Evan jolted awake, his body sprawled against the damp forest floor. The first thing he noticed was the heat, thick, suffocating, pressing against his skin like a living thing. He remembers standing on his grandpa's farm and feeling just like this. Except this air feels older, more ancient. The air was dense with humidity, carrying the scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, pungent and raw. He inhaled sharply, pushing himself upright, his fingers sinking into the cool, moss-covered ground. Sunlight streamed through the towering canopy above, painting the world in shifting golds and deep emerald shadows. The moment felt eerily dreamlike, but something was terribly wrong.
He was naked.
Not just naked, exposed. No clothes. No phone. No wallet. No sign of civilization. A pulse of panic rose in his chest, sharp and electric, but before it could take hold, another realization crashed into him like a freight train.
He wasn't hungry.
For the first time in years, there was no gnawing, insatiable hunger clawing at his insides. His ever-present need to eat suddenly silent giving him a sense of peace he hasnt known in a long long time. His senses weren't overwhelmed, no flood of distant heartbeats, no razor-sharp sounds slicing into his skull. He flexed his fingers. Normal. Ran a trembling hand over his face. Smooth skin. No fangs pushing against his gums, no telltale prickle of fur threatening to burst free.
Had he finally, finally, been cured?
A breathless, disbelieving laugh escaped him. "Oh, hell yes."
And then, memory struck like a lightning bolt.
He had died.
The air conditioner. The falling metal. The instant, crushing weight. He remembered the sheer, paralyzing shock, the desperate, instinctive shift, his body trying to save itself in a transformation that wasn't supposed to be possible outside of a full moon. But gravity was faster than his newfound ability. He remembered pain, then nothing.
And yet, here he was. Alive. Somewhere else.
The forest around him pulsed with life. Leaves rustled with unseen movement, distant calls of animals echoed through the trees, and the incessant buzz of insects droned in the air. Even without enhanced hearing, the world was loud, alive in a way that felt impossibly real. But this wasn't just any forest. The trees were massive, their gnarled roots thick and ancient, stretching like grasping fingers across the earth. Towering ferns draped the undergrowth, their fronds impossibly large, giving everything a prehistoric, untamed wildness.
Nothing about this place looked modern. No plastic, no distant hum of vehicles scrambling, not even a sign of human trampled wilderness. Even the air smelled different, clean, untouched by pollution or industry.
A cold shiver ran down his spine.
Okay. Okay. Don't freak out. The good news? He wasn't a werewolf anymore. The bad news? He had no idea where the hell he was.
Evan took a deep breath, forcing himself to assess the situation with clarity. His pulse hammered in his ears, his skin slick with sweat, but he had to stay calm. First things first: cover. Walking around buck naked wasn't just humiliating, it was dangerous. The jungle didn't care about his modesty, but exposure meant vulnerability, and right now, that was the last thing he needed.
His nerves were on edge, his body keyed up in a way that felt familiar but also… wrong.
The raw, unfiltered sunlight felt like it was searing his skin, and the thick, humid air pressed against him like a suffocating blanket. His mind raced, a frantic catalog of every possible danger lurking in the undergrowth, venomous snakes coiled beneath roots, insects carrying god-knows-what kind of disease, plants that could leave burns worse than fire. He could practically feel the jungle's heartbeat around him, pulsing, alive, as if it were watching him, waiting.
Evan was a city boy, raised in a world of honking cars, concrete towers, and dirty muddy sidewalks. But even he wasn't ignorant of the wild. Every childhood vacation to the province came with warnings from older relatives. Stay close to the house. Don't wander too far. Snakes can hide in the grass, insects can fall from trees, and some plants can drag you under the house and slowly devour you. The last one might have just been a fabrication of a movie-loving drunk uncle, but still, the stories had terrified him. Now, standing in a jungle that looked untouched by time, those same stories felt less like cautionary tales and more like survival lessons.
Back when he'd been a werewolf, none of this would have mattered. His instincts would have taken over by now, guiding him with an effortless certainty. His nose would have sorted through the thousands of scents in the air, his ears would have latched onto the faintest rustling, and his muscles would have coiled, ready to act before his brain even caught up. But now? Now he had nothing. No heightened senses, no primal certainty, just the fragile, human limits of sight and sound.
And damn, he felt vulnerable.
