"Now you look more fashionable and flashy, Tari. Told you you'd like it,"
Silas joked, his voice dripping with amusement that could only come from someone who had clearly lost all sense of empathy somewhere between yesterday and the apocalypse. It wasn't really a compliment; it was more like a flashy mockery wrapped in the thin veneer of friendly banter—the kind of banter that makes you question whether your so-called guide is actually trying to help you or just entertaining himself at your expense.
Tari stared at her reflection in a makeshift mirror propped against the hut's wall. The glass was cracked and clouded with age, streaked with what she desperately hoped was dirt and not dried blood. But she could see enough through the grime to know she looked like an absolute disaster—a walking, talking monument to poor life choices and worse fashion sense.
"I think I look like a mountain troll and smell of shame and regret,"
she replied, her voice flat as she glared at Silas, who was now doubled over laughing so hard he had to brace himself against the wall. His shoulders shook with mirth that seemed entirely inappropriate given their circumstances.
"This is not how a lady should be dressed. This is how a human being gets mistaken for garbage and thrown into a compactor."
The clothes were monstrously oversized, a cruel joke played by whoever had donated them to the survival wardrobe. They swallowed her whole, making her look like a scarecrow that had been abandoned in a particularly violent storm and left to contemplate its existence.
The fabric hung off her frame in defeated folds, and she was fairly certain the pants alone could house a small family. The boots were heavy, clunky things that felt like they had been stolen from a giant who worked in a muddy paddy field and never bothered to clean them. Each step produced a squelching sound that made her cringe. Then there were the gloves—stiff, foul-smelling things made of what Silas enthusiastically called monkey leather, though Tari suspected he was making that up just to see her face twist in horror.
"No way am I wearing this, Silas,"
Tari snapped, tugging at the baggy collar that kept trying to strangle her despite being three sizes too large.
"You must have something better. Something that doesn't look like it's survived three world wars and a trip through a coal mine. Maybe something that was manufactured in this century? I'm not asking for Prada or Armani here, just basic human dignity."
Silas stopped laughing abruptly, his face suddenly turning stone-cold serious in that way that immediately made Tari regret complaining. The transformation was jarring—one moment he was the class clown, the next he was a battle-hardened survivor who had seen too much death.
"At least it guarantees your survival on Jotunheim, Tari. That's more than any designer label can do," he said, his voice now carrying an edge sharp enough to cut through her protests.
He stepped closer, and the humor had completely drained from his eyes, replaced by something darker and infinitely more frightening—experience. The kind that came from watching people die because they cared more about comfort than survival.
"Amphidragons are the scariest creatures on this island," he continued, his voice low and measured.
"They can smell a single drop of blood from miles away and hunt down a mole in its deepest burrow. Their olfactory senses are so refined they can detect the heat signature of your heartbeat from the sky, thanks to the mutation. But the stench of sulfur? That burns their brains out. It overwhelms their senses, scrambles their neural pathways, makes you invisible to their hunger. They won't touch you if you smell like a volcanic eruption mixed with rotting vegetation and regret. So, yeah, this is the wardrobe. Sorry we didn't take your measurements for the apocalypse. The tailor was eaten by a Gorgon last month."
Tari sighed deeply, feeling the weight of the boots pressing down on her feet like anchors designed to root her permanently to this nightmare island. It was a choice between smelling like a mobile sewer system or being transformed into an afternoon snack for a creature that probably didn't even need to chew. She reluctantly chose the sewer, though her dignity wept quietly in the corner of her mind.
Silas handed her a weathered backpack that looked like it had accompanied someone on at least a dozen near-death experiences, and a spear with a sturdy wooden handle that had been worn smooth by countless desperate grips.
"It's simple, really,"
Silas said, checking his own gear with practiced efficiency.
"You see a monster? Play dead. Don't run, don't scream, just drop and commit to the performance like your life depends on it—because it does. Stay stealthy. Move like a shadow, think like prey. As long as you smell like weed and sulfur, nothing wants to gobble you up. You're a literal two-month-old carcass to them, completely unappetizing. Watch out for Hounds during the day; they're everywhere and they hunt in packs. And stay away from caves unless you have a death wish. Those belong to Gorgons and zombie-bears."
