The mont my boots hit the soil of Gaeth-9, I knew this moon was made for killing.
The earth here isn't like anything back ho—soft and wet, almost sponge-like, as if it had once been alive. The trees reach high with limbs like fingers, branching and curling unnaturally, casting long shadows even without a sun. Strange purple moss glows in patches along the roots, illuminating paths that lead nowhere. The air hums. Not with life, but with hunger.
Around , the others scatter.
So run in panicked packs, their footfalls loud, clumsy. Others drop to the ground, already sobbing, or praying to gods that never answered when the Empire ca.
I don't run.
I walk.
Not because I'm brave. I just know how predators think. They go for the noise. The herd. The weakest.
The collar around my neck pulses once—red. The tir blinks beneath my jaw.
72:00:00HUNTING WINDOW ACTIVE
We have three days. Survive, and we're granted a "reward"—a month of rest, double rations, and a new job sector.
No one's ever survived the full three days.
Not in the last ten years, anyway.
A soft drone-whir echoes above . I don't look up. I already know it's one of the Overseer Drones, broadcasting the Gas live across the empire. The nobles are probably sipping firewine, placing bets, laughing.
I crouch, slide between a pair of wide-leafed stalks, and move toward a ridge. If I can gain elevation, I'll have a view of the terrain—find sowhere to hide, maybe sowhere defensible.
But Gaeth-9 doesn't like plans.
A scream tears through the trees behind —sharp, male, followed by the wet crunch of sothing being torn open. I don't stop. I don't look. You only get one mistake out here.
The rules are simple: move, hide, kill if you must, and never trust anything you see.
Half a klick in, I find a slope covered in moss and layered with dense brush. I crawl under a root archway and wedge myself into a hollowed stump. It stinks of rotting sap and sothing older—sothing wrong.
I watch the forest from my hide. The silence returns. But not the empty kind from Velmora. This silence feels... alert. Like the whole moon is listening. Waiting.
Then I see it.
A figure—tall, cloaked in reflective sh—moving between the trees with perfect grace. One of the Hunters. A noble, maybe, or one of their specially-trained killhounds. He carries a neuro-bow slung over his shoulder, but doesn't draw. He doesn't need to. He's not here to rush. He's here to enjoy himself.
His visor turns slightly toward where I'm hidden.
I stop breathing.
My fingers grip the wet soil. The collar pulses again. If it makes noise, I'm dead.
But then the figure turns and walks away. He didn't see . Or maybe he did—and chose to save the chase for later.
It takes another hour before I move again.
Eventually, I find a crevice in a stone wall, half-covered in vines. Behind it—darkness. A cave.
My first instinct is to keep moving. Caves are traps. One way in, no way out. But sothing tugs at .
A feeling.
A pull.
The kind you don't ignore when you've lost everything and have nothing left but instinct.
I slip inside.
The temperature drops instantly. The air is cold and stale, but dry. The deeper I go, the quieter the forest becos. I reach a chamber—round, hollow, long abandoned. The walls are etched with unfamiliar symbols. Burned into the stone. Not carved. Branded.
And at the center... sothing glows.
Red. Deep red.
Not like fire.
Like blood.
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