The harsh sun beamed down in fragmented shafts, filtering through dense, bronze-red leaves tangled among patches of stubborn green. The foliage shimmered with damp heat, casting shifting shadows across the almost-slick jungle floor. Among the mulch of decaying vegetation and insect-laced rot, a youth stirred restlessly—tossing, turning, limbs twitching as if resisting sleep itself.
His black hair merged with the decomposing biomass he lay on, indistinct from the jungle detritus. His clothes—formal, clean, and wildly out of place—marked him as foreign, not just to this environment, but perhaps to this very world. A tailored suit, creased and dirtied now, bore an emblem on its breast pocket: a staff with two snakes coiled around it. A small ID badge hung loosely from his neck, the image on it showing a youthful face—well-built for his age, eyes ringed with heavy bags, dark and voided of sleep. His expression was utterly deadpan, almost corpse-like. His name Han Tiānzhì.
Buzzing insects and the occasional scratch of leaves finally roused him. His eyes fluttered open, blank and fogged with confusion. He sat up slowly, groggy, blinking at the surreal green world that greeted him.
He had been walking home from the PC café after school. That much he remembered. So why the hell was he in a jungle?
Standing uneasily, he glanced down at his now-wet, grime-caked Jordan 5s sinking into the soft biological slop of the ground. His nose wrinkled in disgust.
"A jungle? Huh. The hell's goin' on?" he muttered aloud, voice hoarse and cracked. "Shit, I gotta get my priorities straight. I don't wanna starve or freeze to death or... whatever the hell else this place wants to do to me. Shelter. Food. Water. Like... a river or something. Damn it, maybe I should've done cadet camp as a kid."
With a deep breath, he started walking, each step squelching in the silence of the oppressive greenery. The jungle was quiet—too quiet. The kind of silence that felt like it was waiting for something.
Then came the sound. A strange shifting of branches—not like the wind, no. It echoed unnaturally, a subtle distortion that crawled along the back of his skull. The trees parted ahead, not from wind or natural motion, but from something moving through them.
A blur—black, fast, massive.
"Ahh—!" he screamed, stumbling backward just in time. A beast lunged past him, missing by mere inches.
Before him stood a monstrous black panther, its body rippling with muscle, its eyes glowing with an unnatural lavender hue. It towered, unnaturally large—its right paw planted less than a foot from his face.
"Shit—shit—"
He scrambled to his feet, slipping on the wet earth but never stopping. The hot breath of the beast was on his neck, the tremble of its growl vibrating through the trees.
Paws thudded beside him, sometimes appearing in front of him, forcing him to veer left and right. He didn't dare look back.
Run.
Run.
Run.
Hours passed—or at least they felt like it. The light dimmed as the sun shifted behind the canopy, and his legs finally gave out. He collapsed, lungs burning, heart pounding like a war drum.
The panther stood before him once more, its lip curled into a snarl, nose wrinkled in primal aggression.
"I'm done for," the boy gasped, wheezing. "Damn it... I haven't even had my first kiss yet. That's not fair—"
The panther lunged.
But its fangs didn't meet flesh. Instead, something intercepted it mid-pounce: a long, sinuous body covered in black and green scales. A snake—massive, awakened by the noise—sank its fangs into the panther's shoulder with a hiss that sliced the air.
HISSSS.
The jungle exploded into violence. The snake coiled, tightening around the beast as the panther swiped furiously, claws slashing at scale and muscle. Poison met fury in a desperate clash of predators.
The boy took the moment to crawl backward, inch by inch, then broke into a weak run. His eyes spotted salvation—a small cave nestled inside raised land across a shallow riverbed. On the rise, an impossibly large tree loomed, like something pulled from myth.
Behind him, the battle raged. But the panther's glowing eyes locked onto him again. Despite its injuries, despite the snake now nearly crushing its ribs, it surged forward—rage or something stranger driving it. It lunged with maddened strength—
And collapsed mid-leap. Its massive frame hit the ground with a dull, final thud. The snake unraveled, bloodied but alive, slithering toward the boy in eerie silence.
"What the hell, man? Couldn't you two have just killed each other?" the youth muttered.
As if on cue, the dying panther lifted its head one last time, jaws trembling—and in a final act of feral spite, bit down on the snake's skull, crushing it with a wet crunch.
"…Huh?"