Bitter cold on his back, the crackling of flames in his ears, Wilson resurfaced once more from unconsciousness, too weak to move. There was heat, but it felt localized; winter was here, surely.

Once again, he heard his captor's arrival, and then his voice.

"Say, pal," growled the keeper of this fake world, "you're really pushing your luck." He didn't just sound angry, he sounded almost demented, a snarl to his voice that was nearly animal. "Turn back now, or I may have to resort to drastic measures!"

He was gone before Wilson rose, of course, but Wilson found himself almost smiling.

"Turn back?" he asked the air. "How exactly do you propose I do that? No, I'm going to keep going until you let me out of here!"

There was no answer, but that was to be expected.

Wilson looked around. He was in a grassy area, without the mud patch he'd seen the last two times; three trees were burning around him, but they were normal pines. As usual, the homing device stood in its stand beside him, and he took it without really thinking; all around, snow covered the land, it was clearly the dead of winter. His tam o'shanter was still in his pocket, and he put it on - it wasn't the best cold weather gear, but it was better than nothing, and he had his beard, as well as his heat stone, the latter of which was absorbing the warmth from the burning trees. Each burning tree had something else burning next to it, though Wilson couldn't make out what through the flames; when the fire was gone, there were three ash piles, at any rate, and he scooped them up quickly.

It was terrifyingly cold - midwinter cold, like the second world, but strangely, the way the sun was moving, there seemed to be only a little less daylight here than that world's summer had held. Did that mean there would be no summer this time? I already went through a world thinking that there would be no summer, this isn't a challenge, Wilson thought, but that worried him more than anything.

A few steps away from where he'd woken up, he was distracted by the sight of a human skeleton kneeling in a pile of his own supplies: three logs, a backpack, an ax, and a blueprint for something or other. Inside the backpack was a lot of cut grass, five pieces of silk, seven handfuls of Beefalo wool, a heat stone that was ice-cold to the touch, and another blueprint. Wilson picked up the blue scrolls and studied them, only for the information to absorb into his brain directly as the pages disintegrated; it was a strange feeling, but it did soothe his headache. One had been for something he already knew how to make - earmuffs - while the other had been for a feather hat; neither was useful, but it was good to keep the shadows at bay.

Of more concern was the silk and wool in the backpack. I could make a winter hat from these materials, I know I could, he thought, but of course, I don't remember the recipe! I never bothered making one of my own…all these Beefalo that I've passed, I kept thinking I had to do something with them, and I never did!

It's fine, he told himself, drawing a deep lungful of frigid air. I just need to make another alchemy engine. That won't be too hard, if I can just find some rocks.

Out of curiosity, he checked the homing device, but the signal was faint. Focusing on his priorities, he started gathering materials while searching for the shoreline. Here and there, he found berry bushes, but despite everything else being normal, there were no carrots. That's fine, Wilson thought, berries are just as filling when they're cooked, and I'm going to need to make a lot of fires to survive here anyway.

Soon enough, he reached a rocky terrain, where boulders with gold veins stood in relative abundance; having found some flint along the way, Wilson set to work mining what he needed. Cold and lack of carrots aside, everything felt too easy, and he went back to the grasslands out of caution before setting up a new alchemy engine and starting a fire to cook his berries. Before nightfall, he had a warm winter hat, and he used the last piece of silk with a hunk of charcoal from one of the burnt trees to make a boomerang in hopes of hunting birds for a bit of extra meat; the cooked fruit kept his stomach quiet, and he waited for morning.

A little more exploration revealed that the grassland was just a node attached to the rocky land, and Wilson started walking on, homing device out, following the same reasoning he'd used in the second world - namely, that food would be too difficult to come by for him to bother waiting around, so he needed to simply plow forward. Further on from where he'd been mining, though, he caught sight of the unmistakeable shapes of the MacTusk hunting party through the snow, and immediately cursed his luck - if he'd seen them, then they'd seen him, and they followed any movement doggedly. Doing his best to give them a wide berth, he kept walking, and soon found a land bridge…walled off by tall, pitch-black obelisks.

The gentleman scientist stopped short, aghast. He wouldn't! Wilson thought, his heart racing, but as he came closer, he found that the snowfall had not obscured his vision: a solid wall of black stone blocked him from proceeding. The line stretched from shore to shore of the narrow land bridge, and they were far too close together for Wilson to squeeze through. But why? Why here?

Trying not to panic, Wilson started following the shoreline away from the obelisks. In time, his homing beacon told him he was headed in the right direction towards one of the transport things, so maybe everything would be fine. But shortly before dusk, he saw an igloo, and when he checked his mental map, he couldn't help but think it was too far away from where he'd seen the MacTusk hunting party earlier to be the home of the same family he'd noticed before. Of course, there were always multiple walrus families in the world, but for two to be so close…Wilson gnashed his teeth and kept running, trying to keep as far as possible from the sound of barking hounds.

