The jungle vanished on the third day.
It had always loomed behind me. A smear of green and shadow, no matter how far I rowed. A promise. A threat. A comfort.
But that morning, when I turned back, there was only water.
Gray. Endless. Moving forever.
My first home was gone.
But not forgotten.
The jungle would live in my bones until the day I didn't wake up.
If that day ever came.
It was my teacher.
My fire.
My first kill.
I touched my chest with two fingers. The old scars. The healed bite marks. The tattoos of claw and vine I'd carved myself with stone and soot.
That was the jungle's gift.
I would never forget.
Then I turned east.
To whatever waited.
To kill it.
At first, the sea was kind…
Waves gentle. Sky soft. Wind behind me.
I fished from the side of the boat, roasted meat in the clay fire bowl, watched the clouds move and the stars dance.
I slept wrapped in leaves and furs, dreaming of nothing.
Every morning, the sun touched my face.
And I rose.
For a time, I felt like I was winning.
Like the sea had accepted me.
But I was wrong.
The sea just waited.
The wind stopped on the eighth day.
The food spoiled. The water turned. I drank slime from the sides of the barrel and caught rain in cupped hands. Fish avoided my bait.
I died of thirst.
Dark.
Then light.
I patched the water sack, made a filter from tree fiber and sand.
Died of fever.
Dark.
Then light.
I rubbed fish bile on my sores, used jellyfish slime to cool the sickness.
I died again. And again.
Hunger. Rot. Exposure. Sunstroke.
Each time, I rose.
Each time, I remembered.
And I adapted.
I stitched the sail tighter. Added a second paddle. Reinforced the seams with turtle hide and coral glue.
I lashed shark teeth to the hull in rows, like armor.
I became the boat, and the boat became me.
A thing that refused to die.
I found islands.
Small ones. Mostly rock and weed and screaming birds.
But some had creatures.
Boars. Giant crabs. Snakes with fins. Wingless birds the size of dogs.
I landed like a god each time.
Killed the biggest thing I found.
Painted my face in its blood.
Carved my mark into a stone or tree.
Mine.
Then I left.
The sea pulled me forward, and I let it.
Storms came.
They always came.
They didn't ask questions. Didn't scream like beasts.
They just hit.
Rain like spears. Wind like fists. Lightning that boiled the air.
My boat flipped once. Smashed against rocks. I woke up on a reef with salt in my lungs and blood in my ears.
The boat was gone.
I searched for three days.
Built a raft from driftwood. Ate clams and jelly. Fought off gulls with a spear made from an urchin spine.
On the fourth day, I found it — half-sunk, lodged between coral teeth.
I screamed with joy.
Screamed with rage.
I rebuilt it. Stronger.
Again.
Always stronger.
I learned to dive.
Not just jump and flail.
Dive.
I wrapped stones to my waist to sink. Learned to hold my breath longer than thought possible. Chewed on jelly sacs to keep air longer. Filtered oxygen through reeds. Made crude lungs from whale-bubble and eel skin.
I could stay under long enough to hunt.
Fish were easy. The small ones, at least.
The big ones… harder.
The ones with scales like armor. With mouths that could split trees. With eyes that watched you like they knew you.
I hunted them one by one.
I stalked a manta the size of my raft for three days. Speared it through the eye. Got dragged for half a league before it died.
I ate its heart under moonlight.
Felt nothing.
Too weak.
Then I saw it.
The shark.
It was black as night. Bigger than my raft. Eyes like twin pits. It swam under me once while I dove.
I felt the water shiver.
I felt my heart throb.
Hunger.
My next kill.
I followed it for a week.
Watched it feed. Watched it tear a whale in half.
I learned its patterns. Its speed. Its silence.
Then I made a plan.
I lashed bone spears together into a trident. Sharpened to screaming points. Coated in venom from reef snakes.
I tied weights to my waist.
I dove with it at midnight.
Waited above the trench it called home.
It rose from the dark like a god of hunger.
I didn't wait.
I fell on it.
Speared into its gill, kicked off, rolled, dodged, stabbed again.
It thrashed. Bit. Took a chunk from my leg.
Didn't matter.
I killed it.
Took hours.
Then I carved its heart with a broken shell.
Took hours.
Then I ate it.
The sea changed for me that day. And me in it.
My lungs stopped burning when I dove.
My eyes saw farther. Clearer.
I could sense movement. Vibrations in the water. Echoes.
My skin thickened, tougher than before. Salt didn't sting.
I could swim like they did. Long, silent, with purpose.
And I knew.
I earned another power. Another skill.
My body was learning.
Evolving.
Becoming.
Power filled me.
But it wasn't enough.
Never enough.
Weeks passed.
Maybe months.
Time didn't matter out here.
The sky stayed the same.
The stars spun.
I marked days by deaths.
How many times I drowned. Starved. Froze.
I marked growth in scars. In the way I moved through water now. In the way the sea watched me differently.
I felt it.
A presence.
Like the jungle once had.
Something old lived down here.
Not gods.
Beasts.
And I wanted them all.
Kill them all.
Devour.
Them.
All.
Then one morning, I dove deeper than I ever had before.
The trench was darker than dark. No light. No sound. Just the slow, pressuring squeeze of the deep.
My skin stung. My head throbbed.
But I kept going.
And then I saw it.
Below me.
Moving.
Slow.
Massive.
Bigger than anything.
It didn't swim.
It drifted.
Eyes the size of trees.
A body like a moving mountain.
Fins like sails. A mouth that opened wider than a cave.
It hadn't seen me.
Yet.
I rose. Fast. Broke the surface. Gasped.
Climbed into the boat.
And laughed.
Laughed like thunder.
Like madness.
I had found it.
The king of this watery jungle.
And I would kill it.
Its heart would be mine.
Its power would be mine.
Not for pride.
Not for glory.
But because it existed.
And anything that existed could kill me.
So I would kill it first.
That was the rule.
Kill or be killed.