Chapter 1

  First Blood

  I’ve been hunted before. But never by a world.

  I stand in the ocean stillness—a desert of green. Three suns bleach the sky with merciless heat and the moons drift above like vultures—grey, rust, red.

  Peace. Strange, for a world built from trials.

  I open the sack. Inside—supplies, as promised, and the map. I unroll it.

  Blank.

  An oversight?

  “No,” It whispers as it crumbles into ashes, “Find your own way.”

  The wind blows its remains away. I stand there, empty-handed. I will, then.

  I walk. The Golden City waits in every direction—north, south, east, west. It calls, and the damned march.

  Time drags. The suns crawl, this world breathing in long days. Rest stalks me, unwanted but near. Still, I move.

  I catch a glimpse of a long-necked fowl sprinting with no wings, vanishing into the green sea.

  Mirages dance, refracting my path in mockery.

  Eventually, the sameness breaks. Uphill, a cluster of stone bones, collapsed and cold.

  They stir, the stones rumbling. They roll toward me.

  A small hurdle.

  I lift my hand. The index ring—my only ring, Zephyr—flares white, polished, smooth. Wind incarnate. A gift, before the fire took it all. I stow the sack into its void and extend my palm. A storm answers, wind exploding outward, stones lurching. I press harder and the gale screams. The stones scatter like leaves in a cyclone.

  All but one.

  A construct rooted on top. I climb the hill.

  Intel, perhaps.

  Grass whispers as I crouch beside the construct—cold stone, etched in glyphs half-swallowed by time. Not just rubble, relic. This world forgets slowly.

  Within its shell, a fire smolders. No soul in sight. Disappointment tastes familiar.

  Yet beyond the ruin, there’s a path winding into the woods.

  A laugh halts my descent, gone before I can place it.

  I turn.

  A figure emerges, coated in coarse brown fur, tail flicking. A monkey, tall as a man, dressed in faded silks. Staff balanced on one shoulder, he grins. “Yo!” a chirp, voice too high. “Name’s Wukong. Goku if you're lazy. Monkey King if you’re fancy. Call me what fits your tongue—just know I’m... mercurial.”

  He winks.

  I narrow my eyes.

  He steps forward—staff raised, swung down in a silver arc. I sidestep; the earth cracks where it lands. Before I counter, he’s already airborne, feet lashing toward my ribs. I block, but the impact jars my bones. Not just strength. Technique. Centuries of it.

  A spirit.

  “Return to your domain,” I demand.

  He grins. “What domain? I am home, friend.” His staff taps the earth. Once. Twice. “You’re new here though. No worries—I’ll escort you to the Golden City. Personally. It’s just...” He presses his staff deeper. “Down there.”

  His body coils—then lunges again. A high kick.

  I move first. Slip inside his guard. Grip his throat. Slam him to the earth. He hits the ground with a bark of breath, squirming. Words spill from his mouth. “Okay—okay! I’m not evil, swear on my tail. Or what’s left of—not the point! Most folks who show up here are jerks or illusions or figments or—” His tone shifts mid-sentence, sharp. “LOOK OUT, A BIRD!”

  I don’t turn. Tricksters always test the gullible. I let my grip answer that.

  He groans, chuckling, nervous. “Heh… Just my mind. Plays tricks. Like I said.”

  I release him. He’s no threat. Just noise in a world already loud with ghosts.

  He scuttles back like a crab. “Foolish mortal! You’ve sprung the Monkey King’s snare! …Wait.” He squints at his staff as though it betrayed him. “Huh. Thought that’d work.”

  I grab his tail. He yelps. I drag him—tie him to a crooked pine. He doesn’t resist. I leave.

  “Don’t die without me!” He shouts, “That’s my job, remember?”

  I step into the trees. The silence shuts behind me like the lid of a stone coffin.

  Gone is the openness of the grasslands.

  Damp air.

  Rot.

  Insects buzzing like a chorus of needles.

  I wave them off. A futile gesture. They return, doubled. Insistent.

  Zephyr flares. Wind cuts through the cloud of wings, scattering them into mist. But a heartbeat later, they swarm again. Annoying.

  I step—a pressure plate dips underfoot. My body tightens. Something groans in the branches above. A severed log swings down—ropes creaking, bark splintering.

  No time to evade.

  Zephyr bursts. The forest blurs past—then stops me cold. My boots sink. Thick, sticky—goo. A trap.

  I can’t move.

  A glint winks between the pines.

  My breath stills. The forest holds its own.

  Then—heat blooms.

  A bullet, carving air, punching two inches shy of my heart.

  I strip my boots, the goo swallowing them whole. Ahead—vines. I call Zephyr, and wind surges beneath me, hurling me upward. My fingers clutch the vine—it snaps.

  I fall—until a staff embeds in the bark beside me. I don’t question it. I grab and swing, landing rough but clean on a thick pine limb.

  That staff…

  I hear a rustling behind me. Then a voice, too proud. “So! Wukong saves the day, once again!”

  He cackles like thunder shattering porcelain.

