Week Two
I developed a routine, because humans, even dead ones currently inhabiting demon bodies, apparently can't help but create structure out of chaos.
Mornings: Check traps (once I figured out how to make traps that didn't immediately catch me), gather water, assess overnight damage.
Midday: Hunt, forage, try not to die.
Afternoons: Improve base camp, practice with weapons, fail at magic (more on that disaster later).
Evenings: Eat something questionable, update my mental map, and avoid the things that only came out after dark.
Nights: Sleep poorly and pretend the sounds outside weren't getting closer.
It wasn't a great life. But it was a life, which was more than I'd had in the year after Emma died.
The traps were a learning experience. I'd started with simple snares copied from a survival show I half-remembered, using vine-like plants that the System assured me were "minimally carnivorous." The first three caught exactly nothing. The fourth caught my own foot. The fifth actually worked, netting me what looked like a rabbit but with scales and too many eyes.
[CREATURE DEFEATED: SCALE HARE]
[+20 EXP]
[BASIC TRAPPING +1]
"It's hideous," I said, examining the thing. "But meat is meat."
It tasted like chicken. Everything in Shadowfen tasted like chicken if chicken had an existential crisis.
The real breakthrough came on Day 10, when I accidentally discovered I could manipulate earth.
I'd been trying to dig a fire pit deeper, safer to keep flames contained when everything around you was flammable nightmare fuel, and had gotten frustrated. I'd shoved my hands into the dirt, thinking maybe demon strength would help, and pushed with... something. Frustration? Will? Magic?
The earth moved.
Not a lot. Maybe an inch. But it moved, flowing like water under my hands, shaping itself to what I wanted.
I stared at my hands, then at the pit, then at my hands again.
"Holy shit."
[SKILL DISCOVERED: EARTH MANIPULATION (LV. 1)]
[MANA COST: MODERATE]
[NOTE: YOUR DEMON SUBTYPE APPEARS TO HAVE ELEMENTAL AFFINITY]
"You couldn't have mentioned this earlier?" I demanded.
[WHERE'S THE FUN IN THAT?]
I spent the next two hours playing with my new ability like a kid who'd discovered finger painting. I shaped stones, moved dirt, tried (and failed) to create anything more complex than a bowl.
My MP, mana points, apparently, dropped steadily with each use, and when it hit zero, I got a splitting headache and a strong urge to take a nap that lasted until morning.
But I could do magic. Actual, honest-to-god magic.
For the first time since waking up in Shadowfen, I felt something like excitement.
Day 12
The swamp was teaching me its rhythms.
Dawn: relatively safe, most predators are sleeping off their night hunts.
Midday: moderate danger, heat making everything sluggish.
Dusk: Get your ass inside. Everything is waking up hungry.
Night: pray.
I was following these rules religiously when I found the egg.
I'd been checking my trap line, a circuit of snares I'd set up in what I'd mentally dubbed the "slightly-less-murderous zone", when I felt something. A pull. A weight in my chest that had nothing to do with the humidity.
My newly acquired Mana Sensitivity (Level 1, earned through repeatedly draining myself trying to make dirt sculptures) was pinging like crazy.
I followed it deeper into the swamp, into territory I'd been avoiding because my Survival Instinct kept screaming warnings. The trees here were older, darker, their bark covered in runes that predated human language. The water was perfectly still, reflecting a sky I couldn't see through the canopy.
And in the center of a clearing ringed by crystalline growths, surrounded by shadows that moved wrong, was an egg.
Not a bird egg. This thing was the size of my torso, obsidian black with veins of ember orange that pulsed like a heartbeat. The mana radiating from it was so thick I could taste it, metallic and sharp, like licking a battery while standing in a thunderstorm.
Every instinct I had screamed at me to run.
I stepped closer instead.
[WARNING: UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED]
[MANA SIGNATURE: UNSTABLE]
[RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 15+]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: FLEE IMMEDIATELY]
I was Level 5. I had a sharpened stick and delusions of competence.
I reached out anyway.
The moment my fingers touched the shell, the world lurched. Not physically, I was still standing in the clearing, but something fundamental shifted. Reality bent around the egg, around me, around the space between us.
And then I felt it.
Hunger. Cold. Loneliness so deep and vast it made my own grief feel like a paper cut.
But underneath all that: curiosity. Hope. A desperate, flickering light that refused to go out.
The egg's consciousness, because that's what it was, a mind, young and wild and terrified, pressed against mine. Searching. Probing. Then....
Connection Established
Pain exploded through my skull. My knees hit the ground. The world whited out.
When I came back to myself, the egg was pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. My hands were pressed against its shell, glowing with the same ember light that traced its veins.
And in my mind, in that space where my own thoughts lived, there was something new. Something other. Small, fierce, and absolutely refusing to let go.
[IMPRINT COMPLETE: SHADOW DRAGON HATCHLING]
[BOND ESTABLISHED: COMPANION]
[WARNING: MANA INSTABILITY DETECTED. HATCHLING AT RISK.]
"Oh fuck," I breathed. "What did I just do?"
The answer came from the egg itself, images, feelings, wordless communication. She (definitely she, I knew somehow) was dying. The mana that sustained her was unraveling. She'd been abandoned, or her parent had died, or both. She was alone.
She'd been alone for so long.
I knew that feeling.
My hands moved before my brain caught up. I reached for that strange new well of mana inside me, the power I'd barely learned to use, and I pushed. Everything I had, every drop, flooding into the egg.
Into her.
[MANA TRANSFER: ACCEPTED]
[WARNING: MANA DEPLETION CRITICAL]
[STABILIZING...]
The cracks in the shell sealed. The ember light steadied. The overwhelming fear in that small mind eased.
Then my mana hit zero, my vision went dark, and I fell forward into unconsciousness with my hands still pressed against the egg that held my new companion.
My last thought before I passed out: Emma would've loved this.
I woke to rain and something warm pressed against my chest.
The egg, smaller now, fitting in the curve of my arm, pulsed steadily. Through the bond, I felt contentment. Safety. Trust.
"You're going to be so much trouble," I mumbled, too exhausted to even sit up.
From the egg came the wordless equivalent of 'Yes.' But worth it.
I laughed, exhausted, drained, lying in the mud in the rain in a clearing that could kill me a hundred different ways.
But I wasn't alone anymore.
And for the first time since dying, since Emma, since everything, that mattered more than safety ever could.
[QUEST UPDATED: SURVIVE]
[NEW OBJECTIVE: PROTECT]
[REWARD: PURPOSE]
I carefully gathered the egg, stood on shaking legs, and started the long walk back to my hollow.
Behind me, the crystalline growths dimmed. The shadows stilled. The clearing watched me go.
Shadowfen had tried to kill me a dozen times in two weeks. But today, it has also given me something worth surviving for.
I'd take that trade any day.