The Deadly Forest did not kill instantly.It preferred to teach fear first.
Air thick with decay pressed against the lungs of anything foolish enough to breathe it. The fog never lifted here—it clung to the ground like a living shroud, crawling over roots swollen with rot and bones half-swallowed by soil. Trees stood bent and hollow, their bark split open as if something had tried to claw its way out and failed. No birds sang. No insects buzzed. Sound itself seemed to rot before traveling far.
At the deepest point of this forest, where even its own creatures avoided lingering, a human child lay on the ground.
He was barely one year old.
His body was thin, fragile-looking, smeared with dirt and dried blood that was not his own. His skin was unnaturally pale, almost blending with the fog. His chest rose and fell slowly, evenly, as if the forest's poison did not exist.
His eyes were open.
They were empty.
Not blank in the way a newborn's eyes were blank—but empty, as if emotion had never been placed inside them to begin with.
Something watched him.
A shape unfolded itself from the darkness, tall and wrong, its joints bending at angles that cracked softly as it moved. Its mouth opened wide enough to swallow the child whole, rows of jagged teeth glistening with venomous saliva that hissed where it dripped onto the ground.
This creature had devoured warriors.It had feasted on screaming men and desperate women.It had learned to savor terror.
Yet as it lowered its head toward the child, it hesitated.
There was no fear.
No instinctive panic.No trembling flesh.No cry.
The child stared back, unblinking.
The creature recoiled.
Confusion rippled through its massive frame. The child did not feel like prey. He did not feel alive in the way living things did. There was no resistance to overcome, no struggle waiting beneath the skin.
The creature withdrew into the fog, unsettled.
Others observed.
Eyes opened in the darkness—too many, in places where eyes did not belong. Bodies pressed against tree trunks, against the earth itself. Winged silhouettes clung upside down from branches, dripping black fluid that burned holes into the soil.
None approached.
The forest waited.
Hours passed. Then days.
Rain fell—thick, acidic, strong enough to peel skin from bone. It washed over the child's body and slid away harmlessly, leaving him untouched. Poisonous spores drifted into his lungs; he breathed them in and out without a cough.
He did not cry again.
Hunger never came.
Something unseen sustained him. Something older than the forest, older than the rules that governed it.
Eventually, the creatures began leaving things near him.
Not out of kindness—out of instinct they did not understand.
A carcass dragged close and dropped. A fruit glowing faintly, lethal to humans. Water pooling unnaturally at his lips.
The child consumed it all.
Without reaction.Without expression.
Years passed.
The forest aged around him. He did not.
His body grew steadily, without weakness or struggle. His skin never blistered. His bones never broke. His eyes remained dull and colorless, reflecting the world without acknowledging it.
He learned the human tongue without ever being taught.
The forest echoed with dying voices often enough. Travelers wandered too far. Soldiers fled lost battles and chose the wrong direction. Their screams, prayers, curses—all of it carried through the trees.
The child listened.
He understood.
He never spoke.
The first creature to die near him collapsed silently.
Its limbs twitched, then stiffened. Black veins crawled across its flesh from the inside, as if something was eating it alive. Within minutes, it was nothing more than a hollow shell.
The child watched.
Another lingered too long, curiosity overriding caution. Its movements slowed. Its breathing grew wet and uneven. By nightfall, it lay motionless, flesh sagging as rot claimed it unnaturally fast.
Whispers spread among the forest's inhabitants.
Creatures that had survived centuries began to weaken. Their strength failed without injury. Their bodies decayed without reason. The pattern was unmistakable—those that stayed near the child did not survive.
Fear took root.
When one of the creatures that had guarded him collapsed at his feet, the child stared at the corpse for a long time. His head tilted slightly, as if considering something unfamiliar.
Then he reached out.
His fingers pressed into dead flesh.
He tore it apart with quiet efficiency.
Blood coated his hands, smeared across his mouth. Bone cracked beneath his teeth. The taste registered as nothing—not pleasure, not disgust.
He ate because the body was there.
The creature that had brought him food, that had watched over him from the shadows, became nourishment.
The forest shuddered.
This was not survival.
This was erosion.
From that moment on, the Deadly Forest rejected him.
Creatures fled at the faintest sense of his presence. Insects dropped from the air before reaching him. Roots withdrew into the soil as he passed. The land itself sickened where he remained too long, turning black and brittle.
A gathering was called deep beneath the earth, where ancient roots formed a throne older than memory. The eldest beings of the forest—those bound to it since its creation—reached a conclusion none wished to accept.
The child was not cursed.
He was incompatible.
They approached him together.
The ground beneath his feet was already dead. The air around him felt strained, as if resisting his existence.
Their will pressed into his mind.
Leave.
The word carried no emotion. No hatred. Only necessity.
The child looked up.
He did not ask why.
He did not resist.
He stood and walked toward the forest's edge—the place no creature crossed willingly.
Do not return.
The warning followed him.
He stepped forward anyway.
Fog swallowed him.
Then released him.
Sunlight struck his skin for the first time, harsh and unfamiliar. Wind carried scents he did not recognize—smoke, earth, life. Behind him, the forest stood silent, watching as one watches a calamity move away.
He walked.
Years passed.
He wandered through ruined roads and abandoned villages, across battlefields where bones lay exposed and rusted weapons still clutched by dead hands. He did not eat. He did not drink. He did not sleep as humans did.
At eighteen, his body stopped changing.
He noticed.
He did not question it.
Pain never came. Hunger never followed. Time simply… passed around him.
When he finally saw smoke rising from chimneys instead of ruins, when he heard voices that were not screams, something faint stirred in his chest—too weak to be called emotion, but enough to slow his steps.
A town stood ahead.
He did not know it yet, but the world had finally noticed him.
And it would not ignore him for long.