The child looked back—and his face turned pale.
As if the forest had revealed a nightmare.
His legs—gone. Where they should have been, there was only a gaping absence and a dark pool of blood. The child stared in disbelief, his mind reeling. For a moment, he couldn't comprehend it. The shock froze him, until the pain surged in like a flood.
He wailed.
His scream echoed through the vast, silent forest. The sun was already dipping beneath the canopy, painting the sky with a deep, bloody red. Yet even that crimson hue paled beside the red spilling from his own body.
And then—he saw it.
A monstrous creature hung from the tree above. A beast of horror, coiled like a curse in the branches.
How the tree bore its weight—he couldn't tell.
Its head alone was larger than the child's entire body. From its massive jaws, a tongue slithered out and back in again, over and over—split at the tip, or so it seemed. But no—it was merely nature's cruel design.
Its eyes locked on him.
Unblinking. Focused. Watching.
The spiteack was staring into him—studying every tremble, every flicker of emotion across the child's face.
Its jaws... they could easily fit the child whole in a single bite. Yet it hadn't. It had only taken his lower half. Why?
Was it the way it hunted?
A message?
A cruel game?
Or perhaps it simply wanted to watch him suffer.
He didn't know.
All he knew now was terror. Cold, primal terror. The kind that choked the breath, that screamed without sound.
The creature's body was endless—far longer than his eye could trace. Coiled around branches, vanishing into the shadows above, its tail disappeared somewhere deep in the treetops. It was many meters long, far wider than the child could ever imagine himself being.
A bead of blood fell from its jaw.
His blood.
The creature was still swallowing the missing half of him, slowly, deliberately. As if savoring the moment.
And as the child stared—frozen, broken—he became aware of movement.
Others.
Spiteacks, drawn by the scent or the sound, began slithering toward him. They were smaller than the beast in the tree, but still monstrously large—far bigger than he was.
They closed in.
But the child didn't care. Couldn't care. Not anymore.
Because he was already in front of the one that had devoured him whole in every way that mattered. The one that ruled this forest.
The true predator.
The child, taken aback by the sudden unfolding of events, was already too late. The many spiteacks had closed in around him.
Meanwhile, the massive spiteack—the beast that had taken his legs—watched in eerie silence, observing the boy's shifting emotions with what almost seemed like curiosity.
The child remained frozen, eyes still locked on the creature hanging above him, even as the smaller spiteacks crept closer, their bodies coiling, their jaws twitching.
Then, as the standoff hung in stillness, one of them lunged.
The child didn't react. Trapped by fear, grief, and shock, he didn't know what to do—couldn't know. His mind was too fractured.
The first bite landed. Pain bloomed. But there was no time to recover. The others, emboldened, surged forward.
He couldn't respond. Couldn't scream. His mind, drowning in trauma, refused to think.
More and more spiteacks closed in, taking savage bites out of his flesh. He could see it—muscle torn, fat shredded, one organ already hanging from the side of his gut. The sight should've shattered him.
Instead—it ignited something.
In desperation, the child lashed out. Any spiteack that came too close met his wrath. With his two powerful back arms, he grabbed them mid-lunge, tearing their jaws wide open, hurling their bodies aside.
For a brief moment, he fought back.
A few smaller spiteacks were torn apart. The rest hesitated, circling him warily.
But it didn't last.
Soon, the horde pressed in again. He could only grab one at a time, while dozens came at him from all directions. They overwhelmed him.
He was drowning in them.
The spiteacks swarmed over him, jaws snapping, flesh ripping. He began to lose more than he could defend. Piece by piece, he was consumed.
And then—fate twisted again.
One of the larger beasts lunged. The child grabbed it, tried to tear it like the others. But it didn't budge. It overpowered him.
With a sickening crunch, it bit down—ripping off his two back arms.
The same arms that had been his lifeline, the only limbs still offering resistance—gone.
By now, half of his body was missing. His front arms, lifeless since he'd awoken, were already gone. His back arms had just been severed. Everything below his chest—devoured.
He looked at himself, or what was left of him, as the spiteacks feasted. Horror turned to agony.
A pain so deep it surpassed shock. Surpassed adrenaline. Pure, unbearable torment.
He screamed.
His voice pierced the jungle as only his chest and head remained. His vision began to blur. His body failed him.
And then—something strange happened.
All at once, the spiteacks stopped.
They froze... then began slithering away from him.
The child, barely conscious, couldn't understand what was happening. He didn't care. Pain had consumed everything.
His eyes were still open, but he could no longer see.
Light entered them—but his mind refused to register it.
And then, slowly, everything around him faded to black.
The scene where the child had been moments ago... was now empty.
Only a pool of blood remained—thick and dark—along with scattered organs and tangled intestines, half-trampled under the swarm of spiteacks that had descended upon him.
Was the child taken by a miracle? Lifted by some unseen force of nature? Had a god, watching over the forest from above, intervened?
No.
The answer was far simpler. Brutally honest.
In this jungle, the weak do not rise. They are devoured, silently, by the strong.
And so it was.
A few moments earlier, the massive beast—the towering spiteack that had first taken the child's legs and watched him suffer—had finally moved. It had claimed the final piece of him. In one slow, inevitable bite, it devoured what remained.
And nature, cruel in its order, obeyed.
The smaller spiteacks, sensing the dominance of their greater kin, had retreated from the child's flesh. Not out of mercy, but out of fear. The jungle had its hierarchy, and in that chain, the strongest always ate last—and took everything.
Having finished its meal, the monstrous spiteack coiled its immense tail and pulled itself back into the treetops, vanishing once more into the dense canopy above. It vanished like a shadow—silent, wide, and unchallenged.
This moment carved a truth into the heart of the jungle:
There was no god here.No deity watching from above.No sacred force to balance wrong and right.
Only one law held power in this forest.
The weak fall.The strong feed.
And so, when the child entered this indifferent wilderness...
He, too, was devoured—before long.