Chapter 0
Old Kahel lay face down on the rotten leaf floor, his body in intense pain. He tried to push himself up off the ground to stand but to no avail. Amid the fog of pain, Kahel realized he had made a terrible mistake. Perhaps when he saw the third trap destroyed, he should have stopped checking the remaining traps and hurried home to hide.
The early morning hours seemed to drag on endlessly. Finally, the old hunter managed to flip himself onto his back. His back touched the damp, cold ground, a gentle breeze passed by, the rustling of leaves, and the sunlight piercing through the forest canopy created a kaleidoscope dancing in the last dance of life. The old man could feel the breath of the forest, each inhale brought the musty smell and the fierce vitality of the wild.
Kahel’s skin itched intensely, like a large colony of ants crawling over him. When he tried to raise his hand to brush them off, he was horrified to realize there were no ants on his limbs, only bruises and boils that buzzed beneath his skin. Early hemorrhagic spots soon gathered into small bubbling blood blisters. Kahel wanted to scream, but only hoarse coughs came from his mouth. Tears, mucus, froth, and phlegm mixed with blood ran down his face.
Cough. Cough.
The blood blisters under his skin burst open, and from the bloody pus, a green sprout emerged from the rough skin of the old hunter. Kahel’s body shivered uncontrollably, heat and cold assaulted him alternately. The verdant walls of the old forest witnessed this scene, indifferent and aloof. But the hunter realized he was not alone. Something else was watching him, a presence that was everywhere yet invisible. It made itself known through a distinctly sweet and penetrating smell.
“That thing” moved around the bushes where the old hunter lay twitching and sprouting. He felt its fiery gaze fixed on him. As the mysterious creature approached, each step it took on the rotten leaves made a sound like stepping on wet mud. Sinking in and lifting out left a hole with bursting air bubbles. The hunter felt the strength and might of it, an overwhelming force. An unprecedented fear began to creep in, Kahel heard his own heart pounding beneath his fur cloak. But with that, there was a curiosity, a desire to understand the creature that emerged from the shadows of the old forest. He wanted to know who he was dying at the hands of.
And in the final moment, as the creature appeared from the shadows, just as a sprout grew from his tear duct, the old hunter only had time to realize that he was facing something far beyond human comprehension. A powerful entity of nature, indescribable. That was the last image he saw, before darkness completely enveloped him.
A shrieking sound echoed under the forest canopy, a flock of birds startled and flew away in disarray. Then all was silent.
In an instant, all that remained of the old hunter Kahel was a small mound of flowers on the rotten leaf floor.
