Adrian didn't move for a while.
The forest had gone quiet again. Too quiet. It was the kind of silence that didn't feel empty—it felt like it was waiting.
His breathing was slow. Too steady. That was the first thing he noticed.
The second was the pain.
It came late, like a delayed signal. A sharp, burning line across his shoulder where the creature had torn into him. His shirt was soaked, warm and sticky against his skin.
He looked down. Blood. A lot of it.
He should have panicked. He should have felt his stomach turn.
He didn't.
Adrian frowned slightly, pressing his hand against the wound. His fingers came away dark and wet.
"That's… bad," he muttered.
The words sounded hollow. Detached. Like he was describing a smudge on a window rather than a hole in his own body.
His heartbeat thudded in his chest—slow, heavy, deliberate. It wasn't racing. It wasn't desperate.
Everything about this was wrong.
He exhaled and forced himself to move. Standing still felt dangerous—not because he knew something was coming, but because it felt like the forest was listening to his stillness.
He started walking.
Each step sent a dull pulse through his shoulder, but the agony didn't slow him down. It was just information. Data received, but ignored.
The trees were too tall. Their trunks stretched upward, disappearing into a canopy that swallowed the starlight. What little light remained painted the world in faint, broken patterns.
Adrian kept moving.
Water first. People… later.
The thought was a script. Simple. No hesitation. No second-guessing.
He stopped suddenly.
That wasn't normal. He should care about finding help. He should want a doctor, a light, a voice.
But the idea of seeing another human didn't bring relief. It felt... unnecessary.
A faint tension settled in his chest. Not fear. Something colder.
"…What is wrong with me?"
The question lingered in the air, unanswered.
A sound echoed in the distance. Metal. A faint scraping noise, like something heavy dragging against stone.
Adrian's head snapped toward it. Too fast. His body was reacting before his thoughts could even finish forming.
He stilled. Listening.
Nothing.
Then—again. Faint. Unnatural.
He changed direction without a second thought.
The deeper he went, the stranger the forest became. It wasn't just silent. The place itself felt… off.
The air felt heavy in spots, thin in others. Shadows didn't quite line up with the shapes that cast them.
Once, he saw a movement between the trees. Not an animal. Something too tall. Too thin.
When he looked directly at it—it was gone.
Adrian didn't stop, but his fingers tightened into a fist.
The smell reached him first. Iron. Old. Dry.
Blood.
He slowed. Ahead, the trees began to thin into a clearing.
Something was there. A shape. Angular and sharp. It didn't belong in a forest.
Adrian stepped closer, cautious now.
It was a camp. Or what was left of one.
A broken fire pit sat in the center, its stones scattered like teeth. A collapsed tent leaned to one side, torn open from the top down.
No fire. No light. No movement.
Adrian stepped into the clearing. The ground was disturbed—scuffed, dragged, messy.
He crouched, ignoring the pull in his shoulder. Dark stains marked the dirt. Not fresh, but not old enough to ignore.
There had been more than one person here.
He straightened slowly, his eyes scanning the tree line.
"Hello?" he called out.
His voice didn't travel far. The forest swallowed it instantly, like it was never spoken.
No response.
Near the edge of the clearing, he saw a shape. He approached it.
A body. Face down.
The clothes were shredded. The back was ripped open in long, uneven lines. These weren't clean cuts; they were tears. Like something had been pulled out from the inside.
Adrian stared at it. He waited for the shock. He waited for the disgust.
Nothing came.
"…I should feel something," he said quietly.
The fact that he didn't bothered him more than the corpse did.
A faint pressure stirred in his chest again. Cold. Subtle. Like something was brushing against the inside of his ribs.
Adrian's gaze shifted.
There—for just a second—thin lines flickered in the air above the corpse. Faint. Unstable.
He blinked, and they were gone.
The wind moved, but it felt targeted. Adrian straightened his back.
The clearing had gone quiet again. But it wasn't empty.
He felt it before he saw it. A presence. Not in front of him, not behind him.
Everywhere.
The hairs on the back of his neck didn't rise. They should have. Instead, his body went stone-still.
Focused. Cold.
His breathing slowed to a near-stop.
A shift in the shadows. A step. Adrian turned his head.
Then, he saw it.
Between two jagged trunks, a silhouette stood. It was human-shaped, but the proportions were skewed—limbs just a few inches too long, shoulders unnaturally sharp.
It didn't move like a person. When it tilted its head, it was a sudden, frame-by-frame snap.
No fluid motion. Just a series of static poses that looked like a glitch in reality.
It didn't step into the light. It didn't speak.
But as Adrian stared, the silhouette's shadow did something impossible. The light was coming from the stars above, but the shadow on the ground stretched toward Adrian, crawling across the dirt against the direction of the light.
The pressure in Adrian's chest spiked.
Something inside him reached out—not a hand, but a pulse of that same white, cold energy.
The silhouette flinched. Its static form flickered, turning transparent for a microsecond before snapping back into focus.
Adrian's eyes narrowed. He felt a jolt of recognition.
Not of the figure's face—but of the feeling.
The same wrongness. The same pressure he had felt in the void. Something inside him stirred in response.
Something cold. Something hungry.
The figure tilted its head again—a full 90-degree snap.
Then, it stepped back. Its form didn't fade; it simply ceased to be there, as if someone had erased it from the frame.
The clearing returned to silence.
Adrian stood there for a long time. Waiting. Nothing came back.
He exhaled slowly. "…Great."
Meaningless. Flat.
He looked at his hand. The faint white lines beneath his skin flickered once, then faded into his flesh.
He clenched his fist.
Something was wrong. Not just with this world. With him.
And whatever had been watching him just now—it knew exactly what he was.
"…I'm not the only one," he thought.
The realization settled in his mind, heavy and quiet.
For the first time since waking up, something close to unease crept in.
Not fear. Not yet.
But something that might become it—if there was still enough of him left to call it fear.
He wasn't sure there was.