"Zombie-bears?" Tari's voice went up , cracking slightly with disbelief.
"Is this some kind of Jurassic Park joke? What in the actual hell is a zombie-bear? Please tell me you're making this up to scare the new girl."
"You don't want to find out,"
Silas said darkly, his expression suggesting he had personal experience with the subject and none of it was pleasant.
He spread an old, stained map on a weathered crate, the paper crackling as he smoothed it out. His finger traced a jagged line across the yellowed surface.
"We're crossing the old bridge to the mountain pass. It's less crowded during the day because the Amphidragons claim the air there—territorial disputes keep most ground predators away. But whatever you do, don't fall in the water. You'll end up as a warm-up snack for a Leviathan, and trust me, you don't want to be an appetizer for something that considers great white sharks a light breakfast."
"A warm-up snack?" Tari whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs like it was trying to escape her chest and flee this conversation entirely.
"Gorgons, water dragons, Leviathans, zombie-bears? I won't last ten seconds out there! This is insane! I'm a Girls' Guild Master, not a jungle adventurer!"
"Well, Princess, you're lucky you've got the best guide in Jotunheim," Silas said with a confidence that Tari found either reassuring or deeply concerning—she couldn't decide which.
"Follow my lead and you'll be just fine. Probably, maybe. Let's move before I start thinking about the odds."
Silas adjusted his pack and whistled for Axle, a sharp, piercing sound that cut through the humid air. The large, silent man emerged from his hammering position and heaved a familiar grunt that somehow conveyed both greeting and warning. He exchanged a complicated, rhythmic handshake with Silas—clearly some kind of survival code they'd developed over years of not being eaten together.
As they headed for the exit, Axle paused mid-stride. He turned and waved at Tari, his hood falling back just enough to reveal the silhouette of deep, jagged scars that crisscrossed his face like a roadmap of violence. Amidst the trauma of his damaged skin, Tari saw something unexpected—a genuine, small smile that somehow made it through the scar tissue to reach his eyes.
She waved back, the gesture carrying a silent message: Thank you for saving my life back there.
"Axle's a warrior with a soft heart," Silas noted as he began to climb down the wooden ladder that led from their elevated hut to the forest floor below.
"Don't let the face fool you. He's a gentle giant .You'll see."
Tari followed him, moving with a grace that clearly surprised Silas based on the way his eyebrows shot up. She hit the ground lightly, her oversized gear clattering only slightly—a small victory in a day full of humiliating defeats.
"Whoa, nice moves," Silas said, genuinely impressed this time. "Where'd you learn to climb like that? That was almost professional."
"I'm a Girls' Guild Master,"
Tari replied matter-of-factly, unfazed as she brushed a thick, sticky cobweb off her shoulder without even flinching. "Climbing is Day One stuff. We do rope courses before we even learn to tie proper knots."
"Good. I hope that skill pays off out here," Silas said seriously. "This island needs every bit of competence it can get, and most people show up with none."
He leaned in close, his voice dropping to barely more than a whisper, his breath warm against her ear.
"Follow my steps exactly. Do not deviate, do not improvise, do not step on any mounds or anthills. They aren't for termites. They're landmines for Super-Ants."
"Super-Ants?" Tari repeated, hoping desperately that this was another one of his elaborate jokes.
"Three-feet-tall underground soldiers," Silas said casually, as if talking about the weather or the price of milk instead of nightmare fuel given insectoid form.
"They'll devour you in one bite—well, technically several bites, but it happens so fast it might as well be one. They can render a full-grown giraffe into a neat pile of bones in a matter of minutes, so watch your feet very, very carefully."
Tari gulped audibly, her eyes immediately gluing themselves to the ground. Every pebble and bump in the dirt now looked like a potential death trap, and she found herself taking absurdly careful steps like she was navigating a minefield—which, she supposed, she essentially was.
As they trekked deeper into the emerald green heart of the jungle, where the canopy grew so thick it filtered the sunlight into an eerie, underwater glow, Silas chatted non-stop. He talked about the best ways to cook komodo dragons ,and how you apparently had to remove a specific gland or the meat tasted like battery acid, how much he missed real coffee ,as the local substitute was made from roasted beetle shells, and his theory that the island's mutations were the result of some corporate experiment gone catastrophically wrong.
