The Teeth That Knew Me

"There's a moment when someone else's grief becomes a mirror you can't look away from. His wife. His toddler. Same ache, different face—and suddenly I couldn't carry anyone else's pain on top of my own."

The shadow panther's head greeted us before anything else.

It sat atop a wooden pole at the camp's entrance, a grotesque sentinel mounted with the kind of deliberate placement that spoke of intention rather than accident. Someone had put it there. Had chosen to display the severed remains of the creature that had nearly killed me, that had torn my leg apart and dragged me through the darkness like a toy being carried to a dog's bed.

The ute rolled to a stop, and I couldn't look away.

The panther's fur was jet-black, absorbing the sunlight rather than reflecting it, creating a silhouette of absolute darkness against the pale sky. Its jaws gaped open in a frozen snarl, the expression it must have worn in its final moments captured and preserved like a photograph made of flesh and bone. The teeth — those serrated teeth I knew so intimately now, that had punched through my skin and ground against my bone — glinted like rows of surgical steel, still stained with the rust-brown remnants of old blood.

My blood, I thought, and the realisation sent a cold finger tracing down my spine.

The tongue lolled from the creature's mouth, pink and obscene against the black fur, a splash of colour that somehow made the whole display more horrifying rather than less. And the eyes — those dead, glassy eyes that stared at nothing and everything — held none of the primal fury that must have blazed within them when the creature was alive. They were just... empty. Marbles set in a mask of death, reflecting the sky without seeing it.

Matted fur ringed the severed neck, crusted with dried blood that had turned nearly black in the sun. The cut was clean — Charity's work, probably, executed with whatever blade she carried and the kind of skill that came from practice I didn't want to imagine. The violence of the creature's death was written in every detail, a brutal counterpoint to the violence of its life.

I understood why they'd done it. The head was a warning, a declaration, a fuck-you to anything else that might be lurking in the darkness and considering our camp as a potential hunting ground. We killed one of yours, it said. We'll kill more if we have to.

But understanding didn't make it easier to look at.

The creature that had haunted my nightmares for the past twelve hours was now a decoration, stripped of its power and reduced to a trophy. I should have felt satisfaction. Triumph. Some sense of closure at seeing my attacker displayed in defeat.

Instead, I felt sick.

A glance beside me showed Nial's face, and the expression there was worse than anything I was feeling. The colour had fled his cheeks, leaving him pale as bleached bone, his eyes wide with a horror that went beyond surprise into something approaching catatonia. His mouth hung slightly open, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps.

This was his introduction to Clivilius. Not the portal or the strangely blue sky or even the news that he could never go home — this. A severed head mounted on a spike, dripping implied violence from every preserved detail.

Welcome to your new life.

"That's why we need you, Nial," Paul said, his voice cutting through the heavy silence that had settled over the cab.

He pointed toward the mounted head, his finger trembling slightly as it traced the outline of the panther's snarling visage. The gesture was meant to be explanatory, I think, but it came across as something closer to accusation — look at this, understand this, accept that this is real.

"We need you to help us build security fences around the camp's perimeter to keep us safe from the Shadow Panthers and any other dangers that may lurk in this new world."

Shadow Panthers. The name had a weight to it now, a specificity that transformed the abstract terror of "creature in the darkness" into something concrete and nameable. These things had a classification. A category. They were part of this world's ecology, as real and as dangerous as snakes or sharks or any other predator that had evolved to kill.

And we were their prey.

Nial rubbed at his eyes, the gesture speaking of exhaustion that went far beyond physical tiredness. His soul was tired. His capacity for processing new information had been overwhelmed, and now he was operating on reserves that had long since been depleted.

"I can't believe this is real," he admitted, his voice trembling with the effort of forming words. "I have a wife and young toddler to get home to. I can't stay here."

The confession hit me hard.

A wife. A toddler. A family waiting for him on the other side of the portal, wondering where he was, why he hadn't come home, what could possibly have delayed him. They would file a missing persons report eventually. Would plaster his face on social media, would organise search parties, would cling to hope long after hope had become cruelty.

