In a dreamy haze, Damon saw a vast, unfamiliar forest drift through his consciousness field.
The ancient trees loomed above, their frozen leaves coated in white snow while a crescent moon bathed their tips in a pale, silver light.
In one secluded corner of this winter landscape, shattered and weathered stones littered the ground around a partly collapsed shrine. It was far larger than any he had ever seen in books.
Half of its clay roof tiles lay cracked and scattered across the ground.
Withered, frost-ridden support beams stood slanted from a fractured concrete platform, barely holding up what remained of the grand structure.
At this moment, a dull ache radiated through Damon's feet from the frozen ground beneath him. He stirred awake, and his eyes snapped open.
His vision blurred for a few seconds as a throbbing pain flooded his skull. A bitter cold spread across the roof of his mouth, as if he had bitten into a block of ice.
"What is this place?" Damon groaned, rubbing his forehead. His brows creased as he spun around in a fluster to look at his surroundings.
Confused, he saw that the buildings around him looked nothing like the brownish-red brick and wood he saw every day at Redhill. Yet, despite the obvious damage, he couldn't shake a strange, buried sense of familiarity.
'T-this place resembles one of those artworks the librarian is always staring at…'
Without thinking, Damon shifted his gaze to a crooked signboard hanging from one of the wooden pillars and narrowed his eyes.
He couldn't make any sense of the sharp symbols carved into its weathered surface. But he had certainly seen them before, thanks to Mr. Ying's occasional canvas paintings.
The instructor was known to have an unorthodox teaching style.
Mr. Ying came from a long line of nomadic eastern tribes, and he often preached the value of independent study over the rules of a formal classroom.
He wanted every child at Redhill to have a decent grasp of the foreign cultures and landscapes he had explored in his youth.
'The voice said something about a dimensional shift. Was I somehow transported to Mr. Ying's home country…?' Damon muttered to himself, breathing a wisp of white vapor into the freezing air.
'Maybe this place is a lost ruin…?'
Though nervous, he couldn't hold back his curiosity. He decided to scope out the area with light, quiet steps.
He avoided the damaged path leading up to the main structure and paused when his eyes fell on a pair of eerie stone cat statues painted in red and white.
Their slanted eyes, solid and unmoving, seemed almost alive, as though they were mocking his situation.
'These things can't be normal house decorations… right?' Damon felt his heart skip a few beats.
He quickened his pace to put some distance between himself and the unsettling shrine statues. If he weren't so afraid to get close, he would have smashed their stone heads to pieces instead.
Tearing his gaze away with a touch of regret, he turned a sharp corner by a shabby stall covered in thick snow and moved toward a damaged well.
Suddenly, his eyes fell on a wide patch of snow soaked in a dark green color.
Then the wind carried the stench of rotten eggs straight into his face.
"Is that… blood?" Damon whispered, wrinkling his nose in disgust. Though the fluid was clearly non-human, it looked fresh, as if it had bled into the cold white canvas only minutes ago.
Hunching his back to keep a low profile, he took a shallow breath and surveyed the area for a few seconds. Once he confirmed there were no other hostile creatures lurking nearby, he inched around the stone masonry for a closer look.
As he rounded the well, the source of the stain finally revealed itself.
Lying on a thick layer of snow was the wrecked carcass of a giant insect.
The creature was nearly the size of a human child. Its segmented body was a monstrous mix of a hornet and a praying mantis.
Blue icicles covered most of its frozen frame, though large parts of its armor had been smashed apart. Dark green fluid seeped from the jagged cracks running across its shell and dripped into the snow.
The sight turned Damon's stomach, but the rotten smell was even worse.
"Urgh..." He raised a trembling hand to cover his mouth and nose, fighting the urge to throw up. A second later, a ragged sigh escaped his pale lips, and a small realization struck him.
'Guess it was a good thing I didn't eat breakfast...'
