His silver eyes locked onto the peculiar mushroom beneath his foot.

  It was nearly twice the size of his bare foot, its dark brown hue blending seamlessly with the dirt around it, while faded green patterns snaked across its cap, mimicking the grass that surrounded it.

  The sheer oddity of its appearance might have been intriguing if not for the ominous squelch it released under his weight.

  “Shit.” Akira muttered under his breath, his voice trembling with dread. The sound was grotesque and wet, like the deflation of something rotting and foul.

  A sudden hiss followed, sharp and insidious, as if the mushroom itself had come alive in retaliation.

  Before he could react, a thick yellow mist burst forth from the ruptured fungus, expanding outward in an alarmingly swift wave.

  It enveloped him entirely, snaking into his nostrils and searing his throat as he inhaled.

  The mist clung to his skin like it was alive, and the acrid sting in his eyes made him squeeze them shut, though it offered no relief.

  Akira stumbled back instinctively, his foot catching on uneven ground.

  The mantis claw and crimson crystal fell from his grasp, tumbling onto the soft, verdant ground with muted thuds. Akira barely noticed.

  “Damn it, poison?” The toxin had invaded his lungs. He gasped, his breath hitching as a violent, hacking cough erupted from deep within his chest. Each convulsion sent lances of pain through his ribs, his throat raw and burning.

  Through watery, bloodshot eyes, tears of blood rolled down his pallid cheek.

  Akira caught sight of his hands trembling before him.

  His breath hitched, and he froze as a new wave of horror swept over him.

  His fingers seemed to writhe of their own accord, twisting unnaturally, each digit bending in impossible angles.

  His nails elongated and split apart like strands of thread, each fragment curling in strange directions.

  “What the hell...?” Akira’s voice came out a strangled rasp, but the words dissolved into another round of relentless coughing.

  He dropped to his knees, clutching his throat, his vision spinning.

  Blood trickled from his nostrils, staining his upper lip, and hot, crimson tears endlessly streamed down.

  “No, it’s not my body that's changing.” He gasped between coughs, forcing himself to analyze the situation even as his thoughts splintered. “It’s my vision.” The realization didn’t calm him, it only deepened his terror.

  The mist wasn’t just a poison, it was something far worse, a hallucinogen targeting his very sense of reality.

  Looking around, the state of his vision only worsened, the gigantic trees around him started to bend like light poles, the bushes rustled in compassion and joy, as if mocking his state.

  “And not just my vision huh? My hearing is also getting affected, my best guess is that all my senses have probably been affected.”

  In order to get away from the rustling of the foliage, Akira stepped back out where the gruesome massacre had taken place. It wasn’t much of a clearing but it was enough to have some room to breathe.

  The boy’s snow colored eyes glazed around in panic, the scene around him nothing short of mesmerizing as the piles of broken bodies of the behemoths lay in the grass, lifeless yet still captivating in their beauty despite the mutilations they suffered from the giant snake’s blows.

  Lifeless… Wait. What was that?

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Akira looked at one pile in specific, it was composed of at least half a dozen winged beasts.

  Did it just. Suddenly the body of one of the behemoths twitched. Damn, I know that it's an illusion, but still. It looks too goddamn real!

  Akira’s vision swirled in a fevered dance of color and light, the dense jungle around him seeming to shift and blur, as though painted by a trembling hand.

  The sky, a chaotic tapestry of crimson and orange hues, dripped like molten wax onto the forest floor.

  His limbs felt heavy and disconnected, up until now he has been in a race with the fatigue his body was facing, barely keeping ahead, but now… Fatigue had finally caught up, and it didn’t plan to let go.

  Shit, this situation just keeps getting worse and worse.

  Akira’s knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the grass-covered ground. His head spun, pain radiating from the base of his skull, sending sharp, biting pangs through his temples.

  He swiped at the blood that streamed down his face, smearing it across his cheeks, and wiped his shaking hands on the damp earth.

  His fingers still moved in grotesque, disjointed movements, and he could only watch in horror as they curled and twitched.

