The silver moonlight filtering through the ancient trees did little to alleviate Adrian's growing sense of isolation. After discovering the mysterious crater with its petrified warriors, he had reluctantly retreated back into the forest's embrace. The exposed clearing made him feel vulnerable—too visible to whatever eyes might be watching from the shadows.
"Keep moving until dawn," Adrian muttered to himself, gripping Wind Howl's hilt tighter as he navigated the treacherous terrain. "Find higher ground, establish a defensive position, then figure out where in all seven hells I actually am."
His academy instructors would have approved of his methodical approach. Master Leon's voice seemed to echo in his mind: "When facing the unknown, rely on what you do know. Your training. Your instincts. Your blade."
The problem was that nothing in his training had prepared him for waking up in an unfamiliar forest after his own death, complete with shadow wolves and mysterious silver runes.
Adrian paused to orient himself, keeping his back against a massive tree trunk. Despite the exhaustion weighing on his limbs, his senses remained razor-sharp—a skill honed through countless night drills at the academy. The forest had grown quieter since his encounter with the six-eyed shadow wolves, but the silence felt watchful rather than peaceful.
A slight breeze stirred the canopy overhead, momentarily parting the leaves to reveal unfamiliar constellations. Adrian's jaw tightened. Those stars confirmed what he already suspected—he was somewhere far beyond the maps of Astor Kingdom.
"One problem at a time," he reminded himself, shaking off the existential dread threatening to overwhelm him. "Survive the night first. Contemplate the impossible later."
He pushed away from the tree and continued his careful advance, each step placed deliberately to minimize sound. The leather hunting garments he'd mysteriously acquired proved surprisingly practical, allowing silent movement through the underbrush. Small mercies.
The terrain gradually sloped upward, and Adrian followed the natural rise, hoping to find some vantage point. The massive fungi colonies provided just enough bioluminescent light to navigate by, casting everything in an eerie blue-green glow that transformed the forest into something from a bard's dark fairy tale.
A sudden crack—a branch snapping somewhere to his left—brought Adrian to an immediate halt, Wind Howl rising instinctively into guard position.
"I know you're there," he called out, voice steady despite the rapid pounding of his heart. "Show yourself."
The response came not in words but in a low, rumbling growl that seemed to emanate from multiple directions at once. This sound was different from the shadow wolves—deeper, more guttural, and undeniably more threatening.
Adrian pivoted slowly, sword extended, as a pair of crimson eyes materialized from the darkness. Unlike the amber gazes of the shadow wolves, these burned with a bloody light that reflected none of the surrounding luminescence. They belonged to a beast that stalked forward with predatory grace—a wolf nearly twice the size of the shadow creatures, its coat as black as midnight but substantial rather than ethereal. Saliva dripped from jaws that could easily crush a man's skull.
"You're a handsome fellow, aren't you?" Adrian remarked dryly, falling back on gallows humor to steady his nerves. "Bit larger than the hunting hounds back home."
The wolf snarled in response, revealing teeth like yellowed daggers. It circled deliberately, testing Adrian's reactions with each step. A veteran predator evaluating its prey.
Adrian matched its movements, keeping the massive trunk behind him while calculating his options. One wolf, even one this size, wouldn't normally pose a lethal threat to a trained swordsman. But the way this creature moved, with unnervingly deliberate intelligence...
A second pair of red eyes appeared to his right. Then a third to his left. Within moments, Adrian found himself surrounded by a semicircle of massive wolves, at least seven of them, each easily the size of a cavalry mount.
"Of course," he muttered, "because one monster wolf would be too conventional."
The academy had trained him for multiple opponents, but those drills assumed human adversaries with human limitations. These beasts moved with unnatural coordination, their positioning cutting off every potential escape route with tactical precision that suggested something beyond animal intelligence.
Adrian centered his breathing, focusing on the cold clarity that had always served him well in desperate situations. Wind Sword forms were designed for mobility, using an opponent's force against them. Against multiple foes, staying still meant certain death.
The alpha wolf—a scarred behemoth larger than the others—lowered its massive head and charged. Adrian waited until the last possible moment before executing a controlled side-step, bringing Wind Howl down in a precise arc that should have opened the creature from shoulder to flank.
Should have.
