Lucian moved differently now. The rush of adrenaline from killing the centipede had burned away, leaving behind something heavier, colder. Survival wasn't about speed or strength. It was about caution. He kept the knife in hand, pipe strapped back to his pack, and every few steps he marked another tree with a shallow X.
The jungle towered higher the deeper he went, trunks thick as houses and roots curling like petrified snakes. Humidity slicked his skin, his shirt clinging to him, his breaths coming low and careful. His ears strained against the jungle's noise—the insect hum, the distant cries, the unseen rustling in the canopy.
He froze when he spotted it. Another centipede. Bigger than the last. Its armored body slid over a root, mandibles testing the air. Its eyelids stayed shut, but Lucian felt its presence like a pressure in the soil itself. His grip on the knife whitened—until the ground moved.
The root beneath the beast trembled, swelled, and tore upward. Wood ripped like muscle. A gnarled tendril wrapped around the centipede's body, pinning it tight, and before Lucian could even blink, the trunk of the tree itself split open.
The bark yawned apart into a vertical maw lined with endless serrated teeth, each bigger than his forearm. The root hurled the centipede into the opening. The monster's eyes flashed red as it writhed in panic, but the tree snapped shut, crunching through chitin like brittle glass. A muffled screech rattled the leaves before silence returned.
Lucian's mouth had gone dry. He stepped backward slowly, marking the tree in his mind instead of with his knife. Not everything here is worth fighting.
Hours seemed to pass as he crept farther into the jungle. His legs burned, his shirt stuck, and the heavy silence pressed on his ears until a new sound broke it: snorting, low and guttural.
Through the dense foliage he saw it: a boar. But not any natural one. Its body looked like it had been sculpted for violence. Thick black fur bristled into spikes like jagged quills. Tusks jutted outward from its mouth, curved and flared at the tips like hooks. Each step cracked branches underfoot as the beast pushed into a jungle clearing.
Lucian crouched, heart pounding. Something about the clearing didn't look right. The ground was too even. Too deliberate. The boar strutted into the center, head lowered, foam spraying from its tusks. Then the earth shifted.
The "field" itself rose, sharp rocks jutting up from beneath like teeth. The whole circle of ground folded upward, closing around the boar in a single, crushing bite. Its squeal echoed through the trees before the ground sank again, folding shut until all that remained was a yawning sinkhole where the clearing had been.
Lucian pressed himself against the roots of a nearby tree, chest heaving. He didn't dare breathe until the jungle stilled again.
Only when the quiet held did he rise, moving forward more carefully than ever. His knife traced another X into the bark of a trunk. His body screamed for rest, but his eyes stayed fixed on the foliage ahead.
And finally, through the mesh of green, he saw it. A toppled column of pale stone, vines crawling down its sides. Carved patterns peeked faintly from beneath the moss, angular shapes cut by a hand, not nature.
The first ruins.
Lucian exhaled, almost a laugh. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. For the first time since stepping into the jungle, the thought cut through him clear and sharp:
He was close.
Lucian lingered at the edge of the ruins, knife still in hand. The air felt… different here. The constant chorus of insects softened, the distant screeches of unseen predators faded, even the oppressive humidity seemed to ease.
He realized it after a few minutes of watching: nothing else came near. The jungle's creatures, restless and brutal everywhere else, skirted wide around the stone. It wasn't fear he recognized in them, but avoidance, like instinct telling them this place wasn't theirs.
Lucian stepped forward, heart steady but wary. Moss clung thick to shattered walls, carved blocks half-swallowed by roots. His boots scuffed against the ground, crunching over fallen pottery shards. Whatever culture had raised this place, the jungle had all but devoured it—yet something remained untouchable about the core.
He found a toppled pillar and lowered himself onto it, letting his pack rest. His arms and legs trembled faintly, exhaustion creeping in like a slow poison. He hadn't eaten since the morning, but thirst gnawed at him harder. His lips cracked when he licked them.
A glimmer caught his eye. He pushed through a narrow arch half-collapsed by roots, and there it was: a stone basin sunk into the ground, half-filled with water trickling from a crack above. The surface shimmered, undisturbed.
Lucian crouched low, wary of reflection tricks, but the water looked clean—clearer than anything he'd seen since the world fell apart. He dipped the edge of his hand in first, then cupped it and drank. Coolness slid down his throat, washing the grit away. He drank again. And again. Only when his chest loosened did he pull back, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist.
"Still alive," he muttered under his breath, the words a kind of anchor.
Back at his pack, he forced himself upright and pressed on. The deeper he went, the more the jungle thinned, the more stone took its place. At first it was only cracked flagstones beneath the undergrowth, but soon entire paths emerged, latticed with grass and vines forcing their way through the gaps.
The ruins rose higher around him—fragments of towers leaning at impossible angles, scaffolding that looked centuries old, vases shattered into heaps of clay dust. Strange carvings peeked through moss, their meanings lost but their presence undeniable.
He tried not to think too hard about how this could be here—dropped into the city like a cruel copy-paste of another world. But as his boots clattered across broken brick, an old memory rose unbidden:
His mother, brushing dust from a book at the kitchen table. Her voice absentminded as she spoke about sites she had worked on, lost cities swallowed by sand or vines. She'd called ruins "the world's scars, proof that nothing survives forever."
Lucian blinked hard, shutting it out. The thought pressed too heavy on his chest. He didn't want to remember her voice now, not here.
He rounded a toppled arch, and froze.
In the distance, past the scattered fragments and moss-choked stairways, a tower rose. A colossal spire smothered in vines, climbing so high it dwarfed even the surrounding jungle canopy. Its peak was lost in the dim haze above, vanishing where the trees themselves ended.
It didn't belong in the city. It didn't belong anywhere human.
Lucian's throat tightened, though this time it wasn't thirst. The knife felt small in his hand. The pipe at his back might as well have been a twig.
And yet his feet carried him forward.
Because the totem that waited inside that tower… would help him survive whatever's to come later.