The rain dwindled to a beaded hush, a million tiny mirrors clinging to the edges of leaves. Kai moved slowly because slow was the speed that kept his legs in the correct order. He had found a rhythm that didn't throw him to the ground every third step—a four-beat meter that felt learned and ancient at once—and now he let the forest come to him with each careful placement of paw to earth.
"What a huge forest," he thought, and the words didn't feel like an exaggeration so much as a confession. He had grown up with parks bounded by fences and sightlines interrupted by apartment blocks. This place went on. It didn't only stretch forward; it stretched upward and downward, into layers and stories. The canopy sat like a layered cathedral ceiling, and the pillars holding it up were trees he didn't recognize. Their bark was not just rough: it was patterned, latticed with whorls that suggested eyes and spiral script. Lichen glowed faintly on their sides, and threads of pale fungus stitched one trunk to another like the forest was wearing seams.
"What… is this place?" he whispered in his head, because saying anything out loud made him imagine the word escaping and never coming back.
The trees answered without voice: a slow exhale of cedar and loam, a thousand tiny water-drips calibrating their falls to create a rhythm that tugged at his new ears. In the undergrowth, ferns as tall as his old knees unfurled like the hands of giants. Strange fruit hung low on a thorned vine, each orb faintly luminous as if remembering the moon. And everywhere, small lights drifted that he first took for gnats until one passed close and he realized it was a seed with its own halo, bobbing with purpose, looking for a place to plant a story.
This could really be another world. The thought arrived without ceremony, and the moment it did, everything in him that could nod was nodding. Not a hospital. Not an alley where time held him and then handed him back. Another world with the word "enchanted" primed like a spring on his tongue.
A crisp tone chimed in the space just behind his eyes. It slipped under his thoughts like water under a leaf and then presented itself in a clarity that made the air feel edged.
```
Location Detected: Enchanted Forest
You are currently at: Enchanted Forest — Outer Verge.
Warning: You are currently at Enchanted Forest where Deities and strong monsters reside.
```
"Deities?" Kai thought, his mind catching on the word the way claws catch on wool. He corrected the grammar in his head reflexively, then immediately felt ridiculous. If the world wanted its warning to sound like something translated hastily in a hurry, who was he to argue?
He turned, head swiveling with a freedom he kept being startled by. There was nothing like a road, nothing man-made, nothing carved except by wind and time. But as his eyes adjusted to the forest's color palette, he noticed a path as cats notice—patches of ground scuffed in a similar direction, ferns bowed just so, moss smoothed by repeated touch. He kept parallel to it but not on it. Somewhere inside him, a knowledge too old to have a date suggested that paths were made by creatures larger than him, or more numerous, or both.
His belly complained in a way that was not theatrical. It was steady, practical, a drum tapped lightly to remind him of contracts. Hunger was simple when you were a cat. Eat or don't, live or don't. He scanned the understory for insects he could practice on, for the bright flicker of any creature slower than him and made of less moral complication than a rabbit.
The river he'd heard earlier declared itself with an increase in the alphabet of water, a broader sound, then a sight: between two boulders sugared with light moss, water slid green as glass over stone, thin in places, pooling in others. The stones were worn the way time wears prayers smooth. In a shallow cup near the bank, the water held still enough to show him a face.
He didn't recognize himself, not because he didn't expect a cat but because the cat looking back held two variables at once. White marked his chin like a dropped brushstroke. A storm-gray mask darkened his cheeks and temple. His eyes were large, yellow shot with green, pupils sliced into black verticals that adjusted as he peered. The expression was open in a way human faces can't be. In it he saw question after question.
He reached a paw toward the water and it mirrored him with a precision that made him flinch. The paw's pads pressed a cold that came with edges. He drank, and the water tasted like stone and leaf and a little bit like old coins. His tongue surprised him again—so rough, like a tool built to scrape. He thought of the rabbit and felt the word "kill" appear in his head with the thud of a dropped book.
"Do I have to?" he thought—not to the forest, not to any deity, but to the other presence that had announced itself during and after the void.
