That night was the calmest since I arrived in that world.

  There were no dreams.

  No nightmares.

  No constant feeling of being about to die with every heartbeat.

  Just… nothing.

  A gentle emptiness. Silent.

  The kind of darkness that doesn’t press on your chest or make you wake up in a panic.

  And the warmth.

  The warmth that came from lying near an absurdly strong, dangerous, lethal feline… and, for some reason, on my side.

  Rhaz.

  His presence was like sleeping beside a living wall. A barrier of flesh, muscle, and experience that seemed to separate my body from the rest of the world. I didn’t need to keep watch. I didn’t need to think about distant sounds or shadows moving between the trees. For the first time since I had arrived, my body allowed itself to truly rest.

  I was no longer alone.

  I was no longer lost.

  I knew that outside there was a vast world, wild and incomprehensible…

  and even so, for the first time, I wanted to see it.

  I wanted to discover it.

  As I sank into that deep rest, into that state where the body surrenders and the mind grows light, I thought about the village. About what I would do when I arrived. I couldn’t keep depending on Rhaz as if he were my personal guardian.

  He said he helped me because he wanted to, but… nothing in life was ever truly free.

  Maybe a job.

  Maybe carrying things, cleaning, helping with whatever was needed. It didn’t matter.

  I didn’t want to be a burden.

  The night felt endless. I had no way to measure time, but it felt as if countless hours had passed, as if the entire world moved slowly while I floated in that heavy calm, suspended in a darkness that no longer frightened me.

  Until something changed.

  A different warmth brushed against my eyelids.

  Light.

  My consciousness returned little by little, as if my body were becoming heavy again. I felt pressure on my chest… on my arms… on my legs. A light weight, spread out, almost pleasant.

  And small itching sensations.

  Annoying. Soft, but constant, like tiny touches that couldn’t decide whether they were caresses or warnings.

  I frowned.

  Was I… covered?

  I opened my eyes slowly, blinking to clear the haze of sleep.

  It took me a second to understand what I was seeing.

  Feathers.

  Soft feathers. Warm. Dozens of them covering me as if they were a living blanket breathing over me. Some shifted with small hops; others barely moved, adjusting their position on my clothes and skin.

  Birds.

  Many of them.

  They were on top of me.

  I could hear their sounds: short chirps, strange vibrations, small brushes of feathers rubbing against each other. They weren’t loud, but they weren’t normal either. Each sound lasted only a moment, as if they communicated in incomplete fragments, in codes my brain couldn’t decipher.

  One pecked my shoulder.

  “Hey…” I murmured, still half asleep, my voice rough.

  I lifted my head slightly.

  At least a dozen froze completely when they noticed my movement. Their bodies tensed. Their heads turned toward me at the same time, in a synchronization that didn’t seem natural.

  They were looking at me.

  They were… strange.

  Beautiful, in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Their bodies were slender, almost delicate, with plumage that looked hand-painted.

  But also… wrong. As if someone had taken the concept of “bird” and modified it just enough so it didn’t quite fit into the real world.

  The first ones I noticed left me breathless.

  When they opened their wings, they revealed impossible patterns. Spots, lines, symmetrical shapes that looked far too much like butterfly wings. Not only because of the colors—mixtures of soft tones with stronger contrasts—but because of the design itself, as if each feather were part of a larger picture.

  The feathers imitated those fragile, deceptively delicate forms.

  When they flapped their wings, the patterns seemed to move. To breathe. To ripple, as if something larger were hidden inside them, using those figures as a mask.

  They glided with unsettling calm.

  Far too silent.

  Among them all, one stood out.

  Its patterns were similar… but distorted. Twisted. The spots were darker, misaligned, forming shapes I couldn’t stop looking at without feeling an uncomfortable tingling at the back of my neck.

  False eyes.

  Too many.

  Its neck was unnaturally long. When it tilted its head, it emitted a low sound, a wet creak that didn’t resemble the song of any bird.

  It didn’t move its wings with elegance; it snapped them open, as if revealing a weapon rather than plumage.

  I didn’t know if those markings were meant to attract…

  or to warn.

  Then the air exploded.

  A brutal gust swept across the clearing, lifting dust, leaves, and feathers in every direction. The birds shot away in a chaos of wings, screeches, and shadows crossing in front of the rising sun.

