"Looks like it's time to leave," Eric muttered, closing the heavy, leather-bound book he'd nearly finished.
Its pages were the only company he'd had for a month.
He couldn't stay in this cave forever. He wasn't a caveman, and a month of isolation had already pushed him dangerously close to losing his mind. Humans needed contact—voices, faces, anything to remind them they weren't alone.
But isolation wasn't the only thing that forced him out.
He was running out of the only thing keeping him from crumbling into a brittle corpse.
Mortis potions.
The book had described them as a common alchemical mixture used by hunters and wealthy collectors to preserve animal carcasses—basically this world's version of formalin.
Useful for taxidermy.
For him, they were closer to food.
Without them, his skin would split like dried leather, his flesh would shrivel, and the rot lurking in his veins would start eating him alive again.
"Three months," he whispered, weighing the tightly wrapped bundle of bottles in his hand.
That was all he had left. Three months to learn how to survive out there… or fall apart for real.
He changed into the dead warlock's clothes. Surprisingly, the outfit fit him better than it had any right to—dark trousers, reinforced boots, and a long black cloak thick enough to hide the stiffness in his movements.
He had also scrubbed himself clean earlier. His body had carried the faint, nauseating smell of decay, and he had washed until the last trace was gone.
And also body he possessed wasn't bad—almost handsome, with ash-brown hair, pale skin, and white-blue eyes that now held a faint cloudy haze. A little too pale, a little too still… more vampire than zombie.
At least he looked human now.
A month ago, he had looked—and smelled—like a decomposing nightmare.
His fingers brushed the edge of the ragged hole in his abdomen, where a chunk of flesh had been torn out.
"What am I supposed to do about this…?" he murmured. He couldn't let anyone touch him. One wrong move, one curious hand, and they'd discover exactly what he was. And then he'd be burned alive.
He tightened the straps on his bag, pulled his hood lower, and turned toward the cave's mouth.
Cold air drifted in—fresh, sharp, filled with the scent of pine and distant rain.
***
Eric stepped out of the cave, and the outside air hit him with a sharp, damp chill—colder than anything inside the stone tunnels.
"Still gloomy as ever," he muttered. He'd stepped outside several times in the last month, and nothing had changed. The forest circling the cave seemed permanently trapped in twilight, a place where sunlight existed somewhere above the world but never touched the ground.
A ceiling of heavy clouds smothered the sky. Mist drifted between the trunks in thin ribbons, coiling around the roots like pale smoke.
The silence was oppressive. Not peaceful—unnatural.
Branches creaked overhead with slow, deliberate groans, as if the trees themselves were shifting in their sleep.
Of course a warlock lived here, Eric thought. A forest like this is perfect for someone who doesn't want neighbors.
But for someone trying to escape, the place felt like a warning. Every direction looked identical: old trees with bark scarred like burn marks, roots curling out of the earth like ribs, no tracks, no pathways, no signs of anything living.
The fog distorted distance. A tree ten feet away looked twenty. A branch snapped somewhere behind him—but echoed like it came from deep within the woods.
He needed to pick a direction. Any direction.
He found a fallen branch, wiped the dampness from the ends, and held it upright for a moment before tossing it into the air.
A classic lost-person strategy. Not useful—just comforting.
It spun silently, disappearing into the fog for a heartbeat before landing with a soft, wet thud. The broken tip pointed toward a patch of forest darker than everything else. The fog there didn't drift. It just hung there, heavy and unmoving, like a curtain.
Eric stared at it.
"…Yeah, no."
He turned the opposite way without hesitation.
'No way I'm going into that creepy, fog-filled death corridor. Nope. Not today, forest. Not today.'
He started moving, keeping his pace steady. But after almost an hour, the forest still felt wrong.
The fog ebbed and flowed unpredictably, thinning in some places only to thicken again moments later. The ground dipped and rose in strange ways that didn't match the natural flow of the terrain.
But the most unnerving part? The silence.
No chirping insects, no rustling leaves, not even the distant call of birds. It was as if the forest itself had been drained of life.
The silence wasn't normal, not in a forests like this.
When the world went this quiet, it usually meant one of two things: either an apex predator roamed the area, keeping everything else in check, or something much worse—something far more unnatural—was at work.
He leaned toward the latter.
A predator, after all, would leave traces behind—sounds, insects ,birds the occasional disturbance in the brush. But there was nothing. Just stillness. An unnatural stillness.
There was, however, a strange comfort in the situation. No creatures were attacking him. No wild beasts, no otherworldly horrors.
Just him, his rotting body, and the warlock's half-broken staff. It was no weapon. In truth, he was no match for anything that roamed these woods, but for the moment, that worked in his favor.
At least, for now, he was safe.
He couldn't help but feel a small, twisted gratitude for the peace—however unsettling it was. It was better than being hunted.
The silence was shattered by a faint sound.
A weak groan.
Thin. Shaky. Dying.
Eric froze. Every movement felt painfully loud in the quiet, his body stiff as stone. Slowly, he turned toward the noise.
Through the fog, a twisted shape came into focus—a deer-like creature, trapped, half-suspended between the branches of a tree. But the branches weren't just holding it.
They were alive.
They pulsed.
Tendrils, thin as thread, wrapped tightly around the creature's body, sinking into its flesh, drawing something out. The animal trembled violently, its fur losing color, as if its life was being siphoned straight from its bones.
Eric's breath hitched. He backed away silently, finding cover behind a nearby tree, his body instinctively staying low. Only one eye peeked around the trunk, watching the grisly scene unfold.
'...That tree's definitely weird,' he muttered to himself, dead sarcasm dripping from his words.
The branches creaked again, pulling tighter as they drained the last bit of strength from the creature. It gave one final shudder, its body going slack, drained pale and lifeless.
He took one last glance at the grotesque sight before retreating, his footsteps quiet but hurried.
'Yeah, nope. Not getting anywhere near that thing. You keep whatever you're harvesting, tree,' he thought, shaking his head.
*****
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