The System obliged him with a response that felt like a door opening without anyone needing to pull.
```
Core Objective: Accumulate Evolution Points (EP) to evolve into stronger forms.
Primary EP Sources:
— Defeating monsters.
— Surviving encounters with higher-tier threats.
— Completing System-directed tasks.
Note: Sustenance from non-monstrous fauna yields no EP. Harvesting benign flora yields no EP.
```
He closed his eyes and saw a top-down view of his old life, bullet points and lists and rules, and somewhere in there his teacher in ninth-grade ethics asking for a paragraph on the difference between moral action and survival. He had written something sincere and clumsy and gotten a B-minus. He wished he could go back and add a section on "What if you wake up as a small carnivore in a forest where deities walk."
"Monsters," he thought. "What does that mean here? Slimes? Goblins?" He was being jokey to himself to avoid the part of him that was already thrumming with the idea of a hunt. The body knew a thing the mind still wanted to negotiate.
A movement drew his eye—a shape inconsistent with the rest of the scene. In the shallows downstream, just before the water quickened around a bend, a lump that had been a lump a second ago wasn't. It pulsed faintly, then shuddered. The color wasn't moss, precisely, or algae. It was the idea of green given a body. The thing attached itself to a submerged branch with an ooze that made faint strings, and as the trickle of current pressed at it, it reshaped, recomposed, persistent as a stubborn thought.
As he watched, a dark seed hung within it like an olive in gelatin. When the seed rotated to face him—or when the ooze turned in a way that made it seem so—Kai felt the sensation of being noticed. Not seen, exactly. Registered.
He tasted the air without meaning to. The scent was plant-not-plant. It lacked the warm, blood-edge of mammal life. It smelled like damp caves and old bottles of pickles.
He crouched. The crouch arrived fully formed, a gift from something that had studied cats full-time. His hind end rose, tail straightened, weight shifted to the balls of his feet. The ground spoke through his pads, telling him which bits would betray him with crackle and which would accept him without comment.
"Okay," he thought, and it was both a plan and a dare to himself. "If this is a monster, then it's at least one I can look in the eye and not see a childhood." He flattened further, then eased forward, one paw at a time, the purring machine of focus moving his body like a logic problem.
He had been quiet plenty of times in his old life, out of courtesy and shyness. He had never been silent as a tactic. The difference electrified him. Each whisker reported back on the air's texture; each ear flicked to filter out the meaningless.
At three cat-lengths, the slime did an improbable thing. It jigged. The membrane that held it bulged and hardened and then bulged again, a test of shape believed and abandoned. In one of those hardenings, the slime became a mouth. It opened and closed with the laziness of a yawn.
"Oh," Kai thought, both fascinated and newly alarmed. The mouth swayed toward him. In another life, he might have half-laughed at the ridiculousness of being jawed by a gelatin salad. In this one, his life could be ended by something that left no bones behind.
"Now," his body told him, and he went.
The leap could not have been any other gesture, and still it surprised him. He launched with hind legs that felt like springs serviced yesterday. His front paws kissed the slime and slid. Cold met his pads and tried to wrap. He brought his back feet up in a bicycle motion and raked, hoping instinct was smarter than fear. His claws met resistance when one caught something firm within the green. The slime convulsed and made a sound like a bathtub drain swallowing a child's toy.
"Core," his brain said, supplying knowledge it insisted it had not had before. "Get the core."
The slime tried to engulf his forepaw. He wrenched back in a panic that was ugly and effective. Goo slicked his fur. He went in again, lower, teeth bared. His mouth filled with chemical cold and a taste like stale mint and rainwater. He bit and, as soon as he could, let go what he thought he'd grabbed: something round and hard, the size of a marble, with a texture like polished seed. As his jaw disengaged, the thing popped loose and struck a rock with a click.
Light crawled through the slime like embarrassment or exposure. The mouth-shape collapsed. The mass fell in on itself and then gave up its verticality, spreading into a puddle that steamed a little. The little marble rolled until it bumped his paw, and he placed his paw on it the way you might put a hand on someone's shoulder to assure them that everything would be all right.
