The scent of the roasted quince lingered within the ruins, a fading ghost of the night before. Borz had survived the first few days, but his body was no longer satisfied with the hollow energy of wild fruit; he craved real fuel. The lack of protein was beginning to cloud his mind, dragging at his limbs like lead weights.
Borz sat on his cardboard-lined platform, running a thumb along the edge of the axe he had spent hours sharpening. The silver line glinted in the weak morning light. He wanted to feel like a predator; this cold steel provided a much-needed illusion of power.
"Today," Borz whispered. His voice sounded brittle, cracking against the absolute silence of the stone walls.
He needed a functional trap. Borz took the old hemp twine he had salvaged from the cellar, working with painstaking precision despite the numbness in his fingers. He bent a flexible hazel switch, fashioned the twine into a noose, and secured the trigger with a simple figure-four mechanism. In the center of the circle, he placed the last remnants of the wild pear as bait. Everything looked perfect. The laws of physics were on his side—the tension was set, the noose was open.
Borz retreated to a nearby slope, leaning against the rough bark of a pine tree to watch the trail.
One hour passed. Two. Three.
As the sun retreated from its zenith and the shadows grew long and thin, the silence collapsed over him like a physical weight. To Borz, the silence of the mountains was not peace; it was a profound indifference. Nature knew he was there, but it simply did not care.
Suddenly, a rustle stirred the bushes. Borz felt his heart hammer against his ribs. A small, gray shadow emerged onto the trail. A rabbit. Its nose twitched, ears scanning the air for the slightest vibration. It slowly approached the snare. With every inch it gained, Borz's breath grew tighter. The rabbit noticed the pears. Just as it was about to commit its weight to the circle—
The world seemed to hold its breath.
The rabbit lifted its head, its dark eyes seemingly fixing on the shivering stranger at the top of the slope. Then, instead of tripping the wire, it suddenly bolted, vanishing into the dense undergrowth like a ghost.
Snap!
The trigger had tripped, but the noose was empty. The branch whipped upward, striking nothing but the cold mountain air.
Borz froze. He didn't even run down to check the trap. His shoulders slumped, the weight of the failure crushing him. All that effort, the careful mathematics, the hours of frozen waiting—all for a kestrel's worth of wind.
When Borz finally stood, his knees shook with exhaustion. Reaching the trap, he saw that the weathered hemp twine had snapped under the tension. The old world's refuse had failed the new world's test.
He picked up his axe, but the steel no longer offered him a sense of superiority. It felt like a heavy, meaningless burden of metal. As Borz walked back toward the ruin, the growling in his stomach had sharpened into a biting pain. The lesson was simple: here, plans were fragile, and hunger was the only enemy you couldn't sharpen away.
He collapsed onto his cardboard bed, lacking the energy to even spark a flame. As darkness swallowed the room, the wind whistling through the boards on the window seemed to mock him.
"Not yet," Borz muttered into the dark, but even to his own ears, the defiance sounded hollow.
...
Borz leaned his back against the cold stone wall in the dark. The void in his stomach was no longer just hunger; it was a gnawing humiliation of the soul. Yet, in this moment of frailty, a whisper rose from the deepest corners of his mind, sounding like the rattle of a rusted but unbreakable chain. The ancient law of life that his ancestors had forged against wind and steel for millennia in the rugged cliffs of the Caucasus echoed in his blood.
In the Nakh laws of life, there was no word for "surrendering"; that vocabulary had long since burned to ash amidst gunpowder and blood. For his ancestors, to give up was not just to die, but to betray every generation that came before and after. A Nohcho would retreat to his lair when wounded—not to quit, but to lick his wounds and return with sharper teeth.
As he closed his eyes, he heard that primordial oath echoing from the smoke-veiled mountain peaks: *"Either we shall be free, or we shall rest beneath the black earth."*
Borz clenched his trembling hands into fists. The burst blisters on his palms, his aching bones, and his growling stomach... they were all pains reminding him that he was alive. Surrender was not an option; it was a luxury, and Borz did not have a life cheap enough to afford such a thing.