The blade connected with a jarring impact that sent vibrations up Adrian's arm. Instead of cleaving flesh, Wind Howl barely penetrated the beast's hide, leaving a shallow gash that seemed to enrage rather than disable. The wolf wheeled with impossible speed, its jaws snapping closed inches from Adrian's face as he barely managed to throw himself backward.
"Wind Sword Fourth Form: River Cuts Stone!" Adrian called out the technique as he flowed into a series of lightning-fast thrusts targeting the wolf's eyes and throat—vulnerable points on any living creature.
The alpha wolf somehow anticipated the move, twisting away with preternatural awareness. Worse, Adrian's focus on the alpha had created an opening that two flanking wolves immediately exploited, lunging in perfect coordination.
Adrian dropped to one knee, Wind Howl sweeping in a desperate defensive arc that caught one attacker across the muzzle. The enchanted blade drew blood this time—dark ichor that hissed where it touched the forest floor—but the wound only seemed to intensify the pack's frenzy.
Surging back to his feet, Adrian abandoned formal technique for pure survival instinct. He launched himself toward a narrow gap between two wolves, rolling beneath a snapping jaw and coming up running. If he couldn't win this fight, perhaps he could outpace them long enough to find more defensible ground.
The pack gave chase, their massive forms crashing through undergrowth with terrifying speed. Adrian wove between trees, vaulted over fallen logs, and ducked beneath low-hanging branches—using every obstacle to slow his pursuers while maintaining his desperate flight.
His lungs burned, muscles screaming in protest as he pushed them beyond normal limits. The academy's ruthless endurance training kept him moving when most men would have collapsed, but even his conditioned body had limits—limits the relentless wolves behind him didn't seem to share.
A fallen tree loomed ahead, its enormous trunk creating a natural barricade easily eight feet high. Adrian gathered himself for a desperate leap, knowing the alternative was being run down in seconds. He launched himself upward, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the moss-covered bark, Wind Howl awkwardly clutched in his right hand.
He had almost cleared the obstacle when something clamped around his ankle with crushing force. The alpha wolf had timed its jump perfectly, massive jaws locked around Adrian's leg. With a savage jerk, it pulled him backward, sending him crashing to the ground with bone-jarring impact.
Adrian hit the forest floor hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, but instinct kept Wind Howl clutched in his hand. Rolling to face the advancing alpha, he thrust upward as the massive beast lunged for his throat. The blade sank deep into the wolf's chest, drawing a howl of pain that reverberated through the ancient trees.
For one heartbeat, Adrian thought he might survive. Then reality crashed down as the wounded alpha's weight drove him into the ground, and the rest of the pack closed in from all sides. Wind Howl remained buried in the alpha's chest, but the beast still lived, still snarled with murderous intent despite what should have been a mortal wound.
Adrian's free hand fumbled for the hunting knife at his belt—a futile gesture against such overwhelming odds, but his warrior's spirit refused to yield without struggle. As he pulled the knife free, a blinding pain exploded between his shoulder blades. One of the wolves had circled behind during the chaos, its claws tearing through leather and flesh alike.
The pain was exquisite, familiar in its intensity yet somehow more intimate than the arrow that had killed him on the battlefield. Adrian felt razor-sharp claws puncture his lung, scrape against his spine, sever connections his body desperately needed to function. Blood filled his throat, hot and coppery, as his vision began to narrow into a dark tunnel.
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Not again, he thought with strange clarity. I've already died once today. This is becoming a habit.
As his consciousness wavered, Adrian's gaze locked onto the hunting knife still clutched in his trembling hand. The silver rune on his forearm flared to life, its glow intensifying as his life ebbed away. Was this the contract the silver-haired woman had spoken of? An eternity of deaths, each more painful than the last?
The wolf's jaws closed around his throat, and Adrian Felton died for the second time.
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Darkness.
Not the endless void he had experienced after the battlefield, but something more immediate and oppressive. Adrian was aware of himself, of his identity, of fragmented memories of teeth and claws and pain...but not of his body.
Am I dead again? The thought formed without voice in the formless blackness.
Before he could contemplate this existential question further, sensation slammed into him with the force of a battering ram. First came the sense of solidity—weight, mass, the pressure of ground against his back. Then proprioception—the knowledge of limbs, their position, the space they occupied. Finally, with a sharp gasp, breath filled lungs that moments ago had been shredded by wolf claws.
Adrian's eyes flew open to a sky filled with unfamiliar stars, visible through a gap in the forest canopy. He bolted upright, hands frantically patting his chest, his throat, his back—searching for wounds that should have ended his life.
