The cave fell quiet after the hyena died.
Not the uncomfortable kind of quiet—more like the world holding still because it realized it owed me a moment.
I looked at the corpse.
Well… "looked" is generous. I felt it.
Warm in all the wrong places, soft in others.
It was a mess, and worse, it was lying in my room.
Not ideal.
The warmth sliding into my core steadied me, like taking the first sip of coffee after being awake all night. Functional. Necessary.
I considered my situation.
A newborn dungeon with the structural integrity of wet clay, a wide-open entrance, and a growing reputation as "fresh meat" among the dark's wildlife.
Lovely.
If I wanted to avoid becoming fertilizer, I needed to fix that.
A very faint impulse stirred—like someone tapping a suggestion on my shoulder.
Reinforce. Adjust. Shape.
Reasonable advice, honestly.
I pushed, and the stone shifted.
A small hump in the floor.
A narrower entrance.
A low-hanging edge of ceiling.
It wasn't malicious.
Just practical—like rearranging furniture so burglars trip on the way in.
The cave responded to me smoothly, surprisingly so.
Either I was good at this, or the stone was very forgiving.
Possibly both.
I kept shaping.
Not too much, nothing obvious.
Just enough that anything rushing in here next time would regret the decision before dying.
Efficient, I suppose.
Then my attention slid back to the corpse.
It was taking up space, and it wasn't going to decompose into anything useful if left alone.
Actually… that's not true.
It could be useful.
Bones, hide, sinew.
Nature's craft kit.
All lying there, waiting.
A small nudge rose again—not a voice, not a command. Just a thought that made an uncomfortable amount of sense.
Use the material.
I couldn't argue with that.
I reached out, and the stone softened beneath the body, pulling blood into tiny grooves I definitely did not remember making. The corpse dropped with a wet sound. No reaction. That's normal—dead things are polite.
Breaking it apart was surprisingly easy.
Bones snapped cleanly.
Flesh parted with minimal resistance.
No guilt. No disgust.
Just work.
The more I handled it, the more its structure made sense—
like solving a puzzle I hadn't realized I'd dumped on the floor.
A rib bent nicely.
The spine had potential.
The skull… well, the skull was going to require creativity.
I arranged the pieces in a rough outline.
Functional? Not yet.
Promising? Absolutely.
Nothing alive.
Not even remotely alive.
But the shape was starting to form—
something that could one day move, bite, guard, exist.
Without noticing it, I shaped a small depression in the ground, the perfect place for something to rest, heal, or hatch. Hard to say which.
The dungeon expanded around my idea.
Barely an inch, but it did.
A pleasant, subtle confirmation.
I wasn't sure if I was getting better, or more efficient, or simply more willing.
Probably all three.
One thing was clear:
This wouldn't be the last thing I built.