  I offer him a glance. That’s all.

  Behind the pine, no sign of the sniper. Two targets—too many.

  “Your boots,” he mutters. “Had to wrestle them from the swamp’s gut.”

  I turn. He holds them between two fingers, tattered fur clinging to one leg. He lost it to the goo.

  “No praise needed,” he says with a wink.

  I take them. “Why help me?”

  He thumps his chest. “Some call it a change of heart.” He drags a hand across his scalp. “I call it... destiny.”

  “Am I your destiny?”

  His swagger shatters. He steps back. “Whoa there, traveler. That’s a loaded question—”

  I step forward. “Then answer.”

  He scratches behind an ear, muttering in low voice. “My master ordered me.”

  Is he watching me? Brave.

  I glance down the path. “Do you know the way through?”

  The monkey rests his staff across his shoulders, balanced like a yoke. “Well, depends. Am I coming with?”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  I walk alone.

  But he might serve a purpose.

  “Who is your master?”

  He tilts his head, eyes tracing the canopy. “You’ll meet him. Sundown.”

  Not a place, but a time.

  I press a hand to my shoulder. Blood flows free, slower. The monkey tears a leaf free, offers it like a trinket. “Patch it up. Master’ll stitch you proper later.”

  “With a leaf?”

  He frowns, wounded. “Just trying to help—” He tugs at his tunic, exasperated. “You want the shirt off my back? Spare my modesty, why don’t you?”

  I stare. He blusters, but his hands shake. Silence unsettles him more than violence.

  Eventually, he rips a strip from his sleeve. I bind the wound; crude, but serviceable. He mutters behind me, words low, bitter. I ignore him.

  He sulks. I walk. The path ahead yawns open.

  Rotting citrus, sour and sweet, lingers under the moss. White-bellied rodents spiral up trees, vanishing into cracks before I blink.

  Night falls slow and quiet—like a curtain drawn over the woods’ bones. We choose to halt beneath their leaves.

  Smells like ash and eucalyptus.

  For food, I wade into a stream. The water is cold. Clear. Still. Fish circle, unaware. I strike. One motion—efficient, silent. Silver flashes, my hand closing. It thrashes, but I do not let go.

  Four will suffice. Two for now. Two dried for the path ahead. I return with the fish. Wukong kneels, coaxing a fire to life. The flames catch, flicker, then settle into a steady burn.

  He hums. Off-key. Carefree, then straightens. “Well—it’s time.” He stretches, staff tapping the earth—for a heartbeat, his shadow writhes. Not simian. Shorter. Blue.

  The air ripples. His outline blurs, bones folding inward, fur bleeding into pale skin. “Until next day,” he murmurs, “Strange… I still don’t know your name.”

  Light blooms beneath him. When it fades… the monkey is gone. Or changed. In his place stands a Yartun. The eyes—dead grey. No trace of Wukong’s spark. Shorter by a head. The same staff, now held as a cane, not a weapon. His skin—sky-blue, a bag circling his shoulder. A faded hazel robe cloaks his form, hanging loose, for comfort, not pride.

  He looks like peace made flesh.

  I say nothing.

  He does. “It is a pleasure to meet you.” His voice flows like a stream over stone. “You may address me as Trichidae, if you wish.”

  An elder. In every sense.

  He gestures to the fire. “You’re wounded. Sit.”

  No courtesy—just fact.

  “I will sew the flesh closed.”

  The needle finds flesh. Cold metal—a bite—then the thread, tugging heat through broken skin. The bullet passed clean.

  I watch the flames rise. They move like thought—dancing, never still.

  “I came here four years ago,” he says. “Not for the same reason as most.”

  Another pass of the needle. The skin pulls.

  “Wukong’s land is green. Gentle. A tree so vast it holds birdsong like breath. He returns there when this world turns dark. I come here in his stead.”

  Two spirits bound to one another. Yet never in one dimension.

  He shrugs. “I like the silence. The space to make, sculpt, craft. My hands remember.”

  He tightens the knot, then slices it free with a blade no larger than a fingernail.

  Barter.

  Wukong trades peace for danger. Trichidae, peace for purpose.

  He nods at the fish. “They must be warmed before serving.”

  We do. One each, skewered and turned toward the flame. The others will dry when embers rule.

  He speaks again.

  “What is your purpose here? The same as the rest?”

  The firewood collapses inward. Orange devours bark. “The same.”

  The Golden City holds two things: answers for the desperate, graves for the weak. I’d risk both.

  He watches me. Doesn’t blink. Then reaches for a pouch and unfolds it, taking a pinch of white. He leans forward to season the fish.

  I snatch his wrist mid-motion.

  “You poison me.”

  No tension in him. Only that slow smile. “I wouldn’t poison what I dine. Salt, nothing more.”

  I release him. He sets the pouch down between us. “You are right to suspect,” he says. “Trust no one—”

  A light flickers past my leg. Then vanishes.

  I do not waste breath. I roll.

  A bullet punches into the fire, hissing through fish and flame. Smoke erupts.

  That shot was meant for my head.

