The wind had forgotten this place.
Each step Hunnt took sank into soil that sighed with age. The ground was soft, almost spongy, layered with centuries of leaf-rot that had never been disturbed. Around him, the trees stood like enormous bones—pale trunks stripped of bark, hollow in places where insects should have lived but did not. Even the light that filtered through the canopy felt muted, as though the forest itself absorbed it out of fear.
Pyro walked ahead, tail low, sword and shield strapped tight across his small frame. His paws made almost no sound, yet every movement seemed too loud.
"Master," he murmured, his voice thin, "no birds… no bugs… not even wind. Nyaa, it's like the forest died and forgot to fall."
Hunnt crouched beside a fallen trunk, fingers brushing against its surface. The wood was blackened, smooth as glass.
"Burn marks," he said quietly. "But not from a spreading fire—these are straight, focused."
He traced one of the grooves. The cut ran deep and precise, fused by heat.
"Claws did this."
Pyro leaned closer, nose twitching. "Too big for Rathian. Too clean for Tigrex."
Hunnt didn't answer. He pressed his palm against the mark. A faint warmth still lingered beneath the ash, like the memory of something alive. He rose slowly, eyes scanning the endless white trunks that surrounded them. "Something strong passed through here. Not long ago."
They walked deeper. The silence thickened, heavy as water. Time blurred; the air grew colder, denser, until their breath turned to mist. Hunnt noticed shapes—trees bent outward in a spiral, as though pushed by a single enormous gust. At the center of the pattern lay a crater half-buried in vines.
He knelt at its edge. Inside, shards of dark material glimmered beneath the soil. He pulled one free—a fragment of scale, black and violet, edges etched with faint crimson veins. It pulsed faintly in his hand, like something breathing.
Pyro hissed. "That… doesn't belong to anything we've ever hunted."
Hunnt's brow furrowed. "No," he said. "It belongs to something older."
He pocketed the shard, wrapping it in cloth. The weight of it felt wrong—not heavy, but significant, as if it carried memory. As daylight faded, they made camp beneath a crooked pine. Hunnt kindled a small flame; it flickered weakly, unwilling to burn strong in this place. He sat cross-legged, gauntlets resting across his knees, and began to sharpen them with deliberate rhythm. The faint shhhk of stone on steel echoed far too clearly, swallowed and returned by the forest like a whisper from unseen mouths.
Pyro sat opposite him, eyes half-closed, trying to listen for anything beyond the rasp of metal. "Feels like we shouldn't stay here, nya."
Hunnt smiled faintly without looking up. "Then we'll stay until we understand why."
He finished sharpening and lifted one gauntlet. The edges gleamed dull red in the firelight. "This forest was alive once," he said. "You can feel it under your boots. Something took that life and kept it."
Pyro flicked his tail nervously. "Kept it? You mean… it's feeding?"
Hunnt's gaze turned toward the darkness beyond the fire. The shadows between the trees were too deep, too deliberate. "Maybe. Or maybe it's sleeping—and the world grew quiet so it wouldn't wake."
He leaned back against a root, eyes half-closed, letting his breathing slow. In that stillness, he stretched his senses outward—not sight, not hearing, but something subtler. The silence wasn't empty. It was waiting. Beneath the earth, beneath the hush, something immense stirred once every few minutes: a vibration, a rhythm older than sound.
A heartbeat.
Hunnt's eyes opened. For a moment he thought he saw movement—just beyond the fire's reach, a flicker of shadow crossing between trunks. But when he looked again, nothing. Only the whisper of smoke rising through cold air.
Pyro had fallen asleep, curled beside the embers, tail wrapped around his body. Hunnt smiled faintly, the corners of his mouth softening. He's braver than he admits.
The night stretched on. Mist coiled low along the ground, carrying the faint metallic tang of burnt air. Hunnt sat in silence, mind turning over what he'd seen: the scale, the claw marks, the crater, the heartbeat. He thought of the stories whispered by the old hunters—tales of beasts that slept beneath the roots of the world, their dreams shaping the land above. No one truly believed them, but Hunnt had learned that silence often hides truth.
His hand drifted to the pocket where the scale rested. It pulsed once—so faint he almost thought he imagined it.
The fire sputtered. For an instant the flames bent sideways, as though pushed by a gust from nowhere. Hunnt looked up sharply. High above, through the ragged canopy, clouds shifted. Something vast glided across them—silent, dark, winged. Only a momentary ripple betrayed its passage.
Then stillness returned.
Hunnt exhaled slowly. He didn't speak the thing's name; it had none yet. But he understood instinctively: whatever had scorched this forest still watched from the sky.
He whispered to himself, "So the world moves again."
He lay back on the cold ground, arms crossed behind his head, staring into the fragments of sky. Somewhere far above, hidden by cloud, the unseen creature circled once more before vanishing into night.
The forest listened.
---
Morning came without color.
The mist had thickened overnight, pooling like a living thing. Hunnt stirred, feeling the dampness in his hair and armor. Pyro was already awake, crouched near the edge of camp, staring into the fog.
"Master," the Palico whispered, "I think it moved."
Hunnt rose silently. "The crater?"
Pyro nodded. "It's deeper now. Like something pulled itself lower."
They approached together. The air around the crater trembled faintly, distorting light as though from heat—but the temperature had dropped. Frost clung to nearby roots, and the soil cracked underfoot.
Hunnt crouched, pressing his palm against the ground. Beneath the surface, a pulse answered him—slower than before, but stronger. Each beat carried weight, like the shifting of continents.
He drew a slow breath. "It's not sleeping," he murmured. "It's remembering."
"Remembering?" Pyro tilted his head.
Hunnt's eyes traced the surrounding trees—their pale trunks, their hollow hearts. "Forests don't burn this clean. It wasn't destruction; it was… erasure. Something ancient stirred here and took back what was once its own."
He stood, brushing dirt from his glove. His voice dropped to a whisper. "We're standing on the grave of something that's not finished dying."
Pyro swallowed hard. "So what now, nya?"
Hunnt looked to the fog-covered horizon. "We listen. And when it breathes again, we follow."
A distant rumble rolled beneath the earth, faint but unmistakable. The ground shivered under their boots; leaves trembled though no wind moved them. Pyro's fur bristled. Hunnt didn't flinch—his gaze sharpened, and for the briefest moment, the faint shimmer of Observation Haki danced across his irises.
He could feel it now—something vast, coiled beneath layers of time and memory, aware of their presence yet not fully awake.
The forest of silence was not silent at all. It was listening back.
Hunnt turned from the crater, his gauntlets glinting with morning mist. "Come on. The path ahead's not done whispering."
They left the clearing without another word, their footsteps swallowed by fog. Behind them, the crater pulsed once more—faint light bleeding from beneath the soil, heartbeat syncing to the slow rhythm of the earth itself.
And far above, beyond the clouds, something answered.
The wind returned—not gentle, but curious.
It brushed through the trees like a breath long held and finally released.
The forest lived again. But what had awakened within it… did not belong to this age.