The volcano had growled at Krag.

  Low and long.

  Like a warning from something that thought it could still win this fight.

  Krag stood on the blackened ridge, bare feet sunk deep into warm ash. Smoke pressed against him like an unwelcome hand. His shoulders rolled—not in fear, not awe. Just anticipation.

  A gust swept across the slope, hot and gritty, dragging burnt feathers and teeth with it.

  The rest of the tribe had left days ago, driven off by the mountain's relentless warnings. But Krag remained. For weeks, the volcano had growled and spat, daring someone to answer. It had stolen from his ancestors; it would not steal again. Krag was the clan's leader now, their protector. He had come to end the mountain's boasting, or be ended by it.

  All wildlife had vacated, not wanting any part in what was about to unfold. The land lay barren now, hollow and expectant.

  Krag stayed.

  Because the mountain had spoken.

  And he wasn’t leaving until it was silent.

  A plume of steam hissed up from a crack in the rocks.

  The ground still pulsed with the firestorm that had rolled through the day before. Bones littered the ash—some old, bleached; some new, blackened to crumbling nubs. Shards of jewelry and melted tools clung stubbornly to a few.

  Krag walked steadily, every footfall deliberate.

  He carried a stick.

  It was half-charred, blood-dark, knotted like a broken limb. It wasn't carved or fashioned, just found and kept.

  When it hit things, they stayed hit.

  Krag scanned the ridgeline, muscles tense, searching for the source of the growls that had challenged him. His gaze swept across the seared horizon, reading the land like a battle map. When the sound rumbled again—closer this time—he shifted his weight forward, beginning his ascent.

  At the summit, the ridge dipped away into a basin of cracked stone and seeping molten pools. Smoke puffed from the vents in lazy, broken rhythm.

  The ground under Krag's feet rumbled, subtle but pointed. A vent nearby made the mistake of rumbling again—low and wet, like a mountain trying to cough up its dead.

  Krag approached it, cautious, steps heavy and deliberate. He circled the maw once, sizing it up like a hunter finding wounded prey before assuming a low crouch. As he crept closer, the sour, defiant stench of the vent's gluttonous digestion reached him, thick and vile in the back of his throat. Then, with the same grim certainty he brought to breaking bones, Krag decided how best to answer the mountain's challenge.

  He unwrapped his loinwrap and pissed directly into the vent.

  The hiss was immediate.

  Steam shrieked skyward in a sharp, white jet.

  Krag grinned at the response, pleased with his declaration. Apparently, he had pissed it off... and a provoked opponent was a reckless one.

  The vent shuddered violently. The ground cracked wider, coughing up a black, rounded shape—smooth, glistening, and pulsing with red-gold veins beneath a shell of scorched stone. Steam and ash sheeted off its surface as it forced itself into the open, as if the mountain itself were birthing a hardened wound.

  Krag’s grin widened. The thing was revealing itself. His opponent, the cause of the mountain's anger.

  He jumped back, muscles flexing, instinct pulling him into battle-readiness. His stance lowered, weight shifting to the balls of his feet, as he sized up the emerging form that the mountain had spat out- it's chosen champion.

  He crouched, muscles coiling, feeling the ground vibrate beneath his feet. For a heartbeat, he simply watched it—savoring the inevitability.

  The rising dome shivered under Krag's glare, wobbling slightly—as if struggling against the pressure building beneath it. It held its shape stubbornly, neither yielding nor retreating, the way a dying thing might cling to the last breath it wasn't meant to keep.

  The dome's surface glistening under a skin of steam and heat as it fully emerged. It hovered for a moment, a soft whine building from within as faint pulses of light traced alien patterns across its body. Krag watched, eyes fixed & muscles coiled, as a narrow slit opened at the dome’s center—and a low, scanning hum swept over him.

  Tensing, he bracing for impact, but none came. It washed over him like weak wind and he sneered at the coward's feint.

  Krag didn’t understand it's pleadings, but it had attacked, and he would return it in kind.

  With a roar, he lunged—pouncing like a beast onto the dome. Fists hammered down, jaws snapping, teeth biting into the hot, unyielding shell. He expected to feel the satisfying crush of a broken foe beneath him, to tear through the thing's defenses before it could spit more insults into the world.

  Instead, pain struck.

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  Not in his mouth.

  In his bones.

  A jolt of alien color slammed into his skull—wrong, too bright, faster than thinking. His body reeled, tensing in brace for an impact that never came.

  Light surged outward in concentric rings.

  The world around him flickered.

  Paused.

  Reassembled itself in unnatural ways.

  [SYSTEM ALERT]

  Unclassified input detected.

  Primitive entity identified: "KRAG".

  Initiating Seed Protocol Backflag...

  The sky inverted.

  Heat flipped to vacuum.

