Kurozane backed away slowly, his eyes locked on the circling Shadowed Maw. The creature's low growls and the twitching of its spiked tails kept him on edge. He knew the fleeting defense of the shadowy tendril was not enough to save him. He needed to escape, but the dense forest offered no clear path.
As the Shadowed Maw lunged again, its speed surprising for its size, Kurozane reacted purely on instinct. A surge of terror mixed with a desperate desire to be anywhere else flooded his senses. He didn't understand what happened next, but it felt as though the shadows around him deepened and swirled with an unnatural intensity.
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to flicker. The trees wavered, the light shifted, and the growling of the Shadowed Maw seemed to come from a distance, even though it was mere feet away. Kurozane felt a strange sensation, like a momentary disconnect from his physical surroundings, a feeling of being briefly submerged in a cold, silent void.
Then, just as suddenly, it stopped. Kurozane found himself several feet away from where he had been standing, now partially concealed behind a thick cluster of thorny vines. The Shadowed Maw skidded to a halt, its red eyes wide with confusion, sniffing the air as if its prey had vanished into thin air.
Kurozane gasped, his lungs burning. He had no conscious control over what had just happened, but he knew it was connected to the darkness within him. It felt like a desperate, involuntary lurch… a sudden, disorienting shift in space.
The Shadowed Maw, its predatory instincts overriding its confusion, began to cautiously circle the area where Kurozane had been, trying to pick up his scent. It snarled, frustrated by his sudden disappearance.
Kurozane, hidden behind the vines, felt a wave of nausea and disorientation. The brief journey through… whatever that was… had left him feeling weak and unsteady. But he was alive, at least for now.
He realized that this accidental ability, this sudden shift, might be his only way to survive in this terrifying forest. He didn't understand it, didn't know how to trigger it intentionally, but the instinct to escape danger had somehow activated it. He had instinctively stepped, or perhaps been pulled, into some kind of veiled path within the shadows. The question now was whether he could ever control it, and whether it would protect him from the dangers that lurked in the monster forest.