Ezra stayed frozen.
It sniffed. Or tried to. It didn't have a nose.
Then it kept moving.
He waited another full minute before standing. Even then, his legs were shaking.
That thing — whatever it was — didn't feel like a predator. It felt like a leak. Like something from somewhere else trying to wear this world like a skin.
The forest had more of them. He was sure of it.
Ezra pushed on.
There were flowers that turned when he passed them. Huge ones — dark red, wet-looking. Their stalks tracked him. One opened when he got too close. Nothing came out. Yet.
He gave them wide berth after that.
The temple, if it could be called that, loomed deeper in. Vines hung thick across the stone. Some twitched. Others just dripped. A broken mirror shard lay on the ground nearby — cracked, half-covered in mud.
He didn't look into it.
Didn't know why. Just didn't.
Something about this place set every instinct on edge. Ezra had done wilderness drills, storm shelter training, even resonance control under duress. None of it applied here.
Here, the rules weren't the same.
The plants moved when they shouldn't. The sky didn't track time right. The monsters weren't part of the food chain — they didn't eat, didn't roar. Just wandered. Wrong.
He entered the temple scanning around , it seamen's clear , it was getting harder to see with the disappearance of the sun as he grabbed a branch letting flame emerge from his palm . The temple was covered with runes and vines as he wandered inside .
Ezra didn't light a fire until he was sure the temple was empty.
It had taken hours to check every corner, every stairwell choked in roots, every hallway that curved too tight. The deeper levels were half-submerged — flooded or worse — and one set of stairs had collapsed entirely.
In the end, he picked the upper hall. High ground. Only one way in or out. Better chances if something came crawling.
He sealed the entry as best he could. Piled debris from a fallen pillar and wedged a chunk of broken door into the gap. Not perfect. Wouldn't stop those creatures. But it'd make noise. Enough warning to stand up and die on his feet, maybe.
Then, finally, he lit flame.
A branch. Dry enough. A whisper of resonance through his fingers and it caught — dull orange flicker, barely enough to warm the shadows. He fed it slow, cautious. Watched how the vines overhead twitched when it flared.
They didn't like fire.
Good.
He didn't either.
Ezra sat down cross-legged and took stock. His satchel — half-empty. One ration bar. Canteen with filtered water. A shard of mirror he'd wrapped in cloth and refused to throw away. Not sure why. It felt… important. Or dangerous.
He propped it against the far wall, facing away.
Around him, the ruin breathed.
Not in the metaphorical sense. Not in the "it felt alive" way.
It actually breathed.
The stone walls ticked like cooling metal. The vines creaked and shifted as if sensing him. Once, a low groan passed through the floor — not from above or below, but from the walls themselves.
Ezra didn't move. Just watched. Waited.
Eventually, nothing happened.
Which was worse than if something had.
Later, maybe hours:
He built a second fire. This time with more branches. Let it burn hotter. Not for heat — the air was muggy. But the fire kept his nerves in place.
And the shadows still.
From his makeshift bed — a cloak stretched across stones — he listened to the forest outside.
The flowers made noise. Low hisses. Clicking petals. Sometimes, something large crashed through the treetops far off, followed by silence that lasted too long.
The moon was still out, full and wrong. It didn't move. Just hovered there, heavy, like it was waiting for something to finish breaking.
Ezra didn't sleep.
Not really.
He sat beneath a crumbling arch inside the ruined temple, flame flickering in his hand, casting long, crooked shadows on the vine-covered walls. The runes etched into the stone pulsed faintly beneath the moss — not with light, but with presence. Like they were remembering something. Or waiting for it to return.
The temple was too quiet. Even for ruins.
No night birds. No rustling brush. No wind. Just stillness. Thick and watching.
He'd cleared enough space to sit, pushing aside brittle roots and shattered tile, laying out his coat to rest on. He didn't dare sleep. Not after what he'd seen outside — the riftspawn, the shifting sun, the flowers that turned when he passed them.
Instead, he listened.
Hours passed like oil. Slow, heavy, clinging to thought. And still the forest didn't sleep.
At some point, he heard footsteps — not close, but near enough to catch. Not animal. Not human. Just off. Something that walked like it had never done it before.
He stayed still.
Eventually the sound faded. He didn't relax.
In the morning — if it could be called that — the sun rose crooked. Not east. Just… up. Like someone had dragged a torch behind a curtain of smoke. The light was weak. Sickly. And it didn't warm anything.
Ezra stood, stretched aching joints, and stepped outside.
The forest wasn't the same as last night.