  The hallucinations intensified as he strained to focus, his silver eyes darting back to the mound of winged beasts. They shuddered, their broken limbs twitching, the torn remnants of their bodies seemingly trying to escape the embrace of death.

  One of the beasts, its eyes still wide open, seemed to stare directly at him, its amber gaze full of fury, as if it were trying to reach out from beyond the grasp of mortality.

  “Don’t fuck with me, you bastards. I know this isn’t real. You’re all dead, so stay that way!” Gripping the shreds of sanity that remained inside his head, Akira tried putting himself in a state of peace and reason. However, the hallucinations looked so real that one could not tell them apart from reality.

  Desperately he tried to get up, but his weak body did not listen, what little muscles he had were pushed far beyond their limits, the poison contorting his senses with no end in sight to its effects.

  The violent coughs did not leave him as it continued to barrage his ribcage with thumps from his lungs as they burned from the inside.

  Think Akira, you're seeing your own fingers twist like branches, maybe everything is also just hallucinations. Rationalizing his situation was the only thing Akira could hope to do in order to take his mind away from the pain.

  He glanced back up to the pile of bodies. One of the pale titans was now standing on all four of its limbs, is skin wings were ripped like a beautiful silk that had holes burnt into it, its long neck snapped in two as the head hung loosely by some tendrils of flesh and skin, but worst of all were its plate-sized eyes that never left Akira.

  Both him and the monster simply stared at each other, the sun drowning over the horizon as light was now very scarce, figures turned into shadows that danced in horror as other shadows skippered around the bioluminescent fauna that offered a minimal glow.

  Despite having crossed many moral barriers in a short amount of time, the sight of the figure made Akira gag, he might have even vomited, but what was there in his stomach to throw up? The gelatinous flesh of the larva he had taken a few chunks out of? Or the fruit that was more seed than flesh?

  Akira’s silver eyes flickered in the dim light as he fought against the chaos both within and around him.

  The risen figure of the pale titan loomed in his twisted, poisoned vision, its grotesque form a nightmare pulled from the depths of his darkest fears. Staggering forward, dragging its broken limbs across the bloodied battlefield. Its flesh made a wet, squelching sound against the ground, and its head, barely attached to its serpentine neck, lolled unnaturally with each agonized step.

  A sight that was too vivid, too real to be an illusion, or so Akira’s scrambled mind convinced him.

  Come on, this isn’t real, it’s fake, it can’t hurt me. It’s not real. His heart beat so fast he felt like choking.

  The creature let out a sound. Not the sound it made before with its beak, but a horrid, otherworldly screech. It was layered, echoing in his mind like the wails of a hundred damned souls, each note tearing through his sanity.

  Akira clutched his head, his nails digging into his scalp as if trying to rip the sound out of his ears. The screech was unbearable, an auditory assault that resonated deep within his skull, amplifying his disorientation and fear.

  His breaths came in short, shallow gasps, his chest heaving as if suffocating under the weight of the toxin and his crumbling psyche.

  The boy’s gaze, though hindered by the throbbing headache the sound gave him and his messy hair half covering his eyes, saw the mantis claw and the crimson orb resting a few meters away where he had dropped them.

  Without any other solution coming to mind, he began crawling through the blood infused dirt towards them.

  Akira’s body moved on sheer instinct, his mind barely holding together under the crushing weight of the hallucinations. His trembling hands clawed at the blood-soaked dirt, dragging his frail frame forward.

  The grotesque sound of wet earth squelching under his weight was drowned out by the monster’s ceaseless wailing, the layered screech echoing endlessly in his ears.

  “AAAAAAHHHHH!” Akira let out a roar of his own, though it was drowned out by the sound of the behemoths' weeping.

  He clawed his way further with his fingers, his silver eyes locked on the mantis claw and the glowing orb just out of reach.

  The screeching abomination shuffled closer, its broken form an unholy amalgamation of death and persistence. Its hollow eyes burned into Akira’s very soul, filled with rage and agony that didn’t belong in the world of the living.

  Grasping the sphere with his left hand, the boy quickly brought it to his chest while turning on his back to face the monster but…