Wounds [Discovery Drafts]

Jake was hit by a bus on the way to school and transmigrated to a new world... approximately 12 years ago. Now he's a crotchety old man of 26 living alone in some unknown forest, staying as far away from any form of civilization as possible for reasons he doesn't like to think about... until something stumbles out of the darkness and into his campsite, threatening his self-imposed isolation with memories of weapons, magic, warmth, and worst of all, conversation. Most worrying of all is the magic causing creature of the forest to twist and change; they transform into beasts, and they have his scent. The wolves are coming, with gnashing teeth and claws that rend through flesh, with minds too cruel to have ever been born of nature. To survive, he'll have to put his trust in a person he's only just met; but there's a reason he's chosen to live alone, in a world with magic, in forests filled with monsters. He'll have to decide if trust is worth the risk, what he owes and is owed, and how long it'll take before he's betrayed by the stranger peering at him from the corner of his eyes... or how long before he betrays the stranger to save himself. Even if he makes it out of the forest, surviving the beasts and the stranger, where would he go? This world has no place for him, no land under the cold light of the moon that would want him, except for the holes he carves in the forest with the shadows of leaves against his back. The forest is what he knows. The forest is all that knows him. But the world is bigger than the forest, and whatever change the wolves underwent that turned them from animals into beasts, into monsters... It's not going away. There are Dungeons now, leaking magic into the earth like acid rain seeping into ground water and polluting the wells and rivers of the world. The world is about to twist and change; it is about to transform. The world will need heroes to face the darkness. And whether or not he understand it, Jake will be one of them. One day. Right now, he's a broken man, alone in the forest with a sword and a fire roaring at his feet when something howls in the dark and the pale, cold moon peers down through the cracks in the canopy onto his shoulders like a floodlight, holding him in place like a deer in front of a car, like prey caught in the slitted eyes of a predator peering out of the dark. The world bites. The world leaves wounds. The world will watch him bleed out into the dirt. Unless he leaves something behind. Unless he twists and changes... Unless he transforms. Expect:- No Grim-Dark - Slow burn- Multiple mcs- Bad jokes- No AI Discovery draft chapters of Wounds update every Friday @ 12:20pm EST. Hit Follow to be notified when the next chapter drops.  Cover by Grassy.