The forest had not stayed quiet.
That should have been obvious.
Victor felt it before he heard anything—a pressure in the air, subtle but wrong. Leaves trembled without wind. The birds did not return. The space around him felt occupied in a way that had nothing to do with sound.
He slowed, knife already in his hand.
The ground sloped gently downward ahead. Visibility was poor. Too many trunks. Too much undergrowth. Whatever was moving out there carried weight—enough that the earth seemed to register it before his ears did.
Then came the sound.
Not a growl.
Not a howl.
Movement. Heavy. Deliberate. Too close.
The ground shuddering under it's foot steps.
Victor shifted his weight, angling left toward a thicker stand of trees.
Too slow.
The undergrowth there was dense—brambles, roots, uneven ground. Good for concealment. Terrible for retreat. He felt the slope give slightly under his heel and corrected before it could take him fully off balance.
Whatever was coming did not adjust.
It advanced straight through the terrain as if the forest were a suggestion rather than an obstacle.
Victor stepped back once, just enough to test distance.
The sound closed faster than it should have.
He felt it then—not fear, not panic—but the certainty of mass. Too much of it. Too close already. The thing moving through the trees did not rush. It did not hesitate. It carried momentum like a guarantee.
Running would expose his back.
Climbing would cost time he didn't have.
Turning meant committing to contact.
He exhaled once, short and controlled, and let the choice collapse into a single option.
Victor turned—and then stepped forward.
Not back.
He drove his shoulder into the wolf's chest, angling his body to deny its jaws a clean line to his throat.
The impact nearly broke him.
It wasn't like hitting flesh.
It was like colliding with compact stone wrapped in muscle. The shock ran through his ribs in a white-hot line of pain, knocking the air from his lungs and making his vision stutter.
His ribs screamed.
He forced the knife up anyway, teeth clenched, and plunged it behind the foreleg where something vital should have been.
Resistance.
Not bone.
Density.
He pushed anyway.
The wolf twisted violently, its weight shifting to crush him rather than tear him. Its traction was absurd—claws digging into soil like anchors, refusing to slip even as its body contorted.
Victor wrapped his free arm around its neck, not to choke it—he didn't have the leverage—but to control its movement. To keep its head from turning. To limit angles.
Pain flared from his bitten forearm, sharp and immediate, flooding his senses.
He ignored it.
He drove the knife again.
Short.
Direct.
No wasted motion.
The wolf scrabbled, carving trenches in the ground as it tried to overpower him with sheer mass. Victor's body shook under the strain. His arms burned. His injured leg trembled, threatening to fold.
The knife slipped.
Not free—just enough to ruin the angle.
Victor felt the resistance change, felt the blade glance instead of sink. The wolf surged in response, its weight slamming into him with renewed force, driving him sideways. His shoulder struck a tree hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Pain spiked down his spine.
For half a second, he lost leverage.
That was enough.
The wolf's jaws snapped shut inches from his neck, teeth clacking together where flesh should have been. Hot breath washed over his face. He smelled blood—his, not its—and felt his grip starting to fail.
Victor tightened his arm around its neck and adjusted, not stronger, just closer. He pulled himself in until the space between them vanished completely.
If he couldn't overpower it—
He would deny it room.
His breath came apart.
"This shouldn't be like this," he rasped, the words torn from him by effort rather than thought.
He didn't know what he'd expected when he woke in this forest.
He hadn't expected to die within a day.
The wolf jerked suddenly.
Its weight shifted.
Not pushing.
Dropping.
Victor felt the moment it happened—the instant resistance vanished, replaced by dead mass.
He staggered back as the body collapsed to the ground, heavier in death than it had any right to be.
He stood there, swaying, knife still raised, waiting for something else to move.
Nothing did.
The forest noise returned in hesitant layers. A bird called. Then another. Insects resumed their hum. Leaves stirred in the breeze.
The world continued.
Victor's arms began to tremble violently.
Blood ran down his forearm in thick lines, dripping from his fingertips onto the leaves below. His shin burned where teeth had grazed it. Every breath made his ribs grind together unpleasantly, like something misaligned.
He dropped to one knee.
The ground tilted.
"Okay," he whispered, voice hoarse and thin. "Okay. So… killing is necessary."
The words weren't philosophy.
They were a conclusion.
His vision tunneled.
Then the world broke.
Something appeared in front of him—not light, not illusion, not hallucination. A flat, colorless overlay imposed itself over the forest, indifferent to depth or distance.
[EXPERIENCE GAINED]
The words didn't glow.
They didn't pulse.
They simply existed.
Victor froze, staring through the haze of pain and exhaustion.
Beneath the text, a number resolved—too large, too precise. It flickered once, then stabilized. A bar formed below it, filling rapidly before slowing, stopping just short of a threshold marked by an unfamiliar symbol.
Victor's heart hammered harder.
"No," he whispered. "No, that's not—"
The overlay did not respond.
More text appeared.
[LEVEL INCREASE RECORDED]
The words landed with physical weight. Not excitement. Not triumph.
Finality.
A pressure swept through his body—brief but overwhelming. His muscles tightened involuntarily. His spine arched. Heat flared behind his eyes as something inside him adjusted without permission.
Not healing.
Not strength.
Alignment.
Victor gasped, clutching at his chest as the sensation passed.
The overlay shifted again.
[STATUS UPDATED]
He didn't read the details. Couldn't. The edges of his vision were collapsing inward, darkness eating at the periphery.
So it wasn't a dream.
Not even close.
His grip on the knife loosened.
The forest tilted violently.
He tried to stand.
His body refused.
The overlay remained, steady and uncaring, as if waiting for acknowledgment that would never come.
Victor's head dipped forward.
His last coherent sensation was cold dirt against his palm—
and the heavy, wrong weight of dead wolves in the leaves.
Then darkness took him.
Not gently.
Not gradually.
But final.