Being Hunted
The forest had not stayed quiet.
That should have been obvious.
Victor felt it before he heard anything. A pressure in the air. Subtle. Wrong. Leaves trembled without wind. The birds did not return.
The space around him felt occupied.
He slowed. The knife was already in his hand.
The ground sloped gently downward ahead. Visibility was poor. Whatever moved out there carried weight. Enough that the earth seemed to register it before his ears did.
Then came the sound.
Not a growl.
Not a howl.
Movement. Heavy. Deliberate. Too close.
The ground shuddered under its footsteps.
Victor angled left toward a thicker stand of trees.
Too slow.
The undergrowth was dense. Brambles. Roots. Uneven ground. Good for concealment. Terrible for retreat. The slope gave slightly under his heel and he corrected before losing balance.
Whatever was coming did not adjust.
It advanced straight through the terrain as if the forest were a suggestion.
Victor stepped back once to test distance.
The sound closed faster than it should have.
He felt it then.
Mass.
Too much of it. Too close.
The thing moving through the trees did not rush. It did not hesitate. It carried momentum like a guarantee.
Running would expose his back.
Climbing would cost time he did not have.
Turning meant committing.
He exhaled once and let the choice collapse into a single option.
The wolf burst through the brush.
It was larger than it had any right to be. Dense. Compact. Its shoulders rolled like layered stone under fur. Its eyes locked onto him without frenzy.
It was not starving.
It was hunting.
Victor stepped forward instead of back and drove his shoulder into its chest, angling his body to deny its jaws a clean line to his throat.
The impact nearly folded him.
It was not like striking flesh.
It was like colliding with packed stone wrapped in muscle. The shock tore through his ribs in a white line of pain and his vision flickered.
His lungs emptied.
He forced the knife upward anyway, plunging it behind the foreleg where something vital should have been.
Resistance.
Not bone.
Density.
He pushed harder.
The wolf twisted violently. Its weight shifted, trying to crush rather than tear. Its traction was absurd. Claws anchored into soil as if the earth itself agreed to hold it steady.
Victor wrapped his free arm around its neck. Not to choke. He did not have leverage for that.
To control angles.
To limit options.
Teeth found his forearm.
Pain flared. Sharp. Immediate.
He ignored it.
He drove the knife again.
The wolf scrabbled, carving trenches as it forced its mass against him. Victor's arms burned. His injured leg trembled. His ribs ground together with each breath.
The knife slipped.
Just enough.
Panic tried to rise.
He crushed it.
The blade glanced instead of sinking. The wolf surged. Its weight slammed him sideways into a tree hard enough to rattle his teeth.
Pain shot down his spine.
For half a second, he lost leverage.
That was enough.
The wolf's jaws snapped inches from his throat. Teeth clacked where flesh should have been. Hot breath washed over his face.
He smelled blood.
His.
His grip started to fail.
Victor tightened his arm around its neck and pulled himself in until space disappeared completely.
If he could not overpower it,
He would deny it room.
His breath came apart in fragments.
This should not be like this.
The thought escaped him without permission.
The wolf jerked suddenly.
Its weight shifted.
Not pushing.
Dropping.
Victor felt the exact moment resistance vanished and became dead mass.
He staggered backward as the body collapsed, heavier in death than it had any right to be.
He remained standing for three seconds.
Waiting.
Nothing else moved.
The forest noise returned slowly. A bird. Then another. Insects resumed their hum.
The world continued.
Victor's arms began to shake violently.
Blood ran down his forearm in thick lines. His shin burned where teeth had grazed. Every breath made his ribs grind unpleasantly, misaligned but not broken.
He dropped to one knee.
The ground tilted.
Okay, he whispered hoarsely. Okay. So killing is necessary.
Not philosophy.
Conclusion.
His vision tunneled.
Then the world changed.
Something appeared in front of him.
Not light.
Not illusion.
A flat, colorless overlay imposed itself over the forest, indifferent to depth or distance.
[VICTOR GRAVES LVL. 1]
The words existed.
He stared at them through pain and exhaustion.
A bar formed beneath the text. It filled rapidly, then slowed, stopping just short of a marked threshold.
Victor's pulse hammered.
No.
The overlay did not react.
More text appeared.
[LEVEL INCREASE RECORDED]
[LEVEL 2 GRANTED]
The words landed with weight.
Not triumph.
Finality.
A pressure swept through his body. Brief. Overwhelming. Muscles tightened involuntarily. His spine arched. Heat flared behind his eyes as something inside him recalibrated without permission.
Victor gasped and clutched at his chest as the sensation passed.
The overlay shifted again.
[STATUS UPDATED]
He did not read further.
The edges of his vision were collapsing inward.
So it was not a dream.
His grip on the knife loosened.
The forest tilted.
He tried to stand.
His body refused.
The overlay remained steady. Indifferent. Waiting for acknowledgment he would not give.
Victor's head dipped forward.
Cold dirt pressed into his palm.
Dead weight in the leaves behind him.
Darkness took him.
Not gently.
Not gradually.
But final.