Air slammed into Victor's lungs.
He gasped violently, rolling onto his side as his body convulsed. Cold dirt pressed into his cheek. Leaves clung to his skin. The smell of earth flooded his senses—sharp, wet and alive.
He coughed hard, dragging in breath after breath until his chest burned. Each inhale came too fast, too shallow, until he forced it to slow. Panic flared—
—and was contained.
He stayed where he was, fingers digging into soil, anchoring himself through touch. The ground was solid. Real. It did not give way beneath him.
When he opened his eyes, green filled his vision.
Leaves. Branches. Sunlight fractured through a canopy far above.
The world held.
That mattered more than he expected.
Victor pushed himself upright slowly, pausing halfway as his balance wavered. His body felt different.
Light. Responsive. Young.
Not weak—but unprepared, like a tool taken out of storage without warning.
He sat there for a long moment, breathing, letting sensation settle. Muscles ached in unfamiliar ways—not injured, not strained, just unused. His joints complained faintly, then quieted, as if accepting correction.
He took inventory.
Clothes: rough fabric. Practical. No insignia. Nothing decorative.
Boots: worn enough to be broken in, not worn enough to fail yet.
Hair fell forward into his face. Black, with a brownish cast where the light caught it. Longer than expected. He pulled it back and felt it brush his shoulders.
The detail registered without context.
He touched his face.
Smooth.
No scars.
No memory of earning any.
That bothered him more than the absence itself.
He frowned, pressing inward, searching.
There was a gap where memory should have been.
Not a blur.
An absence.
He pressed against it and met resistance—not pain, but pressure. Like touching a bruise he couldn't see. Something pushed back, firmly enough to warn him away.
Victor withdrew.
Fine.
If the past was unavailable, he would work with the present.
He stood, wiping away dirt from his back.
His posture corrected automatically. Feet set. Balance distributed evenly. Weight settled where it belonged.
He did not remember learning how to do that.
He scanned the forest.
Near. Mid. Far.
Birds called overhead. Insects hummed. Leaves shifted in the breeze.
No immediate danger. Calm for now.
The quiet felt… large. Expansive in a way that made him suddenly aware of his own presence inside it.
He was alone.
That certainty landed heavy in his chest.
Victor began moving. Indexing everything he saw.
Each step was careful. Deliberate. He placed his feet where the ground was firm, where leaves were thin. He adjusted to the slope without conscious thought.
Muscle memory without memory.
Hunger followed, creeping in gradually. Thirst came soon after.
Both felt real. Grounding.
He found water by sound—a narrow stream threading through the trees. He crouched, scanned upstream, downstream, then drank. The water was cold and clean. He splashed his face and welcomed the shock.
His reflection rippled back at him.
Young.
Eighteen, maybe.
His eyes looked older than the rest of him.
That mismatch irritated him.
He didn't know why, but it did.
As he walked, fragments surfaced—ideas without origin.
Something is wrong.
It must be corrected.
He didn't know what.
He didn't know how.
Only that the certainty existed, sharp and unwelcome.
He stopped as the light shifted, shadows stretching longer across the forest floor.
Shelter mattered.
Not urgently.
But soon.
He chose high ground, dry and defensible, and began clearing space with methodical efficiency. He did not remember learning how to do that.
He did not question it.
When he finally sat, back against a tree, the forest settling around him, a pressure built inside his chest.
Not fear.
Not despair.
A sense of being placed.
Of being moved without permission.
He did not know why he was here.
He did not know what had been taken from him.
But the pressure inside him—quiet, persistent—told him one thing with absolute clarity.
Whatever this world was hiding, it was not allowed to last forever.
Victor closed his eyes.
"Fine," he murmured to no one. "Then I'll survive first."
The forest did not answer.
Victor slept lightly that night.
He woke before light even decided to arrive.
Not because he'd chosen to. Because his eyes opened on their own, snapping wide as if they were responding to a sound he hadn't consciously heard. For a few breaths he didn't move, letting the world settle into place around him.
Tree bark pressed against his back. Damp air cooled the exposed skin of his neck. The ground beneath him was uneven and hard in a way that promised bruises later. Leaves clung to his clothes. Somewhere above, something small skittered along a branch, claws scratching softly.
No walls. No ceiling lights. No voices.
Just green darkness thinning into gray.
He swallowed. His throat was dry. His stomach ached with a slow, hollow insistence.
Hunger. Thirst.
Real problems. Grounding ones.
Victor ran a hand over his face, then through his hair, pushing shoulder-length strands back from his eyes. The motion came with a familiar irritation, like he'd done it a thousand times—yet the memory of doing it wasn't there.
He didn't chase that thought.
Chasing the gap only made the pressure in his head throb, like a pimple that refuses to pop. He had learned that yesterday in the most basic way possible: probing backward didn't produce answers, it produced resistance.
So he stayed with what he could verify.
He was alive.
His name was Victor Graves.
He was alone.
And he had no business dying out here because his memory didn't feel like cooperating.
He looked down at his waist. The knife was still there where he'd set it—tucked into his belt, handle angled for a natural draw.
He touched it lightly. Not to reassure himself it existed, but because contact with something solid made the rest of the world feel less unreal.
He rose carefully, joints stiff, muscles complaining. The body was young, responsive, but underprepared. It moved like it hadn't been asked to do much beyond ordinary life. It felt like a body that had been dropped into responsibility without negotiation.
Victor exhaled slowly and forced calm into his breathing.
In.
Out.
He inventoried his surroundings again, more deliberately. He'd chosen a rise in the terrain that stayed dry, with a thick tree at his back and a view that didn't trap him. Not ideal. But workable.
The forest woke around him.
Birdsong started in scattered bursts. Insects resumed their hum. Pale light filtered through the canopy in fractured sheets.
Victor listened for anything that didn't fit.
Nothing obvious.
That didn't mean safe.
He followed the sound of running water downhill further this time and drank deeply, teeth aching at the cold. When he sat back on his heels, he stared at his reflection in the stream again.
Young face. Hard eyes. Hair too long to be practical.
His expression didn't match his face.
The mismatch irritating him even more the next day.
He stood and moved on.
Keeping the stream on his left, understanding without memory that water meant animals—and animals meant either food or danger.
As he walked, hunger sharpened. His eyes lingered on berries he didn't trust, roots he couldn't name, birds that flitted too fast to catch.
Then he saw the tracks.
Not human.
Hoof-like—but wrong.
Too narrow. Far too deep.
The mud displaced more than it should have.
Victor crouched, studying them.
It wasn't just size.
It was density.
His stomach tightened.
He didn't like unknown animals with wrong weight.
He stood and moved on.
And then the forest went quiet.