A series of notes chimed in his head, celebratory but clipped, like a polite video game.
```
Monster defeated: Moss Slime (Juvenile)
EP +3
Loot: Verdant Core (Common)
New Skill acquired: Pounce I
— Enhance initial leap distance and accuracy. Minor stamina cost.
Stat increases:
— Agility +1
— Perception +1
Condition: Slime Residue — Minor. Clean recommended.
```
Kai let the numbers float in his awareness and then sink. It wasn't the math that made him breathe in and then breathe out and let a small laugh escape. It was the feeling in his muscles—the small, objective ticks of better—not heroic, not story-breaking. He could jump a little more on purpose. He could notice a little earlier. He couldn't help thinking of the corners of his life before, the ways he'd tried to become better at lifting boxes without hurting himself, at talking to a hiring manager without talking himself out of the job. This improvement sat adjacent to hope.
He licked his foreleg, testing how much cat logic he could stomach. The residue tasted worse than it smelled. He grimaced, which, as a cat, meant he closed his eyes and wrinkled a portion of his nose he had never been aware of. He cleaned anyway because sometimes you do a thing for the after, not the during.
He nudged the marble—the Verdant Core—with his paw. It glowed from within like a nightlight with a dim dial. It felt inert now, but the System attached data it thought he should know.
```
Verdant Core (Common)
— A condensed remnant of a Moss Slime. Can be consumed for minor stamina restoration or used as crafting material. No EP on consumption.
```
No EP. He considered leaving it for the river to decide. Instead he rolled it to the base of a nearby fern and scraped a thin layer of dirt over it with decisive motions he was pleased to find he knew how to perform.
He drank more from the pool and then retreated into the drier ferns, habit forming: drink; hide; plan. The first kill—if it counted as that; if it counted as kill—had given him a piece of the forest the size of a coin. It had also replaced some of the panic with a working hypothesis: If monsters were like that, then he could live without feeling like a villain in the first chapter of a tragedy.
"A deity lives here," he reminded himself, and wondered what shape that god took. The distant rumor of bells, or a shadow that never matched its owner, or a fox with antlers and a human smile. He tried to picture a human-shaped god and his brain refused, stubborn as a child refusing a coat. Instead, he imagined a tree that was also a person, a mountain that laughed when a cloud brushed it, a river that, when you said thank you, said you're welcome back, actual words wrapped in splashing.
He followed the not-path again, letting it be a guide without becoming a rail. The forest revealed its oddities casually, the way a friend shows you their messy room without apology. A circle of mushrooms ringed a tree's base, but each cap's spots moved slowly, rearranging into patterns that resolved into letters when he looked slantwise, then dissolved when he looked direct. A log was covered in shelf fungus that chimed in the wind with a tuner's precision. Two dragonflies paused midair, wings stilled, and then resumed in perfect mirror once he'd looked away, as though time itself hiccuped under observation.
He adjusted to a body anchored so close to the ground that the ground felt like a companion. The smell of moss surprised him as variation rather than monotony. He had been human long enough to believe sniffing the air was a single act. Here, it was study. One moss smelled sun-struck and warm, a memory of summer stored for winter. Another exhaled pepper and old books. He could track the progress of a beetle by the lean of a blade of grass. He could tell which branch had been brushed by something big recently by the brightness of its broken edge.
"You're noticing that you notice," he told himself. "That's good. That's you not losing you."
He found a low branch with a cradle just big enough for a cat of his dimensions. Climbing was another set of instructions his body had saved to muscle. The first time he reached for the bark, his claws extended with a small, satisfying click, a tool produced from a sheath without ceremony. He hauled himself up with a combination of pull and push, of hug and hop. In the cradle, he could tuck himself into a comma. From there, he could see and not be seen.
The System chimed once, half-suggestion, half-reminder.
```
Tutorial Tip:
— Enchanted Forest layering increases with depth.
