He woke up choking.
Air tore into his lungs like something forced, sharp and wrong, scraping all the way down. His body jerked upright on pure instinct, and pain detonated through him instantly.
White. Absolute. Consuming.
A scream clawed its way up his throat and died halfway out.
He froze.
Stone.Wood.Darkness.
The world wobbled, refusing to settle. His head throbbed in slow, merciless waves, each pulse a reminder that he was still alive—an idea that felt deeply incorrect. His mouth tasted like rust and soil. His tongue was dry, swollen, useless.
Then he remembered.
The ground giving way.The weightlessness.His fingers slipping.
His left arm wasn't there.
The realization came gently, almost kindly, before the pain followed.
When it did, it was biblical.
He collapsed sideways, retching nothing, vision fracturing into black stars. The stump where his hand had been was wrapped tightly in fabric, his belt. Dark, stiff, soaked. The smell hit him a second later. Iron. Rot. Fear.
He laughed once. A broken, hysterical sound.
"I… I did that," he whispered, unsure if he was proud or horrified.
He was alive.
Barely.
The shelter around him was small, wedged between a massive fallen trunk and a slab of stone that jutted from the ground like a broken tooth. Someone—many someones—had tried to make it safe. Branches had been stacked and woven together. Mud packed the gaps. Time had peeled it all apart.
It smelled of old death.
As his breathing slowed, his eyes adjusted.
Skeletons.
Not scattered. Not dragged in.
Sitting.
Propped against the stone, slumped in corners, curled like sleepers who never woke up. Some still wore scraps of fabric—rotted coats, boots fused to bone. One had fingers permanently bent into the stone, nails worn down to nothing.
They hadn't been dragged here.
They had come here to wait.
His stomach twisted.
The walls were covered.
Not writing—scratching.
Marks carved into stone with desperation, overlapping, cutting through one another. Words in no single language, written by hands that shook, bled, broke.
Latin, jagged and uneven:
"NON RESPICERE"
"Do not look."
Old French, half-erased:
"Ils me voient quand je pense être seul"
"They see me when I think I'm alone."
Arabic, deep and careful, like a prayer carved slowly over days:
"القمر يكذب".
Something that might have been English once:
"DON T SLEP"
Luckily for him, he knew English, French, and Latin. In this place, that almost counted as a superpower.
Others weren't words at all.
Instructions.
Near one skeleton, someone had taken the time to draw diagrams—crude, but careful. Stick figures crouching low. Lines showing paths through the forest, broken abruptly where a large, dark shape loomed.
Next to it, one word had been carved deeper than the rest in English, the grooves almost frantic:
LOOKING IS DEATH
A chill crawled up his spine.
He shifted slightly, and something crunched beneath him.
He froze.
Slowly, he looked down.
A small pile of objects had been stacked near the back of the shelter. Bones, yes, but arranged. Sorted. Skulls placed facing outward. Long bones stacked neatly, almost respectfully. And little scraps of metals.
Someone had lived here.
For a while.
He looked at the other wall.
Symbols. Spirals gouged so deep they cracked the stone. Stick figures with too many joints. Forests drawn as cages. Eyes everywhere, on trees, in the sky, carved into circles that hurt to look at for too long.
He looked away too late.
His heart slammed violently against his ribs. For a split second, he was certain something behind him had moved. A breath where there should have been none. The sound of bone shifting.
Nothing.
Still, he didn't turn back.
They had panicked here. He could feel it in the marks, in the way lines overlapped and clawed at one another. People who had tried to understand. Tried to leave warnings. Tried to survive.
They had failed.
Outside, the forest whispered.
Not wind. Not animals.
Something slower. Heavier.
He pressed his back against the stone, sliding down until he was sitting among the dead, shaking uncontrollably. Every sound became a threat. Every shadow stretched wrong. His remaining hand cramped from clenching too hard.
Then—
Pressure. A familliar one.
A presence.
Not close. Not touching.
But watching.
His vision dimmed at the edges, colors draining away. The air grew thick, crushing, as if the forest itself had leaned in to inspect him. He didn't dare look. He knew—knew—that if he did, something inside him would break permanently.
Fuck, not again.
His thoughts scattered. Fear became physical, squeezing his heart, pressing against his skull.
Then darkness took him.