The candle sputtered like it didn't want to be here.
Old Gared hunched over the summoning circle, his gnarled hands tracing the outer ring with a trembling fingertip. He'd carved it into the stone floor years ago, but every year the lines had to be re-etched, every year the runes re-inked with fresh blood. The chalk dust clung to his knuckles like frost, pale against the liver spots and veins that rose like tree roots beneath his skin.
He coughed once—dry, sharp, painful—and the sound echoed in the chamber far too long. The room was old stone, the walls lined with shelves sagging under the weight of jars, scrolls, and relics. It smelled of ash, damp paper, and something faintly metallic.
The faint hum in the air was not the wind.
Outside, beyond the tower's thick walls, the Forest pressed in. Gared could feel it even here, a presence at the edges of his mind. The cursed treeline was a black wall on the horizon, its skeletal branches stretching toward the sky like the fingers of a drowning man. Every year it came closer. Every year the ground beyond its border withered, animals vanished, and villages fell silent.
It was patient, the Forest. Patient enough to wait him out.
Gared ground his teeth as he worked the ritual. "Not yet," he muttered under his breath, words half prayer, half defiance. "You'll not take it all. Not while I still breathe."
He had been the Summoner for forty-eight years. Not by choice, never by choice—when the last Summoner fell, the curse had marked him as the next to bear it. And so, for nearly half a century, he had done the same thing every year: prepare the circle, chant the words, spill the blood, call for aid.
Every year, no one came.
The runes glowed faintly as he finished the outer ring. The light was weak this time, as if even the magic was tired of trying. Gared pushed himself upright, his knees screaming in protest, and shuffled toward the altar. There, laid out with reverent precision, were the last of his summoning reagents: a silver bowl, a vial of crimson ink, a shard of obsidian, and a small dagger whose blade was worn to a ghost of its original edge.
He lifted the dagger first, cradling it in both hands like an old friend. "One more time," he whispered, more to himself than the empty room. "Just one more."
The words of the summoning were etched into his memory—not from a scroll, but from the endless repetition that had ground them into the marrow of his bones. He began to speak them now, the syllables older than the kingdom itself, older even than the curse that hunted them. His voice rasped in the air like dry parchment tearing, but the magic stirred. The hum grew louder.
As the chant deepened, he drew the blade across his palm. The pain barely registered. The blood was thin, watery, and slow to fall, but it fell, drop by drop, into the silver bowl. Each drop hissed faintly as it struck, releasing a wisp of shadowed steam.
The obsidian shard went next, dropped into the bowl with a muted clink. The crimson ink followed, swirling through the blood in a pattern that pulsed faintly with life of its own. The air grew heavier, charged, as if the chamber was sinking deeper into the earth.
Gared closed his eyes and placed his hands over the bowl. The runes on the floor flared a little brighter. He pictured them as they had been in the old records: white-hot, blinding, the kind of light that could cut through the blackest night. Now, the glow was just enough to cast his shadow on the wall.
He spoke the final invocation, each word burning his throat.
"From beyond the veil… from the farthest flame… hear the call… and come."
Silence.
The blood in the bowl quivered, a faint ripple disturbing the surface, as though something far away had noticed. The runes flickered like dying embers.
And then… nothing.
Just like every year.
Gared let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. "Of course." He put the dagger down, the blade clinking on the altar. His hand left a faint smear of blood on the stone.
The ritual was meant to summon a champion—someone from another world, untainted by the curse, to fight back the Forest's spread. The old books spoke of heroes arriving in shining armor, or wielding strange weapons, or with powers beyond comprehension. But that was centuries ago.
Now, the ritual was just an echo, bouncing off the walls of a dying world.
He had tried everything—changing the reagents, altering the chants, moving the circle to different sacred sites. He'd even tried doubling the blood offering, though that had nearly killed him. The result was always the same: the Forest came closer, and the summoning brought no one.
He stood there for a long moment, listening to the hum fade away until the room was just stone and dust again.
Outside, a wind picked up. It carried with it a faint whisper, not in words, but in intent: I am coming.
The old man shivered, though the chamber was warm.
He wiped the bowl clean, his movements slow but deliberate. Even now, even with failure settled like lead in his chest, he was careful with the tools. They had outlived every Summoner before him, and they would outlive him. That was the way of things.
