Wood Demon - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: A Rude Awakening in Crimson

The first sensation was the biting cold, seeping insidiously through cheap denim and a t-shirt that suddenly felt as substantial as wet tissue paper. It clawed at Jack’s skin, a damp, earthy chill that vibrated up from the ground beneath him, making his teeth click together in a Morse code of misery before he was even properly awake. The second assault was the smell – an aggressive, almost dizzying perfume of sodden earth, the rich, sweet decay of a thousand autumns’ worth of leaves, and the sharp, resinous tang of pine. It was a world away from his tiny, perpetually laundry-and-stale-pizza-scented apartment. This was… aggressively organic.

Jack groaned, a pathetic sound that seemed to be instantly absorbed by the oppressive, listening silence that followed. His eyelids felt weighted, caked with sleep-sand or perhaps, he darkly suspected, actual dirt. He tried to pry them open, his lashes catching like tiny, stubborn Velcro strips. Where in the godforsaken, Frito-deprived corners of the universe was he? Last he remembered, he was gloriously deep into a marathon session of ‘Naruto’ anime, a half-eaten, tragically abandoned bag of chili cheese Fritos his only companion, the faint glow of his monitor painting the fight of Uchiha Madara and Hashirama Senju. He’d definitely, probably, almost certainly passed out. But his couch, a lumpy beast of indeterminate age and questionable stains, was definitely not this… aggressively textured. Or this uncomfortably damp.

He finally managed to crack an eye open, then the other, blinking against a darkness so profound it felt like a physical substance. Not the familiar, comforting dark of his bedroom, where the neon blush of the city lights always managed to bleed through the cheap blinds, but a profound, inky blackness that seemed to actively drink the very idea of light. Above him, a dense, tangled latticework of skeletal branches clawed at a sky that wasn’t truly black, but the deepest, bruised indigo, hinting at the dying embers of a long-gone sunset, or perhaps the faintest, most reluctant promise of a far-off dawn. He was… outside? In a forest? Had his building’s notoriously eccentric landlord finally decided to redecorate the entire apartment complex as a Druidic shrine?

“Okay, either I got blackout drunk and decided urban LARPing was my new calling, or my Frito-induced coma was significantly more serious than I initially assessed,” he mumbled, his voice emerging as a dry, raspy croak. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing as his palm pressed against something sharp, unforgiving – a jagged little rock, probably nursing a grudge against unsuspecting hands. Definitely not his couch, unless it had undergone some serious, geology-themed renovations.

Panic, cold and sharp as the offending stone, began to prickle insistently at the edges of his awareness, like an overdue bill collector. He scrambled to his feet, or attempted to. His legs felt strangely heavy, leaden, yet simultaneously imbued with a bizarre, thrumming energy he couldn’t quite place, like his blood had been replaced with low-voltage carbonated soda. He patted himself down with growing alarm. Wallet? Vanished. Phone? A gaping, tech-shaped hole in his pocket and his heart. Keys? Probably keeping the wallet and phone company on their unscheduled vacation. “Great. Just great. Stripped for parts in the wilderness by particularly thorough squirrels. My mother always warned me those video games would lead to a bad end. Didn’t think she meant actual bad end, with, you know, trees and potential dismemberment.”

He took a cautious, tentative step, then another, his worn sneakers squelching with a mournful sigh in the damp earth. The forest – because it was undeniably, unequivocally a forest, ancient and vast from the sheer oppressive feel of it – was unnervingly, disturbingly silent. No chirping crickets performing their nightly symphony, no distant, reassuring hum of traffic, not even the furtive rustle of a nocturnal creature looking for a late-night snack. Just his own breathing, which was starting to sound suspiciously loud and ragged in the profound stillness, like a broken accordion.

“Hello?” he called out, his voice barely more than a hopeful whisper, then immediately winced. “Yeah, real smart, Jack. Five-star survival strategy. Announce your presence to whatever axe-murdering hermit, overly territorial bear, or C-list cryptid is out here. ‘Dinner’s here, and he’s chatty!’” He always did have a habit of talking to himself, narrating his own life with a running commentary of questionable jokes. His ex-girlfriend had found it endearing for approximately one week, after which it was grounds for ‘serious discussions about his coping mechanisms.’

