Elias ran, the forest closing around him like a living trap. Branches tore at his skin, but he didn't stop. The claw marks in the dirt, fresh and deep, chased him in his mind. They weren't human, not entirely, and the chunk of meat impaled on the symbol—a circle with crossed lines, like a broken star—told him something was hunting him. The rusty knife trembled in his hand, the dried blood of the traitor and the savages clinging to his skin like a curse. He couldn't stop. Stopping was death.
The air was thick, heavy with rot and dampness. His lungs burned, but his head was clear. He had killed, had seen what hunger could do, and he wasn't going to let the island turn him into one of them. María always said his stubbornness would get him out of any trouble. Now, with the forest growling at his back, he was going to put it to the test.
He ducked under a fallen tree, seeking cover. The howls had returned, distant but closing in, not as guttural as the savages'. These were sharper, as if something faster, wilder, was on his trail. Elias scanned the ground, looking for an advantage. He found a broken branch, sharp at one end. It wasn't a spear, but it could work. He tucked it into his waistband, next to the knife, and kept moving, staying under the shadows.
The forest opened into a small clearing, surrounded by moss-covered rocks. Elias stopped, panting, his eyes scanning every shadow. Something glinted in the ground, half-buried in the dirt. He approached, knife ready, and dug it out carefully. It was a tooth. Not a human tooth. Too long, too curved, like a predator's. Around it, there were more, scattered like seeds, and a trail of dried blood leading toward the rocks. Elias felt a chill. He wasn't alone.
A crack made him turn, but he saw nothing. Just the forest, staring back. He tucked the tooth into his shirt, proof that the island held more secrets than savages. He had to keep moving, find a shelter, a boat, anything. But as he advanced, his mind went back to the clan, to the bitten bones, to the traitor devoured. How had they gotten to that? What had broken them?
Months ago…
The beach was silent, the sun scorching the sand where the shelters of tarp and wood were starting to crumble. The thirty-two survivors were now twenty-eight. Four had died: two from infections, one drowned searching for fish, another crushed by a tree while cutting wood. Hunger was a constant guest, squeezing stomachs, clouding minds. Raúl's traps barely caught a rabbit a week, and the berries were gone. The stream still gave water, but it didn't fill the void.
Clara, the nurse, kept organizing, but her voice was weaker, her eyes sunken. "We have to ration better," she said, dividing a scrawny bird into tiny pieces. Diego, the boy, no longer drew ships in the sand. He just stared at the sea, silent, his ribs sharp under his skin.
Raúl was the first to break. They found him one night, far from the camp, crouched by Ana's body, a woman who had collapsed searching for roots. She was dead, her skin gray, eyes open. Raúl wasn't crying. He wasn't talking. His hands were red, not with dirt, but with blood. A chunk of flesh was missing from Ana's thigh, the edges torn by teeth, not a knife.
Clara confronted him, screaming, tears streaming down her face. "What did you do, Raúl?! What did you do?!" He didn't answer, just looked at her, lips trembling, blood dripping from his chin. The others came, some vomiting, others frozen. But no one touched him. No one stopped him. Because deep down, they all felt it: the hunger, whispering, promising relief.
That night, no one slept. Clara burned Ana's body, scattering the ashes in the sea, but the smell of charred flesh lingered in the air, tempting, unbearable. The next day, Raúl was gone. He'd fled to the forest, or so they thought. But at night, he returned, not alone. He brought two others, men who'd been hunting with him. Their eyes were different, empty but bright, like a wolf's. And their hands were red.
They didn't talk. They just attacked. They killed an older man, too weak to run, and dragged him into the forest. The screams didn't last long. Clara tried to stop them, but the others were too scared, too hungry. Diego hid under a tarp, covering his ears. At dawn, the three returned, mouths stained, stomachs full. And one of them had something carved on his arm: a circle with crossed lines, like the symbol on the tree.
It didn't take a week before others joined. First one, then two. They ate in secret, far from the camp, but the smell gave them away. Clara tried to resist, but hunger was stronger than morals. One night, they found her gnawing on a bone, tears mixing with the blood on her hands. Diego was the last to fall, eating the remains of a friend because there was nothing else.
The symbol started appearing everywhere: on trees, on rocks, on skin. No one knew who made it, but they all felt it. It was a pact, a mark of what they were now.
Elias tripped, a root catching his foot. He fell to his knees, the tooth in his shirt digging into his chest. The flashback wasn't his, but the horror was real. He didn't need to know how the cannibalism started to understand it. He'd seen it in the savages, in the traitor, in his own blood-stained hands. The island didn't just kill. It stripped you bare, reduced you to instinct, to teeth.
He stood, knife ready, the sharp branch in his other hand. The howls were closer now, mixed with a new growl, deeper, as if the claw marks had an owner. Elias looked for shelter, finding a large rock with a crack beneath, narrow enough to hide in. He crawled inside, the damp moss against his face, and held his breath.
Then he saw it, carved in the rock above his head: the symbol again, the circle with crossed lines. But this time, there was something more. A human finger, fresh, impaled in the center with a splinter. Blood dripped, falling inches from his face. And outside, the growls stopped, replaced by a silence that was worse.
Elias gripped the knife, teeth clenched. Something was right above the rock. And it knew he was there.