Hunger arrived without hierarchy.
It did not announce itself with urgency or pain. It did not sharpen the way danger did. It simply appeared—quiet, factual—like a line item added to a list that did not ask to be reordered.
He noticed it while walking.
The realization came between steps, unconnected to exertion. His body continued moving with the same cadence. Breath stayed even. Balance held.
There was no internal escalation.
The Blood Sigil remained warm and silent.
In the cave, hunger had been managed indirectly. Time blurred. Needs softened. Signals either arrived late or were folded into routine until they ceased to matter.
Outside, hunger did not behave like a warning.
It behaved like truth.
He slowed, scanning the land for something he could not yet define. The basin ahead thinned into scattered scrub and stone. Nothing there resembled instruction. Nothing presented itself as "food."
He kept walking.
Minutes passed. Then more. The sensation deepened—not into pain, but into weight. A gentle drag behind movement, as if each step required a fraction more intent.
He acknowledged it.
And still, nothing told him to stop.
That absence unsettled him more than the hunger itself.
He reached a low stand of shrubs growing between rocks, their leaves thick and dull. Some bore small, dark clusters—berries, perhaps. Or something that resembled them closely enough to invite error.
He knelt and examined one cluster without touching.
Color was inconclusive. Smell offered little. No internal response guided him one way or the other.
The Blood Sigil did not react.
He understood then that the seal would not classify this decision.
Eating was not threat.
Not eating was not threat.
Both were permitted.
The choice was his.
He picked one berry and crushed it between his fingers. Juice stained his skin faintly, purple-brown. The scent was thin, slightly bitter.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
No heat. No warning. No internal veto.
He tasted it.
The flavor was sharp and unpleasant, but not immediately wrong. He chewed slowly, monitoring sensation the way he would monitor injury.
Still nothing.
He ate two more.
The hunger eased slightly—not satisfied, but acknowledged. His body responded without gratitude or protest.
He wiped his fingers on the ground and stood.
As he moved on, a thought surfaced—not as memory, but as comparison.
Inside, needs had been abstracted.
Outside, they were personal.
No system would prioritize for him. No seal would sort good from bad. Every intake would be a wager made without assurance.
He walked until the shrubs thinned and the ground rose again. The land ahead showed signs of passage—flattened grass, broken stems, a narrow path pressed into soil by repeated steps.
Human use.
That fact mattered.
Where people passed, food existed somewhere nearby—cultivated, traded, or taken. Hunger became not just a bodily state, but a social one.
He followed the path cautiously, aware of how visible he would be if someone emerged.
The hunger returned in small pulses. Not strong enough to force him. Strong enough to remind him of time.
By midday, his pace slowed. Not from weakness, but calculation. He needed water soon. He needed more food eventually. These were not crises.
They were timelines.
He found a shallow stream cutting across the path and drank, cupping water in his hands. The coolness settled the weight behind his ribs.
The Blood Sigil observed.
Still silent.
As he rose, he noticed the scrape on his palm had stiffened, the skin tight around it. The berry stain had darkened into the crease of the wound.
A minor thing.
But his.
He understood something then—simple and unavoidably human:
Outside, survival would not announce itself with alarms.
It would arrive as accumulation.
Small needs. Small choices. Small mistakes.
Ignored long enough, they would decide for him.
He moved on, stomach light but steady, carrying with him the knowledge that hunger was no longer a signal to be obeyed—
only a fact to be managed,
one decision at a time.