception Filter active. Do not engage entities not directly acknowledged by name.][Timeflow Sync: Unstable. Est. sync deviation: 3.4 hours to 1 week.]

  Brass muttered under his breath, “This was supposed to be a bath.”

  He followed after them, the older nymph walking swiftly with a grace honed over centuries, the younger dancing barefoot like a child who thought consequences were bedtime stories. Around them, the forest stretched impossibly tall and wound inward like a byrinth, constantly shifting—trees changing shape, paths growing or shrinking.

  At one bend, something tall and antlered leaned partway out from behind a tree. Brass’s breath caught—it was gaunt, its face stretched too long, eyes like ink-bck pits.

  “Don’t look at it,” the older sister hissed. “And for all our sakes, don’t think about it.”

  Brass swallowed and stared ahead.

  Which, of course, meant now he was definitely thinking about it.

  He tried not to think about the fact that he was completely exposed in a realm that didn’t obey the same rules of time, biology, or sanity.

  He tried not to think about the whispers that now carried his name, or how the air tasted faintly like honey and ozone.

  And most of all, he tried not to think about how once again he was desperately in need of pants.

  After nearly an hour of wandering through the dream-warped forest in nothing but his skin and a rucksack slung over one shoulder, Brass had stopped trying to get any coherent answers out of the two river nymphs. Every attempt at conversation had either been met with a flippant giggle from the younger one or a sharp, silencing gre from the older. The dynamic between the two was strange—pyful on one side, cautious on the other—but neither was forthcoming.

  So, naturally, he turned inward.

  “Alright, System, tell me this—can I use the Webways to get the hell out of here and back to Albion?”

  [Query registered. Assessing pnar link status…][Result: Insufficient realm attunement. Webways access denied in current state.]

  "To enable traversal between the Fae Realm and Albion, one of the following upgrades is required:"

  – Form a Pact with a native denizen. This will grant your Webway matrix access to realm-bound ley signatures.– Consume an adequate volume of Fae blood. Upon absorption, your physiology may simute native shift traits.– Utilize Soul Siphon on sufficient Fae-aligned beings to acquire traits tied to dimensional travel.– Acquire and absorb a sufficiently charged Fae relic or artifact.– Politely request transport from your current hosts.

  "Estimated difficulty of each path: High."

  Brass let out a quiet groan, rubbing his temple with two fingers as he walked. “So basically I either cut a magical deal, drink someone’s blood, rip out souls until I get lucky, or go full fantasy tomb raider…”

  "Correct.""Note: Option 5 includes the risk of being politely ignored."

  “Fantastic.” He cast a gre toward the younger nymph ahead, who was busy chasing a floating puff of light that may or may not have been a sentient will-o’-wisp. “And asking her is definitely going to end well.”

  "Statistical projection: Low probability of cooperation. High probability of mischief."

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Still grumbling, he gnced around, increasingly aware of how… alien the forest had become. The trees were taller now, their bark a pale ivory like sun-bleached bone, leaves shimmering with an opalescent sheen that reflected hues not found in any sane rainbow. Flowers opened as he passed, releasing scents that were almost memories—his mother’s voice, warm summer air, the smell of cold metal and blood.

  The deeper they went, the more the forest seemed to watch. And not in a metaphorical way. Faces of bark shifted in the corners of his vision, following him. Giggles echoed from hollows, and once he could’ve sworn the wind said his name in a nguage only his bones understood.

  And he was still naked.

  That fact, despite the bizarre beauty around him, remained an uncomfortable anchor to reality. His bare feet padded along a mossy path too soft to be natural, and his skin prickled from the ambient magic hanging in the air like mist. If not for the satchel bouncing against his hip and the cool leather strap digging into his shoulder, he might’ve felt more like a ghost than a man.

  Eventually, the forest began to open. The unnatural trees thinned, giving way to wide gdes lit by shimmering sky-light that wasn’t quite sunlight. Strange vines formed arches overhead like woven cathedral ceilings, and rge mushrooms grew in careful rings at the edges of the clearing.

  And then he saw it—a settlement.

  Well, something like one.

  Dozens of low structures—grown more than built—rose from the earth like natural outcroppings. Roofs were made of interlocking leaves tougher than leather, walls pulsing faintly with bioluminescent patterns. Bridges of woven bark and humming threads crisscrossed above the main path. There were no roads, but where the moss wore thin he could see stones beneath etched with swirling, spiraling runes.

  Creatures moved through the vilge—graceful beings with angur faces and luminous eyes. Some had antlers, some had wings, some shimmered like reflections on water. All of them turned to look as the trio approached, their expressions unreadable.

  Brass shifted awkwardly, hugging the strap of his bag a little tighter across his chest.

  “Well,” he muttered. “At least they’re not throwing spears at me.”

  "Yet."

  He sighed. “You just had to say it.”

  "Optimism is not part of my default personality parameters."

  Brass steeled himself as they entered the vilge. The older nymph walked ahead with her chin held high, clearly respected by the denizens, while the younger one skipped ahead like she owned the pce. Brass, still naked, bloodstained bag bouncing at his side, trailed behind like a wayward beast dragged into court.

  And somewhere, deep in his gut, he could feel it—Fae magic, ancient and alive, pressing in on his soul like a thousand tiny hands trying to feel him out.

  He wasn’t sure if he was a guest… or prey.