Noctis snapped awake before dawn, nerves prickling like exposed wires at the ghost-memory of goblin screams haunting the valley. His body was a map of complaints—joints locked stiff as rusted hinges, wounds itching with feverish heat, skin clammy under crusted filth—but paralysis was the true killer. He shoved it down, hauling his battered frame into motion: packing scavenged scraps into a makeshift pouch, scanning the terrain for shifts in mud and mist. Goblin tracks splayed wildly across the soaked earth—too many clawed prints, smeared with frantic mud, radiating rage from his trap's success. They'd doubled patrols, spread thin in fury.
Morning dissolved into a perverse dance: him tracking them as they hunted him, roles blurring until even Noctis lost the thread momentarily. The goblins rampaged louder now—snapping branches like brittle bones, upturning stones with guttural curses, smearing their own foul dung across his false trails to overwrite scents. They'd sharpened up, adapting in their brutish way. Noctis almost respected it. Almost. It just meant better lessons ahead.
Tension hummed constant, a live wire under his skin. Every rustling bush hid a spear-thrust, every hollow log a shrieking scout ready to pounce. But today marked a pivot—for the first time since crashing into this airborne hellscape, Noctis hungered for blood. He moved with purpose: tearing up his own footprints with dragged branches, carving shallow trenches across game paths to funnel pursuit, positioning razor-sharp stones to hobble charging feet. Evasion was dead. He was baiting them now—on his terms, across ground sculpted into a kill-zone of hidden advantages.
By mid-morning, opportunity slunk into view: a lone young goblin, its mottled green skin twitching with unease, nosing through leaf litter for his trail. Smaller than the brutes, eyes wide with novice fear. Noctis ghosted closer, breath held to a whisper, calculating every variable—wind curling from his left to carry no scent, angles for strike and escape, lessons fused from wolves he'd once shadowed and monsters that had nearly claimed him.
He struck with clinical detachment. A hidden trip-vine snapped taut; a sharpened branch lanced through the goblin's calf in a spray of dark ichor. It howled, a high keening of terror, scrabbling to flee on three limbs. Noctis was atop it in a blur—no hesitation, no mercy's fool's pause. Safety was a myth here; mercy, a grave invitation.
Blade work was grim efficiency: a swift thrust to silence the throat, twist to end the twitch. He dragged the limp corpse deep into thorn-choked underbrush, heart pounding steady, masking the kill's scent with dung and leaves. Scavenging came next—crude iron dagger still warm from goblin grip, leathery scraps of dried meat tough as boot-leather, a chunk of fungus-bark barely edible but calorie-dense. A necklace of jagged teeth rattled softly; he claimed it, not for superstitious luck, but stark reminder: enemies were resources, monsters mere textbooks in flesh.
Noctis retreated upslope as the sun clawed higher, battered hands scaling a sheer ledge to a vantage cloaked in dripping vines. Below, the goblin packs reeled—mournful yips for their fallen, bickering exploding into shoves and claw-swipes, discipline crumbling under fear's acid. He grinned, dark satisfaction threading through bone-deep fatigue. Fracture them further.
Rest intervals doubled as wound clinics. Infection crept insidious—a dull throb, crimson lines tracing his arm like veins of fire. He cauterized the worst with smoldering moss pinched from a damp crevice, breath hissing through clenched teeth as charred flesh popped and sizzled. Pain anchored him: Not dead yet. Past hells were worse—endure.
Dusk unleashed a battering rainstorm, sheets of water eroding trails and slaking the fire in his parched throat. He cupped handfuls in callused palms, gulping the red-tinted deluge, then hunkered under a slab of weathered stone. Stomach clawed for sustenance; he forced down rations—vile slime cores crunching like gravel, rot-tanged meat. Hardship shredded rules; survival demanded filth.
Evening devolved into delirious strategy-mumbling, voice a hoarse rasp. "You survive by learning their hurts, becoming what they fear in the dark. Tomorrow, make them bleed deeper. Tomorrow, you're the nightmare rustling their sleep."
Night swallowed the world, goblins falling eerily silent. Noctis permitted one stolen minute to mourn—comfort's ghost, safety's lie, rest's cruel tease. Then he released it, iron-willed.
[Trait Progression: Ambush Instinct (Uncommon)]
[Resource Acquired: Goblin Dagger, Teeth Necklace]
Every night you steal, you evolve. Every dawn you claim, the world redraws its claws around your pulse. Let tomorrow charge; you'll bite back harder.