The Weight of Living Volume 2: Beneath An Indifferent Sky

The Weight of Living

Volume 2: Beneath An Indifferent Sky

Written by HollowVow

Ren Kurose’s Perspective

I was told to live, so I did. It was a remarkably simple arrangement, as long as no one asked me why.

Morning had a way of making everything seem forgivable. Sunlight spilled through the high canopy in long, pale shafts, cutting between branches and drifting leaves as if the forest had been made for nothing more than beauty. Birds called to one another somewhere above, insects hummed within the undergrowth, and a cool breeze wandered through the trees with no concern for the dead. The world, in all its quiet routine, had committed the same offense again: it had continued. It had gone on breathing, on singing, on turning beneath the same sky as though the capital had not bled, as though children had not died, as though promises had not been swallowed by stone and water and darkness. I watched the light settle over roots and moss and wild grass, and then I kept walking.

It had been a few weeks, I thought. Perhaps more. I had stopped bothering to count the days somewhere between hunger and sleep, between one nameless stretch of forest and the next. Time had become little more than the distance between sunrise and sunset, between an empty stomach and the next thing I could force down my throat. My injuries had healed, at least the ones that mattered. The deeper gashes had sealed into pink, ugly lines, the bruises had long since faded, and the ache in my ribs no longer sharpened when I breathed too deeply. My body had done what bodies did best—it endured. The rest of me had been less efficient. My clothes were ruined beyond the point of shame, stiff with old blood, torn at the sleeves and hem, stained by mud, rain, and several things I preferred not to identify too closely. My hair had grown rough and unruly. My skin felt grimy no matter how often I washed in streams. If I looked like a stray animal dragged half-dead from the road, then it suited the life I had been living.

I moved without haste and without purpose, stepping over knotted roots and ducking beneath low-hanging branches, following no path except the one that kept me alive a little longer. I had long ago realized that survival became easier when stripped of sentiment. Hunger was not tragedy. Thirst was not hardship. Exhaustion was not suffering. They were instructions. The body demanded; I answered. That was all. When the trees began to thin and the quiet trickle of running water reached my ears, I changed direction without thinking. A stream cut across the forest floor not long after, clear enough to show smooth stones beneath its surface. I crouched at its edge, dipped both hands into the water, and drank until the tightness in my throat loosened. The water was cold enough to sting my teeth. I washed my face next, not because I cared what I looked like, but because dirt in the eyes was inconvenient.

While crouching beside the stream, I took the opportunity to inspect the hunting knife I’d acquired several days earlier. I’d found it among the remains of an abandoned campsite, buried beneath a collection of rotting supplies that its previous owner had apparently deemed unworthy of carrying. The blade was chipped in several places, its edge dulled by years of use, and the wooden handle had begun to split near its base. It was hardly an impressive weapon, but it had proven useful enough for preparing food and cutting through stubborn vegetation. I rinsed the dirt from its blade, inspected the edge for any further damage, and returned it to my waist. There was little point in complaining about its condition. It worked, and that was enough.

Food took longer. It always did. I followed the stream for a short while, scanning the roots and brush at its banks until I spotted movement—a small, squat thing no larger than my forearm, somewhere between a rabbit and a marsh rat, nosing around the ferns. It didn’t notice me until I was already close. By then it was too late for the creature and barely worth noting for me. I cleaned it with the same empty efficiency I had used every day since leaving the capital, built a small fire in a patch of exposed stone, and ate once the meat had stopped bleeding. It was stringy and unpleasant. I chewed, swallowed, and moved on.

The forest changed gradually as the day stretched on. The birdsong thinned first. Then the smaller movements in the underbrush grew less frequent. Not gone—just wary. I noticed such things now because I had learned to. A world that wanted to kill you seldom announced itself honestly, but it left signs for anyone willing to pay attention. A snapped sapling. A patch of trampled earth. A silence that lingered too heavily to be natural. I came upon the remains of something half-eaten before I found the reason. The corpse belonged to a small deerlike animal, though its legs were longer than any deer I had seen within the city walls, and its skull ended in a pair of ridged protrusions rather than antlers. Its abdomen had been torn open. Most of its organs were gone. The wound was too deliberate to belong to scavengers.

I lowered myself into the shadow of a broad-rooted tree and waited.

The monster appeared several minutes later, emerging soundlessly from a curtain of brush as though it had been stitched out of the darkness between the trunks. For a moment I mistook it for some malformed wolf, but that impression vanished as soon as I saw it properly. It was taller, leaner, and wrong in a way ordinary predators weren’t. Its limbs were too long, especially in the forelegs, giving it a hunched, predatory posture that made it look as though it were always halfway through a pounce. Black fur clung in ragged patches to a gaunt frame, broken by ugly seams of crimson flesh that showed through like wounds that had healed badly—or never healed at all. Its claws dug into the earth with slow, deliberate pressure. Its face was narrow and cruel, less because of emotion than design, and its eyes burned a wet, hostile red. When it lowered its head to feed, its jaw opened wider than seemed natural.

A Blood Fang, though I did not yet know the name.

It did not gorge itself mindlessly. That was the first thing that stood out to me. It fed in intervals, raising its head between bites to listen. Its ears twitched toward every disturbance in the leaves. Its body remained taut, ready to move, ready to kill again if necessary. There was no joy in it, no spite, no savagery for the sake of cruelty. It had hunted because it was hungry, and now it ate because the hunt had ended in success. Simple. Honest, in its own way. Far more honest than most men I had known.

The animal it had killed had not died quickly. That much was clear from the torn ground around the corpse and the streak of blood dragged across the roots nearby. The Blood Fang had opened the creature alive and watched it weaken beneath its teeth. The scene should have repulsed me. It did not. I had seen uglier things done by human hands, and for worse reasons.

