A rasping shriek shattered the silence like broken glass
"ME KILL FIRST!!"
Cassius barely had time to turn before the goblin burst from behind a dune, bone axe raised high, its glowing eyes wild with hatred and hunger.
Time snapped back into focus, and his old life shattered like a dream.
"What is that thing!?"
Before processing anything else Cassius started running for the woods in hopes of losing the goblin there.
Having experienced the treacherous path already, he traversed it with amazing agility.
He pushed forward, ducking under low branches that whipped at his face like lashes. The ground shifted treacherously beneath him—one moment soft and sucking like loose sand, the next knotted with roots that snatched at his feet. His ankles rolled, slid, caught. Every step was a gamble.
Twisted trees leaned in from all sides, their gnarled limbs forming a maze of shadows and obstacles. He shoved past them, bark scraping his arms, sweat stinging his eyes. The forest didn't want him here. It fought him with every inch.
A foot sank into a patch of sand, he cursed, yanked it free, only to slam into a low-hanging branch that sent him staggering back. He caught himself on a root, but it bit into his palm.
As he ran like never before, taking sharp turns and changing directions he would ask himself.
~For how long have I been running? Minutes? Hours?
Branches clawed at his face as he crashed through, his breath ragged, thunderous in his ears. His frame was now clumsy with fatigue. Every stride felt like dragging chains through mud.
Behind him, mad cackling came closer.
It was laughing. He could hear it, laced through the forest like poison.
His pride snarled, but his legs stumbled, sending him face first. Sand filled his mouth. He spat it out with a growl, more animal than man, and forced himself up, one arm trembling beneath his weight or was it fear?
It saw that and he knew. The goblin would remember him scrambling like a dog.
Rage surged, but it only made the weakness worse.
His lungs burned. His vision blurred. He wasn't running anymore, he was fleeing. Hunted.
He could already see it sneering in his mind.
His fists clenched as he stumbled forward, refusing to give it the satisfaction. Not yet. Not like this.
His breathing has become heavy.
Exhaustion was reaching its critical mass in tandem with feeling of humiliation and anger.
Was it minutes or perhaps hours, he asked himself again, but it mattered not. Cassius could tell without looking the goblin was closing the gap.
A low growl rumbled from the goblin's throat. It hissed a word Cassius didn't understand.
The inevitable came. It leaped with unnatural speed closing the gap instantaneously.
Cassius stumbled back—no weapon, no plan—only instinct. The axe came down. He twisted. Missed him by inches.
He hit the sand hard. The goblin howled and pounced again, bone blade raised. Cassius rolled left, kicked out blindly, and felt something crack.
The goblin shrieked.
Cassius scrambled to his feet. "Focus or die" he muttered, heart hammering.
The goblin came frenzied and fast. Cassius didn't dare to try and match it in contest of strength. So he waited. Dodged. Took a glancing blow.
Then when he sensed an opportunity, Cassius claws lashed out. He struck its throat. It gagged. He drove his fist into its eye. It reeled.
Cassius didn't stop.
He couldn't.
The goblin's shriek turned into a wet snarl, spittle flying from its jagged mouth as it staggered back, clutching its half-caved eye socket. But the pain only seemed to drive it deeper into madness. It laughed. Loud and guttural, spattered with blood and broken teeth. The sound echoed like some demented hymn of pain and pleasure.
It liked this.
So did Cassius.
He didn't know when it happened. Maybe it was when he felt its blood splatter warm across his face. Or maybe it was the moment he saw its eyes widen with fear. Something inside him woke up, something that had nothing to do with survival.
It wanted to hurt.
To tear.
To win.
Cassius roared, a sound more beast than man, fueled by fury, humiliation, and the pulsing rhythm of violence he lunged. He tackled the goblin mid-lunge, and the two slammed into the ground in a tangle of limbs, sand, and snarls.
They didn't fight like warriors.
They fought like animals.
Claws and fists tore at their flesh, fingers gouging, teeth snapping. The goblin bit down on Cassius's shoulder drawing blood. Cassius howled, slammed his forehead into the thing's nose. Once. Twice. A third time, until something cracked and the goblin screeched, throwing him off.
Blood poured from both of them now, dark and steaming in the cold, rotting air.
They circled each other. Breathing hard, bent low, both grinning with split lips and wild eyes. There was no strategy to be seen.
The goblin swung first, a jagged arc of bone.
Cassius ducked under the blow, raked his claws across the goblin's side, and when it twisted to retaliate, he grabbed its wrist, held it, and slowly, deliberately, began to bend it backwards.
The goblin shrieked in panic, writhing like a pinned snake. Cassius leaned in close, his breath hot on its face.
"You think I'm prey?" he rasped.
Snap.
The wrist broke like dry wood. The axe fell. The goblin wailed.
Cassius didn't let go.
He headbutted it again, and again, and again, blood and spit flying until the goblin went limp, it still smiled through the ruin of its face.
Cassius didn't care.
He slammed the goblin to the ground, straddled it, and rained blows, each strike more brutal than the last. His fists coated in blood, bone cracking beneath his knuckles. A low growl rumbled from the goblin's throat. It hissed a word he didn't understand. Blur of motion followed. Block, thud. Cassius was send flying. Barely landing on his feet.
The goblin snarled, its jagged teeth bared in defiance even as it stumbled. Black blood streamed from its ruined eye socket, and its breath came in wheezing gasps. It hissed in fury, like a cornered beast denied its kill. Every muscle in its wiry frame tensed, not for attack, but in order to retreat deeper Into the forest.