  All except one.

  The one with the false eyes.

  It remained on my abdomen, gripping my clothes with its thin legs, its head tilted, staring at me with those spots pretending to watch.

  “If I’d left you alone a little longer, I would’ve found a skeleton.”

  Rhaz.

  He appeared as always: out of nowhere. As if the forest had spat him back out.

  Before I could react, something whistled through the air.

  A dagger.

  It pierced the bird and pinned it to a tree with a dry, heavy, final sound.

  My heart jumped so hard it almost hurt.

  “Rhaz! Why did you do that?”

  “Hey, I can’t recite the entire bestiary of this place to you,” he said, walking toward the tree to retrieve his weapon. “Those things are dangerous.”

  He pulled the dagger out with a firm tug.

  “They emit a sound that bursts your eardrums, leave you disoriented… then they go through your eyes and eat you from the inside. They hunt in groups. Flexible, strong, and patient.”

  I looked at the corpse. Now, pierced and motionless, it looked small. Harmless.

  “They didn’t do anything to me…”

  “Because you were still useful,” he replied without looking at me.

  That didn’t help.

  “By the way… when did you leave?”

  Something made of leather hit my face.

  “I went to get you a shirt.”

  I pushed it aside, blinking.

  “You can’t walk around half naked. In this forest there are things that drool over something that vulnerable.”

  “Let me guess. They’re lethal?”

  Rhaz looked at me as if the question were offensive.

  “Where did you get this? There’s nothing nearby.”

  “I raided a goblin camp. You’re welcome.”

  I made a face of disgust.

  “That was on a goblin?”

  “Would you rather keep showing your ribs?”

  I sighed and put it on. The fabric smelled like smoke, dirt, and something else I preferred not to identify. I had no right to complain. I wasn’t home anymore.

  Here, survival mattered more than dignity.

  Rhaz wiped the blood from his dagger with a piece of old cloth.

  “Alright, listen to the plan. We’re going to Hollowbark. From here it’s more than six hundred kilometers.”

  I felt my stomach drop.

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  “How much did you say…?”

  “If you were walking, it would take about three days without stopping,” he replied calmly. “And that’s assuming nothing tries to eat you along the way.”

  That didn’t help.

  “So I’ll do something more efficient,” he continued. “I’ll carry you while I run. At my pace we should arrive tomorrow morning… if nothing goes wrong.”

  I looked at him, processing what he had just said.

  “You… are going to carry me all that time?”

  “If I leave you, you die,” he said naturally.

  I didn’t argue with that.

  “I feel like you’re wasting your time on me…”

  He went still. Then he let out a deep laugh that vibrated in the air.

  “Kid, I have time to spare. Don’t compare your human life to mine.”

  He leaned down slightly, a crooked smile on his face.

  “And don’t think I don’t know you want me to carry you so you can touch my magnificent fur.”

  I felt my face burn.

  “That’s not true!”

  “Sure,” he said in a sarcastic tone.

  Damn cat.

  He turned around, kicked dirt over the campfire with a single motion, and watched the forest for a few seconds, as if measuring invisible routes between the trees, wind currents, dangers I couldn’t even imagine.

  Then he crouched in front of me.

  “Get on.”

  My stomach tightened.

  This was no longer just help.

  It was another step deeper into that world.

  Even so, I stepped closer… and grabbed onto him, feeling beneath my hands the true density of his body, the strength contained in every muscle.

  “Hold on tight,” he said.

  A second later, the world disappeared in an explosion of speed.

  The air stopped being air.

  It became a wall.

  An invisible удар crushed my chest and tore the breath from my lungs before I could scream. My hands reacted on pure instinct, burying themselves in Rhaz’s fur. It wasn’t a conscious decision.

  It was that… or be thrown backward and disappear.

  The ground turned into a blurred stripe.

  Colors mixed together. Green, brown, shadows, flashes of light. I couldn’t distinguish trees anymore, only columns that appeared and dissolved at the sides as if the world were breaking apart while we moved.

  “WHA—?!” I tried to say.

  The shout died in my throat, ripped away by the wind before it could form.

  Rhaz wasn’t running.

  He was disappearing… and reappearing.

  Each push of his body wasn’t a step—it was a horizontal leap that devoured dozens of meters.

