by MirzaWriter
Raven has spent nine years reading the Hollow Wood the way other men read scripture — every silence, every step, every sign that keeps a hunter alive one more day. It has to be enough, with a sister to feed and a debt only he's ever admitted to himself.Then the boundary stones start moving on their own. The birds go quiet before anything's wrong. And on the night the fog rolls in two hours early, something climbs out of the tree line that won't hold still long enough to have a shape — and doesn't go down when an arrow finds it.Raven doesn't survive the night.He wakes up anyway. Same stone. Same forest. Wrong sky. And four words hanging in the air that a hunter who's never heard of a "system" in his life has no business being able to read:[World Save Corrupted.]Something already knows he shouldn't be able to see that message. And it's standing right behind him.