He left the circle as it was—what was the point in wiping it away now?—and shuffled toward the small door at the far end of the room. His bedchamber was little more than a cot, a table, and a chair. A single window looked out toward the horizon. In the distance, barely visible in the moonlight, the treeline stood. It was closer than last year.
He sat on the cot, feeling the ache in his bones ease slightly under the thin blanket. The silence was heavy, but not unfamiliar.
His hand lingered on the dagger for a moment before setting it aside.
Gared lay back, staring at the wooden ceiling. He thought of the years he had spent trying to keep the curse at bay, of the friends and family buried long ago, of the towns swallowed whole by the black roots.
"Let it be someone else's burden now," he murmured, eyes closing. "I've done what I could."
For the first time in decades, he felt no pull to get up. No lists to check. No reagents to gather. Just… rest.
And so, the last Summoner exhaled slowly, and did not breathe again.
Hours passed.
The Forest did not wait.
In the circle room, the runes pulsed faintly. A sound like rushing water filled the air, though no water was near. The blood in the bowl—untouched since the ritual—began to swirl again. The glow spread outward, tracing the runes with sudden urgency, as though something had finally heard the call… only too late for the caller.
The air shimmered, and with a sound like a cracking bone, something appeared in the center of the circle.
It was not a knight in shining armor.
It was not a sorcerer wreathed in flame.
It was a young man, sprawled on the cold stone floor, wearing clothes from another world entirely—scuffed sneakers, a hooded sweatshirt, and jeans.
He groaned, rolling onto his side, eyes blinking against the dim light. "What… the hell?"
The smell of dust and iron hit him first. Then, the faint hum in the air. He sat up slowly, clutching his head. The stone beneath him was warm, and when he looked down, he saw the faint glow of the runes fading even as he stared.
"Where…?" His voice cracked. The last thing he remembered—what was the last thing he remembered? His mind was foggy, like he'd woken from a dream he couldn't quite catch.
The room was silent. No sign of anyone else. The only light came from a single candle on the altar, burning low.
He staggered to his feet, unsteady, and looked around. Shelves of strange jars and scrolls. A silver bowl still slick with something dark. Symbols carved into the stone that made his eyes ache to look at.
"Okay," he muttered to himself. "This is… not home."
The wind outside howled faintly, and in it—though he didn't realize it yet—was the same intent that had whispered to Gared.
I am coming.
...
The wind outside the tower was colder than he expected.
It wasn't the kind of cold that nipped your skin — it was the kind that slid under it, as if it was already inside you and had just been waiting to be noticed. The moment he stepped out through the warped wooden door, the air smelled different too: damp earth, rotting leaves, and something sharp and metallic at the edge of his senses.
The tower stood on the edge of a clearing. Beyond that, trees — endless, ancient, wrong. The bark was too dark, almost black, and the branches curled like they were reaching for something just out of sight. The leaves overhead shivered, but there was no breeze to move them.
He hugged his arms around himself, trying to ignore the way the treeline seemed to… lean closer when he wasn't looking directly at it.
"Okay. Great. Woods. Creepy as hell. Ten out of ten first impression," he muttered. His voice sounded small out here.
The ground was soft underfoot, the grass a faded brown-green that crunched faintly when stepped on. Each breath made a faint mist in the air. He had no plan except find people, find shelter, but after circling the tower twice, he realized the forest was his only direction.
He stepped in.
The sound changed immediately. In the clearing, the wind had been constant, carrying distant rustles and the occasional low groan of wood. In here, everything was muffled. His own footsteps sounded too loud, like he was trespassing somewhere he shouldn't.
Something about the trees… they weren't spaced right. Natural woods had chaos — gaps, undergrowth, fallen logs. Here, they formed rough, arching corridors, as though grown deliberately. He kept moving, trying to pick a direction and stick to it, but the longer he walked, the more he felt like the path was guiding him rather than the other way around.
Minutes passed. Or hours. Time was slippery here.
Then — light.
At first it was faint, a warm glimmer somewhere ahead, like the glow from a lantern through fog. His chest loosened just seeing it. Warmth meant people. People meant answers.
He picked up the pace, weaving through the trunks until the light began to sharpen — less yellow now, more pure white with a faint golden hue. And it wasn't flickering like a fire. It was steady. Solid.
