(Renji remained stranded on that unforgiving island for a full week, the relentless tropical sun baking the sands by day and stars wheeling coldly overhead by night, survival etching hard lines into his already razor-sharp features. One sweltering afternoon, as the sun blazed down mercilessly on the island he knelt at the water's edge, staring intently at his reflection. Silvery-white hair framed his face in sweat-dampened strands, golden eyes piercing even in mirror-form.) "Do I not grow hair?" (he murmured to himself, brow furrowing as he scrutinized his smooth chin and jaw. He straightened fluidly, turning on his heel with predatory grace, brushing past the survivors huddled in their routine: sprawled around a smoky campfire, listlessly poking at roasting fish skewers, faces gaunt with hunger and boredom.)
(The black-haired man whose name was Mark was a wiry survivor with sharp features and wary eyes who had glanced up from the flames, wiping soot from his hands.) "Going to hunt?" (he called out, voice carrying a mix of curiosity and envy.)
(Renji didn't break stride, vanishing into the dense forest's emerald gloom with towering trees draped in vines, underbrush thick with ferns and hidden perils, air humid and buzzing with insect hums. His pupils dilated immediately before contracting into vertical slits, irises bleaching from gold to inky black, then reigniting as an eerie, glowing white. He bit into his lower lip deliberately, drawing crimson beads that dripped to the loamy soil, a calculated blood-trail bait.)
(Seconds ticked in oppressive silence; then a guttural roar shattered the quiet, laced with primal hunger echoing from the canopy shadows. Renji's head snapped toward it, neck rolling with a series of satisfying cracks, muscles rippling under porcelain skin. He crouched low, muscles coiling then burst forward in a sprint, sparks of white lightning crackling in his wake, blazing through undergrowth at inhuman velocity with trees blurring into green streaks.)
(The forest floor trembled as the beast lunged forward. Renji's instincts fired as mid-stride, he leaped upward in a gravity-defying arc, the creature's pounce whistling harmlessly beneath him, claws raking empty air where he'd been a heartbeat prior.)
(Renji dropped down onto the creature's massive back with lethal precision, muscles coiling like steel cables beneath his flawless skin. He pulled his fist back, white-glow eyes locked in cold focus, and slammed it into the spine with bone-shattering force causing a sickening crack to echo through the trees as it's vertebrae pulverized instantly. The beast collapsed mid-lunge, legs buckling in a twitching heap, guttural whimpers escaping its slime-dripping maw.)
(Renji leaped off gracefully, circling calmly to its front like a predator appraising a fallen foe. He stared into its dimming, terror-wide eyes; it thrashed feebly, jaws creaking open for a desperate bite. Renji exploded upward in a blur, dropping heel-first with extended leg, the impact caving the skull in a spray of purple ichor and fragmented bone, driving through to mush the brain in one ruthless stomp. He lingered a beat, disgust curling his lip at the gore coating his leg, then hopped off, striding to the flank. Fingers sank into coarse black fur; a yank ripped it free in ragged strips, exposing raw, veined meat beneath.)
(He tore into the flesh methodically, ripping chunks with sharpened canines, chewing slowly and quietly with purple blood smearing his chin, body adapting to the foul sustenance. Rustling stirred behind; he didn't flinch, voice flat.) "What do you want?"
"Seriously? Am I not much of a threat to you? Lame," (Victoria muttered, emerging from bushes scratched and prickly-thorned, her red hair tousled wild. She took hesitant steps closer, eyeing his gore-slicked back.) "Why the hell are these so prickly?" (she grumbled to herself, then fixed on the carnage.) "So does it taste good?"
"It tastes like a hooker's ass," (Renji muttered through a chew, purple juice dripping.)
"How do you know how hooker ass tastes like?" (Victoria raised a thin eyebrow, crouching warily amid the steam.)
"I'm just guessing what it tastes like," (Renji fired back instantly, swallowing the chunk and rising fluidly, wiping mouth with forearm.)
(Victoria watched him stand, brow arched higher as he turned deeper into the forest gloom.) "Where are you going?"
"To live alone," (Renji said flatly, vanishing into thick shadow, his eyes scanning every rustle and every vine-sway. She sighed, left staring at empty underbrush.)
(Renji moved with ethereal silence through the deepening forest twilight, his eerie white-glowing eyes piercing the gloom like twin beacons, scanning every shadow and rustle with hyper awareness. He pressed deeper and deeper into the heart of the island's wilds with the night creeping inexorably, canopy thickening to blot stars as a silent yawn escaped him, his fangs glinting momentarily. Mid-yawn, his instincts screamed a visceral alarm as a new oppressive presence slithered close causing the air to thicken with something foul. His eyes narrowed as a dark humanoid silhouette materialized from the murk, it was tall and sinewy plus featureless with a void like stare that locked with his. It was a brief standoff before it then released a guttural roar that shredded through the silence.)
"What the fu—?" (Renji stepped back reflexively as it lunged in a blink, vice-fingers clamping his skull and slamming him into ancient bark with a cataclysmic force causing the tree to groan and crack with it's top slowly falling towards the earth with a loud sound.)
(The creature easily lifted him skyward as through its fingers Renji's white eyes bored through unyielding. He curled his legs tight, then exploded them against it's torse shoving himself free in thunderous kick-back. He landed rolling, breath fogging unnaturally white in the humid air. Stares between each other ignited before they charged and clawed their hands locking in a test of raw strength, both sinews straining and his veins bulging. Renji clenched his jaw as he lifted it up using it's hands before heaving it earthward and planting it's face down to make a small crater. He released it's hands and his leg arced with perfect flexibility to stomp its skull but it rolled away and immediately lunged as it's counter. It snared his torso before leaping with him high enough to reach the canopy.)
