The last of the rich, spicy smoke from a Corvus Cigar curled from Devon's lips, an ephemeral grey cloud in the crisp morning air before dissolving into nothingness. He stubbed out the remaining ember on the edge of the roof he had just repaired, its fading warmth a final reminder of that strangely adult moment of peace. Below him, in the small meadow now stained by violence, the carcass of the giant stag lay in a gruesome silence, a mute monument to the power he had only just realized he possessed. Its charred, smoking neck still gave off a thin vapor that smelled of burnt hair and cooked meat, a horrific perfume that corrupted the scent of pine and damp earth.
"Alright," he whispered to himself, his voice flat, devoid of triumph or regret. "Time to work."
Getting down from the roof was an exercise in deliberate movement. He no longer moved with the panic of prey or the clumsiness of a teenager. He moved like the owner of this property, each step sure on the wooden shingles, his hands finding easy purchase as he descended the makeshift ladder fixed to the side of the cabin. His feet landed on the soft ground with barely a sound, his leather boots leaving no more than a shallow depression in the dew-kissed grass.
He approached the carcass. Up close, the scale of the destruction was far more intimate and horrifying. The magnificent head was gone, replaced by a scorched black crater of burnt flesh and shattered bone. Blood had pooled beneath it, turning the green grass into a sticky, crimson marsh. The sharp, metallic smell stung his nostrils, but his mind, now shielded by the cold calm of the black ring, simply processed it as data: this was a resource to be secured.
Dragging it was a brutal task. The stag was a mountain of muscle and bone, easily three times Devon's weight. He gripped one of its sturdy hind legs, the muscles in his arms and back—so recently used for hammering—now screaming in protest as he pulled. The earth fought back, the grass clung, and the carcass moved only inches at a time. He wasn't frustrated. Frustration was an inefficient emotion. He simply adjusted his grip, planted his feet deeper, and pulled again, turning the impossible task into a series of methodical, exhausting efforts.
After what felt like an eternity, he managed to drag the carcass to a clear area near the side of the cabin, a makeshift workspace away from his newly planted garden. Here, he could make a mess. He drew Corvus's hunting knife from the sheath on his belt. Its polished dark steel blade caught the morning light, its edge as sharp as a broken promise.
He began with the task that felt the most intimate: skinning. He had no experience, but he had the memories from Corvus's journal and the cold detachment of the ring. He made the first deep incision around the burnt stump of the neck, then sliced a straight line down the length of the belly. Steam billowed from the body cavity as the cool morning air met the residual warmth of a life just extinguished.
The hide was thick and tough. He had to use his full body weight, pulling with one hand while carefully slicing away the connective tissue beneath with the other. The sounds were a gruesome symphony: the wet tear of yielding membrane, the sharp scrape of the blade against fat, and the sickening 'plop' as a large section of hide finally came free. He worked with the focus of a surgeon, ignoring the blood that soaked his arms to the elbows, ignoring the strong, musky scent of the wild animal.
As he worked, a quiet hum began to escape his lips, entirely unconscious. It was a simple tune, almost a lullaby, a melody from his old world that had somehow surfaced from the depths of his memory. The hum held no emotion—not joy, not sorrow. It was just background noise, a rhythmic accompaniment to his grisly work, like a factory worker humming on an assembly line. The contrast between the innocent melody and the brutal act before him was something that would have shattered any sane mind.
Once the hide was off, spread on the ground like a horrific carpet, the real work began. He broke open the chest cavity with his small hatchet, the crack of ribs sounding like dry wood snapping in a silent forest. The glistening internal organs spilled out with a wet sigh, a steaming pile of reds, purples, and greys. The heart, still massive and firm. The deep crimson liver. The spongy lungs. And the intestines, an endless pink labyrinth.
With his bare hands, he began to clear it out. He removed the heart and liver, setting them neatly on a clean section of hide—Corvus had written of their nutritional value. The rest—stomach, intestines, spleen—he tossed aside into a pile he would bury later. His hands were deep in the residual warmth of life, thick blood coating his fingers like a glove, the smell of iron and viscera filling the air. And he kept humming, the same tune over and over, his cold, focused eyes never leaving the task at hand.
It was then, from the corner of his eye, that he sensed a movement. Or rather, a lack of one.
His humming stopped instantly. His head rose slowly, instincts honed by danger taking over. There, at the edge of the tree line, about thirty yards away, stood a bear.
