The morning air hung heavy, thick with a pressure that felt like the moment before a storm. Mist clung low to the clearing, wrapping the shelters in a soft, translucent veil. No birds sang. No insects hummed. Even the orb seemed to be holding its breath, its light pulsing slower, duller than before.
Raif crouched near the fire pit, his fingers tight around the last of their root strips, inspecting them between thumb and forefinger. "This won't last us two days. Not all of us."
Lira stood across from him, leaning heavily on her walking stick. "Then we don't all eat."
Goss lay nearby, blank-eyed and silent, wrapped in bark-fibre. The fever had left him, but his skin still held a sickly pallor. Occasionally, he flinched in his sleep, muttering incoherent words.
Naera stayed close, watching him. She could see the way his fingers twitched as he slept. "He's stabilised, but something's frayed. The fever left holes. Not in his body. In his mind."
Raif's jaw tightened. "We need real food. We need that deer."
Eloin shook his head, his expression hardening. "No. We don't even know what it was. Its eyes glowed, Raif. That wasn't meat, it was an invitation to get killed."
Raif straightened, locking eyes with him. "You saw it too. It didn't run. It watched us. Like it was waiting. It might be the only thing out here that isn't trying to poison or strangle us."
"Or it's bait," Eloin snapped. "Set out by something smarter."
Lira gestured with her stick. "Still food. Still flesh. If it's dying, we take it before something else finishes the job."
Thomund grunted. "And if something else is already there?"
Raif didn't flinch. "Then we learn. But if we do nothing, we starve anyway."
A tense silence fell. Eloin sighed, rubbing his jaw.
"What's the plan, then?" he asked.
Raif exhaled, looking out over the jungle. "We track it. Quiet, slow. Get eyes on it again. See how it moves. Thomund, you've got the best footwork, keep it pinned. Eloin, if we can net it, we bring it down. If not, we pull back."
Lira gave him a thin, approving nod. "Assuming it doesn't tear the net and charge us."
"We'll be careful," Raif said. "We don't get a second shot."
Naera looked up from Goss, her voice cool. "It saw you. And let you leave. I'd ask why."
They all turned to look at her. The question hung, unanswered.
Thomund broke the moment by moving to his kit. "We go now. While it's early."
Raif grabbed a bundle of sharpened stakes. "Three of us. Quick and light."
"Four's better," Eloin said reluctantly, picking up the netting.
"I'm staying," Naera said. "He's not safe alone."
Raif gave her a brief nod. "Then we go."
The three men turned toward the treeline, leaving the others behind. Goss muttered softly in his sleep, and Lira stirred the fire. The orb pulsed, silent and dim.
They moved slowly through the underbrush, pushing through tangled roots and curtains of hanging moss. The jungle was quieter than usual, no birds, no insects, just the wet hush of the leaves pressing in around them.
They'd been walking for only fifteen minutes when Raif raised his hand, signaling them to stop. Eloin stopped beside him, Thomund just behind.
"We need to be sure this thing is worth tracking," Raif said quietly, scanning the dense greenery. "That wasn't a normal deer."
Eloin grunted. "Wasn't a deer at all, if you ask me. Something's changed it."
Raif nodded. "Yeah. But it still moved like one. Graceful. Skittish. It didn't attack. That counts for something."
"Could be camouflage," Thomund added. "Plenty of things use mimicry. Lure tactics. I once saw a fungus that looked like a baby bird. Even had a call."
Raif glanced back. "You've seen worse than glowing antlers?"
"Not glowing," Thomund replied. "But sick? Sure. Spinal growths. Fur peeling off. One winter we found a moose with two mouths. One of them worked."
Raif's eyes narrowed, his mind racing. "I read about creatures like this. Not real ones, ledger entries. Reports from the outer zones. Creatures that were... distorted. Still alive, but wrong."
Thomund raised an eyebrow. "Why keep them around?"
"Because someone was curious," Raif said. "Or didn't want to admit they couldn't kill it."
Eloin shook his head, kneeling beside a patch of moss. "No limp, no blood. Whatever we saw wasn't in pain."
"But the ground's scorched," Raif noted. He pointed to a smear of singed moss. "Whatever passed here left heat behind."
Thomund grunted. "Maybe it's hosting something. Fungal growth, parasite. If it's radiating warmth, it could be more plant than beast now."
"Yet it didn't act like it," Raif said. "It was alert. Aware. Watching."
They exchanged looks.
"Then we're not tracking a deer," Thomund said. "We're tracking something that remembers how to move like one."
Raif straightened. "Then we'd better remember how to hunt."
They moved again, more carefully now.
It was Eloin who spotted the first set of tracks, elongated hooves pressed deep into a damp patch of leaf mold. Raif crouched, brushing debris away to reveal the outline. The prints looked familiar at first glance, but something was off. The angles were wrong. Too symmetrical.
"It's not limping," Eloin said. "Weight's even. This thing's fast."
They followed the tracks through a winding line of broken ferns and peeled bark. Half an hour passed in tense silence. Then, suddenly, Raif dropped to a crouch, holding up a hand.
There.
In a clearing ahead, grazing, or pretending to, was the deer.
It stood perfectly still at first. Its hide shimmered faintly, and its antlers twisted like coral, fanning out unevenly, one broken at the tip. The creature didn't flinch when a leaf fell from above. It only turned its head slightly, eyes blinking slowly.
Raif signaled with two fingers. Thomund flanked right. Eloin circled left.
They stepped forward, inching closer. The clearing narrowed. The animal didn't flee. Raif's breath caught. They were within range. Another step, and-
A sharp intake of breath from Eloin.