I waited until it seemed nearly finished, then shifted my weight to stand.

The branch snapped beneath my boot with a sound far too loud for its size.

The Blood Fang froze. Its head rose in a single sharp motion, strands of dark saliva and blood stretching from its mouth to the torn body below. Its red eyes found me immediately.

For a breath, neither of us moved.

Then it lunged.

I threw myself sideways just as it struck the tree where I’d been crouching. Bark exploded in splinters beneath its claws. The force of the impact shuddered through the trunk. I hit the ground hard, rolled, and got to my feet as it turned with terrifying speed. Too fast. Far faster than the scavenging mutts and alley dogs I’d grown up kicking away from garbage piles. Its body coiled again, not wasting motion, not roaring or posturing like some idiot in a backstreet brawl. It simply assessed and attacked.

I reached for the knife at my side and backed toward denser terrain. Fighting it in the open would get me killed. Its limbs were longer, its weight greater, and it needed only one clean hit to end the matter. So I ran.

It came after me at once, crashing through the brush with enough force to shatter low branches and enough speed to make the sound unbearable. I cut sharply between two close-standing trees, felt its claws scrape bark behind me, and heard it snarl in frustration as its broader frame lost momentum. Good. Not trapped, but slowed. I seized a fallen branch thicker than my wrist as I passed and hurled it to my left. The Blood Fang’s head snapped toward the movement. The hesitation lasted less than a second, but it was enough. I pivoted and drove my knife toward the creature’s shoulder as it corrected course.

The blade bit shallowly. Too shallow.

The Blood Fang screamed and struck back with one sweeping foreleg. I twisted away, but not far enough. Claws raked across my side, tearing cloth and skin alike. Pain flashed white-hot through my ribs. I stumbled, caught myself against a tree, and narrowly avoided its jaws as they snapped shut where my throat had been.

It was stronger than me. Faster than me. Its pain tolerance seemed obscene. Good to know.

I kicked off the trunk and put more distance between us, forcing it to pursue through a cluster of exposed roots and low stones near the stream. The terrain was uneven, slick in places where moss fed on the damp. I nearly lost my footing once. The Blood Fang did worse. One of its elongated forelimbs slipped between two roots as it sprang, disrupting its balance just long enough for me to snatch a jagged stone from the ground and slam it into the side of its face. A human would have reeled. The monster only staggered, snarled, and came on even angrier.

So that was useless too.

I let it chase me farther downstream, bleeding as I ran, breathing harder with every step. My side throbbed. My arms felt heavy. The forest blurred in flashes of green and brown and sunlight. The Blood Fang adapted quickly. It stopped committing so completely to its leaps and began circling wider, trying to herd me toward open ground. Smart. Smarter than I liked. I caught sight of a narrow break in the earth ahead—a shallow dip where rainwater had eaten away the bank beside the stream, leaving slick mud beneath an overhang of tangled roots. Not enough to trap the creature entirely, but enough to inconvenience it. That would have to do.

I slowed just enough to invite confidence.

The Blood Fang took the bait. It sprang.

I dropped flat and slid into the muddy depression as the monster sailed overhead. Instead of landing cleanly, its front claws struck the weakened bank and tore through the mass of roots holding the edge together. Wet soil collapsed beneath its own weight. The Blood Fang twisted mid-landing, one limb plunging deep into the loosened earth as its chest slammed against the bank. It shrieked and thrashed, fighting to free itself before the rest gave way.

I moved before it could recover.

My knife drove into one of the raw crimson seams along its side, more by instinct than certainty. This time the beast truly screamed. Dark blood spilled hot across my hand. It tore free with violent force, wrenching backward and nearly taking the blade with it. I ripped my arm away in time to keep from being dragged under its claws. It lashed out blindly, caught only air, and scrambled back from the collapsing bank. We stared at each other again from opposite sides of the shallow break—both breathing hard now, both bloodied, both less interested in finding out which one would die first.

The monster understood something then. Whether it recognized real danger or merely decided I was no longer worth the effort, I couldn’t say. It bared its teeth, gave a low warning growl, and began to retreat one step at a time. I did not chase it. I would have been an idiot to do so. After a few tense heartbeats, it turned fully and slipped back between the trees, vanishing into the brush with an eerie smoothness that made it seem as though the forest had reclaimed it.

Only when it was gone did I allow myself to sit.

The ground beneath me was cold and damp. My side burned. My chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths that made me feel briefly, unpleasantly human. I looked down at the blood on my hand—its and mine mixed together—and wiped the blade clean against the grass before sliding it back into place. I had learned nothing useful from the encounter except that the wilderness had teeth sharper than the ones men showed in city alleys, and that monsters, at least, did not pretend to be anything other than what they were.

By the time the sun began to sink, I found a suitable place to rest beneath the roots of a fallen tree, where the trunk had split long ago and left behind a hollow half-sheltered from the wind. I drank again from the stream, washed the wound as best I could, and tore a cleaner strip from what remained of my sleeve to bind my side. It would hurt tomorrow. That was tomorrow’s problem. For now, I leaned back against rough bark and let the forest darken around me.

The day had given me water, food, pain, and proof that the world beyond the capital had no shortage of things willing to tear me apart. It had not given me purpose. I had not expected it to.

Above the trees, visible only in broken fragments through the tangled branches, the evening sky faded slowly toward black. Vast. Distant. Indifferent.

I closed my eyes beneath it, exhausted in body and empty in every place that mattered, and waited for morning to decide whether I would be permitted another day.