The forest changed after that night.
Rey could feel it in the soil, in the trees, in the very breath of the Abyss. The creatures had grown quieter. Their movements more erratic. The ground was marked by deep claw prints, and the air carried a metallic scent—blood, but not human.
He didn't speak.
He barely breathed.
Days passed.
Each shelter he made, he abandoned faster. No longer staying for weeks. No longer bothering to name the regions he crossed. Now it was about moving, observing, and not being seen.
One afternoon, while moving through a patch of rotted woodland, Rey noticed something strange—a tree, larger than most, with bark like broken stone. It throbbed slightly, as if alive, and when Rey looked closer, he saw dozens of small bones embedded in its roots.
> "This tree feeds on flesh?"
He reached out slowly, touching it with the tip of a wooden spear.
It twitched.
Then screamed.
Rey stumbled back, clutching his ears. The noise wasn't physical—it was in his mind, stabbing into his thoughts like a thousand needles.
The tree cracked down the center. And from inside…
It moved.
Out slithered a creature, half-flesh, half-bark. No eyes, just a gaping mouth. A parasite. It had used the tree as a shell.
Rey didn't wait.
He threw his torch at the tree.
The fire caught, fast and wild, feeding on the dried roots.
The creature hissed and lunged, but Rey was already gone—running, stumbling, slicing through the underbrush.
The forest behind him glowed red.
He didn't stop until night.
---
Later that evening, Rey sat in a new hiding spot—a trench covered in dried leaves. He shivered, not from cold, but from realization.
> "Even the plants here… even the trees… aren't what they seem."
He scribbled into the monster-hide sheet he'd fashioned into a crude journal:
Tree parasite. No eyes. Reacts to touch.
Fire is effective.
Beware hollow bark.
Then, he added a new line under his long-standing heading:
> Classification: Environmental Monsters
So far, Rey had split the Abyss's creatures into categories:
Beasts – Raw, instinct-driven killers like the horned wolf, spider-apes, and night leapers.
Intellects – Those that planned, hunted, waited.
Shadows – Rare. Unnatural. Likely not beasts at all.
And now…
Environmentals – Part of the land. Traps disguised as safety.
It was a terrifying truth.
The Abyss wasn't a land filled with monsters.
It was a monster.
---
The next day, Rey began constructing something new.
An underground tunnel—his first proper home, not just a shelter.
He used hardened vines as rope, old beast bones for reinforcement, and crushed mushroom paste to seal air holes. It wasn't pretty, but it was hidden.
More importantly, it was defensible.
He had learned too much. Lost too much.
He needed time—time to craft better weapons, develop stronger traps, and chart the shifting behavior of the Abyss's wildlife.
He wasn't surviving anymore.
He was adapting.
---
That night, as he sat in his tiny cave with only a flickering glowworm jar for light, Rey stared at the roof of dirt and whispered softly:
> "I'll make it back home… even if I have to burn every floor of this hell."
---