Not because it wanted to.
Because it had to.
Cassius grabbed its axe and gave chase. The hunter has become the prey.
He followed it with murder on his mind.
The stolen axe bounced against his leg as he tore through the woods, following the black trail left behind by the goblin. It was fast, but not fast enough. Not anymore.
The forest seemed to welcome him now, as if branches parted for him. Roots twisted with his steps. The air itself seemed to quicken with every breath he took, his pulse syncing with the thrum of this place. His killing ground.
He didn't speak. Didn't think. Just tracked. Just hunted.
Blood. Heat. Movement.
He caught flashes between the trees, lank hair, bent limbs, the glint of bone. The goblin limped, dragging its broken wrist, panting in short, shallow bursts. It looked back once.
That was its mistake.
Cassius screamed, sound ripped raw from his throat as he leapt.
He slammed into the goblin from behind, dragging it down in a whirlwind of limbs, teeth and hate. The axe clattered away as they tumbled. He didn't need it. Not anymore.
He beat it.
Fists cracked against bone. Nails raked over skin. He slammed its head into the sand over and over, snarling, drooling, lost in the moment.
The goblin choked on its own blood, its body twitching under him. But still, it laughed.
Before it could mutter anything more, Cassius roared and drove his fist into the thing's mouth, splitting his knuckles on sharp teeth.
"DIE!"
He didn't care if it could understand him. He wanted it gone. Erased.
He slammed its head again.
And again.
And—
Pain.
Sudden. Sharp. Real.
Something sank into his side.
Cassius reeled back, blinking. The goblin had stabbed him with a crude bone sharpened to a point. Jammed right into his ribs.
It twisted.
He screamed, staggered, and tried to stand, but the goblin was already on him.
It struck low, fast. Bit his arm. Tore flesh. Then slashed with a jagged claw across the back of his thigh. Cassius fell forward into the dirt with a guttural grunt.
The goblin leapt on him. Now it had the axe.
It swung.
Wood met bone. A chunk of Cassius's shoulder vanished in a black spray.
He gurgled.
The goblin leaned in close, tongue flicking at the blood on its cheek. Its breath stank of rot.
"Not prey. Not predator. Just stupid… meat."
It grinned.
Cassius grinned back.
And lunged with all his might.
His hands locked around the goblin's skull and he bit deep into the side of its neck.
It screamed.
Not in rage, this time it was panic.
It thrashed, clawed at him, but Cassius didn't let go. He bit harder, teeth grinding into tendon, muscle, vein. Hot black blood spilled into his mouth, down his throat, thick, bitter and ecstatic.
The goblin tried to pull away.
He held on.
The goblin's screams turned into gurgles, then nothing.
Cassius tore back with a snarl, flesh between his teeth, and let the body drop.
It spasmed once.
Then lay still.
Cassius knelt there, blood streaming down his chin, his breath ragged, feral.
All he felt was full.
Full of violence. Of triumph.
Of something deeper, darker, that whispered yes in the pit of his mind.
He didn't cry.
Didn't scream.
He just breathed and smiled, wide and red and savage.
The forest around spun. The clouds bled across the sky like open wounds.
Would he survive those wounds? Unlikely.
But the goblin was dead.
And that was all that mattered right now.
He just laughed.
A hollow, broken sound, thick with blood and satisfaction.
Part of him… wanted more.
But something pulled him forward.
A voice without words.
A weightless command beneath the skin.
Calling him home.
Cassius stumbled through the trees in daze, the goblin's blood slowly drying on his face, his own dripping freely from many wounds. His vision blurry, muscles twitching with the aftershock of violence. The axe dragged behind him, leaving a dark groove in the soil, now unnecessary.
He emerged from the tree line and stopped.
The lake was there.
Still black. Still silent. Still devouring light.
The twisted path of roots stretched across it like a memory, leading to the small island where he had first awakened, not even a full day ago. Nothing had changed… and yet everything had.
The wind howled low and long behind him, as if urging him forward.
Cassius obeyed.
Each step across the narrow path made his limbs feel slightly lighter. His legs trembled still. Blood slicked the roots beneath his feet. He nearly fell once, catching himself on a jut of roots that pulsed warmly beneath his touch.
He didn't question it.
He reached the center.
The tiny island welcomed him.
At the heart of it, the ground churned.
Roots slithered from below, writhing with purpose. Stones parted and reformed, clicking together. In seconds, they shaped something like a chair but more grandiose, a throne perhaps.
Cassius did hesitate, but he had no strength to resist.
He dropped the axe.
He crawled into it.
And the moment his back touched the throne's surface, it changed.
What looked crude and coarse now cradled him perfectly. The jagged edges molded to his wounds like salve. The cold stone hummed with impossible warmth, roots gently curling over his legs, up his sides, as if tucking him in.
He exhaled, long and deep.
His eyelids fluttered.
Blood from his side oozed steadily, soaking into the roots below. They drank it fully, pulsing, tightening.
And then…
Peace.
For the first time since waking, Cassius rested.
The throne throbbed beneath him, and the island pulsed, deep beneath the earth, like the beat of a massive, unseen heart.
Cassius didn't stir.
He slept, mouth slightly parted, blood on his lips, the roots carefully curling tighter around his limbs.
And the forest leaned in to listen.