Chapter 7: The Sound That Split the World
Sleep did not come gently.
The forest dimmed.
Something cracked through it.
A sound.
Sharp.
Contained.
Too clean to be thunder.
Too sudden to be branch or stone.
It split the air.
His body was upright—
not this body, but the other one.
Lighter.
Narrower.
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Hard ground beneath his feet. Flat. Cold.
A dark, small shape with straight edges in someone’s hand.
The way fingers wrapped around it felt familiar.
The way it was held—intentional.
The sound came again.
The world struck inward.
Pain tore through his chest.
Not teeth.
Not claws.
A force that entered without warning.
Air vanished.
The ground rushed up—
Stone. Smooth. Unforgiving.
Another crack of that sound—
Closer.
Too close.
Light fractured.
Voices blurred.
His body refused to draw breath.
Warmth spread beneath him.
Too fast.
Then—
Nothing.
—
He tore awake.
Forest.
Wet leaves against his chest.
Air filled his lungs fully.
He inhaled again, harder.
No tearing inside.
No spreading warmth.
He lowered his head and stared at his own body.
A broad chest, thick ribs beneath fur.
He pressed a claw lightly against the center of it.
Solid.
Alive.
But the pain had struck higher.
Closer to his head.
The distance between throat and heart had been shorter.
Narrower.
He could still feel the shock of it—how breath had failed, how the world had tilted.
He flexed his claws.
They answered.
The memory did not.
That body had not had claws.
The sound lingered in his mind.
Clean, violent, unnatural.
It wasn’t thunder or predator—it was something made.
Something shaped.
He lay still beneath the branches.
The forest continued around him as if nothing had broken.
Insects.
Wind.
The distant shift of something large moving through trees.
One thing cut through the confusion—
That pain had ended him.
And it had not ended this body.
