The Rules of Wolves

Let me get something straight.

Building a faction isn't about food or fortifications.

It's about narrative control.

You either own the story of your survival, or someone else writes it for you. Calen was already trying to turn us into a cautionary tale—"the idiots who thought a patch of land could protect them." Mercer, if he ever noticed us, would probably label us future corpses.

Not on my watch.

So on the morning of our fourth day, I called a war council.

Which is just a fancy term for "everyone sitting in a half-circle around a burnt-out fire pit while I try to sound smarter than I am."

Reef had dirt on his arms and a bow slung over one shoulder. Lenn had engine grease on his neck and was halfway through modifying a shock trap into a flamethrower. Ava, of course, looked like she'd already dissected three of us in her head. And Theo? Theo was drawing again.

Always drawing.

"What's the plan?" Ava asked flatly.

I tapped the crude map we'd drawn in the dirt—outlines of nearby valleys, water sources, enemy sector markers. I pointed at the outer edge of Sector Eleven, to the north.

"There's a quarry here," I said. "Abandoned. Probably overlooked."

Lenn squinted. "Resources?"

"Stone. Possibly metals. Maybe—if we're lucky—power cores from old mining rigs. We scavenge, we reinforce. And more importantly?" I looked around. "We put out a message."

Reef raised an eyebrow. "You want to broadcast?"

"Not literally. Just... actions. People need to see us pushing out. Reclaiming. Expanding."

"Drawing attention," Ava said.

"Drawing respect," I corrected. "We stay defensive too long, we start looking like prey."

Theo stopped sketching. "Then we go. Now. Before the island changes again."

Ava's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

He looked up at her, voice lower. "It's shifting. The terrain. The old lines don't match anymore."

"Skull Island has tectonic instability?" Lenn asked.

"No," Theo said softly. "It has mood swings."

That shut us all up.

We left by dusk.

Ava, Reef, and I took point. Theo came with us, said he felt something pulling him north anyway. Lenn stayed behind to reinforce the perimeter—probably also to test his new incendiary wall defense, which he named "The Toaster" for reasons that were not explained and frankly should not be.

The trip to the quarry took four hours.

Two of them in silence.

The jungle here felt... older. Less vibrant. Like it was waiting. Watching. Even the birds were quieter, and that's never a good sign.

By the time we reached the rim of the quarry, the sun was bleeding down behind the trees and casting long shadows over the pit below.

It was massive.

Rusting scaffolding framed the edges. Cranes long-dead sagged against cliffs. But the real treasure? A machine half-buried in rock, shaped like a spider had married a tank and given birth to an industrial abomination.

Reef whistled. "Jackpot."

Ava didn't respond. She was already scanning the far side with binoculars.

"I see movement," she said.

I tensed. "Mercer's?"

"No."

She handed me the binoculars.

I zoomed in.

Three figures. Lightly armed. Setting up some kind of scanner device near a fallen generator. They weren't Calen's—wrong colors. Definitely not Mercer's—these guys looked... lost.

Theo peered over my shoulder. "Freelancers," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Because they don't belong anywhere."

We moved in fast and loud.

Let them see us coming. No need to spook desperate people. That's how accidents happen.

When we stepped into view, they froze. Two raised weapons. The third—probably their tech—dropped his scanner and scrambled behind a crate.

"Easy," I called out, hands up. "We're not scav raiders. We're new."

The older of the three—gray beard, patch over one eye—narrowed his gaze. "New?"

"We're claiming territory south of here. Setting up a neutral zone."

The tech guy laughed bitterly. "There's no such thing as neutral on Skull Island."

I shrugged. "We're trying anyway. You want a hand with that generator, or should we just strip your rig and walk?"

That got their attention.

Five minutes later, we were gathered around a cracked power node while Theo and the freelancer tech argued over wiring.

Ava kept her weapon loosely slung but her gaze never left the tree line. Reef circled the area, setting quiet tripwires as insurance.

Eventually, the generator sparked once—twice—then whirred to life with a satisfying hum.

The tech guy—his name was Bren—grinned. "Didn't think I'd see it working again."

Theo nodded, still distracted. "The core's not stable. It'll run, but not long."

"Long enough to recharge our jump pack," said the one-eyed leader. "We're headed east. Trying to cross into the Ashlands."

"Why?" I asked.

"There's a rumor Mercer's pulling out of parts of the north. Power vacuum. We're aiming to take a slice."

Reef returned just in time to hear that. "You and what army?"

"Us and whoever's tired of kneeling."

I liked that.

I offered him my hand. "Jack Gulf. We're setting up base in Sector Twelve. If things go south in the Ashlands, you've got a fallback."

He hesitated.

Then shook.

That handshake meant something.

We returned to camp by nightfall.

Tired. Dirty. Satisfied.

Theo was the first to notice it.

The fire pit had been moved.

By exactly three inches.

Not destroyed. Not tampered with.

Adjusted.

Ava drew her blade. "Someone's been here."

Reef checked the perimeter. "No breach."

Theo crouched and ran a hand over the stone ring. "It's a message."

I crouched beside him. "From who?"