The ground under his feet shifted from soft earth to scattered stones, then to a flat, ancient-looking path of worn flagstones. Moss clung to the cracks. The light grew brighter.
A few more steps and the forest opened up.
He froze.
Ahead of him, in the center of a circular clearing, stood the remains of a stone structure. Half the walls were gone, collapsed inward or swallowed by creeping vines. What was left rose in jagged, skeletal shapes, the once-smooth marble now cracked and worn. Despite its ruin, there was a strange symmetry to it — as if it had once been a temple or shrine.
And in the heart of the ruins, standing among the broken stones, was the light.
It wasn't a torch, or a lantern, or even a magical flame. It was a single chunk of rock, no larger than a football, resting in a shallow stone basin. The rock itself was rough and pitted, unremarkable in shape, but it shone with a radiance that was both blinding and… gentle. The glow reached every corner of the clearing, painting the moss and stone in hues of gold and ivory.
He stepped forward without thinking.
CHIME.
The sound came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Clear, crystalline, like a single note struck on a perfect bell. He flinched.
Before his eyes, faint golden text shimmered into existence, hanging in the air just above the basin:
[Ruins of the Holy Light]
He stared. "The… what?" The words hung there, untouched by wind or gravity. He reached up instinctively — his fingers passed right through them, the letters scattering into ripples before reforming.
The chime faded, but the words remained.
"…Okay," he muttered to himself, "either this is a dream, or I'm inside some really immersive video game. Or I'm dead. Possibly dead." He looked at the rock again, blinking against its glow. No wires. No flames. No fuel. And stranger still — no heat. He stepped closer, holding a hand out toward it.
Nothing. No warmth, no chill. Just light.
"Alright, magic rock," he said under his breath. "How're you doing this?"
He circled the basin. The surrounding stones were etched with faint carvings, though centuries of wear and moss had eaten away most of the detail. The ones he could still see were strange symbols — some spirals, some jagged strokes, some that almost looked like letters, but none he recognized.
He crouched, peering closer at the rock. The light didn't just radiate outward — it seemed to spill through the cracks and pits on its surface, as though the glow was coming from deep inside.
Which made no sense. None of this made sense.
He reached out again, this time touching the stone.
The instant his fingers brushed its surface, a pulse of light flashed outward. It wasn't blinding, but it hit — a gentle, almost warm pressure that passed straight through his chest. The hair on his arms rose.
A second chime rang out, softer than the first, and for just a heartbeat, the forest seemed… quieter. Like something was listening.
The words above the basin shifted.
[Holy Light: Dormant]
Purity: 23%
Corruption Threshold: Approaching
He stumbled back, blinking hard. "What the hell does that mean?"
The text lingered for a few seconds before fading, leaving only the original name hovering above.
"Okay… so… not just a magic rock. A magic rock with a UI. Great. Totally normal day."
He glanced back toward the forest. The treeline here seemed farther away, as if the ruins themselves pushed it back. Even so, some of the nearest trees had black, twisting growths creeping up their trunks — the same kind he'd glimpsed on the ones near the tower. They stopped a few meters short of the clearing, their progress arrested at some invisible boundary.
His brain started connecting dots.
"'Corruption threshold'… So, the curse or whatever's eating this forest… this thing's stopping it? Or… slowing it?"
If that was true, then what happened when that purity number hit zero? He looked back at the rock, imagining the clearing swallowed by those black, grasping roots.
A shiver ran through him.
He sat down on one of the fallen stones, rubbing his temples. "Alright, let's list what I know so far," he muttered. "One: I woke up in a creepy tower. Two: giant cursed forest. Three: shiny magic rock in ruins. Four: apparently this is called the Ruins of the Holy Light. Five: I have no idea how to get home, if that's even possible."
The silence pressed in again. The light didn't flicker.
He looked around the ruins more carefully now. There were remnants of doorways, their arches half-broken. A collapsed pillar lay in the grass, its carvings more intact than most. They depicted figures — tall, robed, holding staffs or blades — standing in a circle around a central shape. The central shape was nothing more than a crude outline now, but it looked suspiciously like the rock in the basin.
Once, this place had been important. Sacred, maybe. Now, it was just… forgotten.
And yet, here it was, still glowing.
He stood again, pacing slowly. "Okay… either I camp here, or I keep moving." The idea of staying under the rock's light was tempting. It felt safe here. But safety without food or water was just a slower kind of death.