  I press behind the nearest tree. No clean sightline now. Trichidae follows. Back flat to bark.

  His eyes meet mine.

  I exhale through my nose. Thumb toward the source. Left. High canopy.

  He traces the angle with his fingers. Then gestures. Split the approach. Pincer.

  He moves.

  I move. Tree to tree, fast and low. Mind tuned to the ground—bear trap, pressure plate.

  The sniper wants me dead at all means.

  A glint catches my eye in the treetops—a scope.

  I pivot.

  The bullet shears through flesh—tears my ear in half.

  Pain blooms. I don’t flinch. I did before.

  “The tree between four!” I call out.

  A light flares—sudden, blinding. Wukong launches upward, staff as fulcrum, body twisting in the air. He lands hard on a branch.

  “Gotcha!”

  Too late. The shooter leaps—grabs a vine—the branch above cracks, but they swing anyway, reckless, vanishing into the canopy’s throat.

  I don’t wait. I run. Shadows guide me. Moonlight threads through leaves like silver veins—then a snarl. Left flank. A wolf, all ribs and hunger, explodes from the brush. With teeth bared, it lunges. I pivot, but its jaw finds my arm. Hot breath, sharper than the bullet’s kiss. I don’t cry out. My right hand moves.

  Zephyr answers, wind erupting—violent, pure. We rise above the trees.

  The wolf drops, whimpering into the dark. I don’t watch the fall. My arm burns where its teeth sank in.

  Anserine.

  I’ve survived assassins, yet this damned world tries to kill me with starving mutts.

  Mid-air, I search the woods. Ahead—the sniper runs. Dark clothes, fast feet, with no direction and no escape.

  I call Zephyr again. Its storm carries me forward. I carve through trees. Grip a vine—this one holds. I swing, leaves whistling past.

  Close in.

  Hook my legs around his neck. Drive him down. We crash to the forest floor, the air knocking from both of us, dry leaves crunching.

  He thrashes, I don’t release. The sniper case slips from his hands, fingers clawing me instead. Useless. I squeeze harder.

  His hand shifts—belt—click.

  A hiss. Smoke.

  I glimpsed at it just before the blast. White fog swallows us whole, a bitter metallic scent stinging in my nostrils. But I don’t let go—until pain slices through my thigh. A blade, he twists. My grip falters.

  I roll back. Seize the case. One weapon less for him.

  When the smoke clears, he stands beyond the trees. Purple suit. Top hat. Face masked—polished steel, blank as death. A violet rose glows faint in his chest pocket. He tips his hat. Vanishes into the dark.

  I rise. My leg fails, collapsing under me.

  Then—

  Growls.

  I scan the dark. Eyes shimmer low, adroit in their silence. Wolves. A pack.

  I should’ve known. They never hunt alone.

  My arm—dead weight. My leg—worse. This won’t end clean.

  Then—

  Something else, not a wolf.

  A growl, deeper, rolling, low—like thunder caught in a cavern. It scrapes the ground as it grows stronger.

  The wolves stop. Ears flatten. Eyes wide. They back away slowly, paws pressing into soil as if trying to vanish into it.

  The shadow stretches long across the forest floor. It grows. Broad.

  It’s behind me.

  One wolf snarls—it’s met with another growl. Louder, deeper. This one breaks their formation. Nothing but fear, but flight.

  I remain still.

  Then—footsteps. Not normal. The sound of something mocking movement. I turn. Zephyr hums beneath my skin, wind curling around my fingertips like a warning drawn.

  I see him.

  Wukong.

  Hands cupped around his mouth, lips twisted, throat vibrating as he unleashes one last monstrous snarl—echoing, fractured, near inhuman. He notices me and stops mid-howl, dropping his hands.

  Clears his throat.

  “I make noises,” he says, sagely. “It’s kind of my thing.”

  It isn’t.

  But it fits.

  In a way.

  Light spills across the earth again. The trickster vanishes. In his place—Trichidae. Silent as dusk. He approaches, hand drifting into his satchel. “Rest,” he says. “I will tend to you.”

  I do.

  The bark at my back is cold, the ground still damp with blood.

  The world stills again.

  He draws a porcelain vial. Tips it over the torn flesh of my arm. The liquid bites. I don’t flinch.

  Then bandages, but he pauses.

  “I would know your name before I bind you,” he says, voice low. Almost reverent.

  I meet his eyes. The words come like stone.

  “Vladimir Gulvir.”

  A breath passes.

  “…I’ve heard of you.”

  They always have.

  Not for what I want to be known for.

  He begins the wrap.

  “A bounty hunter in the outer worlds,” he murmurs. “Now you come to Ojim. Strange.”

  He shifts to my leg. The wound leaks slow, angry blood. Antiseptic hisses on contact.

  “It’s a mysterious choice,” he adds.

  Needle in hand. Thread glides through flesh.

  Then, quiet:

  “Welcome,” he murmurs, “to the eternal prison.”

  The fire crackles.

  I say nothing. But I do not look away.

  If this world wants to imprison me, let it try.