  Krag rose off the ground, bare feet kicking loose a halo of ash, as the dome cracked wide beneath him.

  Light coiled through his muscles, behind his eyes, into his teeth. Something deep beneath the stone screamed—not sound, not spirit, but something alien and incomprehensible.

  Krag didn’t scream.

  He just grunted, tightening his grip around his club.

  [Broken Calibration Insert — Mid-Freefall]

  As the light spun around him, something deeper moved beneath his skin.

  Muscles twisted backward—tendons winding wrong, balance pulling left while gravity yanked right, breath knotting against bone.

  The system reached inside his body, threading through his breath and blood like invisible roots.

  [SEED PROTOCOL: CALIBRATION IN PROGRESS]

  Normalizing biomechanical parameters...

  Gravity acclimation: 46% complete.

  Stamina regulation: 23% complete.

  Sensory adjustment: initializing...

  The world twisted harder.

  He tumbled through it, fists clenched, wrongness pulling at him from the inside in all directions. Like a tide of leeches were hallowing him out from within.

  [WARNING]

  Host impact predicted.

  Protective protocols insufficient.

  Recommending rollback to seed point—

  Then he met the world — shoulder-first, bone-deep, and uninvited.

  The volcanic stone still beneath him now bled light, cracked from impact and whining like a wounded creature.

  [CRITICAL ERROR]

  Calibration sequence interrupted.

  Gravity normalization incomplete.

  Biomechanical anomalies expected.

  No fallback node detected.

  Proceeding with active anomaly flag...

  Krag lay still for a long moment, blinking against the light.

  His senses crawled back into place, slow and stubborn.

  Beneath him, sharp fragments of the shattered dome dug into his skin, still radiating heat.

  He pushed upright with a grunt, wincing as the drone's remnant talons tugged at his skin.

  Looking down at his bloodied and burnt form, he found jagged black fragments embedded in his side and thigh—pieces of the opponent he had crushed.

  He tore them free one by one, releasing a slow ooze of blood with each.

  Strange shards. Heavy. Not bone. Not stone.

  With each shard freed Krag's grin widened, satisfaction rumbling low and slow in his chest.

  It was a strange fight, but a good one. Its shell was hard, but Krag had been harder. A fair challenge—and a better kill.

  The mountain had lost.

  As the final shard was torn free, Krag shifted, his senses sharpening. Only then did he start to notice the world beyond the broken shell.

  The air was too thin. The light too sharp. The ground flexed when he shifted his weight. The sky stretched overhead like a hide stretched too tight, painted blue, trying to pass itself off as real. It stared down at him and he stared back in challenge.

  Krag stood, slow and deliberate. His muscles complained, not from the injuries—but from distrust.

  The ground beneath him squished, but not like mud. It flexed beneath him—yielding and false

  His nose twitched, sniffing the air.

  It was clean.

  Too clean.

  Not clean like mountain wind.

  Clean in a way that felt empty—like the air had been boiled until nothing remained.

  As his eyes continued to survey his crashsite, something perched just along the rim of the crater he stood in, stood out. The only other natural thing in this hollow place- his club, sturdy and unbroken.

  He moved to pick it up, it's familiarity weighed in his palm and gave him brief comfort—a piece of home in a place that felt anything but. It was familiar. It was earned. It was his.

  Krag began to move, his steps heavy on the yielding earth. Ahead, the soft ground stirred, grass peeling back in neat, unnatural lines. It pulled apart too cleanly, too obediently, exposing a smooth trail that bared no tracks.

  From the center of the path, something rose — growing like a weed from cursed soil, dragging the earth with it in slow, reluctant shudders. It was stiff, unnatural, humming like trapped fire.

  Glowing letters burned themselves across its face:

  [GUIDANCE INITIATION]

  Welcome, Honored Arrival

  Proceed to the Guidance Arena to begin survival onboarding.

  Krag eyed the standing thing warily, muscles still coiled with caution.

  It wasn't a tree. It wasn't stone.

  It carried no scent of earth, no blood, no life—nothing a hunter could trust.

  It carried the same empty scent that clung to everything else here, a hollow space where life should have been.

  He continued his approach as if daring it to react.

  He sniffed the air again. Listened. Waited.

  Still nothing. No tension of danger. No pulse of life hiding behind it.

  Krag grunted, the sound low and dismissive.

  Then he swung.

  The club met the thing with a heavy, satisfying crack.

  Splinters of false wood and shards of trapped fire burst outward, spitting light into the yielding earth.

  The ground shuddered beneath his feet.

  Glowing letters burned themselves across the broken surface:

  [ONBOARDING INITIATION INTERRUPTED]

  [ADAPTIVE PATHWAY DEPLOYED]

  [SYSTEM NOTE]

  Recalculating optimal experience... lower standards detected.