Li Fan had stripped a length of bark from a root poking through the alcove wall, scraping off the outer layer with his thumbnail before forcing himself to chew it. It was bitter, dry, and near impossible to swallow, but the hollow ache in his stomach dulled a little with each mouthful. Not food, not really — but enough to quiet the worst of the emptiness clawing at his gut.
He leaned back against the stone, chewing slowly, and let himself breathe for the first time in what felt like hours.
Then the thought hit him, sharp and sudden: he had no idea whose cave this was.
He sat up straight, bark forgotten in his hand. The alcove had felt like shelter — solid rock at his back, walls on three sides, a place to catch his breath. But shelter for him could just as easily be shelter for something else. Something that had already claimed this space and simply hadn't come home yet. If whatever lived here returned in the dark while he was curled up near the entrance, there would be nowhere to run. No warning. Just teeth or claws out of the black before he even had time to stand.
He couldn't stay exposed like this.
Li Fan got to his feet, dropped the bark, and turned toward the back of the alcove, where the gray light from outside gave way to solid black. If there was a deeper pocket of the cave — a narrow crevice, a defensible corner, anything smaller than his own body — that would be safer than sitting out in the open near the mouth of the cave.
He pressed one hand flat against the wall and stepped forward into the dark.
The stone was cold and damp under his palm, slick in places where water had seeped through some crack far above. He kept his steps slow, sliding his boots forward before committing his weight, feeling for uneven ground with the toe of each foot. The tunnel narrowed as he went, the ceiling dropping low enough that he had to duck, his shoulders brushing rock on both sides.
The dry, dusty smell of the outer alcove faded the deeper he went, replaced gradually by something heavier in the air — a thick, earthy dampness that didn't smell right.
A few more careful steps in, his boot came down on something soft and uneven, sinking slightly under his weight. He froze.
The smell hit him a half-second later — foul, thick, and overwhelming, cutting straight through the mineral scent of the tunnel. He crouched down, hand trembling slightly as he reached out to feel the ground in front of him. His fingers sank into something loose and fibrous, still faintly warm.
He recoiled, yanking his hand back, his stomach turning. A pile of it, mounded against the tunnel wall — fresh. Whatever left this had been here recently, and from the size of the pile alone, it wasn't small.
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His heart started pounding again, the same cold spike of fear from the clearing. He was standing in the den of something large, something that could come back at any moment, and he had nowhere left to retreat that wasn't already deeper into its territory.
He forced himself to think instead of panic.
Memories of articles and survival guides he'd read late at night surfaced one after another, half-remembered fragments he'd never expected to actually need. Predators tracked prey by scent above almost everything else. And his scent, whatever it was to this world, didn't belong here. He was something foreign dropped into an ecosystem that had never smelled a human being before. That alone might be enough to draw attention he couldn't survive.
He looked down at the pile in the dark, and even through his revulsion, the logic held.
If he smelled like the beast that lived here instead of like an outsider, whatever tracked by scent might pass right over him.
He gagged before he even reached down, throat convulsing at the thought of what he was about to do. But he forced his hand forward anyway, scooping up a thick handful of the foul mess, and smeared it across his jacket, dragging it over his arms, his sleeves, the exposed skin of his neck. The stench closed around him like a wall, thick enough to taste at the back of his throat. He gagged again, doubling over, forcing himself not to retch it back up.
He kept going until every visible inch of him carried the smell — arms, chest, the back of his neck, even a smear across his jaw where his hand had shaken.
Coughing, eyes watering from the smell, Li Fan crawled further back into the narrowest gap he could find — a crevice barely wide enough for his shoulders, tucked behind a jut of rock that would block any direct line of sight from the main tunnel. He wedged himself into the space and pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.
The cold from the stone bit through his jacket, sharp against his back even through the layer of filth coating him. He shivered, teeth chattering once before he clenched his jaw to stop it. Somewhere above him, water dripped in slow, irregular intervals, the only sound in the absolute darkness.
He closed his eyes, though it made no difference in the black. His whole body ached, his stomach was still hollow, and the smell clinging to his skin was almost unbearable at close range. But underneath all of it, he stayed still. Silent. Waiting.
There was nothing left to do now but survive the night.
Somewhere deep in the tunnel behind him, so faint he almost mistook it for his own pulse, the stone beneath his back trembled once — a single, low vibration, gone as quickly as it came.