Tilted dream

Previously

…He turned and walked away from the fallen creature, his steps more confident, his gaze sharper. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach, but it was tempered by something new: a grim resolve. He would learn to fight. He would adapt. He would survive. The world was not empty. It was teeming with danger, and he was no longer a victim. He was a warrior in the making, forged in the crucible of this broken land. The path ahead was uncertain, fraught with peril, but for the first time since waking, John felt a flicker of purpose, a grim determination to carve out a future, however brutal, in the ruins of the past.