His eyes were slowly, painfully adjusting to the gloom. The faint, almost imperceptible starlight, fractured and filtered through the dense canopy, revealed the colossal, shadowy trunks of trees that rose like the pillars of some forgotten, pagan cathedral. Their bark looked like a titan’s gnarled, ancient skin. Everything was bigger, older, more… intense than any carefully curated national park forest he’d ever begrudgingly hiked in. There was an oppressive weight to the air, a stillness that felt less like peace and more like the baited breath of something very, very large hiding just out of sight.

And then he felt it – a definite, undeniable change within himself. The subtle thrumming in his limbs, which he’d initially dismissed as pins and needles from an awkward sleeping position, intensified, becoming a low, resonant vibration that wasn’t unpleasant, just… profoundly new and alien. His senses felt sharper, unnaturally so. He could pick out individual scents now, a bewildering olfactory tapestry: the faint, metallic tang of distant water, the sweet, cloying rot of a fallen log ten yards away, a faint, almost imperceptibly floral note he couldn’t identify, like ghost-lilacs. His hearing, too. A dry leaf, detaching itself from a branch fifty feet above, sounded like a crisp, deliberate snap. He could hear the frantic scurry of something tiny and terrified burrowing under the leaf litter nearby.

“Okay, new working theory,” he whispered, aiming for a tone of casual scientific inquiry and mostly landing on ‘mildly hysterical.’ “Secret government experiment? Super-soldier serum test gone awry? Did I wake up with a sudden craving for justice and a pair of star-spangled tights? Because I could probably live with that, provided the tights are flattering.” He flexed his hands, peering at them in the dim light. No obvious new bulging muscles, sadly. But his fingernails… they looked… longer. Pointier. Definitely not the chewed-down nubs he usually sported. He brought a hand closer to his face, squinting until his eyes watered. They were undeniably sharper, tapering to wicked little points, almost like nascent claws.

“Huh. Extreme, unsolicited manicure. A bold aesthetic choice, my subconscious. Very ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon chic’.”

A sudden, profound, and utterly unnatural stillness descended upon the small, uneven clearing he’d stumbled into. Even the faint, ghostly whisper of wind through the highest branches seemed to die, choked off mid-sigh. The oppressive silence from before was a noisy carnival compared to this. This was a silence that had weight, that had teeth, that pressed in on him from all sides. Every instinct Jack possessed, instincts he didn’t even know were part of his factory settings, screamed at him with the shrill insistence of a car alarm. Danger. Predator. Apex.

He froze mid-breath, his earlier attempts at gallows humor evaporating like mist on a cold morning. His heart, which had been attempting a reasonably steady rhythm, abruptly launched into a frantic, panicked drum solo against his ribs. He slowly, stiffly, turned his head, scanning the impenetrable, ink-blot shadows between the monolithic trees. He saw nothing, but he felt it. A presence. Cold, immensely powerful, and utterly, terrifyingly devoid of anything resembling warmth, compassion, or a desire to discuss pizza toppings.

Then, from the deepest, darkest shadows, as if coalescing from the very essence of the night itself, a figure resolved. Tall, impossibly, impeccably dressed in a Western-style suit and fedora that seemed ludicrously, almost comically out of place in the primordial, untamed forest, yet somehow, chillingly, perfectly, terrifyingly appropriate on him. The man moved with an unnatural, liquid grace, not a twig snapping beneath his polished shoes, not a single leaf disturbed by his passage. He simply… appeared, as if the forest floor had willingly parted to allow his emergence.

Jack’s breath hitched, lodging somewhere in his throat like a jagged piece of ice. He’d seen that face before. Not in person, no, that was impossible. But in the meticulously drawn panels of a manga he’d devoured with a mixture of fascination and dread. In the terrified, hushed whispers of online forums dedicated to lore and fan theories. Plum-red eyes, vertically slitted like a cat’s, that seemed to absorb rather than reflect the meager light, glowing faintly with an internal, malevolent luminescence. Black, immaculately styled hair that probably cost more per strand than Jack’s entire monthly rent. A face that was handsome in a way that transcended mere humanity, chiselled and perfect like a classical statue, yet radiating an aura of such profound, ancient malice that Jack felt his knees turn to lukewarm jelly.

