Pain.
The back of the head felt like it had been hit with a hammer.
Zhongli Leimo opened his eyes and saw a distorted and faded sky. There was a sweet smell of caramel in the air, mixed with the smell of rust and rotten wood.
He propped himself up and pressed his palms on the cold, slippery ground. The touch felt wrong—not concrete, not dirt, some sort of... Melted, hardened syrup?
Look around.
Broken walls and ruins.
The walls of a huge, crumbling gingerbread house stuck diagonally into the ground, covered in burnt icing. In the distance, only the rusty skeleton of a twisted carousel was left. Several dilapidated wooden horses looked at him with their heads hanging down and their empty eyes. Farther away, what looked like a castle spire was broken in half, and the spire was stuck in a sticky, pink "swamp"—probably melted marshmallows.
Fairy tale world.
But already dead.
