He turned—
and the path was wrong.
Not gone. Worse.
It was there, laid out in front of him with the same terrain, the same scars in the ground, the same distant shapes tearing at one another—but it wasn't his path. The angles were reversed.
The horizon leaned the other way. The door was gone.
John stopped so hard his breath caught.
"No," he whispered, though the word had no authority here.
He tried to retrace his steps anyway. Took three careful paces back, then five more. The world complied just enough to mock him.
Distance stretched. Landmarks drifted apart like they'd never agreed to stay in place.
That's when the sound changed.
The fighting in the distance didn't stop—but something closer did.
A pause.
Then—
a growl.
Low. Wet. Close enough that it vibrated in his bones.
John froze.
The wrongness spiked so violently it felt like a hand clamping around his heart. Every nerve screamed the same message in perfect, terrifying agreement:
It smells you.
Another growl rolled out, deeper this time, followed by the sound of something massive shifting its weight.
The ground shuddered—not from impact, but anticipation.
John didn't need to see it.
He knew.
Whatever it was, it was big enough that distance meant nothing. Three steps and it would be on him. Maybe two. Maybe—
One.
"Oh crap."
The words barely left his mouth before instinct finally overruled caution.
He ran.
The moment he did, the world reacted.
Space buckled. The ground stretched and snapped back beneath his feet like rubber pulled too far. His legs burned as if gravity had suddenly remembered him and decided to be cruel.
Behind him—
the growl turned into a roar.
Not rage.
Hunger.
Each stride he took felt stolen, borrowed from a reality that didn't want to give them up. He didn't look back. Looking back would turn fear into certainty, and certainty would slow him down.
The landscape blurred into violent suggestion—bone, dust, shadow, motion. Something enormous crashed through the distance behind him, not chasing so much as closing the gap by existing.
John ran because walking would mean dying.
He ran because stopping would mean being noticed fully.
He ran because whatever rules this place had, speed was now the only one that mattered.
And somewhere deep inside him—buried, dormant, unlit—
something paid attention.
John didn't find the cabin.
The cabin found him.
It appeared between one step and the next—wood where there had been nothing but torn earth and bone-shadow.
A single structure standing stubbornly upright, as if it had decided this was where reality stopped arguing.
John didn't slow down so much as fall into it.
He slammed the door shut behind him and threw his weight against it just as something enormous passed outside. The walls shuddered. Dust fell from the ceiling in a soft, nervous rain.
Then—
Silence.
Not safety.
Just absence.
John slid down until he was sitting on the floor, lungs burning, heart trying to escape his ribs. He waited for claws. Teeth. The end.
Nothing came.
The cabin smelled old. Wood, ink, smoke long since faded. It was small—mercifully so. One room. A table. A chair. A bed that had never known comfort. No windows. No cracks.
Whoever built this place hadn't wanted to see the outside.
John stood slowly, every movement careful, listening for the world to change its mind. When it didn't, he let himself breathe.
That's when he saw the book.
It sat on the table, untouched by dust, its cover worn smooth by hands that had come back to it again and again. No title on the front. No symbol. Just age.
John picked it up.
The moment his fingers brushed the cover, a chill ran through him—not fear, not pain. Recognition without memory.
He opened it.
The first page was handwritten, neat but tired, like someone who had rewritten the same thought too many times.
"If you're reading this, then the cabin still exists."
"That's good. It means the world hasn't finished eating itself yet."
John swallowed and kept reading.
"I don't know who you are.
But if you made it here, you were running."
"Everyone who makes it here is."
He turned the page.
A name was written alone, centered, as if it carried weight all by itself.
Chase Wheeler
Below it, in smaller script:
"Some people call me a survivor."
"Some call me a liar."
"A few insist I'm the author of all this."
"They're wrong."
"I didn't write the world."
"I just noticed it breaking—and took notes."
John's grip tightened on the book.
Outside, something shifted. Not closer. Not farther.
Waiting.
The cabin held.
For now.
And John realized—with a clarity that made his stomach drop—that whatever this place was, whatever was hunting him, someone else had been here long enough to understand it.
And understanding, out here, might be the most dangerous thing of all.
John turned the page.
The handwriting changed.
Not sloppier—heavier. As if each word had to be pressed into the paper by force.
"I made a deal."
"Not with a god."
"Not with a beast."
"With the world itself."
John's throat went dry.
"That was my first mistake—thinking the world was a single thing."
"It isn't."
"It's layers pretending to be one."
Another page.
"The price was simple."
"Knowledge in exchange for position."
"I was allowed to see the seams."
"To walk where the ages overlap."
"In return, I forfeited my place in the Age of Humanity."
John felt the meaning land before he fully understood it.
"I can enter it."
"I can touch it."
"But I can never belong to it again."
The next pages were diagrams—sketches of landscapes folding into each other, symbols half-erased, words circled and rewritten.
"There are five stages. Five ages. They did not replace one another.
They receded.
And now they leak."
The Age of Earth:
"Before will. Before meaning.
Stone, pressure, heat.
Reality that does not care if it is observed."
The Age of Primordials:
"Will without reflection.
Hunger. Motion. Cataclysm.
Titans that act because stopping never occurred to them."
The Age of Gods:
"Meaning imposed by force.
Names, rules, fate, hierarchy.
The age where reality was told what it was allowed to be."
The Age of Beasts:
"Instinct rebelling against meaning.
Monsters. Myths. Survival.
Life refusing to stay written."
The Age of Humanity:
"Meaning questioned.
