The Tortura chieftain welcomed Team Nemean to stay for the night. It wasn't because he was being polite, though.
"The night in Croak Wood is not safe," he said through broken trade speech and what Alex managed to piece together. Then his voice lowered, and even the younger Tortura nearby seemed to listen more carefully. "Werdigo walks when dark is deep."
That name landed wrong the moment it was spoken.
The chieftain explained only what mattered. In Tortura history, the Werdigo was a supernatural undead predator. Not merely dangerous... Invincible. Brave warriors had gone after it. Strong warriors had challenged it. None lasted long after answering its whisper in the Croak Wood.
Not one of them liked what they heard.
The Tortura prepared a tent for Team Nemean anyway, larger than the others and set close enough to the central fire that it still counted as being under village protection. But the warnings did not stop.
"Do not answer the wood," one of the older archers told them.
"Any voice?" Janet asked.
"Any voice," the Tortura confirmed.
"Even if it sounds human?" Joanne asked.
The archer looked at her flatly. "Especially then."
Then came the next rule. "The fire in your tent must not go out."
Dominic pinched the bridge of his nose. "Of course."
The Tortura continued like this was all perfectly ordinary. "And if shadow claws start coming into the tent, use laurel leaves. Sprinkle water at the entrance."
Jake blinked. "Shadow claws."
"Yes."
"Like that's a normal sentence."
The Tortura did not care for his sarcasm. "It is here."
That shut him up.
By the time the villagers left them alone, Team Nemean stood inside the tent surrounded by bedrolls, travel gear, a small fire basin, a pouch of laurel leaves, and the growing realization that they had somehow wandered into a full rule-horror forest.
Dominic looked at the fire, then at the leaves, then at the closed tent flap. "I did not sign up for r/nosleep dungeon rules."
Joanne pointed at him. "That is exactly what this is."
Alex, kneeling by the fire basin, murmured more to herself than to anyone else, "Werdigo."
Emma looked over. "What."
Alex frowned. "It sounds like two things got shoved together. Wendigo from Indigenous American folklore. And wer. As in old Germanic roots."
Jake stared at her. "That is not making me feel better."
"It shouldn't," Emma said.
None of them had an answer for why the name felt borrowed from two human traditions at once. The dungeon did not bother explaining itself. So they settled in as best they could.
And then they learned why the Tortura called it Croak Wood.
It started slowly. A creak. Then another. Then, all around the camp, the giant trees began to move. Not like treants, though. That was the first bad part. Treants were slow, rooted, thoughtful. Their movements had intention that still felt plant-like, old and deliberate.
Croak Wood was different. The giant trunks twisted. The bark flexed. The roots tore half loose from the ground and dragged themselves a little, then settled, then shifted again. Great masses of wood slithered across the forest floor with an ugly, half-snake motion that no tree should ever have. Their branches bent and writhed overhead while the trunks creaked and croaked so loudly it echoed across the whole forest like giant wooden throats clearing themselves all night.
Jack checked one through the system once and made a face.
"Category," he muttered, "just says tree."
Not monster. Not beast, either. Not even treant. Tree.
The same kind of dead, simple category the system gave rocks, consumables, and things that should not get up and crawl around after midnight. That somehow made it worse.
Even stranger, the trees the Tortura used in their village did not join the movement. The living timber worked into platforms, towers, and homes stayed still and upright, anchored in quiet while the rest of the Croak Wood slithered and croaked around them.
At first, the sight held everyone's attention. It was bizarre enough to be almost impressive. That did not last long. After an hour, it became annoying. After two, it became miserable.
The croaking. The creaking. The constant shifting of impossible trees outside the tent. Every time someone almost drifted off, another long wooden groan would scrape through the dark and ruin it. By three in the morning, Team Nemean had barely slept at all.
Jake lay flat on his back staring at the tent roof with the dead eyes of a man personally betrayed by forest acoustics. Joanne had given up pretending comfort existed. Dominic was still awake because someone had to be. Emma rested with the discipline of someone used to making peace with bad conditions. Janet stayed close to Dominic. Jack and the French girls had at least managed something like a half-doze in turns.
Alex nearly slipped under. That was what made it dangerous. The fire in the basin burned low but steady. Her eyes had just fallen shut for a second when she heard it.
"Alex."
Phong's voice, warm and gentle.
Exactly the way he always said her name when they were alone and he wanted her attention without dragging her too hard out of her thoughts. Her whole body almost answered on instinct.
Almost!
The rational part of her mind slammed awake first. Because Phong was not here. Phong was on another floor. And the Tortura had warned them. Do not answer the wood. Any voice. Especially a human one.
Cold went through Alex all at once. Her eyes snapped open. For one terrible moment she could still hear the echo of his voice in the dark outside the tent, soft and patient and close enough to sound like he was just beyond the flap.
She stood so fast it startled everyone.
Dominic was already halfway upright. "What?"
Alex did not waste time explaining in pieces.
"Up," she said sharply. "Everyone. Now."