Tari, however, was trapped in her own mind, barely hearing his rambling. She kept thinking about the ornate gate in the cave—the overwhelming feeling of possession that had seized her, the stone gargoyle with eyes that seemed to follow her even in memory, and the cold, ancient horror that had unfolded when she'd gotten too close. She wanted to tell Silas about it, the words formed and reformed on her tongue, but something stopped her every time. Did he already know about that place? Had Axle told him what happened? Why the strict warning about the gate? Was that specific, or was there something about that particular cave he wasn't telling her?
And then there was Aisha's episode, her little sister that almost turned evil overlord. Was she really okay? The island was full of mutants and monsters, horrifying enough on their own, but what Tari had felt in the cave was something different. Something ancient and patient. Something that didn't just want to eat you—it wanted to own you, possess you, use you for purposes she couldn't begin to imagine. And beyond that ornate gate was a hushed secret that made her skin crawl even in memory.
"Tari... Tari! Are you even listening to me?" Silas barked, coming to a dead halt so abruptly she nearly walked into his back.
Tari jumped, startled out of her dark thoughts. "Sorry! What did you say?"
Silas slapped his forehead dramatically. "I've just wasted a good fifty calories of energy talking to thin air. Unbelievable. Do you know how precious calories are on this island? What I was saying was—WAIT UP! Don't move another inch!"
He threw his arm out suddenly, the limb like an iron bar blocking Tari's chest and stopping her forward momentum. He was staring intently at something ahead—a single, shimmering strand of silk stretched across the narrow path. It was thicker than any spiderweb Tari had ever seen, almost like fishing line, and it caught the filtered sunlight in an oddly beautiful way.
"See that? Dragline silk," Silas whispered, his voice tight with tension.
"Donkey Spiders. One trip on that thread and you're not just caught, you're a Donkey Spider meal within minutes."
Tari tried to find a joke to lighten the oppressive atmosphere, her default defense mechanism kicking in.
"Donkey Spiders? That is legitimately the dumbest name I've ever heard. What's next, Unicorn Mosquitoes? Leprechaun Leeches?, Gollum Silverbacks?"
Silas didn't laugh this time, which told her everything she needed to know about how serious this was.
"They mimic the sound of a donkey braying to lure in prey—other animals think it's safe, that there's livestock nearby, so there must be humans and shelter," he explained quietly.
"That's why they have the name, and it's not cute or funny, they're total creeps. But look at the silk itself, Tari. Really look at it. It's one of the strongest substances on earth, stronger than steel by weight. It has a strange mechanism embedded in its molecular structure—if you trip it, if your body makes contact, it'll wrap around you faster than you can blink. It won't just hold you in place; it'll tighten progressively until it crushes your ribs and turns your insides into jelly. I once watched a sorry horse get squished into a smorgasbord of soup by it, the whole process took maybe two minutes. Poor thing—it would've served us better in our cooking pot. So be very, very cautious."
He stepped over the strand with exaggerated care, his movements slow and deliberate, making sure even the vibration of his footfall didn't disturb the deadly line. Tari followed with shaking legs, holding her breath the entire time. This isn't an island, she thought grimly. It's a waiting room for hell, and we're all just queuing up for our turn.
"Okay, Princess," Silas said as they reached a clearing where the trees thinned out and she could actually see patches of sky again. "We're in Siren territory now. But don't worry too much, they're primarily night-dwellers. They only come ashore when the sun goes down and the mists rise. Just make sure you don't leave a scent trail they can track when darkness falls. Sirens are excellent hunters, possibly the best on the island."
"Sirens?"
Tari looked toward the vast, misty glades ahead, where curtains of fog rolled through like living things.
"Like the legends? The ones that sing to hypnotize sailors and lure them to their deaths?"
"That's sci-fi nonsense ,Tati," Silas corrected her with a dismissive wave.
"Sirens here are powerful mutant mer-creatures that dwell in misty caves and coastal swamps. They're amphibious, intelligent in a predatory way, and they're a vital part of what we call the Cursed Food Chain."
"The Cursed Food Chain?" Tari repeated, wondering if there was a single normal thing on this entire godforsaken island.
