A lair.
He edged deeper, careful not to step on bone that might snap.
The cave narrowed. The ceiling dipped. His breath came louder in his own ears.
He reached what felt like the end.
A wall of stone. Damp and cold.
Nothing.
Edrin blinked, confused, and the confusion was the most dangerous thing of all.
"Huh," he whispered. "Where is the beast?"
He listened. Heard only drip… drip… drip, somewhere deeper in the rock.
"Don't tell me it isn't here," he muttered. "Damn."
He turned his head, scanning, his mind already jumping to the next step.
Okay, if it's not here, it has to be hunting. That means the village--
"Where am I gonna find it--"
He did not finish.
Because Awareness screamed.
Not in words. In sensation. In the same way your body knew when a blow was coming even before your mind caught up.
A rush of air behind him.
A shift of shadow.
Then weight.
The direwolf hit him like a falling boulder.
It did not roar. It did not snarl with drama. It simply was, and then teeth found his neck.
Pain exploded.
Not a cut. Not a slash.
Crushing, tearing, absolute.
Edrin tried to scream and found only wet choking. His hands clawed at fur, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on hide thick as boiled leather.
He tried to twist. Tried to get the knife up.
Too slow.
Too small.
The wolf shook once, as if it were shaking a rabbit to break its neck.
Something inside him tore.
The world narrowed to a tunnel of white pain.
He thought, absurdly, of the last thought he'd had before dying the first time.
Not like this.
Then there was no thought at all.
Only dark.
…
…
…
"Fuck."
The word came out as a rasp, half-breath, half-sob.
Edrin jerked upright on his pallet, hands going to his throat.
Whole.
No blood. No torn flesh. No warm spill of life leaving him.
Just cold skin and a heart hammering like it wanted to break through his ribs.
He sat there, shaking.
The hut was the hut. The fire hissed. The wind worried the walls.
He stared at the darkness for a long time, breathing through his nose like a man trying not to vomit.
"Dying is not as easy as dying and boom...return," he whispered hoarsely.
His throat felt raw anyway, as if memory had teeth.
He swallowed, and that motion alone made him flinch.
It had been nightmarish.
It had been… instructive.
He had learned one thing: the wolf was not a mindless beast. It had waited. It had circled. It had attacked from behind in its own den like it understood advantage.
He pressed his palms to his eyes until sparks danced.
Then--
DING.
The chime snapped cleanly through his skull, crisp as a blade drawn.
[ GAINED: AGILITY +2 ]
Edrin blinked hard.
Two.
Not three like the first time, but still real.
He exhaled, trembling.
Then...
[ GAINED: MEMORIES OF DIREWOLF ]
His breath caught.
"What--" he began, and then his head split open.
Not literally. It only felt like it.
Images flooded him.
Cold milk-scent and dark fur.
A den full of siblings, bodies pressed together for warmth.
Hunger. Always hunger. A gnawing that was not a feeling but a law.
The forest from low, fast eyes. The world as scent. Blood trails like bright ribbons in the air. Fear-smells. Human-smells.
A man's smoke.
A child's urine.
His own scent, bastard boy, thin and hungry.
Then the kill.
Not as he had lived it, but as the wolf had.
The boy in the snow. The awkward posture. The easy throat.
No malice.
Only certainty.
Then, older memories.
Running through the Gift. Following paths humans never took. A hidden hollow where the snow drifted shallow and deer gathered. A stream that did not freeze even in the worst cold because something warm bled up from stone. A ridge where dark rock broke through and iron smell lingered.
Places.
Resources.
The wolf had a map of the land in its bones.
And then something stranger.
A memory like a shadow passing over the forest.
A vast shape blotting the sun.
Wind that was not wind.
A scream that vibrated through the air and made every beast flatten itself to earth.
Wings.
Scaled belly, pale as moonlight.
A dragon.
Edrin's hands clenched so hard his nails bit through cloth.
He sucked in breath like he was drowning.
"Holy--" he started, then stopped, because the hut was not a place for holy.
He laughed once, sharp and disbelieving.
"A fucking dragon," he whispered.
His head pounded. The direwolf's life sat behind his eyes now like a second skull.
He waited for it to fade.
It did not.
It settled.
Edrin stared at the embers and tried to think.
The rewards were… less than the first death. Maybe because the death had been "smaller." Maybe because the system judged it differently. Or maybe it simply did not hand out gifts with a steady measure.
But the memory,
The memory was valuable.