Day 9 – Entry Start
I woke up underground.
Not buried. Not trapped. Just... hiding. Voluntarily. I spent the night in the cache pit I dug—curled up against the cold wall, a fireless lantern clutched against my chest. Not because I planned to sleep there. But because the forest above wasn't mine last night.
Something was walking near my shelter. It didn't make much noise. But it made the kind of silence that only comes when something smarter than an animal is trying not to be heard.
And it smelled wrong. Like iron and seawater and hot metal.
I didn't breathe for a full minute. Just listened. Whatever it was, it circled twice. Then left.
I waited until sunrise to move.
I expanded the cache tunnel this morning. The soil's damp but stable. I reinforced the corners with wedge-shaped driftwood. Eventually, I want to turn it into a proper fallout burrow—a backup nest if I ever lose the aboveground shelter.
Temperature holds steady underground—cool in the day, warm enough at night. Good insulation. No light, though. I need to find animal fat or fermented oil for longer-lasting lamps. My firefly jar idea failed. They died in under an hour. Probably radiation-sensitive.
Scratch that experiment.
I spent midday crafting a trident from bamboo and scrap wire. Three-pronged, barbed tips. Flexible shaft to absorb impact underwater. Weight's decent.
Fishing in tide pools is harder than it looks in books. Fish move. Light refracts. First attempt was a bust. Second try? Speared something with fins and legs.
Not joking.
It was breathing air. Jumped from the pool to a rock and hissed at me. Its eyes were on opposite sides of its head—like it couldn't decide if it was a lizard or a trout.
I didn't eat it.
I logged it. Drew it. Bagged it in a clay jar for dissection later.
I'll settle for seaweed again.
I went back to the spot where I saw the figure yesterday.
There was a mark on the tree. Not mine.
Not carved. Not burned. Just… peeled. As if something stripped the bark with surgical precision. Two vertical lines, one diagonal slash. A kind of rune? A warning? Territory?
Whatever it is, I marked it on my map. Added an "X" in charcoal.
I don't believe in ghosts.
But I do believe in predators that communicate without words.
It was past sunset. I was writing this. Scribbling on the back of a clay pot shard because I'm out of clean pages.
That's when I heard it.
Not the wind. Not an animal.
A voice.
It was distant, distorted. Like someone yelling underwater.
But it was language. Broken syllables. Repeating.
"...Ka...za...ra...ni...ka..."
Then silence again.
I didn't move for twenty minutes.
Not even to breathe.
Closing Entry – Day 9
There's something under this island.
Not just soil. Not just roots.
A rhythm. A pulse. A pattern to the way the birds don't come back. A shape to the clouds at night. A hum in the rocks that I feel when I press my ear to the ground.
I used to think survival was about mastering the world.
Now I'm starting to think it's about understanding when the world stops obeying its own rules.
If tomorrow comes, I'll go deeper.
I want to know what waits underground.
Even if it doesn't want to be found.