"Yep. Everything here eats something worse than itself—it's a beautiful, terrible circle," Silas explained, actually sounding enthusiastic about the horrific ecosystem.
"Demon-Locusts swarm and devour everything green during the day, stripping entire groves down to bare wood. Then, when night comes, the Sirens emerge from their caves to hunt the locusts while they're blind and sleeping in the branches. And then?" He grinned like he was describing his favorite sports team.
"Then the Amphidragons swoop down from their mountain roosts and eat the Sirens whole. It's a beautiful circle of death, a perfectly balanced cursed food-chain.
We don't fish in Siren waters, and we definitely don't eat them—their meat is toxic anyway. They aren't smart like humans, but they sure are hungry. All they know is hunt, kill, and nom-nom. That's their entire existence."
"You make it sound so... charming," Tari said sarcastically, her voice dripping with the kind of exhaustion that comes from too much terror in too short a time.
"I can't believe you people actually live here voluntarily. The scariest thing I've ever done before this was shooing a fat aggressive mother opossum out of my mom's potato garden, and I thought that was traumatic."
"Oh, you'll see plenty of opossums here too," Silas laughed, the sound echoing strangely in the misty clearing.
"Except here, the opossums are the size of minivans, they travel in packs, and they've developed a taste for human flesh. Welcome to your nightmare, Tari. Please enjoy your stay—checkout time is probably never."
They pushed forward through increasingly treacherous terrain, navigating carefully around the territories of giant spiders and hidden predators, every step a calculated risk. The jungle finally opened up after what felt like hours but was probably only forty-five minutes, revealing a massive, jagged canyon that split the landscape like a wound. A violent river roared far below, the water white and foaming as it crashed over ancient rocks, the sound deafening even from this height.
"There it is," Silas announced with something between pride and resignation, pointing a gloved finger across the chasm. "The Footbridge of Damnation. Not the official name, but that's what we call it."
It was a rickety, swaying bridge made of rotted wood planks and rusted cables that looked like they hadn't been inspected or maintained since before Tari was born. It stretched across the canyon in a slight sag, and it looked like a stiff breeze would send the entire structure tumbling into the abyss below. Several planks were missing entirely, revealing stomach-churning gaps.
"Our crew is camped a few kilometers past that mountain," Silas explained, gesturing to a distant peak shrouded in clouds. "It's our stronghold. Safe-ish. Fewer monsters, more walls, actual beds. Relatively speaking, it's paradise."
"But the Amphidragons," Tari said slowly, her eyes scanning the wide-open sky above the exposed bridge.
"We'll be totally exposed out there. They'll see us instantly from any direction. We'll be like rats running across a kitchen floor with the lights on."
"Of course they will! That's absolutely correct!" Silas said cheerfully, like this was a fun challenge instead of a probable death sentence. "That's why we have to be fast. Come on, Girls' Guild, show me that speed and agility you were bragging about."
"This is a death warrant, Silas," Tari pleaded, actually backing away from the edge of the canyon.
"I'm not doing it. There has to be another way around! What about going downstream? Or waiting until dark?"
Silas didn't answer immediately. He walked calmly to the very edge of the canyon, his boots kicking a few loose pebbles into the void. They tumbled silently, disappearing into the mist before any sound of impact returned. He reached down casually, picked up a heavy stone about the size of his fist, and turned back to Tari with a grin that could only be described as diabolical.
"What are you doing, Silas?" Tari asked, her blood running cold as ice water flooded her veins. She knew that look. It was the look of a man about to do something incredibly, catastrophically stupid.
"Watch and learn, Tari," Silas chuckled, tossing the stone casually from hand to hand.
"Sometimes the best way forward is to create a little chaos."
"No! No, don't you dare!" Tari shouted, already knowing it was too late.
Silas didn't hesitate even slightly. With a casual flick of his wrist, like he was skipping stones across a pond, he tossed the heavy rock high into the air, letting it arc beautifully before gravity claimed it and sent it plummeting toward the roaring river far below.
The splash was loud enough to hear even over the constant roar of the rapids, but the screech that followed—erupting from multiple points along the canyon walls like a demonic choir—was infinitely louder, a sound that bypassed Tari's ears and went straight to the primal fear center of her brain.