Soren awoke to the sound of the cave breathing; the rainy wind, funneled through the narrow fissure of the entrance, created a low, rhythmic hooting sound that vibrated against the limestone walls.
It almost sounded like the mournful funeral flutes used by the Ignis Tribe, and for a moment, disoriented by the deep, nutrient-heavy sleep that had followed his feast, he reached out for the familiar, sagging timbers of the Weeping Cottage.
He had expected to feel the rough, damp wood and hear the judgemental murmurs of the tribe-folks passing by his cottage; unfortunately, his fingers instead brushed the cold, unyielding grit of the cave floor, and the oil-slicked serrated edge of the heavy skinning knife.
The shock was instantaneous, and the reality of where he truly was washed over his mind with the force of a raging waterfall.
Sitting up swiftly, his joints popping like dry corn in hot oven, and to his immaculate surprise, the agonizing "iron-rust" stiffness that had plagued him for years was noticeably dampened.
Did his body feel heavy?
Yes, but it was the heaviness of healing muscles rather than the brittle weight of decay.
Apparently, the Alpha's meat had been more than just fuel; it had been a structural reinforcement.
However, in the next moment, he caught a reflection of his look in a stagnant pool of rainwater near the hearth, and he froze, his heart sinking.
He could see that the shimmering vibrancy of the cat's blood had faded into a dull, muddy brown.
The Tranquil Poison in his veins had already begun to stir, his sleep was just too deep, and the pain still too subtle to notice.
But that wasn't what really made his heart sink... No, it was the fact that Tranquil Poison was already showing physical side effects.
His appearance was already shifting from the looks of a sick child to something altogether ghastlier.
His hair that had once been a vibrant, glossy black native to their tribe was now taking ashy hue of a witch's, falling in lank, uneven strands over his brows.
Also, his skin now looked like parched parchments; so thin and pale that his black, spider-webbing veins were visible across his collarbone, making his temples, and wrists look like a cursed, subterranean land.
Nonetheless, it was his eyes that broke his heart the most, showing the most terrifying changes of them all.
His irises, once dark and human, had faded into a pale, washed-out violet.
As he looked into the pool of rainwater, his pupils didn't just dilate; they seemed to pulse with a slow, gravitational hunger, almost like a blackhole trying to pull every light out of the air.
He was just seven and yet looked like someone who had just taken a foot out of the grave.
With their "distraction" nearly digested, the black threads of Tranquil Poison beneath his skin were already losing their docile, rhythmic pulse, and gradually returning to their jagged, blood-seeking needlelike feel.
'The fire is going out,' Soren realized, his eyes narrowing.
He looked at the remainder of the Shadow-Cat meat; in the cold, dry air of the cave, it had begun to darken, its fat congealing into a waxy, gray film. It would at most last him a few more days if he was careful, but the "heat" he gained from it was diminishing with every hour.
Like a drug that required higher doses to achieve the same effect, his poison was becoming accustomed to the Shadow-Cat's blood; It had begun craving something more potent; it wanted the source itself; blood essence.
As such, rising to his feet like a well-oiled machine, he draped the rest of the charcoal-gray hide around his shoulders like a makeshift cloak, the weight of the hide on his wound serving as a comforting reminder of the beasts he had outlived.
He checked his tools; the rusted paring knife was already tucked into his into his belt, the heavier skinner gripped in his right hand, and the notched white bone of his predecessor tucked against his ribs.
Now he was ready to scout.
A hunter who stayed in his hole was just a trapped animal waiting for the seasons to change.
He stepped out onto the limestone ridge. The morning was pale; a washed-out gray, with mists clinging to the valley floor like a shroud of wool.
From his vantage point, the "Forest of No Return" looked less like a collection of trees and more like a vast, sleeping ocean of thickets and thorns.
It looked and felt like a world that demanded tribute in blood, and today, Soren intended to be the one collecting it.
As he scanned the horizon, his "vision" flickered. The violet lines of the world were particularly thick today, flowing in a massive, slow-moving river toward the north.
He trailed the flow with his eyes, tracing the energy until it converged at a point roughly five kilometers away, where the forest gave way to a series of jagged, red-rock spires.
There, rising above the canopy, was a thin, straight plume of smoke.
It wasn't the messy, sprawling smoke of a forest fire, or the lazy drift of a campfire; not that anyone would be suicidal enough to think the wastelands a suitable camping ground.
No, it was the controlled, vertical signal of a tribal hearth.
Soren's blood went cold, not with the poison, but with a sharp, crystalline fear.
The Ignis Tribe didn't settle this far into the outer fringes of the Wastelands unless they are hunting something (or someone) of immense value.
This was the territory of the "Discarded," a place of execution.
If there was a fire here, it meant one of two things: either the "Nameless Guest" decree was more frequent than he had been led to believe, or the Tribe had an outpost in the dark that they kept a secret from the commoners.
He thought of Liora. He thought of the guards who had pushed him into the mud. If they are here, they are hunting something.
And if they are hunting, they have food. They have salt. They have steel. He reasoned; his brain cogs spinning like an addicted gear tasting new oil.
The risk was suicide though.
