The world was a jagged mosaic of shadow and light, and Paimon Wynter existed somewhere in the hazy, brutal middle. He moved like a ghost through the "whispering forests of the Blackwood", his worn leather cloak a second skin against the biting wind.
Every crunch of a dead leaf, every snapping twig, was a potential threat-a lurking beast, a desperate bandit, or something far worse. Survival wasn't a skill here; it was a state of being.
Paimon was lean, all sinew and bone, with eyes the color of a winter sky-a startling, crystalline blue that seemed to hold both immense exhaustion and a spark of untamed fire.
His face was a study in contradictions: sharp, defined features softened by a perpetual frown of weary concentration. He carried a short sword at his hip, it's hilt worn smooth by countless grips, and a satchel that held little more than a handful of dried rations and a small flint and steel.
Today, the gnawing emptiness in the stomach was the most pressing threat.
He hadn't eaten a proper meal in two days, and the hunger was beginning to claw at his focus. He'd been hunting for a wild hare or a roosting bird, but the forest was eerily silent.
A bad sign. The silence of the "Blackwood" often preceded something terrible.
He rounded a bend in the path and saw it: a flicker of movement near a moss-covered log. He froze, his hand instinctively going to his sword.
It was a goblin, small and sickly, gnawing on a bone. Paimon's first instinct was to kill it and take it's meager food. His second, a softer more unsettling one, was to let it be. It was just as desperate as he was.
A strange sensation, a familiar shift, washed over him. It was a coldness that started at the base of his spine and spread outward, an odd clarity that felt both alien and intensely personal.
The world seemed to sharpen, colors becoming more vivid , sounds more distinct. The gnawing hunger faded, replaced by a cold, calculating resolve.
The goblin looked up, it's beady eyes widening in terror as it saw him. It shrieked, a high-pitched, panicked sound, and scrambled away.
Paimon didn't move. He stood still, the cold clarity hardening into a predatory focus. The goblin's shriek echoed through the trees, a sound that would usually draw more of it's kind, but Paimon didn't care.
He was already thinking three steps ahead, calculating the quickest, most efficient way to track it.
This wasn't his usual way of thinking. His mind was normally a chaotic jumble of caution and fear.
This new mind was different-it was a honed blade, sharp and merciless. It was a mind that didn't hesitate. He started to follow the goblin's panicked trail, his footsteps silent, his movements fluid and deadly.
No longer feeling the biting wind nor the ache in his muscles: he only felt the hunt.
Hours later, the sun was sinking low, painting the sky in the streaks of bruised purple and orange. Paimon stood over the goblin's body, a halft-eaten piece of bread in his hand.
He stared at it, a wave of confusion and disgust washing over him. The cold clarity that had guided him was gone, replaced by a jarring, sickening jolt back to his normal self.
He looked at the dead goblin, the blood on his hands, and the bread he held, and felt a profound sense of bewilderment.
He had no memory of the hunt. He remembered seeing the goblin, feeling that strange coldness, and then... nothing. The next thing he knew, he was standing here, holding food he didn't remember taking.
This wasn't the first time this had happened. Weeks ago, he had woken up in a small village, a handful of stolen coins in his pocket and no recollection of how he'd gotten there.
Another time, he had found himself with a freshly skinned boar, having no memory of the kill.
He wiped the blood from his hands on a clump of grass, his stomach churning with a mix of hunger and shame. The bread felt like ash in his mouth.
He was losing time, and the gaps in his memory were growing longer, the actions he couldn't account for becoming more ruthless. The fear, a cold hand on his heart, returned. Was this what madness felt like ? A slow, creeping loss of self, a stranger taking over his body when he wasn't looking?
He sat down heavily against a log, the silence of the "Blackwood" now feeling oppressive, suffocating. He wasn't just battling the world outside anymore.
He was battling a ghost inside his own head, a phantom who was becoming stronger, bolder, and more violent with each passing day.
The shadows lengthened around him, and in their deepening gloom, Paimon Wynter was forced to confront a terrifying truth: the greatest threat to his survival wasn't the monstrous creatures of the forest or the desperate bandits on the road. It was the other him.