But this was no ordinary bear. This was not the majestic predator he had seen yesterday. Something about this creature was fundamentally wrong. It was the same bear that had stolen his cave, with its moss-covered back and the size of a small car, but its appearance had changed. Its dull black fur seemed thinner, clinging to its frame in wet clumps, revealing sickly pale skin underneath. A thick, oil-colored saliva dripped from its slightly open jaws, hissing faintly as it hit the leaves below.
But the most terrifying part was its eyes. They no longer glinted with ancient intelligence. They were now two dull, milky-white discs, without pupils, without focus, without life. Its stare was vacant, unblinking, and fixed directly on Devon. The creature didn't move an inch. It didn't sniff the air. It didn't shift its weight. It just stood there, a horrific statue of living decay, a silent monument of Onyx's horror.
Silence descended, heavier and more oppressive than before. The only sounds were the whisper of the wind and the drip of blood from Devon's hands. The bear didn't threaten. It didn't growl. It just stared. And that vacant, unblinking stare was more terrifying than any fang or claw. It was the stare of the void, a gaze that seemed to drain all meaning and sanity from the world.
Devon felt a strange sensation. The black ring on his finger did its job perfectly; there was no fear. No panic. He felt no cold jolt of adrenaline or the urge to run. But he did feel… an annoyance. The bear's presence was a scratch on a perfect vinyl record, an error in the code, a wrong note in the symphony of silence. The vacant stare was a static buzz in his now clear, logical mind.
"Well, this is annoying," he thought, a bizarrely mundane observation in this extraordinary situation. He recognized the attack for what it was. This wasn't a physical threat. It was a psychological assault. The creature's very presence was a weapon, designed to corrode the mind, to instill a creeping, existential dread. He could feel how the stare would work on an unprotected mind. It would burrow, erode, and drive one mad with its relentless stillness. For a normal person, without the ring's protection, their brain could have turned to mush in minutes.
He glanced down at the half-butchered stag. He glanced back at the staring bear. This interruption was impeding his work. It was inefficient.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, I'll just blow it up," he whispered to himself, his voice laced with a profound weariness, as if the bear were nothing more than a bothersome mosquito.
He didn't bother to stand up. He remained crouched beside his bloody work, one hand still gripping the hunting knife. He simply raised his other hand, his free hand, and reached into his pocket. He didn't retrieve a fiery red stone. Fire felt too… organic for something so wrong. He pulled out a pale yellow magic stone. A lightning stone.
He clenched it, and a crackling energy immediately surged up his arm. This was different from fire or water. This was raw, unstable, wild power. The air around his hand began to crackle with static electricity. The fine hairs on his arm stood on end. He didn't form his hand into a gun this time. He just aimed his open palm at the bear.
The magic circle that formed before his palm wasn't a neat pattern. It was a miniature thunderstorm, jagged runes of yellow-white lightning appearing and disappearing in microseconds, crackling and jumping with barely contained energy. This wasn't precision. This was annihilation.
The bear did not react. It just continued to stare as doom formed in the air before it.
Devon didn't hesitate. He released it.
There was no projectile. Instead, the entire collected energy exploded outward in a single, blindingly bright, jagged bolt of lightning. It wasn't a thin flash; it was a pillar of pure light and force, as thick as a tree trunk, that crossed the thirty yards in an immeasurable instant. The air in its path was torn apart with a deafening tearing sound, like the fabric of reality itself being ripped. For a moment, the entire world was white and smelled sharply of ozone.
The pillar of lightning struck the bear dead center in its chest.
The result was not an explosion. It was an erasure.
There was no scream. No sound of sizzling flesh. The creature simply vanished. One second it was there, an unmoving statue of horror. The next, it was not. The overwhelming energy of the attack didn't just kill it; it vaporized every atom of its being, reducing it to nothing in a blinding flash. All that remained was a blackened, smoking circle of earth where it had stood, and the fading echo of the tearing sound among the trees.
The silence returned. This time, it was a pure silence. An uninterrupted silence.
Devon lowered his hand. The magic circle vanished. He exhaled slowly, not out of exertion, but more like a sigh of relief at having finished a tedious chore. The threat was neutralized. The annoyance was eliminated.
He looked down at his hand, slick with the stag's blood, then back at the half-butchered carcass before him. As if nothing had happened, he placed the lightning stone back in his pocket, picked up his hunting knife, and returned to his work.
He began to carve the meat from the bone with the same methodical, emotionless movements as before. He separated the massive hindquarters, sectioned the ribs, and carefully sliced away the prized backstraps. As he worked, the quiet hum returned, the exact same tune as before, an innocent, mindless melody drifting over the scene of carnage he had created. He was a boy humming while he did his chores, only his chores were to butcher a monster and turn it into dinner, while the echo of godlike power still crackled in the air around him.