Day 247
After escaping the ravine and burning its horde, he stumbled for days through the island's warped terrain. His body burned with fever. His senses throbbed with every vibration in the ground, every flicker of blood in the air. But eventually, he made it back.
Back to the ruined concrete shell he now called a base — overgrown, half-collapsed, perched beside a waterfall that cut through the forest like a scar. It was peaceful, for a time. He repaired his tools. Made fire. Slept for twelve hours a day. Laughed with May about nothing.
That peace lasted four days.
Then they came again.
They never stopped.
Different forms. Different sizes. Some crawled from the forest. Others burst out of the earth itself. And some just… watched, waiting at the edge of the woods for night to fall.
With no way off the island, Adrian made a decision:
"If I kill every single one of them… maybe I'll finally be free."
The early hunts were brutal. Every encounter was life or death, each kill a narrow escape. And strangely — at first — it was exhilarating. The rush of combat. The weight of risk. The surge of power when he set a monster's blood alight and watched it scream.
He would joke with May between fights, like it was a game.
"Three down. Who's next?"
"You're smiling too much for someone who almost lost an arm."
But that faded.
He got faster. Smarter. Deadlier.
He learned how to control the flames just enough — no need for an explosion, just a thin thread of fire at the blade's edge. With precise timing and the right strike to a key artery, the creatures would die instantly. Efficient. Reproducible.
There was a time he'd celebrate each win. "Hell yeah!"Now, he barely blinked.
The monsters weren't foes anymore. They were chores.
He had become a predator so perfectly tailored to kill them, they barely registered as threats.
The fights stopped being fun.Then they stopped being anything.
Every night, May would try to keep him talking. Keep him human.
"Remember when you used to scream and flail and actually, y'know, try?"
"You were annoying back then."
"You were alive back then."
And maybe she was right.
Because now, on Day 247, Adrian stood atop a rocky cliff peninsula, staring at what might be the last one.
Before him rose a massive, ancient tree, gnarled and towering, its roots choking the earth like a spider's nest. The trunk was wide enough to house a building. A hollow opened at its base — vast, black, and pulsing faintly with something wrong. The sky above it was choked with gray clouds. The sea below was silent.
This island, once endless and unknowable, was now mostly silent. He'd found nearly all of their lairs. And erased them.
Adrian stood at the threshold.
His winter jacket was torn and reshaped into piecemeal armor, shoulders capped in hardened leather, sleeves wrapped in bloodstained rope. Across his chest were thick belts woven from vines, each one bristling with teeth — jagged, yellow-white fangs of the monsters he had killed. He used them like knives. Or bullets. Whatever worked.
His hair hung to his shoulders, matted and wild, streaked with ash and dried blood. One eye was swollen. His skin was marbled with scars and burns.
His eyes…
They were hollow. Not dead — just… burned out from the inside. Eyes that had seen too much.
Both tomahawks rested across his back. Their edges were chipped, but still lit with faint red lines, like veins of molten ore.
He exhaled. The wind pulled the sound away.
"This should be the last one," he muttered, his voice rough like gravel in his throat.
He stepped into the tree.