His stomach growled, confirming the point.
He took one last look at the rock. The glow reflected faintly in his eyes. "Alright, magic rock," he said quietly. "You stay shiny. I'll… I don't know… come back, I guess?"
The light from the Ruins faded behind him as he stepped back into the forest.
It was like walking from a sunny room into an old basement — the air turned heavier, and the shadows clung to the edges of his vision. Every instinct told him to turn back. But instinct didn't fill your stomach.
He took a deep breath. "Alright… survival mode. Step one: Don't die."
The words sounded braver than he felt.
He tried to remember every half-forgotten lesson from documentaries, school trips, and that one time he'd gone camping and ended up sleeping in a car because the tent collapsed. You can do this, he told himself. It's just… sticks, stones, fire, food. Easy. Textbook.
He mentally outlined the plan:
Step 1: Collect sticks.
Step 2: Collect stones.
Step 3: Make campfire with sticks and stones.
Step 4: Find something edible — apples, berries, rabbits.
Step 5: Hunt rabbit or eat apple… or both.
Simple. Foolproof. He'd be feasting in no time. Probably.
Step 1: Collect Sticks
Turns out, sticks were easy. The forest floor was littered with them, brittle twigs snapping underfoot like he was walking on old pretzel crumbs. He gathered armfuls, trying to avoid the ones that felt damp.
Some were gnarled and blackened, and he hesitated before picking them up. The darkened ones had strange patterns, like veins running through the wood — too much like the roots he'd seen near the Ruins. He dropped those immediately.
"Rule one," he muttered. "Don't pick up anything that looks like it might be cursed. Which is… pretty much everything here."
By the time he had a decent bundle of sticks, his arms ached and his shirt was dotted with bits of bark.
Step 2: Collect Stones
Easier said than done.
The forest floor was soft, covered in moss and loam, and most rocks were either half-buried or fused into the ground like they'd been there for centuries. After ten minutes of grunting and digging, he managed to pry up a few fist-sized stones, the kind you could bash together without them crumbling.
One, oddly smooth and rounded, fit perfectly in his palm.
He gave it a few experimental tosses. "Yeah. You'll do."
Step 3: The Fire Problem
He made a small circle with the stones, arranging them just like he remembered from every camping movie ever. Twigs in the middle, bigger sticks leaning over them in a tiny teepee shape.
Now came the hard part.
He looked down at the setup, then at the two stones in his hands. "Okay, brain. How do we make fire again? Hit them together, right? Flint and steel? …Except I have… rock and… other rock."
Still, he tried.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Nothing.
Clack. Scrape. Clack.
Still nothing.
He muttered curses under his breath, tried different angles, and nearly smashed his fingers twice. His hands were sore, his patience thinner than the twigs he was trying to ignite.
"Alright," he said to the forest. "Fine. I see how it is. I'll die cold and alone and you'll have won. Congratulations."
He slumped against a log, glaring at the pile of sticks like it had personally insulted him. That's when his eyes fell on a smaller stone in the pile — sharper, with a grayish gleam under the dirt.
"Wait a sec…" He picked it up and struck it against the smoother rock. This time, a tiny spark leapt out.
"Oh-ho!" His grin widened. "Okay, now we're talking."
It wasn't quick. The first few sparks fizzled out before hitting anything. He rearranged the sticks, added some dry grass for tinder, and kept striking until one spark caught. A faint thread of smoke curled upward.
His heart kicked into overdrive. "Come on, come on…"
He leaned down and blew gently. The ember glowed, the grass smoldered, and with a faint whuff, a small flame bloomed.
"YES!" He jumped to his feet like he'd just won the lottery. "Fire! Actual, real, honest-to-god fire!"
The flames spread slowly to the sticks, licking upward. The heat wasn't much, but compared to the cold shade of the forest, it was heaven. He sat cross-legged in front of it, basking like a lizard.
Step 4: Food — Apples or Rabbits
Warmth sorted, his stomach immediately reminded him of its existence with a low, complaining growl.
"Right. Food."
He scanned the nearby trees. No apples. No berries. Nothing even vaguely edible except moss, and he wasn't desperate enough for that yet.
Which left… rabbits.