— Outer Verge: Mixed low-tier monsters. Rare patrols by mid-tier predators.
— Mid Canopy: Increased magical flora. Avian monsters. Deity attendants possible.
— Heartwood: High-tier monsters. Deity domains. Extreme risk.
```
"Outer Verge, then," he thought. "Stay here, get strong, don't get curious." The last part was a lie he smiled at, because the only thing that had ever reliably gotten him out of bed was curiosity disguised as errands.
Mid-afternoon—if that's what it was—brought warmth enough to coax scents he hadn't had access to earlier. He dozed with both ears working, one turned to the river's gossip, one to the silence that wasn't. The sleep he dipped into was a light thing, more a drift than a dive, and in it he dreamed of crosswalk beeps turning into birdsong and an umbrella sprouting leaves, the rib that had broken becoming a twig that grew a flower. In the dream, he stood up as a human on the wet crosswalk and no one screamed because the truck was a tree bending and bending and then becoming a bridge.
He woke with a start that would have tossed him from the branch if the branch hadn't been made as if for him. The forest had changed its song. A hush had moved through the underbrush like a decision. Birds went from talk to the sort of quiet that makes a person think of funerals. Far off, something barked once, a sound that bounced from trunk to trunk.
The System did not fanfare. It flicked a small light on in the corner of his mind.
```
Threat Assessment:
— Proximity: 120 meters and closing.
— Classification: Unknown predator (mid-tier). Avoid if possible.
```
Avoid if possible became an imperative. The part of him that wanted to test himself against the new rules sat down politely and folded its hands. He slid closer to the trunk, making himself smaller not just with body but with wanting. The bark against his side smelled like night rain and iron. He pressed his face to it and let the smell fill the places where fear could go. If fear found no room, it would wait outside.
The predator came and went not like a thing that passes but like a weather pattern that visits you and then visits someone else. It moved under the leaves, not high, not low. He caught a glimpse through a lattice of fern: a shape the size of a deer but wrong in angles, its neck held too straight, its steps too measured, as if it were a marionette moved by an expert who wanted to teach a lesson. As it stepped, small lights blinked in its fur, pale blue, as if stars had been combing it and some stuck.
It passed without pausing, and when it had gone far enough that his ears let the normal noise come back, he let a long breath out. A bird swore in relief. A squirrel, or the local equivalent, decided to lecture a tree. The forest resumed.
A lower tone than the predator's warning threaded his mind, patient and patient again, and he realized it was the System offering him pointers he could refuse.
```
Objective Unlocked:
— First Evolution: Feral Kit ➝ choose a path at EP threshold 100.
Paths Preview:
— Swiftclaw: Emphasize agility, speed, evasive skills. Unlock: Dash I, Quickstep.
— Shadowpelt: Emphasize stealth, perception, night vision. Unlock: Silent Step, Dark Sight I.
— Ember-Eyed: Emphasize magical affinity, elemental attunement. Unlock: Ember Flicker, Mana Sense I.
Current EP: 3
```
"One hundred," he whispered in his mind, and the number felt like a hill with a view. Slimes might be three points each, which would make him a connoisseur of gelatin despair at this rate. There would be other small monsters, perhaps similarly non-anguishing to dispatch: animated vines, bark beetles with too many eyes, mushrooms that could move when insulted. He'd choose what to fight as if he were eating from a buffet and trying not to pick the dishes that felt like somebody's grandmother.
He thought of the paths and tasted each quietly. Swiftclaw felt honest—it was what the body already tilted toward. Shadowpelt whispered to the part of him that had always preferred corners and observation. Ember-Eyed startled him with its promise. Magic? He supposed it made sense that the world that had trees that laughed also had energy he could touch. The idea of being a cat who threw sparks from his paws made him laugh internally; the idea of sensing the world's invisible currents made him go very still.
"Later," he told himself, because the best way to lose your now is to spend it all on your next.