He moved carefully through the dense foliage, every step deliberate as he sidestepped exposed roots and avoided patches of vibrant, twisting fungi. His bare feet pressed into the damp earth, the wetness of the soil slipping beneath his weight. He could feel the jungle in a way he never had before, not with enhanced senses, but with an overwhelming awareness of just how weak he was without them.
The rustling leaves. The distant cries of unseen creatures. The faint hum of insects, vibrating in the air. It was all so loud. Too loud. His human body wasn't built for this kind of information overload, not the way his werewolf form had been. He missed that instinctual clarity, that razor-sharp certainty of what was a threat and what wasn't.
Now, all he had were guesses.
His heart pounded louder in his chest, but he forced himself to stay calm. Where once he had fought against seeing everything as prey, now he was fighting the feeling of being prey.
A rustling in the underbrush made him freeze.
His breath hitched as he turned his head, stomach clenching with a deeply ingrained expectation, his wolf form would have smelled the intruder by now, would have known what it was before it got this close. But his nose told him nothing. His ears were useless. His human body was slow.
Then he saw it.
A massive wild boar stood just feet away, its thick, bristly fur rippling as it huffed, stamping at the ground.
Evan's blood ran cold. Shit.
For a split second, his mind flickered back to what it had been like before, when instincts ruled his body, when every movement was automatic, when hesitation simply didn't exist. He remembered how his pulse would have slowed instead of racing, how his muscles would have tensed in readiness rather than fear.
He had never needed to think about what to do in a situation like this, he just knew. He never used it before but he knew deep down and without a doubt that his body would have known exactly what to do.
But that was gone.
Now, his heart jackhammered in his chest, his palms slick with sweat, his breath too loud in his own ears. He had no idea what to do next.
Don't run. Don't run. Don't run.
The knowledge was still there, buried under years of experience, of stories, of secondhand wisdom, but without the instinct to back it up, it felt fragile. Like reciting a rule from a book rather than trusting it with his life. Boars were territorial. Running would trigger it. But standing still wasn't an option either.
Slowly, he raised his arms, forcing his breath to steady, making himself look bigger. He stomped his foot, his voice sharp and commanding. "Hey!"
The boar's beady eyes stayed locked onto him, muscles taut beneath its thick hide. Evan braced himself.
Then, with a final snort, the boar spun and bolted into the underbrush, vanishing into the jungle.
Evan exhaled, his entire body trembling with leftover adrenaline. His breath came out in a ragged, almost disbelieving laugh.
"Oh, shit."
His instincts hadn't saved him. They weren't there anymore.
But the memory of them? That had been enough.
For now.
Okay, Lesson One: This jungle wanted him dead. And he was no longer a creature of the wild, bound by primal instincts. But maybe the jungle didn't know that.
Hours passed. The sky deepened into a rich indigo, the last vestiges of sunlight bleeding away beyond the tangled canopy. The air grew cooler, but not by much, humidity still clung to Evan's skin like a second layer, mixing with the grime of sweat and dirt. His stomach twisted with hunger, a dull ache gnawing at his insides, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Food. Shelter. Fire. He had none of them.
All he had was a makeshift covering, broad banana leaves tied around his waist with a strip of vine that dug uncomfortably into his skin. It wasn't much, but it was better than wandering through the jungle completely exposed. He had also fashioned a crude weapon, a splintered tree branch painstakingly sharpened against a jagged rock. The tip wasn't perfect, but it was sharp enough to stab if it came down to it. A weapon. Good. Not as effective as claws and fangs, but better than nothing.
As night fell, the jungle came alive in a way that sent a prickle of unease down his spine. The darkness here was not the kind he knew from the city, there were no streetlights, no neon glows from distant signs, no headlights cutting through alleyways. This was absolute darkness, the kind that swallowed the world whole. That is, until the moon pierces the cloud cover, letting the shadows stretch and shift like living things.
Shadowed shapes shifted in the undergrowth, and the air pulsed with strange sounds. In the distance, something screeched. The calls rose and fell, overlapping with a chorus of croaking frogs, buzzing cicadas, and the occasional eerie shriek of some unseen bird. Fireflies drifted lazily in the dark like wandering spirits, their soft glow barely illuminating the creeping vines and twisted roots of the jungle floor.
Evan exhaled, slow and measured, trying to keep his nerves in check. He knew he shouldn't be moving through unfamiliar terrain at night, but the stillness was unbearable.