He didn't see any, but he crouched low, trying to remember what his survival guidebook had said about small game. "Stay low. Move quiet. Throw rock when you see—"
Something darted between the roots a few meters ahead. Small, fast, grayish-brown.
"Bingo."
Step 5: Hunt the Rabbit
It took him longer than he'd admit to stalk close enough. The rabbit — or maybe a hare, he wasn't exactly a zoologist — sat near a patch of grass, nibbling without a care in the world. Its ears twitched, but it didn't bolt.
He gripped the smooth stone in his right hand, weighing it once, twice. "Okay, just like baseball. Or dodgeball. Or that time in school with the angry goose…"
He took aim, inhaled, and threw.
Thunk.
The rock hit the ground a hand's breadth away from the rabbit. It froze for a heartbeat, then shot off into the undergrowth.
"Damn it!"
He retrieved the stone, scanning the area. Another rabbit appeared a few minutes later, this one bigger. He tried again, missed again, cursed again. It became a frustrating game of stealth and bad aim.
Finally, after his sixth attempt, luck and desperation aligned. He spotted a rabbit half-hidden in the grass, ears flicking lazily. He crept closer, the stone warm in his hand from the fire. His arm drew back, his breath held—
Thwack.
The rock struck true. The rabbit toppled, kicking once before going still.
He stared for a moment, the reality sinking in. "...I actually hit it."
He picked it up gingerly. It was still warm, its fur soft under his fingers. He didn't feel triumphant exactly — more… grimly relieved. Meat was meat.
Cooking Like a Caveman
Back at his makeshift camp, the fire was still burning. He set the rabbit down, realizing he had no knife, no real tools. "Okay… improvise."
Using a sharp-edged stone, he worked clumsily, removing the skin and cleaning it as best he could. It was messy and slow, and he tried not to think too hard about what he was doing. The smell of raw meat mingled with the scent of smoke.
Once it was prepped, he found a sturdy stick, sharpened one end, and skewered the meat. Holding it over the flames, he rotated it slowly, letting the fat drip and sizzle. The sound alone made his stomach growl.
The scent changed — from metallic rawness to something richer, mouthwatering. His impatience grew with every turn.
When it finally looked cooked through, he pulled it away and blew on it. The first bite burned his tongue, but he didn't care. It was greasy, a little gamey, but better than he'd dared hope.
He devoured it, meat tearing away in uneven chunks. By the time he'd gnawed the last scrap from the bone, his stomach felt warm for the first time since he'd arrived.
He leaned back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Alright," he said aloud, staring into the fire. "Step five complete. I am now officially a carnivore. Forest: one, me: also one."
The fire crackled in reply.
He let himself enjoy the warmth and fullness for a while longer, but deep down, he knew this was just the first tiny victory in a very long fight.
And somewhere in the dark, just beyond the reach of the firelight, something was watching.
...
Ben had been riding the warm afterglow of his first successful meal for maybe… thirty minutes before reality crashed back in.
Meat in his stomach didn't mean safety. A fire didn't mean safety.
And most importantly, the sun was dipping low, turning the already dim forest into a tangle of shadows.
He looked at his campfire, then at the surrounding trees. The orange light flickered across the moss, but the darkness between the trunks seemed… thicker now. He didn't need to be a survival expert to know that sleeping on bare dirt under open sky was a bad idea.
"Alright, next problem: a bed," he muttered, standing and brushing ash from his knees. "Can't exactly raid an IK*A out here. Grass should work… maybe?"
It wasn't a perfect plan, but grass would at least give him something between himself and the cold ground. He grabbed a stick and started cutting down clumps, stacking them in a growing pile near the fire. The repetitive motion kept him busy, kept his brain from thinking too hard about the fact that night was falling fast.
That's when he felt it.
A shift in the air. Not wind, not temperature — something… heavier. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck rose, and a crawling unease slid down his spine.
He turned his head slowly.
There, just beyond the outer edge of the firelight, was a shadow.
At first, he thought it was just a tree trunk he hadn't noticed before. But trees didn't stand where there wasn't a tree a moment ago. Trees didn't… lean forward slightly, like they were watching you.
Ben blinked. And just like that — it was gone.
"...Okay." He forced a laugh that sounded thin even to his own ears. "Forest plays tricks on you. It's fine. Totally normal."
He went back to cutting grass.
Step. Step.