“No,” Jack whispered, the word a dry, desperate puff of air, lost in the sudden vastness of the forest. “No, no, no. This is… this is definitely not happening. This is a dream. A very, very vivid, Frito-and-terror-fueled, pants-soilingly terrifying dream. Any minute now, I’ll wake up, and the only monster will be the state of my apartment.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The figure was still there, closer now. Damn.

The figure stopped a dozen feet away, close enough for Jack to see the almost predatory stillness in his posture, the faint, unreadable, and utterly chilling curl of his lips. It was, without a shadow of a doubt, Muzan Kibutsuji. The King of Demons. The ultimate antagonist of Demon Slayer. And he was looking right at Jack, not with the casual disinterest of a fictional character, but with the focused intensity of a scientist observing a particularly intriguing insect.

Muzan tilted his head slightly, a gesture that might have been interpreted as curious on anyone else. On him, it was predatory, analytical, like a cat assessing a cornered mouse. “You are awake, then,” he stated, his voice smooth as polished obsidian, cultured, almost soothing, yet with an underlying timbre that vibrated with barely contained power and an ancient, unyielding cruelty. It sent a fresh wave of shivers cascading down Jack’s spine that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature.

Jack wanted to run. He wanted to scream until his lungs bled. He wanted to wake up in his messy apartment with the lingering scent of stale Fritos and the comforting, mundane regret of another night wasted on video games. Instead, he found himself rooted to the spot, paralyzed by a horrified fascination that warred with the overwhelming, primal terror. His smart mouth, his lifelong companion and oft-times most effective saboteur, chose that exact, inopportune moment to make an unscheduled appearance.

“Well, hey there,” Jack managed, his voice cracking like antique porcelain. “Fancy meeting you in a place like this. You, uh, come to these creepy, isolated, ‘definitely-not-on-any-tourist-map’ woods often? Or is this, like, a special occasion? Because, you know, I feel special. And a little bit like I’m about to be the main ingredient in a very unhappy meal.” He even tried a weak, shaky travesty of a smile. It felt like his face was about to shatter into a million terrified pieces.

Muzan’s crimson eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. There was no amusement in them, no flicker of anger, just a cold, analytical regard that stripped Jack bare. “You are an amusing creature,” he said, the words utterly devoid of actual amusement, making them somehow more menacing. “So quick to jest in the face of your new, inescapable reality.”

“New reality?” Jack echoed, a hysterical, terrified laugh bubbling in his throat like carbonated despair. “Buddy, my previous reality usually involved intense, high-stakes arguments about whether pineapple truly belongs on pizza – spoiler, it doesn’t – not… this.” He gestured vaguely, a trembling hand encompassing Muzan, the dark, brooding forest, the entire impossible, nightmarish situation. “I think there’s been a mistake. You got the wrong guy. I was scheduled for an isekai into a fluffy, low-stakes slice-of-life anime, preferably one with a harem of adorable, non-threatening catgirls, not… whatever fresh, Grade-A hell this is.”

“This is no random occurrence,” Muzan said, his voice unwavering as he took another fluid, utterly silent step closer. Jack flinched, a small, involuntary movement he couldn’t suppress. “You have been chosen. Transformed.”

“Transformed? Into what? A slightly more terrified version of myself? A motivational speaker specializing in existential dread? Because honestly, your stage presence is undeniably killer, very commanding, but the core material needs a little work. It’s a bit… dark. And murder-y.” Jack was babbling, he knew it, a torrent of nonsensical words tumbling out before he could engage any rational thought filter. It was a flimsy, pathetic shield constructed of bad jokes and sheer panic against the encroaching, all-consuming dread.

Muzan was now close enough that Jack could smell a faint, sterile, almost metallic scent emanating from him, like ozone after a lightning strike, or cold, freshly drawn blood. “You are a demon now,” Muzan stated, his voice dropping slightly, each syllable carrying an impossible, crushing weight that seemed to press the very air from Jack’s lungs. “One of my own.”