He climbed down as the sun (or the forest's equivalent) leaned toward a direction that felt like evening. The light sharpened to an amber that made everything seem both truer and more temporary. The tree shadows lengthened until they were conversations between trunks. The insects that mistrusted the day decided the world was now mostly theirs.
He hunted again. Not the rabbit—rabbits, plural, left scat that smelled of grass and caution; he would wait to fight regrets later. The slimes clustered in wetter places. He found another one—a pond's edge, this time—and repeated the pounce, a little cleaner, a little less surprised by his own teeth. He took a splash of residue on his chest fur and washed it out with the methodical air of someone learning a trade. EP ticked to six. A third slime, smaller and less ambitious, slid between stones like a worry seeking the back of your mind. He pinned it with a paw, felt the give, and let it go because some part of him wanted to know what mercy felt like in this body. The System did not address mercy. The slime oozed away unreformed.
He found a clearing not far from where the river widened shallowly and became a mirror. The clearing wasn't the kind made by human hands. It was the kind where trees had stepped back to allow a conversation. In its center stood a stone, knee-high in his old life, a head above him in this one. The stone had been placed rather than born. Its top was flat and its sides bore grooves that invited fingers. Around it, the grass grew in a ring as if respecting someone's need for space.
He approached with a caution that felt like etiquette. The System did not warn but did notice with him.
```
Feature Detected: Waystone (Dormant)
— Function: Travel anchor. Deity attunement required for activation.
```
"Deity attunement," he repeated, and the phrase was so absurd he wanted to roll in it like catnip. He touched the stone with his paw and felt a thrum not unlike the moment before you sneeze. Magic, then. It wanted a password he did not have. He placed his paw a second longer, not to press it, not to claim it, but to say hello the way you say hello to a building you will someday live in.
Leaving the clearing, he discovered that the world had hopped a track while he was inside. The light was now that last generosity before night when everything is the color of honey and then suddenly nothing is. He would need a place to sleep that wasn't a branch where a predator's passing whim could become a new zero. He scented out a hollow: a fallen log with its heartwood chewed away by time and teeth, the entry small enough that only a creature his current size would think to try. He squeezed through, whiskers pulling in, spine flattening, pushing forward with his back legs like he was learning to be toothpaste. Inside, it smelled of mushrooms and the memory of rain.
He turned and, with paws careful not to make much noise, scraped leaves into a scatter that felt like a bed. The act provided him with the strangest moment of the day: a feeling of domesticity that did not appear oppositional to adventure. He was making a nest like he'd make a queue in memory for a grocery list. He lay down with his paws tucked under and his tail curved around. His nose touched the underside of his own paw and the smell of himself anchored him to something even more sturdy than the log. He was here. He was he.
He should have slept immediately and deeply. Instead, a smaller chime rang in his mind, not the System's crisp not-voice but something he was almost sure had a personality. He tilted his head though no senses were required for internal listening.
```
Daily Summary:
— Monsters defeated: 2 (Moss Slime — Juvenile)
— EP gained: 6 (Total: 6/100)
— Skill gained: Pounce I
— Stat changes: Agility +1, Perception +1
— Notes: First encounter with mid-tier predator (avoided). Waystone detected (Dormant).
Suggested Focus tomorrow:
— Practice Pounce I on non-combat targets to improve control.
— Scout and map water sources.
— Identify low-threat monster types for EP accumulation.
```
"You're a planner," he told the System, amused, grateful, wary of reliance and in need of it anyway. He tried to summon a proper status, the kind that would have put numbers to his new parts. The System obliged in the neat, comforting way of a good spreadsheet.
```
Host: Kai
Form: Felis catus (juvenile)
Location: Enchanted Forest — Outer Verge
Stats:
— Strength: 3
— Agility: 6 (+1)
— Perception: 7 (+1)
— Will: 5
— Vigor (HP): 12/12
— Stamina: 14/16
Skills:
— Pounce I
— Basic Climb
— Groom (Innate)
Traits:
— Whisker Sense (Innate)
— Night Sight (Minor)
EP: 6/100
```
Strength 3. He had been stronger his last year at the warehouse, but strength was measured differently here. He liked Will at 5. He could work with that. He would, in fact, lean on it like you lean on a door while you fumble for keys. The skills list looked thin and honest.
