Mike's body burned.
The curare's venom slithered through his veins, turning his muscles to wet sand. Every step sent jagged lightning up his spine as Abby half-dragged him toward the village, her grip like an iron around his waist.
» HP: 18/100 | DEBUFF: CURARE (WEAKNESS -2 STR/AGI)
» WARNING: CRITICAL CONDITION
"Stop... squirming," Abby grunted as Mike's knee buckled for the third time.
"Not... squirming," he gasped, tasting copper. "Dying."
She snorted, adjusting her hold. "You'd need better poison for that. Marpe's hunters brew their darts weak—to prolong suffering."
The jungle blurred at the edges. Between ragged breaths, Mike's vision fractured—
White tiles. The sharp tang of antiseptic. A rhythmic beeping that matched his faltering pulse.
Mike floated above his own hospital bed, watching as doctors in blue scrubs rush around his limp body. His wife Lina clutched his hand, her wedding band digging into his flesh hard enough to bruise.
"His vitals are crashing!" A nurse slammed a syringe into his IV.
The heart monitor flatlined.
"Time of death—"
Then—
Jungle canopy. Blood-soaked sand. A shadow with golden eyes loomed over him, its voice vibrating in his bones: "NOT YET."
» REALITY SYNCHRONIZATION: 22%
» WARNING: TEMPORARY SOUL DISPLACEMENT DETECTED
—the vision shattered.
Abby had him pinned against a kapok tree, her dagger drawing a thin line of blood across his throat. "Your eyes turned white," she hissed. "Like a spirit-touched."
Mike swallowed against the blade. "Side effect of the dart."
Her grip tightened. "The poison doesn't do that. What are you?"
A rustle in the undergrowth saved him.
Elder Moko emerged, his bone staff clicking against exposed roots. "Bring him to the sanctum. Now."
The elder's hut smelled of dried herbs and something darker—old blood and burnt hair. Bunches of jungle orchids hung from the rafters; their petals blackened at the edges as if dipped in tar.
Moko forced a paste of mashed grubs and bitterroot into Mike's mouth. It tasted like battery acid and wet earth.
» DEBUFF CLEANSED: CURARE
» HP REGEN: +5/HR (NEW TOTAL: 23/100)
"Marpe's hunters used pale men's poison," Moko muttered, grinding more herbs with a stone mortar. "Curare mixed with something... other."
Abby stiffened by the doorway. "The outsiders' medicine?"
Mike's head snapped up. "There are others like me here?"
Moko ignored him, shuffling to a chest woven from human hair and jaguar pelts. When he turned, he held a faded red first-aid kit, its plastic cracked with age but the white cross still visible.
» ITEM IDENTIFIED: U.S. AIR FORCE SURVIVAL KIT (CIRCA 1987)
» CONTENTS:
Antibiotics (Expired but functional)
Suture kit (Missing thread)
Morphine syringes (3 remaining)
Mike's breath caught. "Where the hell did you get that?"
Moko traced the peeling sticker with reverence. "Captain James Riggs. The last bridge before you." He flipped open the lid, revealing a yellowed photo tucked inside—a grinning pilot in aviators, his arm around a tribeswoman who looked eerily like Abby.
» HIDDEN QUEST COMPLETE: "FORBIDDEN MEDICINE"
» REWARD: "SURVIVOR'S INTUITION" (HEALING ITEMS +25% EFFECT)
Abby snatched the kit, her face twisting. "This is forbidden! The elders decreed-"
Moko's staff struck her wrist with a crack. "And he" - he pointed at Mike - "was forbidden. Yet the gods marked him. Just as they did Riggs."
Mike's fingers brushed the photo. "What happened to him?"
The shaman's smile held no warmth. "The same thing that happens to all bridges. He was walked upon."
They came for him at moon high.
Mike woke to thorned vines snaking around his wrists, their barbed tips digging into his flesh.
» HP: 20/100 (-3 from vine toxins)
"Easy," growled a warrior Mike recognized as Marpe's lieutenant. "The thornvine's poison keeps spirits trapped in flesh."
Mike thrashed, but six tribesmen hauled him to the village center, where a stone altar stood stained with decades of blood offerings. The entire tribe circled it, their faces painted with white ash.
Abby watched from the shadows; her expression unreadable.
Elder Moko raised a gourd of smoking liquid. "Tonight, we see if the gods claim this bridge—or if he bleeds truth!"
The crowd roared.
Marpe stepped forward, an obsidian dagger glinting in the firelight. "Your blood will prove if you're a gift... or a curse."
» NEW QUEST: "BLOOD OF TWO WORLDS"
» OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE THE RITUAL
» FAILURE: DEATH OR EXILE
The dagger flashed down—
Pain exploded as the blade carved into Mike's Mark of the Fallen. Blood—too bright, almost golden—welled up in thick rivulets.
Then the world split open.
Mike floated in a void where three realities overlapped:
The Tribe: His body convulsing on the altar as Moko chanted.
The Hospital: Doctors shocking his chest with paddles. "Clear!"
The Void: A shadow colossus with golden eyes, its voice shaking the cosmos: "YOU ARE THE SEAM. CHOOSE: LIVE THERE, OR DIE HERE."
» REALITY SYNCHRONIZATION: 47%
Scenes bombarded him:
Captain Riggs screaming as tribesmen peeled his skin with obsidian blades.
Abby as a child, weeping over a woman's corpse—the same woman from the photo.
Himself, years older, leading warriors against men in camouflage.
The shadow's maw yawned wide. "YOUR WIFE PRAYS TO A GOD WHO DOESN'T LISTEN. YOUR TRIBE KILLS WHAT IT DOESN'T UNDERSTAND. WHICH WILL YOU BETRAY?"
Mike screamed-
-and woke vomiting black bile.
The tribe had fallen to their knees, even Marpe's face pale. Moko's staff lay split in half, its bone fragments embedded in the altar.
» QUEST COMPLETE: "BLOOD OF TWO WORLDS"
» REWARDS:
+600 XP (LEVEL UP: LV.3 → LV.4)
"MARK OF THE BRIDGE" (UNKNOWN EFFECTS)
TRIBE REPUTATION: NEUTRAL → RESPECTED
Abby hauled him up, her fingers digging into his biceps. "What did you see?"
Mike touched his chest—the wound was gone. Only a pulsing golden scar remained.
"Enough to know," he rasped, "this isn't a coma dream."
Beyond the firelight, the jungle itself seemed to breathe.