The silence was too loud.
It pressed against Arthur's skull like pressure beneath deep water, humming in his bones without making a sound. It was the kind of silence that had weight. The kind that knew things. He crouched beside a crooked pine, its bark cracked and bleeding sap like open wounds, and scanned the forest with the eyes of something that knew it was prey.
The quiet wasn't peaceful—it was wrong. Not a bird call. Not the whisper of insects. Not even the creak of wind through brittle branches. Every sound had been peeled away like skin from a corpse. Even his breathing felt unwelcome, too sharp against the muted world.
That's when he knew it was here.
He didn't know what it was. But it always came with the stillness. A silence so thick it felt unnatural, like the world had hit pause. The first time he'd sensed it, he thought he was imagining things. Now, he was certain.
It hunted in silence. Total silence.
Not just quiet—absence. No twigs cracking. No pads against leaves. Not even breath. He'd caught a glimpse once, maybe twice. Sleek. Gray. The shimmer of moonlight caught in motion, like something unfinished. Wolf-like. But wrong. Too clean. Too smooth. Its movements were too perfect, like a puppet moved by invisible strings. Its eyes had stared straight into him—not hungry, not angry, just... watching. It scared him down to the bones, he normally didn't know the feeling of fear. But in the face of death, the sides turned.
His enemy seemed intelligent. Way too intelligent even...
Like it was an alien. Something no normal human was supposed to encounter. Ever.
He whispered to himself, because silence made him crazy. "It doesn't make a sound. Nothing. No twigs snapping, no breathing, no growls. Nothing. It's like it's missing sound. Like it stole it."
And maybe it had. Maybe it fed on it. Whatever the reason was, he didn't like it.
Arthur didn't remember how many days he'd been in this patch of cursed forest. The trees here grew crooked, like they were leaning away from something. The light was wrong too—dim, flat, like the sun was being filtered through layers of grief. The three suns above (he still wasn't used to that) burned cold here. Color drained from the world beneath their light.
Time was broken in this place. He marked it by exhaustion and hunger, not by hours. But for at least one cycle, he'd been laying traps. Makeshift things—spiked pits dug with his bare hands, tension vines tied to tree limbs, heavy rocks perched above trip lines. Nothing a hunter would respect, but all a scared boy with street knowledge and desperation could craft.
After some time, he wondered if human life was existing in this world. A civilization of any race or kind, maybe even fantasy creatures like elves. But after he remembered that this was just a dream, a simulation. He gave up on this thought because it seemed too exaggerated.
Even more steps appeared on the outside, he started to shiver slightly, he grasped his chest, his heartbeat was louder than everything else around him.
The fear wasn't just being caught. It was never knowing where the thing was. It could be a breath away or miles off. And he'd never hear it coming.
He carried a rock with him. Fist-sized. Heavy. Chipped at one edge. He talked to it now. "You're going to save me, alright? Don't miss. Don't slip. Just… please don't slip."
"Damn, I feel like a psycho... But aren't we all a little bit psycho in our own way. Well, it shouldn't be too bad if I get a little bit tensed up..."
He checked every trap twice. Then again. Paranoia made his heart jitter in his chest like a caged bird. He marked the ground with sticks and lines of ash, hoping to catch footprints. He carved eyes into bark, crude symbols meant to trick his mind into feeling watched—so he could tell when real eyes were watching.
It didn't help.
Every night, the silence grew thicker. Every time he closed his eyes, he imagined it creeping closer. Its breathless body slipping between trees, watching, waiting, patient like a nightmare with teeth. He dreamed of it standing over him, its mouth open but soundless, blackness pouring out.
His eating routine was absolutely demolished. He only ate some berries he foraged from time to time.
He didn't sleep much either. Not because he couldn't but because he didn't want to.
When sleep came, it was fitful and full of noises he couldn't hear—phantom sounds, imagined echoes. He'd wake with his hands clenched and teeth grinding. The shelter he built, a loose nest of leaves and broken branches, felt like a child's fantasy fortress. The fire he lit at night, small and scared, did little to push back the dark.
And then, in the dim gray between night and whatever passed for morning here, it came.
At first, he thought it was another hallucination. Just a shimmer, a twitch in his vision.
Then it stepped into view.
It was larger than he remembered. A wolf—but sleek, unnatural. Like the idea of a wolf, rendered in silver mist and bone. Its fur didn't move. Its eyes were two glassy stones, black and endless.
No footsteps. No breath. Not even the crackle of leaves beneath its paws.
It saw him.
Arthur didn't move. Didn't breathe.
The thing tilted its head, curious.
His fingers tightened around the rock.
Then it lunged.
His scream shattered the silence like a hammer on glass. Not from pain—just instinct. He rolled as the creature smashed through his shelter. Sticks exploded. Embers soared. The wolf landed where his neck had been seconds ago. Its mouth snapped shut with terrifying force—no sound. Not even that.
He swung the rock.
Missed.
Swung again.
Hit.
A crack, dull and thick, like stone hitting wet wood. Blood spattered his arm, steaming in the cold air.
He didn't stop.
He hit again.
And again.
He was crying as he struck, not out of rage—out of survival. Out of terror. Out of knowing that if he stopped, he'd die.
When it stopped moving, he was covered in blood. Not just the wolf's.
His hands were shaking. He dropped the rock, and it fell silently into the dirt, as if the silence still clung to everything the wolf had touched.
Even dead, the thing stole sound.
He sat, hollowed out, staring at it. The eyes were still open. The silence lingered. He couldn't tell if it was grief or relief in his chest. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
Eventually, the smell hit him—coppery blood, meat, fur.
His stomach twisted violently. He hadn't eaten in… he didn't know. A day? Two? More?
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the corpse. "I didn't want to. I just…"
There were no words to finish that sentence.
He remembered a butcher from back home. A man who worked near the alley where Arthur used to sleep. Watched him gut rats and stray cats. The memory made his stomach clench again.
Arthur watched a few people kill already, but he never thought about doing it himself ever. Human or animal, he didn't care. It was a living being with its own life and he just ended it.
But he did what he could. His hands weren't steady. He gagged more than once. His knife was a chipped shard of glass tied to a stick.
He skinned it. Butchered the meat. Lit another fire. This one burned hotter, angrier.
The meat cooked. Some blackened. Some still bled. He ate it anyway.
It tasted like ash. Like guilt.
The first bite made him vomit.
The second stayed down.
The third numbed his tongue. But after all it still had a good taste.
He cried while chewing. Not from pain. Not from the taste. But because something in him had broken. Something small, and fragile, and human.
This world didn't care if you were just a kid who slept in alleyways and read broken books. It didn't care if you were scared. It gave you monsters, and then made you one.
He buried the wolf.
Not because it mattered. But because if he didn't, he might forget what mercy looked like. The silence never lifted. But the act grounded him.
He sat by the fire. Cold. Hollow.
He looked up at the flickering sky. Three suns blinked, slightly out of sync. The forest flickered, too—like bad reception.
He whispered to the void, to the trees, to himself.
"I don't want to be like this. I don't want to keep killing. I just… I just want to wake up."
No answer came. Of course.
But something heard him.
Somewhere, deep in the silence, behind trees that were not trees and a sky that sometimes stuttered, something else began to listen.
And it remembered his voice.