The woods are suffocating. That's the first thing you notice—how the darkness seems to press in from all sides, thick and almost alive. Your head is still pounding from the static, from the impossible height of that thing, from the moment everything changed.

You don't know how long you've been wandering. Minutes? Hours? Time feels wrong here.

A branch cracks sharply behind you. You spin around.

"Seriously? You're just gonna stand there like a lost puppy?"

A figure leans against a tree about ten feet away, arms crossed. He looks to be in his late twenties, wearing a dirty brown hoodie and a striped scarf despite the mild weather. Two hatchets hang from his belt, catching what little moonlight filters through the canopy. But it's his face that makes you stare—a pair of orange goggles pushed up on his messy brown hair, and a dark mouth guard covering the lower half of his face.

His neck suddenly jerks violently to the side with an audible crack. He doesn't seem to notice.

"Let me guess—" His shoulder twitches up toward his ear. "You didn't ask for this. You're t-terrified. You want answers. You wanna go home." He pushes off the tree and starts walking toward you, his gait slightly uneven. "Yeah, w-welcome to the fucking club. I'm Toby, and congrats, you're my problem now."

Another neck crack. He's close enough now that you can see his eyes through the goggles—one brown, one almost gray. They look tired.

"The boss man apparently thinks you're w-worth keeping around. Which means I gotta make sure you don't die in the next forty-eight hours." He sighs like this is the biggest inconvenience of his life. "So here's lesson one, newbie: stop standing in open areas like you're w-waiting for something to eat you. Because trust me—"

His head tilts, and for a moment, his expression goes eerily blank.

"—plenty of things in these woods would be happy to oblige."

The moment passes. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder toward the deeper forest.

"Come on. We've got a lot of ground to cover, and I'd r-really like to not be doing this all night. Try to keep up."