"I won’t make it out of this alive!"
The words tore out of my throat raw and unfiltered, ripped free by instinct rather than thought as I sprinted through the forest like prey that had already accepted the shape of its own death.
Branches whipped at my face. Roots clawed at my boots. My lungs burned so badly it felt like they were collapsing inward, each breath scraping my chest raw as if lined with broken glass. The ground beneath my feet wasn’t soil so much as a living thing, slick with moss, warped by mana, pulsing faintly with sothing that didn’t belong in any sane world.
Behind , sothing scread.
Not a roar.
Not a howl.
A wet, chittering shriek layered with the bleating cry of a goat and the shrill screech of sothing that should have lived in treetops, not nightmares. The sound scraped against my spine and sent cold lightning racing through my nerves.
It was close.
Too close.
"Sebastian, don’t slow down!" Xavier yelled from sowhere to my left, his voice strained but steady in that infuriating way of his, like panic simply wasn’t an option he’d unlocked yet.
As if I would do that, what an absolute idiot, telling not to jump into the mouth of a beast, brilliant advice really.
I wisely avoided answering the idiot, lest his stupidity get stuck to .
Sue .
That and well... talking took air.
Air was precious.
I truly regret every decision I made in this life. What god had I offended to be punished like this? We were just out hunting.
Gods, that sentence feels stupid now.
Just a few hours ago, the forest had felt almost manageable. Hostile, yes, but familiar in its cruelty. We’d tracked a low-tier beast, sothing weak enough to kill quickly, cook over a fire, and move on before anything worse caught our scent.
That had been the routine.
Hunt C-rank monsters, the easiest thing to kill here, Skin and wash them, cook the disgusting at over a fire, eat the unsanitary al we cooked, hide from the abominations hunting us, and if ti allowed, catch up on sleep
Every day since we’d arrived in this cursed place, we had been repeating this damned routine.
And we’d been careful. So careful. Avoiding the deep groves where mana pooled too thick. Steering clear of the places Annalise’s strings vibrated without being touched. Keeping our heads down whenever the sky darkened or the ground trembled with sothing massive moving far away.
Avoiding abominations like this.
Unfortunately, the forest hadn’t cared.
The thing burst through the trees behind us, snapping trunks like twigs.
I glanced back for half a second, just long enough to regret having eyes.
It was wrong.
That was the only word that fit.
A spider-goat-monkey hybrid, stitched together by cruelty rather than biology. Its lower body was that of a massive arachnid, too many legs stabbing into the earth with terrifying speed. Above that rose the twisted torso of a goat, ribs visible beneath patchy, mangy fur, its chest heaving with each breath.
And sprouting from its shoulders were dozens of arms, long, simian limbs ending in clawed hands that scraped bark from trees as it barreled forward.
Its face... yuck.
I tore my gaze away before my stomach could finish revolting.
"Gemini stage," I gasped, more to myself than to Xavier.
As if the universe needed another reason to hate us.
Gemini-stage monsters weren’t just stronger. They were smarter. Adaptive. Capable of coordinating attacks, of predicting movent, of hunting instead of charging blindly.
If I tried to fight it we would win without a single doubt but...
The thought didn’t even finish.
If I fought, the impact alone would be like ringing a dinner bell. The Entity would feel it. The Jötunn’s who apparently hate because I killed an orphan would feel it. Things far worse than this hybrid would turn their attention toward us.
Each of them stronger than all of us combined.
Running was the only option.
So we ran.
I pushed harder, legs screaming as I vaulted over a fallen log, barely catching myself before I face-planted into a nest of glowing fungi that definitely would have tried to eat . Xavier was keeping pace, his breathing controlled, his footwork precise despite the chaos.
He was good under pressure.
That scared more than the monster.
"How far?" he shouted.
"Too far!" I yelled back. "Base camp’s still—"
The ground exploded beside us.
A claw the size of my torso slamd down where I’d been half a second earlier, spraying dirt and splinters into the air. I stumbled, barely catching myself before the forest floor claid .
