The wind carried a bitter chill, scraping across Rey's skin like sandpaper. Dust swirled through the dry jungle, blanketing the land in an eerie, reddish haze. There was no warmth, only cold silence—and the occasional echo of distant howls.
Rey stood at the edge of the dry riverbed, his eyes locked on the earth.
"This'll do," he muttered.
He didn't know how long this place would stay safe, but the cracked terrain had one advantage—it was soft enough to dig.
Using a sharpened stone he'd broken off a cliff wall earlier, Rey began to carve into the side of a dry slope, just beneath a thick, arching root system. It was slow work. The dirt was brittle, sometimes crumbling in chunks, other times hard-packed like clay.
He dug for hours.
Hands blistered. Fingers scraped raw.
The sunless red sky never changed, but Rey's internal clock told him night was near—again. He didn't want to be out in the open when it came.
By the time he was done, the crude shelter was barely tall enough to crawl through. A tunnel sloped downward into a small, coffin-sized chamber—tight, but hidden. He gathered dried bark, sand, and broken roots to support the entrance and camouflaged it with cracked earth.
It wouldn't fool a sharp nose, but it might stop eyes.
Once inside, for the first time since arriving in the Abyss, Rey let out a breath.
A moment of stillness.
But only a moment.
His hands reached for the monster tooth he had carried since the ruins—the one he'd yanked from the first creature he killed.
It was still intact. Sharp, curved, nearly the length of his forearm.
He pulled out one of the vines he'd salvaged earlier and began wrapping it around the base, securing the tooth to a piece of thick wood. It wasn't elegant. It wasn't balanced.
But it was a weapon.
He tested its weight.
"Too heavy," he whispered, adjusting his grip. "But it'll do."
Next, he collected shards of stone and broken bone from the area, laying them in a small pile at the back of the cave. The tooth blade would be his main weapon—for now—but he needed backups.
A throwing spike.
A sharpened stick.
Even a sling, if he could figure out the mechanics.
Everything felt primitive… but this wasn't Earth anymore. This was Abyss. And here, survival meant adapting with every breath.
As he sat in his cave, working in silence, thoughts slowly returned.
The structure he saw in the ruins.
The wall of realms.
Nine levels. Each deadlier than the last.
The arrow pointing to the second realm. The realm he was in.
Which meant… he had skipped the first.
And that terrified him more than anything.
"I don't belong here," he whispered, tightening the vines on his blade. "I'm not ready for this level. I need to find a way down. I need to reach the First Realm."
Not up.
Down.
For the first time, he had a direction. A goal.
But between here and there were monsters, ruins, and things far worse than what he'd already seen.
Still… at least now he had a blade.
And a shelter.
It wasn't much.
But it was a beginning.
---