Some of the vines had moved. Flowers had bloomed where there were none before. A trail of deep grooves — claw marks — now ran across the path leading toward the deeper trees.
He didn't follow it. Not yet.
Instead, he circled the perimeter of the temple. Marked the edges of where he felt safe. He found a half-intact basin — once used for ritual cleansing, now dry — and made it his water cache. He tested nearby plants for toxicity with tricks Theo had drilled into him. Most failed.
He found one berry that didn't blacken the test bark.
Still didn't eat it.
There was something about the colors here. Too vivid. Too alive. Like the forest was painted in blood under varnish. Everything glistened a little too much.
The more he explored, the more he realized nothing in this place waited. The plants reached. The trees leaned. The forest didn't grow — it crept.
A tree had moved since yesterday.
He was sure of it. Its roots had torn through a nearby wall. Fresh split stone. Fresh sap. No sound when it happened.
Ezra didn't speak. Didn't curse. Just catalogued. Learned.
He scouted slowly, widening his range from the temple day by day. He marked trees with scorched symbols — not runes, just identifiers. Crude lines. Enough to know if something rearranged the forest again.
Some marks vanished. Not covered — erased. Cleanly.
On his third loop, he saw bones in the underbrush. Clean. Picked. But not by teeth. They were twisted in ways that didn't make sense. A ribcage bent inward. Finger bones arranged in a spiral.
He didn't touch them.
Once, he saw someone — or something — in the distance. Humanoid. Moving wrong. Its limbs too long, its pace too even. It vanished behind a hill. He didn't follow.
Back in the temple, he started carving out a system. Inventory. Watch patterns. Defensive placements. He reinforced the door with rubble. Cleared two exits. Kept fire going.
He hadn't seen another marked soul.
Maybe they were dead. Maybe the forest had eaten them already. Or maybe they were out there — somewhere deeper in the Trial — surviving like him. Alone.
But the temple… the temple was his now.
Not safe. Not comfortable. But his.
It was a thin line between shelter and tomb.
Ezra planned to keep it on the right side.
But on the fourth day, he slipped.
It wasn't dramatic. No booming sound. No warning shriek.
He had been tracking a ridge — one he hadn't scouted before. The terrain sloped sharply upward, overgrown with roots and knotted vines. He'd moved slower than usual, eyes on the ground, watching for anything off.
That was the mistake.
He didn't look up.
Something moved in the canopy.
By the time he noticed the silence — the real silence, the kind that meant even the plants were holding their breath — it was already too late.
A shadow fell. Fast.
Ezra jumped back on instinct, hitting the dirt hard as a limb slammed down where he'd been. Not a branch. A leg. It cracked the ground.
He scrambled backward, heart hammering in his chest.
It crawled into view.
Spindly. Wide. Pale grey skin stretched too tight over joints that bent both ways. No eyes. Just a maw where a face should be — vertical, ringed with barbed teeth, and always open. Like it was breathing through hunger.
It moved with jerks. Not fast. Just… immediate. One moment here. Then there.
He didn't wait for it to adjust.
Ezra pushed to his feet and ran.
No thought. No formation. Just the rhythm of footfalls, heartbeats, crashing brush.
It followed.
Not through the trees — above them. Swinging. Scraping. Shadow flickering through the gaps in the canopy.
He didn't try to fight. Not yet. Not alone.
The path blurred around him. No time to mark turns, no time to check directions. He just ran.
He caught the edge of a ravine a second too late.
Slid down. Dirt tore at his arms. He hit the bottom hard — shoulder first, then ribs. Rolled.
It didn't follow. Not right away.
He crawled beneath the roots of a half-toppled stone monolith. Huddled into the curve of it, biting down the sound of his breath.
It landed.
Heavy. Close.
He watched its legs — three of them now? — pacing the ridge. Sniffing. Snapping. The maw clicked shut, then opened again.
Eventually, it left.
But not far.
Ezra waited an hour before moving.
He climbed out. Quiet. Focused. Every inch of him shaking.
He didn't go back to the temple right away.
He limped to the nearest stream — one he'd marked before — and rinsed the blood off his arms. Checked the wounds. Nothing broken. Just bruised.
Then he sat.
Sat and thought.
The creature had been fast, but it hadn't seen him. It hunted on sound. Pressure. Heat, maybe.
Next time, he'd be ready.
No more noise. No exposed paths. No direct trails back to the temple.
He'd gotten too confident. Too used to the rules of survival from back home.
This place didn't follow those.
It punished comfort.
Ezra clenched his jaw, tightened the makeshift wrap around his arm, and stood.
The forest had drawn first blood.
He didn't plan on letting it do it twice.