Xavier grabbed my arm and yanked upright without breaking stride.
"Focus!" he snapped. "We make it back or we die out here!"
As if I needed the reminder.
My mind raced even as my body scread for rcy. Annalise’s strings brushed against my awareness—thin, invisible threads wrapped around both of us, humming softly with stored mana. The communication link was still active.
Move now, I sent, forcing the ssage down the line. We were caught. A fucking spider monkey is trying to hunt us. Pack up and get ready to bail as soon as we co back.
The response ca instantly.
Fear.
Determination.
Movent.
They were already packing.
Good, atleast sothing was going our way today.
We tore through the forest, the canopy above blurring into streaks of green and black. The light here was wrong, filtered through layers of giant banana-shaped leaves that bent color into unfamiliar shades. Shadows moved where nothing should have been moving.
The forest watched us run.
This had been our daily reality.
A few days ago, I might have called it unbearable.
It was still unbearable, but now we were used to it. It was our new reality
We killed what we could. Avoided what we couldn’t. Learned the sounds of danger, the patterns of patrols, the places where the world itself seed thinner, fragile, like it could tear open if pushed too hard.
We had survived so far.
Barely.
But today...
Today, we’d been sloppy.
The hybrid leapt.
I felt the wind shift before I heard it, the air displaced by its massive body as it vaulted overhead, landing ahead of us with a crash that shook the trees.
It turned with terrifying fluidity, blocking our path.
Its goat head bleated, saliva dripping from jagged teeth. Its spider legs spread wide, cutting off every obvious escape route.
Xavier skidded to a stop beside , already raising his weapon.
"No," I hissed. "Don’t—"
Too late.
The monster lunged.
Xavier moved.
Steel flashed. Mana flared, controlled, minimal bursts of explosions, but still enough to sting the air.
The blade sliced across one of the creature’s simian arms, severing muscle and sending black blood spraying. The hybrid shrieked, stumbling back a step.
And the forest answered.
Far away, too far to see, too close to ignore, sothing enormous shifted.
A deep, resonant sound rolled through the ground.
The Jötunn’s.
My blood turned to ice.
"Run!" I shouted, grabbing Xavier’s arm and dragging him past the staggering monster as it recovered far faster than it had any right to.
We bolted again, changing direction sharply, plunging into a denser section of forest where the trees grew twisted and close together. Thorned vines tore at our clothes. The air grew heavy, oppressive, as if pressing down on my shoulders.
My legs felt like lead.
My heart felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my chest.
As embarrassing as it was to admit, I barely had any mana left in my body, which ant that my exhaustion was catching up.
The base camp ca into view just as I thought my body might finally give out.
Hidden beneath layers of concealnt, nestled against a jagged rock formation that warped perception, it was less a camp and more a temporary lie we told the world, that we belonged here, that we were safe.
Annalise’s work.
Brilliant, terrifying Annalise.
I sent the signal through Annalise’s strings again.
Now.
The camp exploded into motion.
Figures burst from cover, already moving, already abandoning what little we couldn’t carry. Packs were slung. Fires smothered. Traces erased with practiced efficiency.
They’d done this before.
Too many tis.
"Where’s the exit?" I yelled as I barreled in.
"East!" Nora shouted back. "I found a rupture unstable, but it leads sowhere else!"
Sowhere else.
Not ho.
But maybe closer.
The hybrid burst into the clearing, tearing through the concealnt like it wasn’t even there. Its presence alone made the air vibrate with hostile mana.
Behind it.
The ground shook again.
Closer now.
The Jötunns were moving.
The Entity was aware.
There was no more room for mistakes.
We ran again.
Together.
Toward the unknown.
Toward hope, thin as a thread.
Toward a chance, no matter how small, to survive long enough to see our world again.
And as the forest closed in behind us, filled with monsters and gods and things that wanted us dead simply for existing, one thought burned through my exhaustion, my fear, my despair.
Please.
Just let us make it.
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