The words hit Jack like a physical blow, knocking the breath from him more effectively than any punch. Demon. The pointy nails. The weird, thrumming energy. The unnaturally heightened senses. The sheer, bone-deep, pants-wetting terror that Muzan inspired. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t an elaborate prank. This was terrifyingly, impossibly real. His earlier, flippant remarks about fangs and super-soldier serums crashed back into his consciousness with horrifying, newfound implications.

“A… a demon?” Jack choked out, his mind reeling, desperately trying to process the unprocessable. “Like, horns, pitchfork, a timeshare in the underworld, eats souls, the whole nine infernal yards? Because I have to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I’m cut out for that lifestyle. My current diet is mostly carbs, caffeine, and a healthy dose of existential dread. Very low in souls.”

“You possess an immortal lifespan,” Muzan continued, calmly, inexorably, ignoring Jack’s desperate, rambling deflections as if they were the buzzing of an insignificant insect. His crimson gaze was intense, unwavering, pinning Jack in place like a specimen on a board. “You will feel pain, yes, but you will heal from any wound, save for the direct light of the sun or a blade forged of a unique, sun-drenched ore.” Jack’s mind latched onto that. Immortal? Cool! Oh wait, giant asterisk about sunlight and special swords. Less cool. “You will grow stronger,” Muzan continued, and his lips curled into that faint, terrifyingly predatory smile again. “And you will achieve this strength by consuming humans.”

Each word was a precisely aimed nail hammered into the coffin of Jack’s old, mundane, wonderfully uncomplicated life. Immortal. Heal from anything. Sunlight… special blade… consuming humans. The last phrase echoed and re-echoed in the sudden, horrified, ringing silence of Jack’s mind, drowning out everything else.

“Eat… people?” Jack whispered, his voice barely audible, a fragile thread of sound in the vast, uncaring forest. The trees seemed to press in around him, their ancient forms looming like disapproving judges, the darkness suddenly suffocating, charged with unspeakable possibilities. “No. Nononono. Absolutely not. I draw a very firm, non-negotiable line at cannibalism. I’m more of a pizza guy, as previously established. Maybe a well-done burger, on a particularly wild and adventurous day. But definitely, unequivocally not… that.” He felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

Muzan let out a soft sound, a low, almost inaudible chuckle that was more chilling than any furious shout could ever be. “Your quaint mortal preferences are now irrelevant. Your new biology dictates your needs. Hunger, a hunger you cannot deny, will guide you. It is the fundamental nature of our kind.” He took another step, closing the distance until he was mere feet away. Jack could feel a palpable pressure emanating from him, a physical manifestation of his overwhelming, suffocating power, like standing too close to a blast furnace.

“But… why me?” Jack asked, the question torn from the depths of his bewildered soul. “I’m nobody. Just some random guy from apartment 3B. A geek who knows more about fictional universes than the actual stock market. Definitely not prime demon material. I cry at sad animal commercials, for crying out loud! I once apologized to a chair I bumped into!”

Muzan’s plum-red eyes seemed to pierce through Jack’s defenses, seeing every fear, every weakness, every pathetic attempt at bravado. “There was a… compatibility. A certain unexpected resilience beneath the layers of foolishness, perhaps. Or perhaps, it was merely whim. My reasons are my own, and you are not in a position to question them.” He reached out a hand, his movements too fast, too fluid for Jack’s human-calibrated eyes to properly track. Before Jack could even think to react, Muzan’s fingers, cold as glacial ice, brushed against the side of his neck. Jack flinched violently, a strangled gasp tearing from his throat as if he’d been touched by a live wire.

“To ensure your… loyalty,” Muzan said, his voice a silken, venomous threat, “and to accelerate your nascent development.” Two of his fingers, nails unnaturally sharp, transformed into veritable talons, pressed against Jack’s carotid artery. Jack’s heart leaped into his throat, pounding like a trapped, terrified bird. He could feel the sharp, insistent points of Muzan’s nails against his vulnerable skin, a terrifying promise of imminent, intimate pain.

