As I checked the time, another thing left me puzzled, I didn't even take a notch.

'Well, after all, I am in a cave in the middle of a forest in the mountains, it is not as rare as a thing ...'

Then I turned around and "plunged" into the forest again.

'Mmh ... there is something wrong ... but what ...'

I stopped in the middle of the pine trunks, I looked around, and a lump rose in my throat.

'Where am I?!'

I noticed that I was no longer where I was before, the pines were mostly bare of needles, many had reddish needles and looked sick. There were neither brambles nor mushrooms attached to the foot of the conifers.

It looked like a dying forest.

I also noticed how much colder, almost wintry air was, and how much it gave a gray and gloomy aspect to the surrounding environment.

I remained motionless for a while with fear.

*Fuh

I recognized the sound instantly and turned towards it.

A grayish flame levitated to my left.

*Fuh Fuh Fuh…

Other flames from the round base appeared behind the first, creating a path as happened a short time ago.

As before, I followed them, but this time I did not feel "controlled" by them, but I was without any other possibilities, after all, I was in a place unknown to me.

They took me in front of a mound of earth and rock, covered with moss and grass, which emerged unnaturally from the ground, and with the side facing me flat. I noticed that in the flat part of the mound, the one in front of me, there was a wooden door. This door had hinges set in the stone of the "hill", it looked old and dilapidated, and made from a single block of wood; looking closer, I noticed that it was also carved with some symbols at the four corners, now, however, indecipherable due to wear caused by time and probably by rains.

'Looks like some kind of underground house !?' I wondered, confused and a little intrigued.

The flames seemed to invite me to open that door.

I went near the door, reached out and grabbed the knob, also made of wood, and stopped for a moment.

'Is it really a good idea?' I thought a little scared.

However, I felt I had no choice, so I plucked up my courage, turned the knob, and opened the door.

The door opened into what looked like an antique shop, a few meters high and rectangular in plan, which made me a little restless, after all, from the outside, one would have said that the room inside would be low, small, and circular. After everything that had happened that day, I didn't even try to explain what was going on anymore.

Inside there you could see very little, there was only one source of illumination: a round window that gave outwards placed high in the wall to my right; little by little, however, I got used to the low light and therefore decided to take a closer look at the shop. Like the door, the shop also looked very old, the wooden shelves, on which various wooden objects and toys rested, were moldy; some of these shelves were also sold, causing all the objects they supported to fall to the ground.

Sheltered to the wall to my left were old wardrobes and tables where termites had wed.

Leaning against the wall to my right were instead myriad mirrors, some with highly decorated but now moldy wooden frames, and others with simple metal frames. All those mirrors had something in common, however, they were all broken, and parts of the actual mirror missing.

After studying the environment in which I was, I decided to continue along the corridor of the store that led to the counter.

The counter was totally in light wood, darkened due to humidity in some places, and as for the rest of the shop, it seemed left there to its fate without any maintenance, it seemed that the table on which one usually buys and sells things was about to give up at any moment.

There was no one behind the counter, just two more shelves to my right with a few empty cruets resting on them.

'It looks like an abandoned shop... why did the flames bring me here? '

I was undecided whether to leave, after all, there didn't seem to be anything useful in there.

I decided to take a last look around me, noticed there was a cobweb in one of the corners of the shop, sharpened my eyes, and saw, hidden in the dark, probably the largest spider I had ever seen, black with gray spots, hairy, and with hundreds of red eyes.

"Nononono ... I'm leaving!" I raised my voice, frightened, hopping backward.

I decided to leave, after all, my biggest fear was spiders, and that wasn't just a spider, it was a beast.

I turned around and got ready to get out of that bad place.

* Where are you going? * I heard a voice in my head, different from what I heard before, it seemed feminine.

I turned around in fear.

'First the spider ... now this!' My heart started beating irregularly.

"Where are you looking at?" This time the voice was not only in my head, someone was talking to me, in the direction of the exit from the store, so, I turned again towards the exit.

A little old woman dressed in a long purple and dark red hooded dress, which covered her almost entirely, leaving only her face and hands visible, which showed the inevitable signs of age. Her hands were wrinkled and with black nails, a face full of wrinkles, and a nose that resembled a half moon, her eyes, however, oozed with wisdom and intelligence.

In all of this, what left me most speechless was the fact that the old woman was flying, or at least not touching the ground.

"Y-you are flying ?!" I said in a trembling voice.

"Hihihi, welcome to this world, Seventh Hero!" She said she, her voice was harsh and vibrant, but it emanated something epic.

At that moment my mind was already full of questions, and these just kept increasing.

'Seventh hero? What is… she talking about?! '

"You're probably confusing me with someone else ..." I said in a low voice.

"My eyes never lied to me boy! You come from another world and so, you MUST be the seventh! " She said solemnly.

"But I…" I looked down, 'Coming from another world… so I traveled to another world ?! However absurd, this would explain many of the absurdities that have happened to me ... '

"There is a legend ..." The old woman started, "it tells of heroes from another world, brought here from this very land, brought here to fight the evil that raging in these lands, the five plagues, and lastly, the Lord of plagues… " She paused, I looked up, he had regained my full attention.

"In order to face the Lord, one must first kill the five Plagues that control the five extended, and increasingly in extension, territories ... these must be killed in a certain order and they must all be killed within 5 years of the death of the first, otherwise, the other dead Plagues will be reborn…" She cleared her throat and drank some water magically created by herself.

"So far, 6 heroes have tried to bring the light back to this world, however, all 6 have failed, the first, Kear, defeated the first plague but died from the poison of the second… the second, Fenir, defeated the first and second plague, but was killed by an errant… the third, Mary, managed to defeat four of the five plagues, dying at the hands of the fifth, the fourth… Dar, died at the hands of the first plague… the fifth, Samuel, defeated the first plague, but died from the errant born from Fenir's body, the sixth, Gobert, killed the first three plagues and Fenir's errant, but was killed by Mary's errant ... " old woman coughed, and then resumed speaking, "You seventh ... what will your fate be !? I'm really curious… "She said smiling and showing the old and few yellow and black teeth she still had.

{TO BE CONTINUED ...}