The world tilts when the wolf slams into me.
The impact is a physical wall of muscle and bone, throwing me back with a force that steals the air from my lungs. My head snaps back, the base of my skull cracking against something hard and damp—a root, a stone, I can't tell. For a breathless, jagged instant, the forest explodes into a blinding white light, and then everything plunges into a heavy, weightless dark.
Sound dulls to a slow, distant hum, like I’ve been plunged into the depths of a freezing lake. The air in this void is thick and unmoving, pressing against my chest. Somewhere far away, on the surface of the living world, I hear the visceral sounds of a hunt: claws raking through the earth, the sickening snap of bones, the low vibration of a predator’s snarl. But it feels unreal—a
