Chapter 4: Shifting Shadows

I took a deep breath. After receiving the notification, Martin and I set about throwing as much wood as we could onto the fire. We threw our shirts off to gather handfuls of bark and dried leaves.

The inferno crackled, its flames rising higher with each armful we tossed. What had once been a small pile of sticks and twigs was now a massive mound of branches, leaves, and anything we could find with the slightest combustibility.

When the fire grew large enough, Martin drew a circle around it with a sharpened stick. He used his bare hands and the stick to dig into the ground, ripping up clumps of dirt to throw around the fire. In the time it took me to deposit five armfuls, a moat, several inches wide and deep, encircled the blaze.

"To keep the fire from catching," Martin panted, catching my puzzled stare. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and coughed. "We need to survive, but we can't go burning the whole forest down, now, can we?"

When the hole was deep enough, Martin stood and dusted off his jeans. He sauntered off to follow me, rummaging through thick bushes and gathering wood. We made small talk, discussing things we were fond of in life or reminiscing about fond memories.

The wood we didn't want to burn for now was set aside into a large pile. At least, the pile was meant to be large. I couldn't shake off the feeling that every time we went to set something else down, it had shrunken instead of grown.

I shrugged off telling Martin about my suspicions. It was more than likely my own foolishness. My nerves were frayed, sitting around in the dark wilderness like this. Besides, if I'd proven something time and time again back home, it was that my perception of things was easily skewed. I could ask someone where something went while holding the very thing in my hands.

So I shoved the thought to the back of my mind, distracting myself by helping Martin wrestle a dilapidated log out of the underbrush. We both lifted with all our might. Clumps of dirt fell off as we lifted it, both our hands working in unison to keep it from falling.

The System's alert made me jump and lose my grip on the log. I quickly recovered, deciding to ignore the message until later. We struggled to lift the long, even between the two of us. After a battle that culminated in us tipping the log to fall over into the flames with a deafening crash, we both fell onto the ground, coughing and sputtering. Sweat glistened all over our exposed torsos.

I propped myself up with trembling arms to read the alert.

CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR BODY IS ADJUSTING TO THE SYSTEM.

[HIDDEN QUEST: A GREAT TRIUMPH] COMPLETED.

QUEST REWARDS: 1 WISHING STONE, RANDOM STAT INCREASE.

STRENGTH HAS INCREASED BY 1. CONSTITUTION HAS INCREASED BY 3.

YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!

Each notification rang off in rapid succession, making a cacophony of noise inside my head. I winced. The noise continued screeching in my ears, unrelenting, until I stretched out my hand to tap the large, flickering ACCEPT button.

WISHING STONE ADDED TO INVENTORY. STATS INCREASED. DUE TO BEING IN THE TRIAL STAGE, YOU CANNOT INCREASE YOUR LEVEL AT THE MOMENT.

Inventory? My thoughts evoked a grid-like window to appear on top of the System's messages. Inside was a crystal in the shape of a star, each of its five points a different color, ranging from red, orange, blue, green, and yellow.

WISHING STONE: GRANTS A SINGLE WISH. HOWEVER, THE PLAYER'S WISH MUST FIRST BE PROCESSED BY [???].

I studied the stone closer before deciding to close the inventory with a command in the form of a thought. The more I interacted with the System, the more I began to understand and think of it as a game-like power. Whatever it was, I had a feeling it would be the key to us surviving the first trial.

A yawn escaped my mouth. I looked around, studying my surroundings. The fire stood over a meter tall, a pillar of orange light that blew fiercely in the frigid wind. It was so hot the cold had no time to settle in at all.

Just as I was going to lay down, I saw it. A long, crudely shaped arm grabbed a handful of leaves and pulled them into the shadows, right through the earth.

"Martin," I croaked, gently shoving his side to wake him.

"Y--yeah?" Carefully and quietly, I pointed a finger at the shadow. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, as if doubting what he saw. When it latched onto one of the large branches, dragging it right through the earth, fear settled into his face.

"The shadows are robbing us of wood." I turned to face him. My hands trembled and cold sweat trickled down my forehead and neck.

To my surprise, he only groaned. It was a long, heavy, albeit terrified groan. He pretended to take it in stride, but I could see the way his body shivered as he watched it frantically snatch around in the dark for wood. "Get some sleep."

"What?" I blinked. "You're not going to?"

"We'll take watches," he advised. No, not advice. It was a command. "I'll take the first. You do second. Tomorrow we'll swap."

I gave a curt nod and flopped onto the sharp grass, trying to quell my fear by closing my eyes and forcing myself to sleep. Unfortunately, I wasn't trained to sleep on command, and no matter how I set about trying to get myself to fall asleep, it ended in miserable failure. I couldn't shake off a single question.

"We have enough wood to last the night." To my horror, my voice trembled. It was an attempt at bolstering faith, but from the way Martin sucked in air, it must've been a spectacular failure.

"That isn't the problem." He heaved a defeated sigh. "The problem is that we might be completely out of wood by tomorrow night. We need warmth and light from the fire, but what do we do if we can't keep it lit?"

His words shook me to the core. Not just because they were terrifying. They were, but they were perfectly honest as well. My mind drifted to my mother, whom I promised to keep living for. I thought about Miranda and everyone back home, the people the System said were in danger. It's not like we could go backward and cower in fear. We had to be strong for their sake.

"We're in a forest, aren't we?"

Martin fell into silence. I didn't bother to interrupt it—not when he knew as well as I that we only had one real course of action. We could sit around and whine, complaining about the new truth we uncovered, or we could move forward and try our best.

With one last stretch, Martin grumbled, "Good night, Isaac."

"Good night, Martin."

Sleep came quickly.