The morning was still in the gray-blue light of dawn, a time when even the loudest creatures seemed reluctant to break the morning hush. Heghmoh tightened the bindings on his spear and checked the edge of his hunting dagger before stepping out of his humble dwelling and joining the rest of the hunting party in the central clearing of the village.

They moved out with practiced quiet, hardly saying a word as they departed, slipping beneath the dense jungle canopy. Beams of early light pierced the leaves overhead like narrow golden lances as the group traced the tracks of their would-be prey. There was a strange air in the jungle. Where small critters should have been scurrying in the underbrush, there was stillness. Where birds should have been croaking their morning songs, there was silence.

One of the older hunters, Torvak, muttered, “Unusually quiet of late.”

Another clicked his tongue softly. “And the hunt has been thin. Animals are changing their paths. The elders say it is just the season, but not like any season I have seen.”

Heghmoh said nothing. He had felt it too for weeks now. A low hum beneath his feet. Strange glints in the air that vanished when he blinked. Sometimes the shadows seemed to pull in odd directions, as if the light itself were bending around something unseen. But none of the others detected these disturbances, not even Torvak, who could normally halt a hunt at the faintest rumble of a boar shifting its weight dozens of paces away.

“The beast moves strangely,” Torvak murmured, observing the tracks ahead of him.

The group followed increasingly erratic tracks deeper into the jungle, tracing the heavy-footed creature. The trail led them past twisted roots and into a section of jungle Heghmoh did not recognize. The air grew warmer. The light between the leaves flickered unnaturally, shimmering like heat on stone.

“We should not go farther,” Heghmoh whispered.

But the group pressed forward, deeper into the jungle, until suddenly the earth underfoot changed. It felt thin. A faint vibration thrummed up through Heghmoh’s boots. He paused, frowning, and pressed his hand against the ground.

Torvak, the keenest hunter of their band, felt nothing. “Keep up,” Torvak grunted.

The jungle hummed only for Heghmoh.

The soil was almost warm. A ripple of pressure rolled up Heghmoh’s arm, so slight he wondered if he imagined it. Then the air pressed against him, as though the jungle itself were pushing him back, urging him not to continue.

“Do you feel that?” he whispered.

The others shook their heads, Torvak impatiently motioning for him to keep up.

The vibration surged beneath him, rising like a held breath.

Heghmoh stepped forward,

          and the world shattered.

A burst of impossible force erupted around them. Light blazed without color. Sound tore through their ears without noise. The air warped, bending inward, then exploded outward in a blast that tore trees apart in spiraling arcs. The jungle floor split open beneath their feet in a surge of raw, uncontrolled weave.

The hunters at the front died instantly, incinerated in a flash. Others were flung into the dense jungle, hurled with such force that their bodies shredded when they struck the surrounding trees.

Heghmoh barely had time to gasp before something inside him surged awake. A sudden instinct, a shield of shimmering force snapping into place around him like a second skin. The pressure hammered against it, threatening to crush him, but the invisible barrier held.

He stumbled backward, sliding down soil that was turning to dust beneath him, until the blast finally faded.

Smoke drifted through the air. The jungle was utterly silent.

Heghmoh pushed himself up, trembling uncontrollably. Torvak, or what was left of him, lay a dozen paces away. The others were scattered in pieces across the devastation, twisted against shattered roots and broken stone. The ground where the leyline burst had occurred pulsed faintly, like the dying beat of a heart.

Heghmoh stared at his shaking hands. He could still feel the echo of the barrier that had enveloped him. Had the magic surge affected him differently, assaulting the others and protecting him? No. The barrier had come from somewhere else, from within him. A cold terror spread through his chest.

Heghmoh had always trusted the jungle. But as he stared at the ruin around him, he felt something shift in his chest. It was as though the jungle itself had turned its gaze away.

He ran.

By the time he staggered back into the village, covered in ash and blood, the villagers had gathered. Other hunting groups hurried back in alarm, pointing toward the distant blast, the direction he had come from. The elders recoiled at the sight of him. Mothers pulled children away. Hunters looked at him as if he carried death on his skin.

He tried to speak, to explain, but the words tangled in his throat.

“An explosion? From what origin?” one elder whispered.

“How did you survive when the others did not? He carries this magic on him,” said another.

“Or within him...” muttered a third.

Heghmoh dropped to his knees, desperate for them to listen.

But the elders conferred quietly, fear thick in their voices, glancing between him and the direction of the blast. Their verdict came swift and final.

“You are no longer welcome here.”

Heghmoh lifted his head, stricken. “I... I did not do this.”

“Leave now,” the eldest said. “Before you bring your ruin to us all.”

Heghmoh staggered to his feet and shambled out of the clearing. There was no arguing. Part of him believed they might be right. Why did he live and the others died? It was too risky to stay.

The jungle swallowed him as he crossed its threshold.

He did not look back.