His hands itched with the old habit of needing something to do, so despite knowing it was pointless, he crouched at the base of the massive tree, glaring at its sprawling roots. Willing whatever was lurking inside to show itself, and die. Or, better yet, to just die unseen. His brain whispered that something was hiding there, most likely a snake, coiled in the darkness, waiting. Waiting to sink its fangs into him.
Back when he had been a werewolf, he wouldn't have had to wait in helpless uncertainty like this. His nose would have picked up the scent instantly. His ears would have caught the faintest shift of scales against soil. His body would have moved before fear even had a chance to settle. The night wouldn't have been a threat, it would have been his domain.
He had taken it all for granted. Walking through the dark without a second thought, never flinching at an unfamiliar sound. His nose had told him who was approaching, who was running up behind him, and none of them ever smelled like a threat. He hadn't needed to look both ways before crossing the street; his senses had already mapped out the world around him before his eyes ever could.
Now? Now he was blind. Deaf. Vulnerable.
His stomach twisted painfully, a sharp reminder that he hadn't eaten. Hunger. A sensation he hadn't truly felt in years, not like this, not as a simple human need rather than an all-consuming beast clawing at his insides. But even that paled in comparison to the suffocating fear keeping him rigid, spear gripped tightly in his hands.
A sudden rustling in the leaves made him freeze, heart hammering against his ribs. His fingers tightened around his crude weapon, his breath going shallow. If something lunged at him right now, what could he even do?
Years of battling his wolf form had masked a simple truth, he was a coward. The sheer fact of having a hidden, untouchable power had kept his fears at bay, a silent reassurance that no matter what, he was never truly helpless.
But now? Now the fear was back, stronger than ever.
He swallowed hard and pressed his back against the massive, gnarled trunk of the tree. Its roots twisted into the ground like ancient veins, its presence almost watchful in the darkness. The jungle whispered around him, a symphony of unseen threats. He told himself to stay awake. To stay alert.
But exhaustion was relentless.
His body, still adjusting to its limitations, betrayed him. His grip slackened. His eyelids grew heavy. Fear gnawed at him, but in the end, it wasn't enough to keep him conscious.
Sleep took him.
He woke to the sound of footsteps.
Disoriented, groggy, and still tangled in the fog of sleep, he barely had time to react before a rough hand clamped around his arm. Panic flared, sharp and immediate. He yelped, twisting on instinct, then froze.
People. Actual, living people.
Relief surged through him, dizzying and unexpected. He wasn't alone. Someone had found him.
But the relief was short-lived.
A second hand shoved him back against the massive tree, pinning him in place. Spears. Sharp, unyielding, and far too close.
Evan's breath hitched as he took in the figures surrounding him, men with dark brown skin, their bodies painted in intricate swirls of red and white. Their muscles were taut beneath the markings, their eyes locked onto him, calculating, assessing. Their grips on their weapons were practiced, steady. Too steady. These weren't men who hesitated.
These weren't modern tribespeople. No faded T-shirts, no sandals, no traces of plastic. Only woven fabrics wrapped around their waists, beads adorning their necks and arms, and weapons, sleek bows, broad-tipped spears, and jagged blades that glinted in the dim morning light.
Everything about them was taut, coiled, like they were one wrong move away from striking. Not the quiet resilience or weary desperation often shown in documentaries of modern indigenous peoples, but something sharper, more immediate.
One of them stepped forward. He was taller than the rest, broad-shouldered, his chest adorned with a necklace of bones. He carried a blade unlike the others, a serrated edge carved from dark, gleaming obsidian. His body was covered in tattoos. His stare was piercing, unreadable, but heavy with authority.
Then, he spoke.
It wasn't Tagalog. It was older, rougher, the kind of language Evan had only ever heard in snippets back in the province. Language spoken by elders whose words felt untouched by time, stubbornly unmoving even as the world around them demanded it. He didn't understand all of it, but he understood enough.
Who are you? What are you doing here?
Evan's mouth went dry. His heart pounded against his ribs as he slowly raised his hands, palms open, careful not to make any sudden movements.
"I, uh" His voice cracked. "I don't" He swallowed, forcing the words out. "Look, I don't want any trouble."
No reaction. The warriors stood still as stone, their faces unreadable, their weapons unwavering. But the air around them had shifted, thick with suspicion, crackling with tension.
Evan exhaled shakily.
He was in deep, deep trouble.
And for what felt like the hundredth time since waking up in this world, he regretted ever wishing to be healed.