They would never know. Would never understand. Would spend the rest of their lives wondering what had happened to the man who had simply vanished one ordinary day, swallowed by forces beyond their comprehension.

Just like Brianne will wonder about me.

The thought rose unbidden, sharp and poisonous, and I had to blink against the sudden sting behind my eyes. My fiancée was out there somewhere, carrying our daughter, waiting for me to come home. And I might never see either of them again. Might die in this wasteland without ever holding my child, without ever explaining why I'd disappeared, without ever saying goodbye.

The engine sputtered into silence as Paul killed the ignition. He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned toward Nial, his face softening with an empathy that seemed genuine.

"I understand how difficult this is for you, Nial," he said, his voice low and gentle.

"We've all got loved ones we've left behind," I added, the words coming out thick with emotion I couldn't quite suppress.

The ache of separation was a constant companion now, a dull throb that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. It lived in the space between my ribs, curled around my spine, nestled behind my eyes where tears waited to fall. I carried it everywhere, this grief for a life I hadn't finished living, and I suspected I would carry it until the day I died — whether that day came tomorrow or decades from now.

"But the fact is, we are here now and we need to work together or none of us are going to survive this place," Paul continued, his tone shifting from sympathy to something more insistent.

His hands gestured toward my leg — my wounded, bleeding, barely-functional leg — and the motion carried the weight of evidence. Look at what happens to people here. Look at the price of not being prepared. Look at what you could become if we don't protect each other.

Nial shook his head, the motion small and defeated. "I don't know if I can do this," he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper.

The words hung in the air between us, fragile and honest, a confession of fear that I understood more deeply than I wanted to admit. I didn't know if I could do this either. Didn't know if any of us could. The challenges of this place seemed designed to break people, to strip away everything you thought you knew about yourself and leave only raw, quivering need in its wake.

"You don't have to do this alone," Paul assured him, his words carrying a quiet strength. "We're here for you..."

But even as Paul spoke, I felt something shift inside me.

The weight of the moment — Nial's despair, the shadow panther's dead eyes, the constant throb of my wounded leg — pressed down on me with a force that made breathing difficult. I had been carrying so much since I'd arrived. The fear, the pain, the humiliation at the lagoon, the knowledge that an ancient entity had taken up residence in my skull and could manipulate my body at will.

I couldn't carry any more.

Not right now. Not while Nial's grief was so raw and so familiar that looking at him felt like looking in a mirror. Not while my leg screamed its displeasure and my blood continued its slow seep through bandages that couldn't seem to stay clean.

I needed to move. Needed to do something, anything, that might give me back some measure of control in a situation where control seemed like a distant memory.

The door handle was cold under my fingers as I flung it open, my movements jerky with an urgency I couldn't fully explain. Fresh air hit my face, carrying the scent of dust and heat and something else — something faintly metallic that might have been blood or might have been imagination.

"I'm going to the lagoon," I declared, the words coming out with a solemnity that surprised even me.

Paul and Nial both turned to look at me, their expressions shifting from conversation to concern, but I was already moving. Already easing myself out of the ute with the careful, deliberate motions of someone whose body had become an adversary rather than an ally.

"Paul can deal with Nial," I muttered under my breath, low enough that they might not have heard.

Let Paul handle the orientation. Let Paul explain the rules of this place, introduce Nial to the others, find him a tent and a purpose and whatever scraps of hope might be available. I had done my part — had welcomed the newcomer, had offered what comfort I could, had played the role of fellow survivor with as much sincerity as I could muster.

Now I needed answers.

Each step away from the ute sent fresh bolts of pain shooting up my leg, the wound protesting its abuse with increasing volume. But I pushed through it, my jaw clenched tight enough to ache, my focus narrowing to a single point.

The lagoon.

The place where Clive's power seemed strongest. The place where the water did impossible things and the entity's voice whispered clearest. The place where I had been violated and manipulated and used as a conduit for purposes I still didn't understand.

I was going back.

Not because I wanted to — god, no, every instinct screamed at me to stay as far from that cursed water as possible. But because the alternative was worse. The alternative was waiting, wondering, dreading the next time Clive decided to collect on debts I hadn't agreed to incur.

Clive, we need to talk!