He looked up at me. "Not Calen. Not Mercer."

Then he paused.

"…Something older."

And in the ashes of the fire, we found a single black feather.

It wasn't from any bird I'd ever seen.

It shimmered in the dark like it remembered the night.

And under it?

A mark.

The same one Theo had drawn back in Chapter 6.

The tower that wasn't supposed to exist.

Somewhere Deep Below Skull Island…

The robed figure stood before a new portal. The smoke inside it boiled.

"The Codex is awake," the voice behind him whispered.

The figure did not turn. "And the island is testing him."

A pause.

"If he passes?"

The robed one finally turned.

"Then we give him the next piece."

The portal pulsed—briefly showing a glimpse of Jack's face in the smoke.

And beneath the island, something ancient cracked its eye open for the first time in centuries.

The Game had begun again.

And this time, it remembered.

[To be continued.]

Absolutely. Here's:

What Monsters Remember

A feather.

That's all it was.

No threats, no blood, no demands carved into the trees. Just a black feather and a burned symbol that wasn't supposed to exist. The tower from Theo's map. The tower Ava saw when she was thirteen. The one the world said wasn't real.

Now it was leaving us breadcrumbs.

"Anyone here allergic to eldritch symbolism?" I asked.

Nobody laughed.

Reef picked up the feather with two sticks like it might explode. "It's not from a bird."

"No kidding," Ava muttered.

She was pacing now. Classic Ava sign of mental overload—her version of 'don't talk to me or I'll medically paralyze you.'

Theo crouched beside the symbol. The ash swirled slightly as he breathed. "It's watching us," he whispered.

"What is?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

That night, no one really slept. Except Lenn, who slept too deeply, which I'm convinced is either a sign of utter peace or brain damage. Reef took first watch. Ava took second. I took third because I hate myself.

Around 3 a.m., the jungle went dead quiet.

No bugs. No wind. Even the leaves stopped rustling. You don't notice how loud nature is until it shuts up like it saw something crawl out of the wrong dimension.

And then I heard it.

Not footsteps. Not growls.

Breathing.

Heavy. Deep. Like a bear chained in a cave.

But it was above me.

Not on the ground.

In the trees.

I looked up and saw it for less than a second—a silhouette. Long-limbed, hunched, ribs like jagged blades. A face too smooth to be real, too symmetrical to be human. Its eyes glowed not with light, but with absence. As if they absorbed color instead of reflected it.

It blinked once.

And vanished.

I didn't sleep.

Neither did anyone else, really. By dawn, we were all tense. Theo was scribbling again, but not maps. Visions. Drawings of towers that bled. Faces stitched together. And that creature—over and over again, always in the corner of the frame, always just watching.

"This thing," Ava said, "is trying to herd us."

"To where?" I asked.

Theo answered without looking up. "To the center."

"Of the island?"

"No," he said. "The center of everything."

Okay, great. Normal day.

We agreed to scout east—toward one of the old relay stations rumored to still be active. If we could hijack its signal, we'd be able to map out nearby sectors, intercept enemy comms, maybe even broadcast a message. A beacon.

A warning.

The path took us through the Black Hollow. Sounds spooky?

Yeah, because it was.

Trees here were taller, trunks warped. Their bark pulsed slightly when you touched it. Like breathing skin. Theo said they were called "nervewoods," and that they used to grow around the foundations of the ancient towers—back when the world still believed in gods and wasn't entirely sure which ones were trying to kill us.

At the halfway mark, we found a body.

Or most of one.

Slumped against a tree, half fused into the bark. His eyes were still open.

And he was smiling.

"What the hell happened to him?" Reef asked.

Ava knelt down and examined the body with surgical efficiency. "He didn't die from wounds. He died because the tree wanted him to."

"Like… absorbed?"

She nodded. "Like he belonged to it."

I took a step back. "Okay. Let's all agree to not belong to anything for a while."

We made it to the relay station by dusk.

It was surprisingly intact. Concrete shell, satellite dish mostly upright, solar panels long-dead. But inside? Miraculously preserved tech. The kind of setup that made Lenn look like a caveman with a toaster.

The door was locked.

Which meant someone still used it.

We breached anyway.

Standard formation: Ava in first, me second, Reef covering the rear. Theo stayed outside to mark the terrain—said he didn't want to be inside "while the building remembered."

I honestly didn't want to ask.

Inside, it smelled like copper and ozone. And something sweeter underneath.

Like rotten fruit.

A corridor led to a central command room. Dozens of screens flickered—some dead, others cycling through strange symbols. Not numbers. Not letters. Just shapes. Circles inside triangles inside shifting lines.

Ava flicked a switch.

The system purred.

"This shouldn't be running," she muttered.

I stepped closer to one of the screens—and froze.

It was showing us.

Right now.

From the hallway. From the outside. From above.

I spun around.

No cameras.

Not a single visible lens.

Reef backed away. "This thing's scrying us."

Magitech.

Pre-Game tech.

Maybe even pre-history.

One screen flickered. Shifted. Showed a new image.

Not us.

Not Skull Island.

But a room.

Stone floor. Spiral staircase