For a few moments, Damon just stared at the corpse with a conflicted expression.
Despite the biting cold, his curiosity slowly won out over his fear. He swept the dark surroundings once more with his eyes and ears, then crouched beside the corpse. He wanted to know how a creature like this had been killed.
Damon carefully reached out and pressed a bare hand against the frozen blue shell to test it. His fingers traced one of the deep cracks before he knocked on the thick exoskeleton a few times.
Tonk! Tonk!
The dull sound reminded him of knocking on metal plates.
'This has to be a mutated beast…' Damon murmured under his breath. There was no way an ordinary animal had armor this tough.
The books in the Redhill archives described mutated beasts as creatures changed by toxic radiation that had spread across the landmasses and sky territories over generations.
Historical records and journals said they had supernatural abilities or physical traits far beyond normal wildlife.
'I've never seen one in person, but this thing fits the description perfectly…' Damon shook his head wearily to clear his thoughts.
Steeling his resolve, he took hold of the creature's upper body and began to lift. The shifting snow beneath the heavy carcass gave way like sand.
After he rolled the creature onto its side, his eyes lit up. He had spotted a weapon.
It was one of the creature's forearms. The limb curved inward like a sharp farming sickle, with a wicked, jagged blade along its inner edge.
"Now that's useful." Damon grinned, pleased and a little desperate.
He grabbed the savage limb near its base and pulled with all his might. His shivering arms burned from the strain.
Yet, the forearm did not budge a single inch.
Seeing this, Damon's brow furrowed in frustration. Unwilling to quit so easily, he adjusted his grip, dug his heels into the packed snow, and pulled again.
The limb shifted a little but stayed attached, its inner joints creaking like a rusted iron hinge.
Two minutes flew by as his arms shook, pulling and twisting. His fingers ached from gripping the sandpaper-like surface of the beast's frozen shell.
"...Seriously!?" Damon glared at the dead insect as he drew ragged, heaving breaths. For something that had already been ripped apart, it was annoyingly stubborn.
With an annoyed grunt, he climbed onto the carcass and planted one boot against its thorax. Using that leverage, he wrapped both hands around the limb and leaned back with his whole body weight.
Crk!
The frozen corpse creaked under his weight. Dark green fluid oozed into the snow as something wet shifted inside the hollow shell.
However, Damon did his best to ignore the sickening squelch.
"Just… break already, you stupid bug!"
He leaned back with all the weight he could muster, and a loud crack echoed through the quiet ruins.
The forearm tore free a second later, and he tumbled backward onto the snow before scrambling to his feet.
A moment later, satisfaction spread across his face. He threw his arms up in triumph, still gripping the heavy, makeshift blade.
In his excitement, he had forgotten the most important rule of the wilderness: keep your voice low.
Damon's expression darkened. He nervously scanned the dark treeline before letting out a soft sigh. "I should just finish up and head somewhere else..."
Although he had a half-decent weapon now, he didn't want to attract whatever had been strong enough to break through the creature's armor.
Damon took one last look at the wreckage. His gaze drifted past the jagged cracks, and he cupped his chin.
Not counting the limb he had just torn off, the beast's other five limbs had been cut clean at the joints. Large chunks of its shell were missing, exposing torn organs that glistened in the moonlight.
Strangely, Damon no longer felt the same disgust. Instead, an odd sense of déjà vu rose in his chest, and the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
At that moment, he noticed a huge shadow stretching across the snow toward him.
"What is..." Dread gripped Damon's heart as he slowly raised his gaze and made out the silhouette.
There, on top of the shrine's half-ruined roof, stood a massive tiger, balanced on all fours.
Rippling muscles and thick black stripes lined its body. Its fur was as white as the snow around it. A pair of long, saber-like canines hung from its upper jaw, soaked in dripping green fluid.
Damon's pupils shrank to pinpricks as he stared up at the giant predator.
But it was at that moment that they locked eyes.