Location: The Dead Zone - Sector Digul (Far from the safety of Dehi City)
"Where are you running to, little rat?"
"Don't worry, Boss. It's almost dark. He has to come back eventually."
"I will bleed him dry this time."
A bald, heavy-set man gripped a sledgehammer, his eyes scanning the dense treeline. He spat on the ground, impatient.
Fifty meters away, An Zhe didn't look back.
He scrambled through the rotting woods, his lungs burning, searching for anywhere to hide. The sun was dying, and in the Dead Zone, darkness didn't just mean night. It meant the ecosystem woke up.
He didn't waste energy hoping for a savior. Hope was a disease in the Dead Zone, it killed you faster than the beasts.
An Zhe knew the only law that mattered here: The strong eat.
There were no heroes coming to save him. There were only predators like the bald man, and prey like him. He had been prey his entire life, scavenging for rotten meat, sleeping with one eye open, and surviving on pure, spiteful instinct.
I won't let them take me back, An Zhe thought, the cold air biting his skin. I'd rather die in the dirt than be their toy again.
He spotted a hollow beneath the roots of a massive tree, a titan rising fifty meters into the gloom. Without hesitation, An Zhe slid into the dirt cavity, pressing his back against the damp wood, trying to silence his own ragged breathing.
Quiet. Be quiet or you're dead.
He was seventeen, but he looked like a ghost. His face was chalk-pale, his frame gaunt, as if his body refused to hold blood. He pulled his tattered brown shirt tighter against the biting cold.
His life had been a sprint from the moment he was born. His mother died giving birth to him. His father was butchered by Awakened hunters in the deep forest.
The camp he just escaped was no better. It was a hellhole run by sadists who hoarded women and treated the weak like livestock. To them, An Zhe wasn't a human; he was a toy. A plaything to be broken.
The forest grew quiet. Too quiet.
Just as his heart rate began to slow, the brush rustled.
Crack.
A body slid into the hole, crashing directly into him.
"Wha-"
A hand clamped over An Zhe's mouth instantly, sealing his scream.
"Are you sure he came this way?" A hoarse voice drifted from above.
The bald man. The hammer. An Zhe thought they hadn't followed him.
An Zhe froze, his eyes widening in terror. The stranger on top of him held a finger to his lips. They waited in the suffocating silence, listening to the heavy footsteps crush the dry leaves just a few meters away.
"There might be Crawlers in this area... let's move back," the hoarse voice grumbled.
The footsteps faded into the distance.
Only then did the stranger pull away.
An Zhe scrambled back against the dirt wall, clutching his chest, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked up at the intruder, expecting another thug from the camp.
It was a boy, roughly An Zhe's age. But he didn't belong here.
He had blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and wore a crisp white shirt tucked into black pants. He was clean. Well-fed. In the filth of the Dead Zone, he looked like a diamond in a pile of coal.
The boy stood up and dusted off his pants, frowning at a speck of mud on his white sleeve. He didn't seem relieved to be alive. He seemed annoyed to be dirty.
He turned his gaze to An Zhe.
He didn't speak. He didn't apologize.
Instead, his blue eyes swept over An Zhe slowly, from his matted black hair, down his pale, starved face, to his tattered brown rags. It wasn't a look of fear. It was an inspection.
He looked at An Zhe the way a butcher looks at a slab of low-quality meat.
Who is this guy? An Zhe thought, shrinking under the gaze. He looks at me like I'm a bug.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. The boy's lip curled slightly, as if he had smelled something rotting.
"I-" An Zhe started, his voice cracking.
Snap.
The dirt beneath him shifted.
Something cold and wet coiled around An Zhe's ankle.
It wasn't a root. It was muscle.
"Ack!"
An Zhe was yanked upward with violent force. The world flipped upside down as the vine hoisted him out of the hole and high into the canopy.
He thrashed, clawing at the air, staring down at the hole.
The blonde boy stood in the dirt, watching him go. He didn't reach out. He didn't shout a warning. He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, tilting his head slightly as if watching an interesting science experiment.
An Zhe swung helplessly, twenty feet in the air, caught in the branches of the predator tree.
Grrrr...
A low, vibrating growl echoed from the darkness directly behind his head.
An Zhe froze. He slowly turned his head.