To their right, emerging from the underbrush with liquid grace, came something else.
It wasn't a blur. It wasn't fast.
It was just sudden.
A bark wolf.
Its limbs stretched unnaturally, paws heavy and silent. Its hide pulsed faintly with green filaments. A chunk of vine swung from one tooth like a pendant.
Raif whispered, "Back. Now."
But the deer was already dead.
The bark wolf pounced, claws outstretched, and the deer didn't even cry. A single impact. A crunch. It folded silently.
Then the beast turned toward them.
Raif cursed. "MOVE!"
Eloin slipped on a patch of moss and slammed into a tree. Thomund grabbed Raif's arm, pulling him sideways as the wolf lunged.
Its claws raked the ground where Raif had been.
"Behind! It's circling!" Eloin shouted.
Thomund hurled a stone. It cracked against the creature's flank, it barely reacted. It crept closer, eyes fixed on them.
"Eyes!" Raif yelled. "Hit the eyes!"
They scrambled back as the wolf lunged again, this time aiming higher. Thomund shoved Eloin aside and swung a branch like a club. The impact staggered the beast. Just enough.
It growled, a deep, gnarled sound, more like wood splitting than anything alive.
Raif slashed with a flint blade, catching the beast across the snout. It reared back.
Then, just as suddenly, it turned.
It gripped the dead deer in its jaws and vanished into the trees.
Breathing hard, Raif dropped to his knees. Eloin leaned against a tree, hands shaking. Thomund stared at the blood-darkened ferns.
"No more tracking," Eloin said between gasps.
"No argument here," Raif muttered. "But we're not safe. Not from that."
By the time the three of them stumbled back into the clearing, dusk had sunk low and thick across the canopy. A bruise-colored light filtered through the trees, casting everything in a wash of grey-blue. Mud clung to their boots, blood to Thomund's arm where the bark wolf had grazed him, and a tight, lingering silence stretched between them, too exhausted to talk, too shaken to ignore what had just happened.
Lira looked up first. She stood from her crouch near the fire and limped toward them, her expression sharpening when she saw Thomund's injury.
"Gods, what happened?"
"Bark wolf," Raif said flatly. "Same kind as before."
Naera was already moving, grabbing her bark-wrapped kit. Eloin dropped to one knee, hands resting on his thighs as he caught his breath. "We had it," he muttered. "The deer. It was right there."
Thomund sat slowly beside the fire as Naera inspected his arm. The gash wasn't deep, but it was ragged. The bark wolf's claws had sliced through his sleeve like paper.
"It was waiting," Thomund said quietly. "Watching the deer. Let us get close, then took it."
Lira's eyes narrowed. "Was it alone?"
Raif shook his head. "Didn't feel like it. But we only saw one."
Naera dabbed the wound with damp moss, her face unreadable. "They're getting bolder."
Raif sat down beside the fire, staring into the flames. The flicker burned a pale reflection in his eyes. "It's the second time we've crossed paths. This one didn't just attack, it hunted. Like it knew the deer would draw us out."
Silence settled. Even Goss, wrapped in his corner of the shelter, looked over without a word. The jungle beyond the clearing hummed faintly, and the vines curled tighter near the perimeter.
"They're testing us," Thomund said finally. "Just like the vines."
Raif didn't answer. He stared down at his hand, dirt-caked, shaking slightly. Eloin sat beside him, watching the fire too.
"You were right," Eloin said after a long pause. "We need food. But if this is what's out there…"
"We'll need more than sharp sticks and grit," Raif finished.
Across the clearing, Naera wrapped Thomund's arm in bark soaked with paste. She said nothing, but her expression was tighter than usual.
Night dropped fast.
The canopy darkened with unnatural speed, swallowing the light before the fire had fully taken. A cold wind crawled through the clearing, brushing the backs of their necks with clammy fingers. The vines around the perimeter didn't creep closer tonight, but they didn't retreat either. They lingered, as if listening.
Raif sat near the fire, his back hunched, elbows resting on his knees. He hadn't spoken in a while. Across from him, Eloin was sharpening a sliver of bark into a wedge, his movements methodical but slow. Thomund leaned against a tree trunk, his arm bandaged, face pale but calm.
The quiet was too complete.
Then... soft footsteps.
Naera approached with a cup of water and a tight-lipped look. She handed it to Goss, who took it with trembling fingers. He looked better, but only just. His eyes still darted toward corners, toward shadows that weren't there.
"I saw something in the trees earlier," he muttered. "A man. Thought it was Raif."
Raif didn't look up. "It wasn't."
"I know. But he waved at me."
Lira stiffened beside the fire. "You're hallucinating."
"He waved," Goss repeated, voice hollow. "And he smiled. Looked like me, I think."
Naera said nothing, but her gaze locked briefly with Lira's.
"Is this part of it?" Lira asked Naera. "The flower, was it supposed to cause this?"
"No," Naera said. "But it stopped the infection. The rest… I don't know."
Raif finally spoke. "Keep watching him. If he gets worse, we need to isolate him."
"And if he doesn't?" Thomund asked.
"Then we stay ready."
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks into the air. The orb flickered once beside Raif, dim, not pulsing. Waiting, as always.
He looked into its glow and whispered, "What are we becoming?"
There was no answer.
Above, something rustled in the branches, too heavy for a bird. Everyone looked up, frozen. The sound stilled. But no one relaxed.
Eventually, Lira muttered, "There are no clean endings in this place. Only pauses between disasters."