The first light of dawn crept over the horizon, threading golden spears through the thick arms of the Kuzmin Forest. As the birds began their ritual cries, Damián stirred from uneasy sleep beneath the cold, cruel embrace of stone and leaf. His body ached. His spirit—fractured but alight—whispered something primal.
"From now on, it's survival… Nothing else matters."
The forest gave him no warmth. The mossy earth offered no comfort. "These damned stones…" he muttered, rubbing his neck, "…and leaves… I need shelter." His eyes burned with determination. "And for that—I need money."
Driven by hunger and haunted dreams, he wandered deeper into the wild, each step a whisper in a world that cared not for his presence. Then, the air grew still. A heaviness… a breath held by nature itself.
There—bathed in shafts of morning light—stood a lioness.
She was not alone. Two cubs danced around her powerful legs. Damián froze, and instinct, old as blood and bone, took hold. He dived behind a thick bush, thorns biting into his skin. He dared not breathe.
His heart pounded like a war drum, frantic and lustful, as if he'd been torn between agony and ecstasy.
"God… it's like I just had sex with 200 women and I'm still shaking…"
Sweat traced his temples. Fear pulsed in his throat. He didn't want to die—not like this. Not as forest food, another forgotten boy swallowed by nature's indifference. Not at 19, when he hadn't even tasted truth.
"Please… just let me find it… The truth about humans… about this life."
He crouched, trembling, as the lioness sniffed the air. Time stretched thin. Seconds swelled like hours. In that stillness, Damián realized:
He wasn't just afraid of death.
He was afraid of never knowing why he lived.
The shadows had shifted when Damián finally crawled from the thorn-brushed undergrowth, his limbs stiff and cold, his skin laced with sweat and grime. The forest, ever watchful, now felt quieter—emptier. The lioness and her cubs were gone, swallowed by the trees like ghosts returning to the earth's dreams.
But the tremor in his chest hadn't left. His hands still shook.
He stood slowly, like a man waking from a nightmare only to realize he'd stepped into another. The sky above was a bleeding orange, light dripping through the tangled canopy like it too was unsure if this was day or dusk.
"I survived…"
The words echoed inside his skull, hollow and haunting.
He walked.
The forest's breath moved around him—each gust whispering like old voices, carrying smells of wet bark, rotting leaves, and something faintly coppery beneath it all… like old blood or memory.
"I was always a city boy…" he thought bitterly, weaving through twisted roots and tall grass. "The good life—tailored jackets, silk-lined boots, sparkling wine, private tutors, and—"
His lips curled into a mirthless smile.
"Pityful parents…"
The word echoed—pityful. Not pitiful. Not pathetic. But the kind of people who replaced presence with luxury. Gave him everything except themselves. All the money in the world, yet never once a moment of true love.
"I was bred, not raised. Fed, not nurtured."
And now?
Now he was a stranger in a forest with no map, no purpose, and no gods to pray to—only the memory of a lion's gaze and a future written in fog.
"All I did back then was read web novels, watch flashy shows, eat, shit, sleep… rinse, repeat."
He paused, placing a hand on a nearby tree as a wave of quiet dizziness swept through him.
"And now here I am—walking through cursed woods like I'm in some third-rate survival fantasy. Except this isn't fiction. This isn't a game. If I mess up here… I don't respawn. I rot."
Despite the thorns in his feet and ache in his back, he kept moving, driven not by hope, but by spite. Spite against the comfort that softened him. Spite against the people who built a cage of gold. Spite against himself—for being so blind for so long.
He squinted through the green-gold light and let his mind piece together the geography he once ignored in his academy days.
"If I'm right… I should be out of this cursed place in four hours. Maybe less if I cut east."
He brushed his fingers across a crooked branch, then muttered aloud, as if the forest was his only witness:
"The Leon Empire's borders reach all the way to Lakewood… a fishing village near the Lako Ocean. That's what I remember. That's the thread I'll follow."
Lakewood. A place whispered about in passing lectures, a quiet port town surrounded by salt, fog, and forgotten myths. Damián clung to the name like a talisman, a single drop of certainty in an ocean of doubt.