His hand froze mid-swing. That wasn't him. That wasn't anything moving in front of him. That was behind him.
Slowly, he straightened up, his ears straining. The sound came again — faint crunches, the brittle snap of dead leaves underfoot.
Ben turned, but the fire cast too many moving shadows to make sense of what he was seeing. Shapes shifted and swayed, but nothing stood out.
"...Nope. Not liking this."
He backed toward the fire, scanning the treeline.
Something moved.
Not in the light — just outside it, where the flicker of the flames couldn't quite reach. A silhouette slid between the trunks, darker than the night around it, and when Ben took a step back… it took two steps forward.
His breath caught.
"...You've got to be kidding me."
The thing didn't make a sound. It didn't have eyes — or maybe it had too many — but he could feel it watching him. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to move.
He bolted.
Grass, sticks, half-built bedding — forgotten. He ran flat-out, his sneakers pounding the forest floor, heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to break free. Branches whipped at his arms and face, roots clawed at his feet, but he didn't dare slow.
The sound followed.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Not hurried. Not desperate. Just steady, like the thing knew it could catch him whenever it wanted.
Ben risked a glance over his shoulder.
The shadow was there — not a trick of the firelight, not a figment of panic. It was taller than a man, thin as a nightmare, its limbs too long to belong to anything human. It didn't run so much as slide forward, each movement jerky and smooth all at once, like it was being puppeteered by invisible strings.
"NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE—!"
He swerved around a tree, ducked under a low branch, stumbled, caught himself, and kept running. His lungs burned, his throat was raw, but he knew stopping was death.
The forest felt endless. The dark pressed in on all sides.
Then — light.
Faint at first, then growing stronger.
Ben's heart leapt. The Ruins. The magic rock. If it could keep the black roots at bay, maybe it could keep this thing away too.
He sprinted harder, his legs screaming in protest. The chime from earlier rang faintly in his head, like the memory of a bell, urging him forward.
The shadow closed in.
Ben could feel it now — not its touch, but its cold. It was like someone had opened a freezer behind him, the temperature plummeting in an instant. His vision blurred at the edges.
The ruins were right ahead. He burst into the clearing, the golden-white glow spilling over him like a wave.
The shadow lunged.
Its hand — if you could call that black, claw-like thing a hand — swept toward his back.
And the instant it crossed into the light's reach… it disintegrated.
No scream. No roar. Just a hiss, like water hitting hot metal, and the thing broke apart into strands of black mist. They whipped backward into the trees, vanishing before they touched the ground.
Ben staggered forward, gasping, dropping to his knees in front of the basin. His whole body trembled, his breath ragged. Sweat cooled quickly on his skin under the gentle glow.
He turned slowly, scanning the treeline.
Nothing moved. The forest was still. Too still.
For a long time, the only sound was his own breathing. Finally, he laughed — breathless, shaky, and far too loud in the silence.
"Okay. Okay. The forest wants me dead. Noted."
He collapsed backward onto the grass, staring up at the ruined walls and the magic stone above him. "Guess I'm sleeping here tonight."
The glow of the [Ruins of the Holy Light] didn't flicker. It didn't warm him, exactly, but… he felt safer under it than anywhere else in this cursed place.
For now.
The ruins had become his fortress.
Not because they had walls worth anything — most of them were cracked, barely waist-high, and offered all the protection of a picket fence against the forest's endless trees — but because of the light.
Ben had learned one thing very quickly: the cursed shadows didn't like it.
He'd stayed there through the night, curled on his side, trying to ignore the way every small sound in the forest made his heart leap. Somehow, he'd managed to get a few hours of fitful sleep.
Morning brought no real comfort. The forest looked friendlier in daylight, sure — less like the set of a horror movie, more like a postcard gone wrong — but the silence was still wrong. The birds didn't sing here. The air didn't carry the usual forest hum of insects. It was like the place was holding its breath.
Ben was chewing on the last scraps of his roasted rabbit breakfast when the sound came.
It started faint — a low grunt, a kind of huffing snort. He froze mid-bite.
"...That's… not a shadow."
The noise grew louder, accompanied by heavy thumps. Leaves rustled. Something big was moving through the undergrowth toward the clearing. Something… fast.
Ben shot to his feet, eyes sweeping the treeline.
A moment later, the brush exploded, and a boar the size of a small car barreled into view.