Nothing. Not even scars remained.
"What in the name of all that's holy..." he whispered, voice steady despite the existential horror washing through him.
The forest around him was silent—no sign of the wolf pack that had torn him apart mere moments ago. Wind Howl lay beside him on the moss, clean and unblemished as if it had never been buried in a monster's chest. His hunting garments were intact, showing no evidence of the savage attack.
Adrian staggered to his feet, retrieving his sword with a hand that refused to stop trembling. The world swayed around him, not from physical weakness but from the fundamental wrongness of his situation. He had died—felt life drain away with absolute certainty—yet here he stood, whole and unharmed.
Moonlight bathed the clearing where he'd made his last stand, illuminating the fallen tree he'd attempted to scale in his escape. Everything was exactly as he remembered, except for one crucial detail: the wolves were gone, leaving no tracks, no blood, no evidence they had ever existed.
"I died," Adrian stated flatly, needing to hear the impossible truth spoken aloud. "I felt my throat crushed, my back torn open. I died."
A warm pulsing sensation drew his attention to his forearm. Rolling up his sleeve, Adrian watched in fascination and horror as the silver rune manifested beneath his skin—more vivid now, its lines more deeply etched into his flesh. It glowed with an inner light for several heartbeats before gradually fading, though it didn't disappear entirely as it had before. A faint silvery outline remained, like an artist's sketch waiting to be completed.
"It is a contract," the silver-haired woman had said. "A responsibility."
Adrian traced the outline of the rune with his fingertip, feeling a resonant warmth respond to his touch. A contract indeed, though its terms remained a mystery. What was abundantly clear, however, was one of its apparent benefits: he had returned from death. Again.
"Is this to be my fate then?" he asked the silent forest. "To die repeatedly in this cursed place?"
The philosophical implications threatened to overwhelm him. If death was no longer permanent, what did that make him? Still human? Something else entirely? And if he could not die, was he truly alive?
Adrian forcibly redirected his thoughts from existential crisis to practical concerns. The wolves might return. His apparent immortality didn't make him impervious to pain, and he had no desire to experience another mauling, resurrection notwithstanding.
He sheathed Wind Howl and gathered his senses, professional discipline reasserting itself over supernatural panic. The revelation of his apparent immortality was staggering, but it changed nothing about his immediate priorities: find civilization, determine his location, and eventually discover why he had been brought here.
The moon had risen higher during his... resurrection... providing better illumination through the scattered breaks in the canopy. Adrian oriented himself, choosing a different direction than his previous course—away from where the wolf pack had appeared.
"If I'm to die and return repeatedly," he muttered, a sardonic smile touching his lips despite everything, "I'd prefer some variety in the experience."
As he walked, Adrian methodically cataloged what he knew against the vastly larger category of what he didn't. Known: he had died twice, once on the battlefield and once here in this forest. Each time, he had returned. The silver rune seemed connected to this process, growing more distinct with each resurrection. The forest contained creatures unlike any in recorded bestiaries, and the night sky showed unfamiliar constellations.
Unknown: where exactly he was, how much time had passed since his first death, why he had been chosen for this "contract," and most importantly, what purpose it served.
The terrain gradually changed as he walked, becoming less densely forested. The massive ancient trees gave way to younger growth, though still larger than anything in Astor Kingdom. The ambient magic that had permeated the deeper forest thinned somewhat, making the air feel lighter, less oppressive.
Adrian paused at the edge of a small stream, crystal clear even in the moonlight. His throat burned with thirst, suddenly reminding him that whatever else he might be, his body still had human needs. He knelt carefully, testing the water with his fingertips before cupping it to his lips.
The liquid tasted sweeter than any water he remembered, with subtle mineral notes that spoke of a pristine watershed. As he drank, Adrian caught his reflection in the moonlit surface—and froze in shock.
He looked exactly as he remembered. Exactly. The same strong jaw, the same cropped brown hair, the same small scar above his left eyebrow from his first sword training accident. No sign of the gauntness that long unconsciousness should have caused, no evidence of the wounds that had ended his life twice now.
"At least I'm still me," he murmured, surprising himself with a short, sharp laugh. "Whoever—whatever—that might be now."
The stream provided both refreshment and direction. Adrian decided to follow it downstream, applying basic survival principles. Water inevitably led to larger bodies of water, which often hosted settlements. If any civilization existed in this realm, he would most likely find it by following this natural path.
