Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

toward the closest homes while he waited for the light to fade to dusk. They were more rough timber one-room shacks than actual houses.

It was less than ten yards to the nearest clothesline. Flapping in the faint breeze he saw a dark cloak, some white medieval-looking shirts, and dark pants that looked worse off than his jeans.

The hills on either side of the small village cloaked the wooden shacks in gloom well before the sun fully set.

Just enough light for Hal to see by. Hopefully, enough to grab some clothes and maybe some food if he was lucky.

Chapter 02

Under the failing light, Hal crept out of the woods. He kept as low as possible, moving between the walls of swaying laundry hanging out to dry. Every footstep felt impossibly loud as it crunched on the dry grass.

So far he only found bed linens and women’s clothes. Up ahead he saw the dark cloak he spotted from the forest and made a beeline for it.

The brown cloak was in direct view of an open window. And on its sill was something that looked a lot like a pie. Hal crept closer to the cloak, but his eyes – and his stomach – could only focus on the food another five or six yards away.

A distant echoing boom resounded and he found his vision drawn up and over his left shoulder to the dark, bruised sky. He managed to catch the tail end of a flash. Then another series of dull explosions, like distant fireworks, and more flashes.

Isn’t that out of order? He thought, entranced by the spectacle. The lights came after the sound. It should have been reversed.

The booming flashes of light came again. This time, he paid closer attention. Two booms, three flashes, two booms.

A signal. It was too regular to be anything else.

It repeated again a few seconds later.

Hal turned his attention back to the cloak and pulled it free from the line. In the flash of the signal fireworks, Hal looked back to the pie. All thought of taking it flew from his head at the sight.

A young woman stood at the window watching the sky, a heavy knife in her hand to cut the pie. In the bright revealing light of the fireworks, she saw Hal.

Her expression sprang from one emotion to the next. Worry, confusion, then anger when she realized Hal was stealing, and finally wide-eyed horror when she caught sight of his forearm.

And the glowing golden light that stood out in stark contrast to the gloom that fell between each flash of the night sky.

In the hours since Hal covered it in mud, the masking stuff had dried and cracked apart. When he went to pull the cloak down, the gold light of the mark shone clear through the dried dirt.

He didn’t wait for the woman to recover her wits. Hal turned and fled back toward the forest. All thought of getting any food or more clothes abandoned.

Glancing over his shoulder, Hal saw the woman cock back her arm. He was already halfway to the forest. There was no way she could hit him from that distance.

The woman didn’t seem to agree.

Hal watched in horror as the knife flipped end over end toward him. Its graceful arc put it on a collision course with the flapping blankets of laundry.

At the last second, the wind shifted like some cruel joke. The knife that should have gotten tangled up in the sheets, sailed clear over the dozens of yards right for Hal’s back.

Hal dropped to the dirt as fast as he could.

The blade sliced through the air where he was standing a heartbeat before. It made a dull thump somewhere in the treeline. The distance worked in his favor. It gave him time to react, no matter how impossible the woman’s throw was.

The [Broken Woman] uses Knife Toss.

The attack misses.

He scrambled to his feet, the flash of text vanishing before he could focus on it. Hal tried to find the knife but gave up when he didn’t see it after a few seconds of searching.

He didn’t have the time.

The small village came alive with the sound of shouts and a chillingly discordant horn that sounded throughout every home.

Any guilt he had about stealing the cloak vanished.

What’s petty theft matter if they already wanted to hurt me or kill me?

Once he was beneath the thick boughs of the forest, Hal took a moment to don the cloak. It was rougher than anything he’d ever felt but he immediately felt warmer.

It struck him as odd that the effect was so complete and stark. Body heat simply did not work like that. It was almost like….

Magic, came the unbidden thought, and he pushed it roughly away. But it came back with a vengeance as he made his way deeper into the woods with no course in mind beyond putting as much distance between him and that last village.

If there was magic, and he was marked, shouldn’t he have some way of defending himself? He was as weak as a toddler compared to everyone else.

Rather than feeling like he was in an epic movie, he felt scared and alone.

Night came swiftly in the covered forest.

A steady downpour tried to drown him. Thankfully, the cloak held up. His feet ached, and he was covered in at least two dozen bleeding scratches and bruises from slips, falls, and stray branches.

No movie, video game, or book ever prepared him for how impossibly dark it gets when there are no street lights, no moon, and no stars. In the depths of the forest, it went beyond simple darkness to an abyssal ink.

He couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face.

Fear was the only thing keeping him going, yet the worry of stumbling into a dry gully and snapping his leg or worse finally forced him to stop. He hadn’t heard any signs of pursuit for at least an hour.

With the cloak about him, he was reasonably dry and it was large enough