"Holy—!"
Its bristled hide was streaked with mud, its tusks curved like sickles, and its small, black eyes locked onto him with pure animal fury. This wasn't a curious sniff-around kind of encounter — this was I am going to gore you into paste.
Ben's first thought was to duck behind the glowing rock.
His second thought — as the boar kept charging — was: The light doesn't scare animals.
"Of course it doesn't! Why would anything here make my life easier?!"
He bolted, not toward the forest, but toward his old campfire site. If he couldn't hide, he'd have to scare it off. And if there was one thing he knew about animals from random internet survival videos, it was this: Fire = Bad.
His lungs burned as he sprinted, the boar crashing through bushes behind him like a runaway freight train. He could practically feel its breath on his back.
He skidded into the clearing where he'd made his first fire, fumbling through the ash and leftover sticks.
"Come on, come on—"
His hands shook as he grabbed one of the half-burned branches, still blackened from last night. He pulled a rock from his pocket — one he'd been carrying for smashing nuts or bones — and struck it against another, praying for a spark.
Nothing. The boar's snorting was getting closer.
"Work, you stupid—!"
Finally, a tiny ember caught. He bent low, blowing frantically until the branch flared into life, orange flames licking up the charred wood. He turned just as the boar burst through the undergrowth.
The beast slowed, snorting at the sight of the flames. Its hooves pawed at the dirt, head lowered in indecision.
"That's right," Ben panted, holding the torch out in front of him. "Fire bad. Me good. You go… somewhere else."
The boar gave a sharp grunt, tossing its head. It didn't run — but it also didn't charge. After a tense standoff, it backed a few steps, then turned and disappeared into the forest.
Ben exhaled so hard he almost collapsed.
His hands were still trembling as he stared at the smoking torch.
"That," he said to no one in particular, "was way too close."
And that was the moment the truth clicked in his mind: he couldn't keep relying on last-minute luck. If an animal could get this close to the ruins in broad daylight, then at night — when the shadows roamed — he'd be completely screwed.
He needed weapons.
He needed barriers.
He needed… an axe.
Not some fancy, iron-forged thing — just stone lashed to a stick. Primitive, but it could cut wood. And wood meant two things:
1. Firefuel — because without fire, he had no defense against beasts.
2. Fences — because if he could ring the ruins in a crude barrier, it might at least slow anything down.
He glanced at the treeline. "Alright, Ben. We're going caveman mode."
The Axe Quest
Step one: Find the right stone.
He needed something sharp-edged and heavy enough to split wood, but small enough to tie to a branch. He spent the next hour scouring the creek bed near the ruins, turning over rocks until he found one with a natural wedge-like edge. It wasn't perfect, but it would do.
Step two: Find the handle.
A thick, sturdy branch was easy enough to get — the forest floor was littered with fallen limbs. He picked one about as long as his arm, stripped it of bark with a smaller rock, and tested the grip.
Step three: Lash it together.
This was the tricky part. Without rope, he needed something flexible but strong — and in this cursed place, that meant scavenging strips of tough plant fiber from certain vines. He hacked at them with the stone, twisting them into rough cordage.
The sun was lowering again by the time he tied the axe head in place. The result looked… laughable. But when he swung it experimentally into a small branch, it bit deep enough to split the wood.
Ben grinned. "Primitive engineering for the win."
The First Chop
He started with a tree near the ruins — not too big, but enough for fence posts. Each swing jarred his arms, and the stone blade dulled faster than he liked, but slowly, steadily, the tree creaked and toppled.
Dragging the trunk into the ruins' clearing, he began cutting it into manageable sections. Sweat poured down his back. His palms blistered. His muscles screamed.
But for the first time since waking in this nightmare, Ben felt something dangerous blooming in his chest: control.
By the time the light began to fade, he had a small pile of logs and enough branches to keep a fire burning through the night.
He built a second torch, lighting it from the campfire before heading to the ruins' edge. Just in case the boar came back — or something worse.
That night, as he sat inside the faint glow of the [Ruins of the Holy Light], the fire crackling nearby, Ben kept the axe within arm's reach.
The forest still pressed close, dark and watching. The silence still felt unnatural. But for the first time, he didn't feel like prey waiting to be eaten.
He had wood. He had fire. He had a weapon.
And tomorrow, he'd start building a wall.