The jungle groaned with hunger.
It was not just the animals or the insects, but the trees, the roots, the vines themselves. Everything in Ayeshe's wilds breathed with sharp intent—twisting, reaching, hunting. For a newly formed tribe with weak stomachs and fewer weapons, stepping beyond their clearing was a gamble with death.
Zaruko stood at the edge of the jungle, his hand resting on the haft of the stone-forged spear they'd crafted just days ago. He stared into the foliage—not as a man unsure, but as a soldier measuring his battlefield.
Behind him, a handful of the stronger youths waited. They wore rough pelts, leather wrappings, and faces smeared with dark soil to mute their scent. Some gripped spears, others held stones, knives, or sharpened branches.
None of them had hunted like this before.
Not like this.
Not with the certainty that the forest wanted them dead.
"Remember," Zaruko said, voice low and cold. "We move together. No noise. If you fall behind, you die. If you panic, you die. If you run without reason—" he paused and met the eyes of the youngest boy, "—we all die."
The boy nodded, swallowing hard.
Zaruko turned to the trees. His sigil, normally quiet on his chest, began to stir. A pulse. A flicker of heat under the skin. Ogou's mark. It hadn't flared since the ritual, but now it responded to the scent of danger, to the call of blood.
The god was watching.
The jungle swallowed them in seconds.
Thick leaves curled over their heads, vines scraped skin, and the buzzing of winged things hummed like a warning in their ears. The shadows were heavier than night. The air stank of rot and wet soil. Every step was a test of nerve.
Zaruko crouched low, signaling to halt. He touched the ground.
Tracks. Three-toed, deep. Heavy. But something else caught his eye—scorched bark on a nearby tree, old claw marks, dried black ichor on a broken log.
"Beast," he whispered. "Big. Smart. Wounded recently."
The others tightened grips on their weapons. Zaruko nodded forward. They moved in a wide arc, careful not to break branches, stepping only where he stepped.
After twenty minutes, they saw it.
A beast unlike any Zaruko had seen in war or memory.
It stood six feet tall at the shoulder, hunched and muscular, with a long, furless neck that pulsed like a gourd full of blood. Its eyes were bone-white, and its jaws split in four directions, each tooth jagged and long. Spines of bark and flesh jutted from its back like thorns.
It chewed something—a limb, still fresh—and did not see them.
Zaruko raised his hand.
"Circle it," he mouthed. "On my mark."
The team moved. Silent. Shadows among shadows.
He waited, counted, breathed.
Then, he attacked.
The spear flew first, sinking into the beast's rib. It roared, but Zaruko was already moving, ducking under a slash of its claws and ramming his shoulder into its flank. The others came, stabbing and slashing. The creature flailed, wounded but savage.
One of the youths screamed as he was knocked back. Zaruko turned sharply—too late to stop the beast's jaws from closing around the boy's arm. The sound of bone breaking was loud, brutal.
Zaruko roared—not in fear, but in command.
With a burst of speed, he grabbed a jagged rock, leapt, and drove it into the beast's skull—again and again, until the thing collapsed in a twitching heap.
Blood steamed on the leaves.
The jungle fell silent.
Zaruko dropped to one knee beside the wounded youth. Blood poured from the shattered arm.
"He lives," Zaruko said. "Tourniquet. Now."
Another boy fumbled with a vine. Zaruko tied it tight and tore strips from his own cloak to bind it.
"No one dies today," he growled. "Not if we hold the line."
The beast twitched again—its corpse bubbling.
Everyone stepped back as the blood began to darken unnaturally. The ground under it pulsed. Then, a shimmer.
A sliver of light rose from the wound in its chest. It hovered—a small, flickering orb of red and black.
Divine residue.
Zaruko knew instinctively. This beast had been touched by a forgotten god. Something still lingering, something desperate. Perhaps once worshipped. Perhaps now reduced to fragments in feral hosts.
The sigil on his chest burned like fire.
Zaruko reached out.
As his hand touched the orb, heat raced through his body. Not pain—but force. Energy. A growl echoed in his mind, not his own.
Then Ogou's voice, like metal over fire:
"You feed me well."
The orb vanished into him. His veins glowed briefly beneath the skin.
The others stared in silence.
One of the girls whispered, "He took its spirit."
"No," Zaruko replied, his voice like steel. "I gave it to a god."
That night, the tribe feasted.
The meat was cleaned, cooked in firepits ringed by stones. The wounded boy lived, his arm useless but his life spared. The others sat closer to Zaruko than before. Their eyes no longer held doubt—but something deeper.
Recognition.
Respect.
Fear.
Zaruko said little as he sat alone, staring into the flames. He could feel Ogou's presence behind the veil, satisfied, growing.
But he also felt something else—something awakened.
In the dark edge of the jungle, something stirred. A low, distant howl—too long to be wolf, too soft to be wind. A presence that had once ruled this region, now watching, now waiting.
Something had noticed them.
And it would not stay silent.
In the morning, Zaruko walked the perimeter of the clearing. He needed to see the signs for himself.
There were claw marks carved into the trees—high, deliberate. Animalistic, but not from a beast. They were warnings. Territory markers.
This land belonged to something.
Or had.
Now that something wanted it back.
Zaruko crouched beside a pile of bones—not from the hunt, but older. Burnt and cracked open, as if drained of marrow. Whatever left these behind didn't kill to eat. It killed to claim.
He stood slowly.
Behind him, the jungle breathed.
He returned to the center camp.
The others had begun reshaping their weapons, binding stone to bone, preparing more torches. There was a new awareness in them now—urgency. The wilds had tested them. And they had lived.
Zaruko gathered the youth who had fought.
"You did well," he said. "You followed orders. You didn't run. You stood your ground."
They waited, unsure what came next.
"But one beast is nothing," he continued. "This land is ruled by monsters touched by forgotten gods. If we want to live here—truly live—we need to become worse than what hunts us."
He pointed to his chest.
"This sigil isn't magic. It's a promise. Every god in this world wants us weak. Every tribe that rises becomes a target. If we build a home, we will be hunted. If we grow, we will be challenged. But if we make the right offerings…"
He glanced toward the horizon, where the jungle shimmered with heat and menace.
"…then even the gods will kneel."