Most people in this modern matrix think literature is just words on a screen. They don’t understand that real, heavy storytelling has to be dragged out of the elements. It’s written in the dirt before it ever hits the page.
For months, I’ve been out here. Tracking day after day in the freezing air, the frost biting through the layers, the silent, heavy grind that small minds will never comprehend. You stand in the silence until your ears pick up that sharp, unmistakable tinkling on the dry leaves—the sudden acoustic warning that something alive is moving through your perimeter.
You trudge through the thermal beds, tracking the paths where the heat is stored, feeling the thick, cold black mud and wet moss filling your rugged boots. It’s a testing ground. It tests your patience when you circle back and find fresh, deep hoof prints pressed directly into the mud where you were stationed just moments before—a silent mockery from the wild, showing you that you missed your window while you were waiting.
The hunger grows in your belly. The cold settles into your bones. But you don't break your frame. You stand frozen, keeping a quiet patience, staring up at the jagged ridgeline until the shadows finally separate.
Suddenly, your prey appears.
Your mind goes entirely cold. Your numbing hands train themselves onto the rigid bowstring. You pull back the heavy weight of the traditional recurve, feeling the raw energy of the wood and fiberglass locked at your cheek. Your eye concentrates, burning a hole through the thicket. But the woods aren't generous—the dense, tangled limbs of the brush are blocking your lanes, forcing you to hold, hold, and wait for the gap.
Then, the herd darts. The chase is on, and you are stalking them through a blinding maze of timber.
You catch up, eyes locked, chest to chest. The deer are panting hard now, their pink tongues hanging out. To an outsider, it looks like they are laughing at you—but their tight, vibrating body language says they are absolutely terrified. As you stare them down, the scene shifts before your eyes. The cream-colored deer part, replaced by the heavy, grey-colored ghost of the woods. You find yourself standing eye-to-eye with The General. He’s the leader, the only one sporting a massive crown of antlers, his fur marked with distinct black spots.
You find your anchor. You release.
Thwack.
The speed is instantaneous, but the survival instincts of the wild are faster. The second the General hears the sudden vibration of the string, he ducks and dodges, slipping the lane like a shadow. Your nerves try to shake as a portion of the herd panics and bolts, while the remaining number literally surrounds you—standing in your space, panting, challenging your presence.
Under immense, suffocating pressure, you don't panic. You renock. You focus. You draw, aim, and hold the line. Your other eye and ears are scanning the wider vicinity, tracking the movement of the brush as you loose the second arrow.
One turns to face you head-on, pivots at the last millisecond, and the arrow connects.
That is the heavy moment where the poetry meets the iron. Your mind is forced to instantly process the gravity of the hunt—watching a raw, primitive life force begin to drain, yet still run with terrifying power. The familiar woods instantly transform into a chaotic, disorienting maze. In the frantic aftermath of the struggle, arrows break against the timber, and the bolts for your limbs suddenly disappear into the brush. The forest fills with the eerie, haunting cries of the deer, the jumping commotion echoing through the trees like a wild pony kicking and bucking at a rodeo.
Then, the storm passes. The chaos settles back into the earth, and the silence returns.
But the real battle begins when you unzip your shelter and lay down in the darkness of the tent. Before sleep even takes you, the entire world of the woods turns completely on you. The heavy weight of the kill settles into the fabric of the canvas—flooding your space with a sudden, suffocating wave of guilt, remorse, and raw shame.
When your eyes finally close, the nightmare begins. Your subconscious twists the chase against you. In your night dreams, you become the hunted. You are under fire, bullets flying as you are being shot at inside the walls of your own home, targeted out in the open at a crowded homecoming game, and hunted down in the exact same fields where you tracked your prey. You startle awake in sweaty, breathless agony, gasping for air in the dark.
Yet, as the sun finally rises up over the trees, the perspective shifts.
Sitting before a stone hearth, you prepare the harvest. That woodsy, caramelized meat tastes incredibly good, yet holds a deep, lingering bitterness that tracks straight back to the night's trials. But as the warmth hits your chest, you feel an unshakeable, primal connection with your ancestors who walked this exact line of survival before you.
As you look around at the dried brush gathered by the door, your eyes settle directly onto a 34-inch, razor-sharp steel-tipped arrow—stained with dark, dried blood. Looking at that iron and blood, I have the exact raw truth and physical weight needed to complete the final forest scene in The Written Soul Saga.
Welcome to the uncut world. The Saga is live on Payhip.