As he walked along the bank, Adrian's trained eye noted encouraging signs—subtle but unmistakable evidence of humanoid passage. A broken branch here, disturbed stones there, patterns that nature alone rarely created. Someone or something of approximately human size had traveled this way, and relatively recently.
The revelation sparked both hope and caution. Intelligent company might mean answers, but given what he'd already encountered in this forest, it could just as easily mean new dangers. Adrian maintained his vigilant pace, Wind Howl loose in its scabbard for quick drawing.
The moon reached its zenith and began its downward arc as Adrian continued his journey. The stream widened gradually, fed by smaller tributaries, until it became a proper creek carving a more defined path through the forest. The trees thinned further, underbrush giving way to mossy banks and occasional clearings.
In one such clearing, Adrian discovered the first concrete evidence of civilization—a rough-hewn wooden bridge spanning the now-substantial creek. Its construction was primitive but deliberate, logs lashed together with plant fiber rope in a simple but effective design. Someone with hands and tools and purpose had built this crossing.
Adrian approached cautiously, examining the bridge for signs of recent use. The weathered wood showed regular wear patterns consistent with foot traffic, but no fresh marks. Still, its existence alone confirmed he wasn't the only thinking being in this strange realm.
Crossing the bridge, he found a rudimentary path on the opposite bank—little more than a game trail, but with subtle signs of maintenance. Someone had cleared fallen branches, tamped down the most obvious obstacles.
Hope kindled in Adrian's chest for the first time since awakening in this strange place. Where there were paths and bridges, there were people. Where there were people, there would be answers—or at least the comfort of voices other than his own.
Dawn began to lighten the eastern sky, transforming the forest around him. Colors emerged from the monotone palette of night—rich greens, earthy browns, splashes of vibrant fungi in hues no academy botanist had ever cataloged. Birds or bird-like creatures began to call from the canopy, their songs exotic yet recognizably avian.
With growing light came growing confidence. Adrian quickened his pace along the crude path, eager to put distance between himself and the site of his second death before the wolf pack potentially returned. The trail gradually widened, showing more signs of regular use.
As the sun finally crested the horizon, its rays filtering through the thinning canopy, Adrian rounded a bend in the path and stopped short, breath catching in his throat.
Ahead, nestled in a broad valley where the creek joined a larger river, stood unmistakable signs of habitation—wisps of smoke rising from what could only be hearth fires, the angular shapes of structures visible among the trees. Not a large settlement, perhaps a dozen buildings at most, but undeniably the work of intelligent hands.
Adrian approached more slowly now, all senses alert for danger. The settlement appeared peaceful in the early morning light, but appearances in this place had proven deceptive. He paused at the forest's edge, studying the village layout before committing to reveal himself.
The buildings were simple but sturdy, constructed primarily of timber with thatched roofs. They surrounded a central clearing where a communal fire pit still smoldered. Gardens and small crop fields bordered the settlement, along with what appeared to be animal pens containing creatures similar to but distinct from the livestock of Astor Kingdom.
Most importantly, he could see people—humanoid figures moving about their morning routines. From this distance, they appeared mostly human in form, though something about their proportions struck Adrian as slightly off. Taller, perhaps, or more slender than the people of his homeland.
Adrian weighed his options carefully. Approach openly and risk potential hostility, or observe longer and risk being discovered anyway, possibly triggering the very suspicion he hoped to avoid. His hand dropped to Wind Howl's hilt, not to draw the weapon but to reassure himself of its presence.
The silver rune on his forearm tingled slightly, a gentle warmth rather than the burning intensity that had accompanied his resurrection. Was it responding to the proximity of other people? Or warning him of some unseen danger?
After a moment's contemplation, Adrian straightened his shoulders and stepped from the forest's edge. He had been a diplomat as well as a warrior in Astor Kingdom, trained to navigate both battlefields and court intrigues. Whatever these people were, however much time had passed, some principles remained universal—respect, clear intentions, and controlled strength.
"One way to find out," he murmured to himself, striding purposefully toward the village.
The sun continued its ascent, illuminating Adrian Felton—twice-dead knight of a possibly long-vanished kingdom—as he walked toward the first real hope of answers since awakening in this mysterious realm.
The silver rune pulsed once beneath his skin, a silent acknowledgment of an unfolding destiny neither of them yet understood.