CHAPTER 224: FIVE-STAR CAVE, WOULD NOT RECOMMEND

Judge awoke to the taste of sunlight in his dreams.

The warm feel of a fire, the crisp crunch of roasted fish, the weightless presence of a flux core nearby. In his dream, he was clean. His hair didn’t feel like twigs matted with blood and dirt, and his stomach wasn’t clawing its way up his spine in a hunger-fueled rebellion.

Then the cold bit into him like a jealous ghost.

His eyes cracked open like dry bark. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His arms trembled as he sat up on the damp cave floor.

"No... go back," he croaked, clawing at the warmth of memory like a child reaching for a dream ripped away. "That was warm. There were potatoes. There were actual gods-damned potatoes."

The forest answered with a sighing wind that might have been laughter.

His fire had died, leaving behind cold ashes and a sour smell. Hunger punched him in the gut with the precision of a trained assassin. Not just a growl. Not a complaint. It was a rebellion.

"Yes, yes, I get it," he muttered. "We’re dying. Could’ve written me a letter instead."

Stiff-limbed and sore, he limped out into the pale, gray light of the flux zone. His joints ached. His wounds pulled against hastily tied bandages. He carried only his blade now, the Golden Eagle rendered useless by its need for ether bullets. Useless in a place that devoured ether like water on fire.

The forest stretched around him like a wound that never healed. Trees twisted at odd angles. Their shadows leaned in the wrong direction. Paths he swore were behind him appeared ahead instead.

He didn’t speak aloud. Not anymore.

He’d made that mistake before. Trees listened.

He moved low through the underbrush. A sound — a wet gurgle, too rhythmic to be natural — made him freeze. Then the bushes rustled without wind. Something whispered in a language no throat should be able to speak.

Judge advanced. Slowly. Carefully. Like he belonged.

He spotted a rabbit. Or so he thought.

It had too many legs. No eyes. Its mouth opened vertically.

He killed it in a blur of motion. It screamed like a human child.

He skinned it, gagging as black mucus oozed from its flesh. He cooked it over a fire made from bark and desperation. He ate it.

Then vomited it out behind a tree.

He wiped his mouth with dirt and kept going.

The flux didn’t just warp reality. It learned. It studied. It responded.

Soon he heard himself — laughing versions, angry versions, broken versions. A younger Judge called out from behind a tree. An older one warned of death. One wept.

He ignored them. Most of them.

A clearing of mirrors caught his eye.

They didn’t reflect him. They reflected could-have-beens. One showed him with golden eyes, dressed in white. Another with blood dripping from his fingers. Another, buried in a coffin, smiling.

He didn’t stay long.

He spent nights under damp canopies and days moving like a shadow. Once, he watched a creature without skin drag itself past him, its ribcage grating over stone. Another time, the sky blinked, and for a moment, all sound vanished.

He grew quieter. He stopped joking to himself. His sarcasm dulled into silence.

He found a cave with a spring. Trapped it with sharpened sticks and old bones. Drank slowly. Ate slower.

He carved his name into the wall. The next morning, it had changed. The letters scrambled.

He carved it again. Deeper. With the blood from his wounds that never had a chance to heal.

Once, he spoke to a rock for three hours. Told it about the time he set a training dummy on fire and blamed it on a squirrel. The rock didn’t laugh.

Still, the best company he’d had.

Corrupted birds became meals. He built bows out of tendons and bones or branches, failing for several tries before he made a makeshift bow.

He skewered them on sticks. Boiled them in a makeshift pot. Told himself they were chicken.

"Flux-fed poultry. Limited edition," he muttered, trying to keep his mind sane, chewing rubbery meat.

His eyes hollowed. His face thinned. Laughter came out like a cracked hinge. Even his occasional tendency to crack a joke, or even talk. It had stopped.

He built traps now. With efficiency. Pitfalls covered in moss. Spears fashioned from rib bones. Alarms strung with vines and bones that clinked like wind chimes.

He learned not to trust still water.

He learned not to blink when the wind went quiet.

Once, he watched a tree melt.

Once, he stepped into a pond and came out with three fewer fingernails.

Then came the worst night.

He followed the smell of roasted meat to a fire.

Real fire. Real warmth. A man sat there. Old. White-bearded. Beckoning.

Judge approached. Blinked.

It was his father. Then his mentor. Then himself.

He turned away. Dug a pit. Slept in dirt.

Woke up covered in feathers. No birds nearby.

One day, he stumbled across a hollow. Quiet. Sterile. No whispers. No illusions. Just silence.

In the center, an object hovered — black and silver, veined with cracks that glowed faintly.

A Flux Core.

He stared for an hour.

It pulsed. Solid. No shimmer. No vanishing trick.

But he didn’t trust it.

He threw rocks. Circled it. Waited.

Cooked another bird. Drank water. Tied a string to his wrist and the nearest tree. Just in case.

He waited for the trap.

And the trap came.

The wind didn’t howl. It screamed — a high, sharp whistle that shook the leaves.

A creature emerged from the woods. All teeth and no skin. Eyes stitched shut. Mouth wide open.

Judge stood. Blade in hand. Back to the illusion.

Of course, it was fake.

The flux never gave things freely.

And Judge was ready.

He had to kill to survive, but to survive also meant to suffer.

That didn’t stop him. Whatever it took to get out. Even if he had to burn the forest to the ground, he would get out eventually.