  I could feel his body compress for a fraction of a second, like a living spring coiling… and then explode forward.

  Every surge made my stomach drop, like falling into the void without actually falling.

  The wind tore tears from my eyes.

  Not from emotion.

  From pure force.

  I pressed my face against his back, clinging as tightly as possible to reduce the impact. His fur, unbelievably, didn’t whip wildly like it should at that speed. It was dense, firm… like gripping a thick rope vibrating with contained power.

  My legs couldn’t find anything to brace against until I felt his tail.

  Long.

  Strong.

  It moved on its own and wrapped behind my knees, securing me with a firm but controlled pressure.

  “Don’t look ahead,” his voice reached me clearly, steady, as if he were walking instead of cutting through the forest like a projectile. “Guaranteed dizziness.”

  I obeyed instantly.

  The side view was worse. Warped lines, split shadows, shapes that never quite finished existing. It was like trying to see while someone flipped the pages of a book at full speed in front of your eyes.

  My brain simply couldn’t process it.

  Then the second problem appeared.

  Breathing.

  The air didn’t come in properly. Every breath felt like trying to inhale in the middle of a storm. I opened my mouth, but the pressure dried my throat and scraped inside it.

  Rhaz slowed down slightly.

  Barely.

  Just enough for the wind to stop striking like a fist and turn into a constant push—brutal, but bearable.

  “Travel pace,” he said. “If I go at full speed, you’ll pass out.”

  How considerate.

  My fingers were numb from gripping his fur so tightly. I felt like if I loosened even a centimeter, I’d be thrown away and my story would end as a stain against a tree.

  “I’m… not… going… to fall…” I muttered, more to convince myself than him.

  “You’d better not.”

  A trunk appeared ahead.

  He didn’t dodge it.

  He used it.

  He planted a paw against the vertical bark mid-movement, pushed off as if gravity were only a suggestion, and changed direction without losing speed. The pull was so sudden my stomach tried to escape through my throat.

  We were no longer in the clearing.

  The forest closed around us. The canopies joined above, filtering the light into green shadows. The smell of sap. Damp earth. Leaves exploding beneath every impact.

  Rhaz didn’t follow paths.

  He read the terrain.

  His paws landed exactly where there were no treacherous roots, where the ground was firm, where branches wouldn’t get in the way. Sometimes he ran along the ground. Sometimes along leaning trunks. Sometimes, for one or two seconds…

  he touched nothing.

  He jumped.

  And the world stayed behind.

  My fear began to mix with something else.

  Awe.

  I, who not long ago could barely walk without feeling something stalking me… was now crossing an impossible forest at a speed no human should ever experience.

  The wind was no longer just violence.

  It was freedom.

  And terror.

  All at the same time.

  “Welcome to the real pace of the world,” Rhaz said.

  And we continued plunging deeper into the forest.

  When he slowed down a little more, his strides became enormous but more spaced out. After each step he seemed to glide for a few seconds above the ground. Even so, I remained steady on his back. I didn’t bounce, didn’t shake, not even when we crossed uneven terrain.

  Sometimes I noticed his paws stepping on depressions, hidden holes, loose roots… but he never stumbled. He didn’t correct himself clumsily. His body absorbed everything as if the ground itself adjusted beneath him.

  It was a straight line.

  A deliberate path.

  The wind stopped stealing my breath. And for the first time since this madness started, I thought maybe I could speak.

  “Since when have you been doing things like this?” I asked, raising my voice over the air hitting my face.

  I didn’t know if he would hear me.

  Rhaz didn’t answer immediately. His body remained leaning forward, each stride covering an absurd distance. More than running, he seemed to slide through the forest.

  When he finally spoke, his voice came deep and steady, without the slightest hint of effort.

  “What kind of things?”

  “Raiding camps. Fighting. Hunting beasts… your job.”

  To me it wasn’t a big deal. In stories, goblins were always pests. Thieves. Parasites living off others. Creatures someone had to eliminate for everyone else’s sake.

  Rhaz let out a small snort.

  “Since I understood how the world works.”

  “And how does it work?”

  “If something isn’t in your hands, sooner or later it’ll end up in someone stronger’s.”

  It didn’t sound like a lesson.

  It sounded like a sentence.