Choice over fate. Doubt over decree.
The only age that asks the world to justify itself."
John paused, fingers tightening on the page.
The next line was underlined so hard the paper had nearly torn.
"Humanity is incompatible with bargains."
He swallowed and kept reading.
"Gods trade."
"Beasts take."
"Primordials endure."
"The world remembers."
"But humans?"
"Humans walk away."
"That is why the world resents them."
"And why it cannot fully erase them."
The final entry on the page was written smaller, almost apologetically.
"If you are reading this and you can still feel the pull of home—
do not make my mistake."
"Do not bargain for understanding.
Understanding comes later.
First, you must choose to remain human."
John closed the book slowly.
Outside the cabin, the wrongness shifted again.
Not hunting.
Listening.
And for the first time since he'd arrived, John understood the real danger wasn't being devoured by a Beast.
It was becoming someone the world would never let go home.
John turned the next page.
The ink was smeared here. Not by time.
By hesitation.
"I was wrong."
Just that.
No preamble. No excuse.
"I thought I was speaking to the world."
"I believed the presence I felt—the weight, the authority—could only belong to reality itself."
The handwriting sharpened, pressing deeper into the page.
"But the world does not speak.
It allows."
"What answered me was a god."
John's stomach dropped.
"Not a king of gods."
"Not a creator."
"Just one old enough…"
"and close enough."
The next pages were frantic. Lines crossed out. Margins filled.
"Gods do not need to be omnipotent to lie."
"They only need to stand closer to the foundation than you do."
A rough sketch followed—concentric layers, one figure standing between them, arms spread as if blocking passage.
"It wore the world like a mask."
"Borrowed its gravity."
"Spoke with its inevitability."
"And I believed it."
John felt cold.
"The deal was never with reality."
"It was with a warden."
"The word was circled so many times the page had nearly torn through.'
"This place is not a crossroads."
"It is a cage."
"This is the Age of Beasts."
The next entry was written with a steadier hand, but the calm was worse than panic.
"Beasts are not evil."
"They are honest."
"They devour because they must."
"They fight because stopping means dying."
"That god rules here because it understands hunger."
John remembered the endless battles. The devouring. The way nothing here noticed him until he ran.
"The god bound me to this age.
Not in body—
in relevance."
"I cannot return to the Age of Humanity because I no longer belong to it."
"I have been classified."
The last lines were written smaller. Quieter.
"This god does not fear humanity."
"It fears transition."
"It fears those who can walk between ages without permission."
"If you are here and you have not been offered a bargain—
that means it cannot claim you yet."
John closed the book.
The cabin creaked—not from age, but from pressure. Something outside shifted its weight, testing the boundary, not attacking.
Waiting.
John understood now.
Chase Wheeler wasn't trapped because he lost.
He was trapped because he agreed.
And whatever god ruled the Age of Beasts…
…it hadn't asked John for anything.
Which meant it didn't know what to do with him yet.
John turned the page.
The writing grew uneven again. Rushed. Pressed too hard, then too light, like the hand holding the pen couldn't decide whether it wanted to exist.
"If you're wondering why this place still stands—
why the cabin hasn't been torn apart like everything else—
it's because Beasts don't destroy what they can't eat."
John glanced at the walls. The table.
The door that had saved him.
They don't hate structures.
They don't resent shelter.
They only tear apart what promises flesh.
"That's why I built."
"And kept building."
Another line, smaller.
Lonely work, but effective.
The next paragraph drifted.
"I don't know what year it is anymore."
"Time behaves strangely here."
"Sometimes it crawls."
"Sometimes it forgets itself."
A pause in the writing. A long one.
"The last date I remember seeing was 1950."
John's breath hitched.
For all I know, the human world has already moved on without me.
"That wouldn't surprise me.
Humanity is good at continuing.
The next lines were underlined twice.
But you need to listen to me now."
The handwriting sharpened into something almost desperate.
"Once you leave this place—
once you step back into open ground—
that god will notice you.
It already felt you running."
John could almost hear Chase's voice shaking through the ink.
"It will look at you."
"It will speak to you."
"And it will lie."
"Not blatantly."
"Not stupidly."
"It will sound reasonable."
"Kind, even."
The next sentence was written in all caps.
"DO NOT LISTEN!!!!!"
Another line, scratched in beneath it.
"Do not believe.
Do not trust familiarity.
Then—heavily pressed, the paper nearly torn:
And most importantly—
do not—
I repeat—
DO NOT SHAKE HIS HAND!!!"
John stared at the words.
"That is how he seals his deals."
"Every god has a method."
"Some shake hands."
"Some sign contracts."
"Some snap their fingers."
"Some only need a nod."
"The stronger ones don't need consent to be elaborate."
The handwriting shrank again, reverent now. Afraid.
"Those who rule an age—
the kings of gods—
they don't bargain.
They speak.
And the world obeys."
The final sentence trailed off, the ink thinning as if the pen had begun to fail—or the hand.
"If he offers you certainty—
walk away."
"If he offers you understanding—
refuse."
"If he offers you a way home—"
The sentence stopped there.
No period.
No warning.
Just silence on the page.
Outside the cabin, something shifted its weight again.
Not hungry.
Patient.
And John understood, with a clarity that made his skin prickle, that the god of this age wasn't watching the cabin.
It was waiting for him to leave it.
And somewhere deep inside—still unawakened, still unnamed—
something in John Walker quietly decided:
He would not shake any hand the world offered him.
Not now.
Not ever.