“Hey, uh, personal space, buddy?” Jack squeaked, his voice embarrassingly high-pitched. He tried to lean away, to put any distance between himself and those terrible claws, but Muzan’s grip, though seemingly light, was like iron, unyielding and absolute. “We just met. Traditional courtship usually involves dinner first, doesn’t it? Preferably not… you know… me as the main course.” His attempt at flirting was so wildly inappropriate, so utterly divorced from the terrifying gravity of the situation, that it was almost clinically unhinged. He was terrified beyond measure, and his brain, bless its panicking cotton socks, was apparently short-circuiting, defaulting to its most useless and potentially fatal defense mechanisms.

Muzan actually paused for the barest fraction of a second, his head tilting another infinitesimal degree. A flicker of something unreadable, perhaps even a microscopic spark of what might have been surprise, or profound annoyance, passed through his crimson eyes. Or maybe it was just the cold calculation of a predator observing an inexplicably bizarre and vocal prey.

Then, without any further warning, pain exploded in Jack’s neck. It was a searing, lancing, agonizing sensation as Muzan’s nails pierced his skin and sank into his flesh. Jack cried out, a choked, pathetic sound that was abruptly cut off as he gasped for air. He felt something cold and viscous, yet burning, slide into his veins – Muzan’s blood. It seared. It burned like acid, like liquid fire, spreading through his system with terrifying, invasive speed. He could feel it coursing through him, a foreign, dominant entity rewriting his very being, hijacking his cells, branding him. There was a sense of connection, a terrifying, unwilling, violating tether forming between his consciousness and the vast, cold, ancient mind of this monster. It was a violation on a fundamental, cellular level, an indelible stain on his soul.

His body convulsed violently, his vision blurring, the dark forest spinning into a nauseating vortex of distorted shapes and shadows. The thrumming energy inside him, once a mere curiosity, surged uncontrollably, becoming a raging, untamed inferno. He felt stronger, yes, but simultaneously more monstrous. More… hungry. Tears of agony streamed from his eyes, and a strangled sob escaped him.

Just as suddenly as it began, the agonizing invasion receded, leaving him gaspending, trembling like a leaf in a hurricane, one hand instinctively clutching his neck where two small puncture wounds were already starting to knit closed with unnatural, horrifying speed, the skin puckering and smoothing out as if the injury had never occurred.

Muzan retracted his hand, the talons receding back into seemingly normal fingernails, observing Jack with that same cold, dispassionate, analytical gaze. “You are now fully one of us. My cells run through your veins. You will feel my will. You will obey my commands. Or you will suffer a pain far greater, far more prolonged, than this fleeting discomfort.”

He straightened his already immaculate suit jacket, a minute, precise adjustment that spoke of absolute control. “Go now. Sate your hunger. Grow strong. Become useful to me.”

With that, Muzan turned, his movements elegant and economical, and began to walk away. He didn’t just walk into the shadows; he seemed to melt into them, becoming one with the oppressive darkness of the ancient forest as silently and unnaturally as he had appeared. In moments, he was gone, leaving behind only the profound, echoing silence, the lingering, sterile scent of cold malice, and Jack.

Jack stood alone in the dark forest, his body shaking uncontrollably, his mind a chaotic maelstrom of terror, agony, and utter disbelief. The world, his world, had tilted on its axis, shattered into a million irreparable pieces, and then been brutally reformed into something nightmarish, something utterly alien. He was a demon. An immortal monster. And Muzan Kibutsuji, the ultimate evil from a story, the stuff of fictional nightmares, was his new, terrifying, and very real master.

But overriding even the crushing weight of his existential horror, a new sensation was dawning, far more immediate, far more insistent, far more demanding. A gnawing, aching emptiness in the pit of his stomach, a raw, hollow void that intensified with every passing second, every ragged breath. It wasn’t the familiar, almost comforting pang of needing a snack after a prolonged gaming session. This was different. This was elemental. This was a ravenous, desperate, clawing craving that whispered insidious, seductive promises of satiation if he would just… feed.

The full horror of what that truly meant, of what Muzan had commanded him to do, began to dawn with sickening, visceral clarity.

He was hungry. Desperately, terrifyingly hungry. And the forest, which moments ago had felt empty and threatening in its own right, now seemed to pulse with the distant, imagined, tantalizingly fragile heartbeats of unsuspecting prey.