  “Besides,” he added, “those goblins would’ve tried to stab you in the back if they saw you alone. Don’t lose sleep over it.”

  That matched what I already knew.

  But his tone… wasn’t the tone of someone talking about goblins.

  “You seem very used to that kind of life.”

  It took him a couple of leaps to respond.

  “Some are born knowing the ground beneath their feet isn’t theirs.”

  The wind slipped through my clothes, cold.

  “And they learn quickly that if they don’t take space… they disappear.”

  My chest tightened.

  He wasn’t telling me anything.

  But he was saying far too much.

  —Did something like that happen to you?

  There was a brief silence. Only the sound of air being cut by his speed.

  —It happened to many —he finally replied.

  Not “to me.”

  “To many.”

  —You’re not special for suffering, human. You just decide whether you stay lying there… or stand up harder to kill.

  That ended the topic.

  It wasn’t an aggressive wall.

  It was a door he had no intention of opening.

  And for the first time I understood that Rhaz didn’t run like this just because he could.

  He ran like someone who had spent far too long unable to.

  The forest kept stretching backward, as if the world itself were being dragged while we remained still.

  Then I noticed it.

  The sound had changed.

  There were no insects anymore.

  No birds.

  No rustling leaves.

  Only the air.

  —Is something wrong? —I asked.

  Rhaz didn’t answer immediately, but his posture shifted. He lowered his center of gravity. His steps stopped being so wide.

  —Hunting zone —he murmured.

  —You mean monsters?

  —Yes. I thought you would keep them farther away, but they’re getting restless for some reason.

  A chill ran down my spine. I wasn’t alone anymore… yet that feeling of something breathing down my neck never truly left.

  His nose twitched slightly.

  —Fresh meat… —he said, almost to himself.

  He changed direction without slowing, leaping over a fallen trunk in a jump that stole the breath from my lungs.

  —What thing?

  —Nothing worth worrying about for you.

  A stretched shadow, too low to be a deer, too fast to be a boar.

  Eyes.

  Several.

  They flashed for a second as they caught the light.

  Then nothing.

  Another movement, this time from the opposite side.

  We were being surrounded.

  —Don’t run faster… —I murmured, my voice dry.

  —I’m not doing it for them.

  One burst out of a bush.

  I only saw it for an instant: elongated body, disproportionate forelegs, jaws open to reveal curved, wet teeth.

  Rhaz didn’t slow down.

  He barely twisted his torso, just enough for the creature to pass through the place where I had been a second earlier.

  A dull impact echoed behind us.

  I didn’t look back.

  I didn’t want to know.

  —Did you…?

  —Next —Rhaz cut in.

  Another attack came from above.

  This time I saw it better: dark skin, short spines running along its back like fragments of poorly buried bone.

  Rhaz stepped sideways without breaking his rhythm.

  Missed.

  A second later, branches snapping.

  Then silence.

  Little by little the forest began to breathe again.

  A bird sang in the distance.

  The insects returned.

  Rhaz straightened his posture.

  —Done.

  —Done what?

  —They’re not following us anymore.

  I looked back.

  I saw nothing.

  That was worse.

  Suddenly the rhythm broke.

  Rhaz stopped so abruptly I almost flew off. His arm crossing in front of me was the only thing that kept me from falling.

  —Down.

  —What is it? Something else?

  He didn’t answer.

  He sniffed the air and walked toward a small clearing between the trees.

  My legs were still trembling when I followed him.

  Then I saw it.

  An animal.

  It looked like a young deer… but not entirely. Legs too long. Irregular bone plates protruding from its back. It breathed with a strange whistle, as if the air itself hurt.

  It hadn’t seen us.

  It was drinking from a puddle.

  —Are we going to eat it? —I asked, my voice still unsteady.

  Rhaz looked at me.

  —No.

  He unsheathed a short sword from one of his bags.

  And tossed it to me.

  I caught it by pure reflex. I almost dropped it.

  —W-what do I do with this?

  —Kill it.

  I felt something inside me empty out.

  —What?

  —Kill it.

  His voice wasn’t harsh.

  That made it worse.

  —This isn’t a test. It isn’t training. It isn’t to make you stronger —he continued—. It’s so you understand where you are.

  The animal raised its head.

  It saw us.

  It didn’t run.

  It simply stayed there, breathing with that broken whistle.