"Night Sight," he noticed. He hadn't thought to name the way dusk hadn't made him blind. The forest beyond the log's mouth was an arrangement of shadows that separated themselves into components as he stared: a shrub that looked like a sleeping person reshaped into branches and leaves; a lump that was a rock and not a crouched enemy; the ribbon of the river's reflected light unwinding from one tree to the next as each moved in a breeze that had found them.
He closed his eyes and every sound introduced itself, lined up, waited its turn. When another sound tried to cut the line, his ears found it and moved to look, a reflex he could have used as a person in meetings. He smiled at the thought and felt strange and tender and himself.
Sleep arrived this time wearing the jacket of exhaustion. It put a hand on his forehead and a hand on his chest and said hush. In that falling, he saw again the truck, not as a weapon, not as a villain, but as a dumb animal of metal who had been given a task and a day and done both poorly. He forgave it because forgiveness made space, not for it, but for him. He thought of Mina just long enough to feel his chest hurt and then he let the hurt drip into the soil where it might find a root and do something good.
Night in the Enchanted Forest was busy. Somewhere above, eyes opened in the bark of a tree, watched, closed. Somewhere near, something thumped the ground twice and then three times, a private code. Fireflies woke and decided to practice cursive. The river told the same story it had told during the day and somehow it meant different things now.
Kai's breathing smoothed to the rhythm of a creature who had found a pocket of safety and believed in it just enough to let go. The System dimmed one more degree, setting its notifications to simmer. In the hollow's doorway, a thin line of starlight embroidered the edge of his whiskers in silver. He did not know it, but the Waystone flickered once in the clearing, like a great creature asleep in another room twitching a paw in a dream.
Dawn came as a gray that thought about yellow. He woke before it fully decided because the forest stirred regardless of sun. He stretched in segments, front first, then back, then the long shivering arc that made him larger and longer and then smaller and ready. He licked the last of the slime from between his toes with a sigh that sounded resigned and proud at once.
When he emerged, the air had changed clothes. The damp had decided to be less sticky. Scents unfolded like origami. He saw his tracks from yesterday, little commas in mud, and next to them another set he did not recognize: something with three forward points and a heel—a bird with ambition or a lizard with opinions. He put his paw in the print to measure and it was bigger than his by half. He adjusted his mental list of places not to be at certain times.
"What a huge forest," he said again, almost laughing, because the phrase had become a mantra and a joke and a way of not being afraid. He followed the river upstream this time, occasionally pouncing at his own shadow under the pretext of practicing Pounce I, and not always missing. Twice, he leapt and landed and turned it into a roll because landing was what living mostly was.
At a bend, the water widened around a fallen trunk. On the trunk, mushrooms grew that made a low hum, different from the clink-chime of yesterday's shelves, deeper, as if tuned to the size of a chest. He stood and let the note vibrate him and realized it wasn't one note; it was a chord. He adjusted his head angle and the chord changed, as if his skull were an instrument allowing a different frequency through. He made a mental note to come back and hum with the mushrooms later, as a treat.
The forest did not yield a deity in the morning. It yielded a small congregation of leaf-apes—a misnomer he gifted them because they weren't apes, not really. They were tri-limbed and used their tails like paintbrushes to stroke the underside of leaves until a dust fell that they licked up, tongues moving double-time in a way that made him blush for them. He watched, invisible in the way that feels like a victory, and thought: Maybe I can learn to eat like that too when my conscience is tired of killing jelly.
He found a patch of berries that glowed softly green—not the normal red or blue he had known. He leaned in and was immediately politely pushed back by the System with the gentlest slap on the wrist he'd ever endured.
```
Warning:
— Verdant Berries (Fey-Touched): Toxic to current form. Do not consume.
```
"Thank you," he said, aloud this time, the word a small, musical chirp that did not sound like 'thank you' but was.
