Herobrine X Reader: Love's Wither Rose (Rewrite)

I stared at the ring of scorched dirt in front of me, my mind still reeling in a vain attempt to make sense of what just happened; one moment we were both stood in the portal room, then there was fire, and now I stood outside the entrance of the cave, alone.

A chill evening wind sent a flash of pain from my forearm, snapping me out of my stupor long enough to see a patch of flesh just below my elbow left raw and burned, the edges of my skin still smoldering faintly. Another cold breeze, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I forced myself to let my arm drop back to my side. I tried again to chase down any one of the millions of thoughts and questions racing around my mind, but I ultimately have up when I felt a throbbing behind my eyes.

It was only then that I really took notice of the old house looming over me, crumbling and half-decayed, sunken back into the trees as if hiding from the glowering eye of the sun behind it. The light used to fill the house from the inside out, once, streaking in through the back windows and reflecting off of almost every trinket inside and then filling the front windows with a warm golden glow like candlelight. But now? The front windows stared blankly out into nothingness, hollow sockets that gazed endlessly at the treeline and the horizon beyond but saw none of it.

Clouded shards of glass littered the foliage, trodden down by time into the dirt. It didn't crunch underfoot when I stepped closer to the doorway. The door itself didn't creak or protest when I nudged it open with the toe of my boot, either: it swung inwards about halfway before the wooden doorframe finally gave in to years of rot and splintered and peeled away at the hinges, where the door landed in a cloud of dust. I might have stepped over the threshold, back into the once-familiar space, wandered between the chambers of a shell that once was. I could have. Part of me would have, too, if reason hadn't reminded me of what nothing remained for me here, reminded me why the portal sat in the state that it's in, reminded me of why I left. Turning my back on the withered room was easier this time, at least.

I made my way back to the old pen where the horses stared, wide-eyed and snorting at the spot where Herobrine disappeared. After no small effort of hushing and cooing, I managed to get my mare calm enough for me to climb back into the saddle, and I loosely took hold of the other horse's reins. With the exit he made, it didn't seem likely that Herobrine would be coming back for the horse any time soon, and with nighttime approaching I didn't want to leave it behind, either.

A little nag in the back of my mind wondered why I didn't just stay at the old house - while, yes, there was barely any house left to speak of, the shelter would have been better than camping out in the open. I ignored it. I had no reason to stay anymore.

I set out again, back in the direction of home, slowly following game trails through the forest until the sun finally sank completely below the horizon and the treeline mercifully gave way to an open field beneath a clear night sky. The moon sat full and bright in the East, casting a gentle light across the grass, just enough for me to see the first creatures of the night as they tentatively crawled out of their hiding places, where they had spent the day cowering from the harshness of the sun's light and warmth. Normally, I would have looked for a quiet spot to hunker down for the night, but an open field would make me an easy target. No, for travelling alone, I always found it safer to cover ground at night and rest during daylight, so that's exactly what I did.

After little over a week of retracing the road home, I finally caught sight of the village just as dawn broke out across the sky, and found myself riding through the streets by midmorning.

I untacked the horses and left them with one of the farmhands in exchange for a promise of my help with the livestock once I had gotten myself back in order. For now, I brought the items from Herobrine's saddlebags with me (I quietly wondered if he was always to careless about leaving things behind), namely the notebook filled with scribblings of specific locations, and made a beeline for Henrik's library.