  —If you can’t take a life to live, this world will eat you —Rhaz said—. And I won’t always be there.

  My hands trembled.

  —I… I’ve never…

  —I know.

  Silence.

  —That’s why it’s now.

  I stepped forward.

  Every step felt like I was walking toward something irreversible.

  The animal didn’t run. Its eyes… were enormous. There was no fury. No instinct to flee. Only a calm that pierced me worse than any threat.

  That sound when it breathed.

  That damned sound.

  I raised the sword.

  My arms didn’t want to move.

  —Do it quickly —Rhaz said behind me.

  I screamed.

  Not out of rage.

  Out of fear.

  The strike was clumsy. Horrible.

  It didn’t die instantly.

  The sound it made…

  was nothing like anything I had ever heard. It was pain without defense. Its body trembled, but it didn’t try to escape. As if it understood. As if it were waiting for it to end.

  Its eyes grew wet. Its chest rose and fell desperately. The low sounds of agony twisted my stomach.

  —I’m sorry… I’m sorry… —I didn’t know when I started repeating it.

  When it finally stopped moving and its eyelids fell closed, I dropped the sword.

  My knees gave out with it.

  I remained staring at the ground as the blood ran between my fingers.

  I had taken a life.

  And nothing inside me felt stronger.

  —That was… interesting.

  Rhaz was observing the animal.

  —It stayed still… let itself be sacrificed.

  He looked at me.

  There was no anger in his eyes.

  There was understanding.

  —Stop crying, Izan.

  His voice reached me muffled, as if I were underwater. Before I could react, he lifted me and moved me a few meters away, turning my back to the scene.

  —I’m going to treat it properly. Wait there.

  Treat it properly.

  As if that could fix anything.

  I stayed standing with the sword in my hand, staring at the dirt. My hands trembled.

  Not from fear.

  From something heavier.

  Now I had “become a man.”

  And it felt horrible.

  Taking the life of a being that didn’t even try to flee didn’t make me feel prepared. It only left a hollow in my chest, as if I had broken something that could never be put back together.

  But Rhaz wasn’t wrong.

  This world wasn’t kind.

  And I had arrived far too weak.

  I was lucky.

  Lucky not to be alone.

  Something floated in front of my face.

  I blinked.

  A bubble of water suspended in the air, slowly spinning. Inside it, the liquid moved as if it had a will of its own.

  Magic…?

  I put my hands into it.

  The water didn’t fall. It clung to my skin and began to move on its own, dragging the blood away, slipping beneath my nails, cleaning every corner with impossible precision.

  It was as if it knew I didn’t want to touch that blood.

  My shoulders trembled.

  —Finished crying?

  I looked up.

  Rhaz was covered in blood up to his forearms, yet he didn’t seem affected. Bubbles floated around him, emerging from his mouth at steady intervals. Each one turned red when it touched his skin, trapping the blood.

  Behind him, the animal no longer looked like a corpse.

  The skin carefully removed. The meat separated. The bones clean. The antlers set aside.

  Order.

  Respect.

  Not brutality.

  Even so, my stomach twisted.

  —Did it have to be something so… innocent? —I asked.

  Rhaz didn’t stop working.

  —Creatures aren’t what they seem.

  He separated a cut with precision.

  —Even something small can become a disaster if it lives long enough. Here, evolution isn’t slow… it’s cruel.

  He glanced at me.

  —One of those “little animals” attacked me with magic the moment it saw me. Tore half my side open.

  Silence.

  —We’re civilized if we’re lucky. But deep down… we’re still animals.

  —Some more than others… —I muttered.

  His ears twitched.

  —What did you say, chimpanzee?

  —NOTHING, SIR!

  He snorted, almost amused.

  Then he tossed me a piece of cloth.

  —Dry your face. I don’t want you arriving in the village looking like you’re at a funeral. Next time it’ll be easier.

  It didn’t sound like a threat.

  It sounded like certainty.

  And that scared me more than the creature.

  He stored everything in his bottomless bag, picked me up again, and started running once more, this time slower.

  Everything happened so fast that I don’t remember when we left the forest.

  I survived. I made a companion.

  And now I had killed.

  Even if it was only an animal, the blood had crossed something inside me.

  And in a way I didn’t understand…

  after all of that…

  I felt good.