A seven-year-old boy, even one carrying thirty venoms, stood no chance against a disciplined tribal patrol. But the "Void" in his chest wasn't listening to reason. It was focused on that plume of smoke with a singular, gravitational pull.
He had begun to descend the ridge before his plans could even fully form, his movements a ghost-like shimmer through the gray briars.
He didn't walk the path he used the day before; instead, he moved through the "vulnerabilities" his vision provided, slipping through gaps in the thorns that a rabbit would have found tight.
As he neared the valley floor, the atmospheric pressure seemed to increase, and the smell of the forest seemed to change, growing heavier with the scent of cedar and rot, overlaid with the smell of ozone and the metallic, chemical tang of the Ignis Fire-Oil.
It was a scent of home, but it carried with it a sting of betrayal that had not yet fully revealed its depth.
It was the high-grade fuel used by the Tribe's elite scouts to keep their weapons from freezing and to signal over long distances.
Soren dropped to his belly, his little gaunt gait vanishing into a patch of silver-leafed ferns.
He continued on his belly, crawling his way forward until he reached the edge of a small clearing and froze.
The scene ahead was not that of the outpost he had anticipated; it was a massacre.
Two large pack-beasts that looked like an oxen paid a lascivious visit to a sheep lay dead in the center of the clearing; their throats slit open with surgical precision.
Scattered around their bodies were the remains of a tribal supply wagon, its wooden slats shattered and its contents strewn across the dirt as if a hurricane had focused its entire wrath on a single area.
However, it was the bodies that made Soren's breath hitch in his throat.
There were three of them. Men in the crimson and gold silks of the Ignis Inner Guard.
These weren't low-ranking scouts, or bored stewards like Gary, or even border guards like the ones who had escorted him here; these were the elite, men who had completed the Body Tempering Stage.
These were men who were capable of shattering boulders with mere fists, and the very same ones who were mostly tasked with protecting the Chief's own household.
Now however, they had been torn apart like butchered meat. Not by Shadow-Cats, but by something that definitely moved with a terrifying, explosive force.
One man's breastplate, made of tempered steel, had caved in as if they had tanked a giant's fist with their chest.
Soren scanned the clearing, his violet vision screaming.
The energy here was chaotic, jagged, and stained with a deep, violent crimson.
He stayed perfectly still, his heart hammering against his ribs, his eyes scanning the carnage for the thing that had broken what was meant to be unbreakable.
However, the silence of the clearing was absolute heavy, and suffocating with a weight that threatened to break the breath Soren had been holding in, but he endured.
He was watching the shadow of the wagon, and for about a long minute, he saw nothing but the slow drift of the morning mist.
And then he saw it. The shadow had moved.
It emerged stealthily, unfolding out of the bottom of the wagon, and Soren's heart threatened to leap out of his throat.
'Grave-Stalker' Soren cursed mentally.
He knew this creature; it had been explicitly recorded in the ancestral scrolls of the Ignis Tribe; a beast that was said to be mostly lost within the limbo of the spirit and the physical realm but unable to call either home.
They were born in this limbo, and most would die of hunger, unable to find food or prey, except to cannibalize their own kin.
However, if certain mysterious conditions were met, they can slip into one realm or the other.
Soren would never have believed if someone told him he would one day encounter one, not even in two lifetimes.
The creature stood nearly seven feet tall on its spindly, multi-jointed limbs, covered in a matte-black chitin that seemed to swallow the light around it.
Its head was long and narrow, possessing dozens of small, milky eyes that spun independently in their sockets.
The smell was the hardest part to endure. It wasn't just the iron-scent of blood; it was the smell of the Grave-Stalker itself—a dry, ozone-heavy scent that reminded Soren of a lightning strike hitting a tomb.
It was a creature that should have been found only in the deepest recesses of Wastelands; a predator that even the Elders whispered about with fear.
The beast was not eating the guards in the traditional sense; it was drinking. Its elongated snout, tipped with a needle-like proboscis, was buried deep in the neck of the Inner Guard Captain.
Soren could see the creature's throat pulsing rhythmically as it drew out the high-quality, tempered blood of a cultivation practitioner.
The captain's blood was thick with the refined essences of a specific kind of tribal elixir that was hoarded by the Tribe Council; a stream of billowing of energy that the Grave-Stalker was siphoning for its own evolution.
Soren's Tranquil Poison reacted with a violence that nearly made him cry out.
The black threads in his throat constricted, sending a surge of acidic heat into his jaw.
The thirty venoms within him weren't afraid of the Grave-Stalker; they were starving.
They sensed the concentrated energy the beast was consuming; the purest "fuel" available in the world of men.
If I touch that blood, I die, Soren thought, his mind racing with a cold, desperate logic.
But if I don't get some supplies from that wagon, I may not last another night.
He looked beyond the beast, his violet vision highlighting the "vulnerabilities" of the scene.
Near the Captain's limp hand lay a small, sealed jade vial that had rolled into a tuft of grass.
It shimmered with a rhythmic, golden light; the unmistakable glow of a Body-Tempering Elixir.
To a tribe commoner it was myth. To the nobles, it was a fortune. But to Soren, it was a hope.