Slowly, as if every bone in his body had been cast from heavy metal, he rose from his place. He gripped the handle of his axe in the darkness. Its texture was hard, real. Tomorrow, that trap would be set again. Tomorrow, that twine would be tied tighter. If the forest would not give him what he needed, Borz would tear it from the forest's throat.
Because for a *Borz*, the rising of the sun meant the hunt began anew.
...
Borz knelt beside the small fire he had kindled, watching the erratic dance of the flames. Inside the ruins, there were no stones, no comforts—only cold concrete and the ancient ache seeping into his very bones. The feeble warmth rising from the fire brushed against his face, but it was not enough to thaw the vast void in his stomach. He had to act. Deep in his mind, that thought he so desperately wanted to avoid rose like smoke, trying to poison his reason. If he succumbed to that method, he could satisfy his hunger, yes; but no hunt could ever heal the wound it would leave on his soul.
He forced himself to think of other things. He summoned the old legends his ancestors told on the smoky mountain peaks, where honor was held more sacred than bread. Yet, hunger scattered these memories like a violent storm. His body was on the verge of revolt; every cell screamed, testing his logic. Still, Borz did not loosen the reins of his will for even a moment. A Borz did not come from a lineage weak enough to kneel before his own hunger, no matter how much his body trembled.
The world had shrunk to the small circle illuminated by the embers. The universe consisted only of the sharp, knife-like pain in Borz's belly. All other human emotions—fear, sadness, longing—had been crushed under this immense pressure. There was only that: pure, harsh, and undeniable hunger.
When he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, he could hear even the blood in his veins pumping to the rhythm of this struggle. His stomach contracted like a beast testing its limits. That unwanted method stared at him from the shadows of the fire, whispering, *"Do it. Do it and end this battle."*
But for a Nakh, life was not merely about breathing; it was about protecting that breath with honor. Borz ground his teeth so hard his jaw ached. Hunger was trying to drive him toward savagery, trying to turn him into a shadow; but he was determined to wear this pain not as a chain of servitude, but as a warrior's armor. He looked at the dying embers and felt the unquenchable fire within his own spirit.
With every breath, the hunger continued to challenge him: *"With me, you live. Against me, you are but a legend."*
Borz picked up a branch and stirred the coals. As the glowing sparks defied the darkness, he whispered silently: **"I am no shadow; I am a Borz. And a Borz does not bow, even to his own hunger."**
...
By the side of the fire, Borz was reconciling not just with his hunger, but with the entire world he had left behind. The city life—those piles of concrete, the incessant noise, and the fake brilliance of a machine that gnawed at the human soul bit by bit every day... All of it felt like pale, meaningless images belonging to another life now. There, everything came at a price, yet no one noticed how cheaply their freedom was being sold.
As sharp as the ache of hunger was within him, the taste of owing nothing to anyone was just as harsh.
"Since I have made this leap," Borz whispered, his eyes fixed on the flames. "Since I chose this path and tore myself away from the gears of that massive system, there is no turning back."
Outside, in the darkness of the mountains, the howling wind seeped through the cracks of the ruins as if in reply. By refusing to be a part of that bright but hollow life, Borz had chosen his own liberty within this wilderness. To die of hunger here was more honorable than to lose one's soul slowly every day within that false comfort. Nakh blood had taught him to live without a master and to kneel before no one. Now, his stomach was challenging him, but Borz knew: once you leave that system behind, looking back isn't just a fall—it is a betrayal of oneself.
He threw another branch into the fire. As the sparks tore through the darkness, he renewed his oath: "I will not return. The cold of this mountain is more real than the deceptive warmth of that city. Though I may tremble from hunger, I will walk stepping on my own shadow, and I will never reach for those chains again."
In the silence of the night, Borz was no longer just a stranger trying to survive; in the heart of this desolation, he was a free son of the Nakh, the sole master of his own decisions and his own hunger.
...
(Author's Note)"Dear Readers,
Borz has reached a turning point. The hunger is biting, the winter is closing in, and the echoes of his ancestors are louder than ever. He has made his choice: there is no turning back to the hollow life he left behind.
In the next chapter, the silence of the mountains will be broken. Borz is about to take a stand, and the hunt is truly beginning. Get ready for an intense surge of action as he moves from survival to mastery.
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