Bai Zixian woke to darkness.
Not the darkness of closed eyes, but the absence of light. Night had fallen while he slept or whatever passed for night in this place. The cliffs, the trees, the valley—all of it swallowed by black so complete that he couldn't see his own hands when he raised them.
No pain this time. No headache. Just cold pressing against his skin and silence pressing against his ears.
He stretched out, feeling the tension melt from his muscles as the fatigue from his concept use dissipated. Though the chill persisted, his focus shifted to the hollow ache in his belly. His hand drifted to his stomach, where it growled audibly, demanding nourishment he couldn't currently provide.
How long since he'd eaten? He didn't know. Time had become meaningless, he crawled out of his shelter and moved to the edge of the cliff.
He needed to reach the water source. The valley ran below—he'd have to climb down, potentially exposing himself to whatever lived in the mist. Better to wait for morning. He turned back toward his shelter and paused.
Lights.
Faint, bluish, scattered across the darkness like stars that had fallen to earth. They dotted the cliff faces in the distance, clustered in areas he couldn't quite make out.
He squinted, trying to understand.
Fire? No, Bioluminescence? No. Something else—steady, cold, emanating from sources he couldn't identify. He climbed onto his shelter's roof. The wood creaked beneath him—a sound that felt like a shout in the silence. The structure groaned but held.
From this higher vantage, the lights became clearer.
The frozen trees.
The ice covering their branches was glowing. Each tree emitted a soft luminescence, barely visible individually but creating a scattered constellation when viewed collectively. That's why his area was so dark—he'd cleared the trees for his shelter, removing the natural light sources.
The wood creaked again.
Bai Zixian froze.
The sound was faint—barely audible, just the natural settling of materials not designed to support this kind of stress. But in the absolute silence of this place, it might as well have been a shout.
He climbed down carefully.
His mind raced. If the trees provided light, he'd removed his only illumination. But that also meant anything hunting by sight would have difficulty finding him in this darkness. He'd traded light for hiding. A fair exchange—if nothing hunted by sound.
He decided to wait until morning. For now—
A roar split the silence.
It wasn't conveyed through sound but weight. Something that bypassed his ears and struck directly at his consciousness, carrying meaning that language couldn't convey.
Hunger.
Killing intent.
The certainty that something out there wanted to consume, to devour, to tear apart anything that moved.
Bai Zixian's breath stopped. His body went rigid. Every instinct screamed at him to stay absolutely still, to become invisible, to erase his presence from the world.
The roar came from deep within the mist valley.
He'd heard it. He'd felt it. And that meant whatever made that sound could perceive things at a distance, it could detect prey through methods beyond normal senses.
The creaking of his shelter? The breaking of trees? His footsteps?
He didn't know what had drawn its attention.
But he knew he wasn't safe.
The roar came again—louder, the intent stronger, more focused. Searching. Hunting. Trying to locate whatever had made the sounds that attracted it.
Bai didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
Don't move. Don't breathe. Don't think.
Minutes passed. Hours. He couldn't tell. Time became meaningless in the darkness, measured only by the intervals between roars that echoed from the mist valley.
Eventually, the sounds faded. The creature had moved deeper, still searching but no longer focused on this immediate area.
Bai remained motionless until the silence had held for what felt like an eternity.
Then, carefully—so carefully—he retreated into his shelter and sat in the darkness.
This was the quietest night he'd ever spent.
And he had the terrible certainty that it was about to become the new normal.