I was watching a monster devour a man as if it were as normal as breakfast. I don't know why I wasn't in shock—was that normal? That thought sent chills down my spine.
"Hey big guy, do you know where the exit is?"
The beast turned its head; its eyes were yellow with no pupils, its forearms were wider than my head, and it had a digitigrade build like a dog's, but what surprised me most was that aside from the parts I just mentioned, the rest of its body was human.
"Are you going to keep staring? What? Want some?"
The beast replied, holding out a limb it had been eating, dripping into the pool of blood.
—The young man looked at his reflection in the dark blood on the floor, seeing a stranger. His black hair, a shaggy mop of wild, unkempt waves, hid part of a face that betrayed his roots: the warm skin of the South blended with the sharp features of the East. He was a young man, but his chiseled jawline and his six feet seven inches of pure, functional muscle dictated an absolute truth: he was a hunter. His body, forged on hunting trips with his father no doubt, was ready for violence, though his gaze still held the emptiness of lost memories—.
"I just came out of a cell where I had to eat insects to stay conscious; I don't think raw meat is the best food right now."
And above all, I'm not crazy enough to eat human flesh.
"You're missing out. Do you know where we are?"
"That's what I was going to ask you. I was locked in a cell for a whole day. Do you know how we ended up here? My head hurts when I try to remember."
"You're not the only one in that situation. We had the same problem when we woke up."
"We did?"
The beast sighed at my question, rising with his rotting arm draped over his shoulder and blood dripping from his mouth. It was a terrifying sight, and his height only amplified that terror.
I walked toward the door of one of the cells.
"I wasn't the only one here."
I approached out of curiosity—how foolish of me. What was I thinking? It was only logical what I was about to see… corpses, though they didn't look like it. I approached their bodies—two boys and a girl. I touched them to be sure, and they were well and truly dead; they had no pulse.
"Why are there no signs of decay?"
I whispered, thinking I was just talking to myself, which made his answer surprise me even more.
"It's because of the malice."
"What did you say?"
"You used it to destroy the wall, absorbing life, didn't you?"
Each of his deductions only made me realize that the one standing before me wasn't just a simple beast and that he was far more dangerous than I'd thought. An intelligent man is more dangerous than a mindless beast—that's what my grandfather always told me.
"I see. Microbes can't find nutrients in these corpses; they're like plastic."
I left that prison; having him behind me was stressing me out.
"Are you planning to leave?"
A question that seemed silly to me at first—who in their right mind would stay by the side of a guy who's feasting on human flesh?
But it also reminded me of what my father always told me: "Don't hunt if you're not ready to be hunted. In a strange land, excessive caution is the only safety."
"I'll take some time. You don't seem ready to leave either."
I needed to investigate the curse before leaving, because if there were at least six of us here, it was highly unlikely we'd be the only ones out there.