Jake jerked awake with a curse. Joanne rolled over and sat up at once. Emma's eyes opened immediately, too trained to question tone before moving. Janet's hand was already on her weapon. Jack and the French girls came awake hard and fast the moment they heard the fear Alex could not quite hide.
Dominic rose fully. "What happened?"
Alex looked toward the tent entrance, jaw tight. "I heard Phong."
That silenced the tent. Every bit of drowsiness vanished. Because now all of them were awake enough to understand exactly why that was a problem.
The rest of the night turned into a test of every single warning the Tortura had given them.
No one in the tent said it out loud. They did not need to. The moment Alex said she had heard Phong's voice outside, everyone understood that this was no longer a strange night in a strange forest. This was now a rule-horror situation in full.
Dominic was the first to move. He grabbed the laurel leaves and shoved half the pouch toward Emma. Jake and Jack shifted closer to the fire basin at once. Joanne and Janet took the rear of the tent, watching the canvas walls as if expecting something to push through at any second. Séline and Camille moved nearer to Alex and Dominic, ready to react if the thing outside tried to force its way in.
For a few breaths, nothing happened. Then the first rule came for them.
A loud, unnatural wind howled right outside the tent flap.
Not through the trees. Not across the camp. Right outside the flap, like some giant mouth had lowered itself there and blown.
The tent walls snapped inward. The fire basin guttered so hard that for one sick second the flame shrank to a weak orange thread.
"Shit," Jake snapped.
He and Jack were already on it. Jake grabbed spare kindling while Jack shielded the basin with both hands and his body. Jake struck flame. Jack fed it. Together they forced the fire back into a strong, steady burn before it could die out completely.
The moment the flame rose again, the howling wind cut off.
Cut off, like something outside had gotten annoyed and stopped trying.
Nobody relaxed. Because then the second rule came.
At first, it looked like the shadows near the tent entrance had simply thickened. Then they moved.
Claws.
Long, thin, shadowy claws crawled under the flap and along the ground like black fingers feeling for warmth. They dragged themselves closer and closer toward the nearest living bodies, slow and deliberate, each one ending in a hook-like point that looked too sharp and too eager.
Joanne lifted her hand.
Emma grabbed her wrist at once. "No."
Right. The rule.
Emma dropped to one knee, snatched up the water bowl the Tortura had left for them, dipped the laurel leaves into it, and sprinkled the entrance with quick, sharp flicks of her hand.
The reaction was instant. The shadow claws recoiled like worms touched by salt. They pulled back in ugly jerks, scraping across the ground before vanishing under the flap into the dark outside.
Jake stared at the entrance. "I officially hate this forest."
"No argument," Janet muttered.
Alex and Dominic exchanged one look. Then both of them reached for the roasted dungeon-grown sweet potatoes they had packed from camp stores.
The crop had a use they did not break out often, but tonight was worth it. Both ate quickly, chewing through the sweet, dense flesh while the others kept watch. A few breaths later, the enhancement hit. Their senses sharpened. Not just sight. Hearing too. Smell. Awareness.
The darkness outside the tent shifted.
Or rather, they could finally start peeling it apart.
What had looked like a solid wall of black now showed layers. Veils. Thin curtains of shadow hanging over the camp like damp cloth. Through those layers, Alex and Dominic could see farther than normal, deeper than human eyes should manage in a night like this. And what they saw was bizarre enough to make both of them go still.
Shapes were moving through Croak Wood. Humanoid shapes. But wrong ones.
A whole march of them passed between the slithering trees, long-limbed and uneven, their bodies looking vaguely like Tortura stripped of everything that made Tortura what they were. No shells. No sturdy dignity. Just hollow, elongated husks with stretched limbs and thin necks, shambling through the woods in silence. In the dark, they looked like the remains of Tortura after something had peeled their history and their bodies apart.
Dominic's throat tightened. "What the hell…"
And above them floated something even worse.
At first glance, it looked almost human. A person, maybe.
Thin. Messy-haired. Bloodshot eyes. Rabid-looking in that filthy, sleep-deprived way some people got after a week without rest. But the wrongness showed itself fast.
First, in how it carried itself. The thing held both of its ears shut with its hands. At the same time, it had lifted both feet unnaturally high, thumbs from its feet shoved into its own nostrils as if plugging them too. The pose should have been impossible. Ridiculous. But the creature hovered above the shell-less Tortura with calm ease, doing it like it had all the time in the world.
Second, it was hovering. Not standing on branch or wood. Hanging there above the procession.
Alex felt the chill reach her spine before she even realized she was using Appraisal.
The system flickered. Then it returned a result.
Name: cà rồng
Race: "human"
Alex's breath caught.
Not human.
"Human."
Including the quotation marks. That hit her harder than the creature's face did.
For one heartbeat, she forgot the tent, the fire, the rules, everything. Her mind snagged on that one impossible detail. The system was either mocking the idea of humanity or trying to tell her that whatever this thing was, it wore the label wrong.
The creature turned its head. Straight toward her. As if it had felt the appraisal. As if it had noticed her looking past the shadow veil. Then it smiled.
Its mouth cracked open too wide, revealing tusks the size of ripe bananas.