He kept walking. He practiced the skill the System had given a name: Pounce I. He pounced on leaves, on his own tail, on a shadow that had the audacity to be where he wanted his paws. He learned to measure distance with a look and a breath. He learned what happened when you pushed off from the wrong part of a rock (you looked foolish, you recalibrated, you tried again). Each small failure produced an immediate, automatic forgiveness in his body that his human life had not always allowed. He would need to remember that lesson if he found a way back to hands.
By afternoon, he had earned three more EP—the slimes were patient and numerous, and he was clean and efficient. He had taken one small nip from a snapping vine and taken it as a personal insult he corrected with a careful spate of claw-work. The System cataloged, tallied, rewarded with parsimonious glee. EP: 9. Not much. Enough to make the number real.
A sound like a blade dragged along a harp string lifted the skin along his spine. He stopped mid-step. The sound came again, a little higher, and this time he caught the direction. Left. Up. He slid under a shrub because it was the place his bones wanted to be when he didn't know things.
Through leaves, he saw it: a creature that might once have been a boar if boars were permitted elegant horror. It carried bark along its flanks like armor; its tusks were live wood, green near the base, flowering near the tips. Mushrooms sprouted along its spine like a crown. It walked with the gravity of a creature that knows its place near the top of something. An attendant deity? Or a pet? Or a wild thing that had been told by a god "you count" and took it too much to heart?
He did not move. He slowed his breath until it matched the breath of the soil. The boar—if that's what he decided to call it—sniffed the air in a way that made him feel seen by a concept. It blew once, scattering a small storm of spores from its back. The spores drifted down in a glowing drift, and where they touched leaves, the leaves trembled almost happily. Then the boar moved on, unconcerned with a juvenile cat the size of a misplaced thought.
Kai exhaled and felt his shoulders in a way he hadn't when he'd had shoulders. He waited the count of two hundred because some numbers are spells and then slipped out. He understood in that moment more than in any System prompt why the forest had named itself to him. Enchanted wasn't a brag. It was a caution. Everything was alive twice here.
He circled back toward his hollow as the light began to do its exit interview. He had not met a deity, but once, in the distance, he'd seen the shadow of something moving with purpose between two columns of trees and heard a whisper in a language he didn't know but understood anyway: it said "later" or "when you're ready" or "learn to pounce first."
At the log, he paused to sniff the doorway. He smelled himself, the day-old version, and he smelled a thin overlay of something that had checked and decided no. He stepped in and turned and lay and allowed the tired to fall on him like a blanket shaken out over a bed. The System offered no summary yet. He asked it anyway, because asking had always been his way.
```
EP: 9/100
Status: Stable
Advisory:
— Consider engaging different monster types to diversify skill growth.
— Avoid mid-tier patrols. Deity activity heightened at dusk.
New Optional Task:
— Map a 200-meter radius around current shelter using scent and landmark association. Reward: +1 Perception (temporary), EP +2.
```
He purred then, unselfconsciously, a sound that surprised him and didn't. It was a motor he had had installed overnight and was now testing to see if it might run the lights in his house. The purr vibrated along his bones and out into the log and into the ground, and the ground said, in the way ground speaks: yes, okay, stay.
"Tomorrow," he promised the invisible thing that might be the forest or the System or himself. "Tomorrow I'll map. Tomorrow I'll pounce without looking ridiculous."
Outside, the night started building its cathedral again, black stones laid atop black stones, sparkling with bioluminescent mortar. Far off, a predator called, and a chorus answered, not fear, not fury, but acknowledgment: we are here, too. The forest didn't argue. It made room. At the edge of the clearing with the Waystone, something appeared for a fraction of a heartbeat—a figure filled with branches and birds and the idea of a person underneath—and then wasn't there again. The Waystone hummed a low note, patient, patient, patient.
Within the log, a small heat generator named Kai lowered his head to his paws and thought, one last time, with equal parts awe and exasperation, "What a huge forest," and slept as if the world had been built to hold him.