Chapter 8
Chapter 8: The Hills
The hills rose and fell like the slow breathing of some great sleeping thing, their slopes carpeted in grasses that swayed in waves of green and gold. Jacob stood at the edge of the tree line for a long time, waiting for the jungle's oppressive humidity to release its grip on his skin. It did, slowly, replaced by a warm breeze that carried the scent of wildflowers and nothing else. No buzzing insects. No distant growls. No footsteps but his own.
He took a step forward, then another. The grass whispered against his legs. After the swamp's sucking mud, the desert's killing heat, the badlands' jagged stone, and the jungle's suffocating tangle, this place felt like a lie. The sky was a flawless blue, the temperature mild, the terrain gentle. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn't.
By midday, he had crossed three valleys and climbed two hills without incident. The map had called this region simply "THE HILLS," with no warnings, no symbols, no notes. That alone was suspicious. Every other biome on the map had been marked with hazards or cryptic messages. Here, there was nothing. Just rolling grassland and the occasional thin tree bent by wind he couldn't feel.
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