Too soon, the edge of the land turned back on itself, making another peninsula, and it wasn't until Wilson was following the shore back the other way that his homing device started going crazy. Among all the rocks, a single patch of grass bore the ring thing, and fifteen evil flowers surrounding it; when Wilson picked up the object, his homing device died to near-silence.

He could only light a fire when nighttime came, as the cold had gotten through his gear. The second heat stone, he realized, was probably redundant, and he dropped it, not wanting to clutter up his storage, though he didn't have much on him just yet. Those obelisks bothered him, as did the shape his mental map was taking, but he tried not to worry. It has to be doable, he told himself. Surely, Maxwell wouldn't set up a challenge that was truly impossible…

Though he wasn't sure why it was so difficult to put that past his sadistic captor, if he was honest with himself.

Resigned to following the shore and trying to formulate a plan, Wilson kept walking in the morning, only to soon stumble across another igloo. Shifting all his supplies to his pockets, he ditched the backpack and put on his log suit, knowing getting hit by a couple of blow darts was going to be inevitable. Sure enough, projectiles punched his wooden clothing like bullets as he kept running, but he wasn't hurt too badly. Luckily, the walruses never seemed inclined to run when chasing their quarry - they only ever ran to avoid getting too close to whatever they were chasing, oddly enough - and Wilson was able to leave them behind.

But before the next night fell, Wilson had mapped the entire circumference of the land available to him; there were no more things to be detected by his homing device, and the only other way to proceed was through the impassible wall.

Wilson returned to the obelisks, studying them carefully. There must be some way to get past them, he told himself. They didn't chip under his pickaxe, though, and he couldn't squeeze through the gaps.

And yet, the more he examined them, the more they felt…wrong. Blacker than obsidian, and unnaturally smooth to his touch; it was the dead of winter, but the stone-like surfaces didn't seem to hold any temperature at all. Just trying to make sense of them made Wilson feel as if he was going crazy. I've seen these before, they surround the Pig King, he remembered as night fell. I never saw a use for them, though… It felt as though he was forgetting something important, but he hadn't given the Pig King's setups much thought in a very long time…

Then, in the dark of night, huddled by a campfire with darkness scratching at the edges of his mind, a ridiculous possibility suddenly dawned on him.

Did the ones around the Pig King shrink when I viewed the world through insanity? he thought, trying to remember. It's…sort of logical, given what I know about how this fake world works: The shadow monsters only become tangible when my mind is sufficiently ravaged, and these rocks feel more like solid shadows than true stone, so what if destroying my mind could make these rocks intangible?

He could not think of one singular better idea, and of course, with food so scarce, he had very little time to spend on the scientific process. The ring of fifteen evil flowers that had decorated the ring thing's resting place would probably sap at his mental health quickly enough, and his tam o'shanter would fix him back up quickly enough if he was wrong. Hopefully.

Dodging the walruses was only a somewhat tall order with his log suit, and Wilson was among the noxious plants only a little after dawn. He tried to take deep breaths to hurry up the process, but he'd been taking too good of care of himself, and so he started picking them, trying to wreck himself quickly. Pain throbbed behind his eyes, the color leached from his vision, and whispers he couldn't make sense of began hissing in his ears. Finally, come mid-dusk, his mind snapped, he could feel the shadows closing in as the gray world distorted around him.

Through the pain, he maintained one thought: the obelisks.

Turning back towards the bridge, he started running, clutching his head as it felt like it was splitting in two. Shadow monsters appeared, paradoxes he couldn't comprehend, and somewhere in the real world, the MacTusk hunting parties took interest in him. But when he got to the bridge, the walls of black stone had turned into a line of tiny little brown pyramids.

Not obelisks anymore, he thought, a savage grin twisting his lips as he bolted past the line and donned his tam o'shanter, trying to ward off the monsters of madness. It didn't happen quickly enough, but that was okay, because another line of pyramids stood between him and the next batch of land still; he crossed them too, and entered a forest. One singular green mushroom grew to his side, and he picked it, lit a fire, cooked it while a blobby shadow chomped on him, and ate it, soothing his hellish migraine just enough.

Behind him, the obelisks rose back into thick walls, and the shadow monsters yielded. Wilson's head was still killing him, but he could manage basic sane thought. Huddled over a fire, pulling his tam o'shanter down to his ears in hopes of making it all go away, he waited out the night, fully aware that he had only just begun to see what this wintery world had in store for him.