"What's up with this fuck ass island?" (Renji muttered mid-ascent with the forest shrinking below before they plummeted. He yanked it's head back and his fists rained relentless on it.)
(He was slammed down onto the ground as his blood jumped from his mouth and his bones rattled. It mounted him and rained it's fists which caused Renji to block with his forearms. Renji released a foggy breath charged with lightning as he spoke through gritted teeth.) "Get. Your. Stinky. Ass. Off."
(The electrified static crackled as the clouds began to gather with the survivors on the beach looking towards the sky and at the area the clouds gathered at with raised eyebrows. The creature glanced towards the sky as Renji bellowed,) "ME!" (A white bolt of lightning crashed downwards onto both of them, the voltages frying both as they screamed in agony.)
(The assault finally ceased as the beast slumped off him and Renji neared the unconscious but his instincts roared for him to arise. Multiple roars ignited all around him causing for him to launch to his feet, barely able to stand still, as he spoke through his breath.) "Fuck my luck."
(Multiple nightmarish creatures erupted from the shadowed canopy, leaping down in a coordinated frenzy to overwhelm him, they were hulking silhouettes with elongated limbs, obsidian claws glinting like obsidian daggers under the fractured moonlight, with guttural snarls reverberating through the mist-shrouded trees. Renji stood blankly amid the encirclement, white-glowing eyes unblinking, as the lead beast exploded forward in a blur of feral savagery, swiping razor claws in a whistling arc aimed to eviscerate his throat. He stepped back with preternatural calm with the darkened talons whooshing millimeters from his cheek shearing air only for a blind-spot ambush as another lunged from the void, it's leg extended like a battering ram, impacting his ribs with seismic force that hurled him spiraling backward into unyielding bark.)
('Wake the fuck up before you die.' The thought ignited like a fuse; Renji thrust off the shuddering trunk, head whipping side-to-side in a violent shake as Wi surged through his veins, auxiliary hearts thundering with dual rhythms, pupils exploding wide in manic dilation before snapping to razor vertical slits.)
(He stared at his trembling hand, fingers curling into an unbreakable fist then took a slow, shaky step forward, deluge cascading from bruise-black clouds above. His eyes narrowed to glowing pinholes as burst forward to spin on his heel, whipping his leg to crater the nearest creature's neck in a spray of violet ichor and pulverized vertebrae, the top of the foot impact severing spine like a wet parchment. His leg descended fluidly as he dodged an aerial pounce by a hair's breadth while mental command rang, 'Strike it.' The heavens obeyed as white lightning lanced down as judgment, incinerating the leaper mid-air in aconvulsing electrocution.)
(He remained in motion as a fist telescoped into a jaw with an explosive crunch sending the beast cartwheeling through underbrush. A rear ambush pierced his upper back, claws raking deep furrows that wept red. He clenched his jaw as a forward-kick redirected him from the impaler into a grappler's vise with his head snared and his face slammed into the earth. A counter bolt thundered frying both the captor and Renji, but he rolled free, taking to his feet in defiance.)
(A duo charged as he evaded a swipe and like a phantom slide behind with his fangs plunged deep into it's jugular, ripping it's arteries in a gushing fountain. He seized it's head to face an ambusher that pierced into the heart of its kin. He kicked both away from him as more roars erupted, and more jumped down to surround him.)
(With a ragged breath, he tipped his head and a foggy exhalation escaped his lips expanding into a suffocating static-charged nebula engulfing the area.) "I'll have your heads." (He whispered coldly.)
(With a flicker of his eyes, he materialized behind one, gripped it's head and twisted, the violet ichor he guzzled and like a severed trophy he discarded.) "I'll drink your blood." (He vanished like a phantom as bodies dropped systematically. One creature attacked early as it's talon pierced his abdomen.) "And I'll have your souls."
(With a primal roar, the static vibrated with a thunder and lightning supernova that detonated the area, obliterating the horde in chain-reaction storm. Renji passed out midst the storm onto his back.)
(He collapsed as the fog evaporated slowly, Days blurred as he remained unconscious. His body fought to heal his injuries and it did. A whole three weeks passed as he snapped awake and sat up, he looked around as everything came back to him. He took a sigh of relief as immediately hunger took hold of him and he got up.)
(He dragged himself through the forest until he stumbled into an empty area as colossal behemoths slumbered on it. Their primal instincts detonated as gazes fell upon him, they saw an incarnate of death cloaked in the flesh of men, They all slowly got up to retreat as Renji's eerie white eye's bored into them. He suddenly erupted forward as the herd scattered in a stampede-panic. One infant the size of an elephant was left behind as Renji jumped onto it and slammed it down.)
(He broke it's spine with a slam of his fist and began to maul through it alive. Three weeks of hunger have built in him for this single meal that he devoured through, he ate chunks upon chunks like a wild animal. There was no other thought but to eat. He surprisingly finished it all leaving the bones as he sat by it, staring blanky into a tree.)
(His eyes stopped glowing but they remained permanently white, scars traced across his back. Across his pectorals where the effects of a lightning hit, across his gut was a scar. By his lip also traced another scar. His body was slowly becoming a canvas of past victories. He released a foggy breath that framed his face and his now white piercing gaze was visible with a slight flicker of that eerie glow.)
(Who is this beast? How powerful was he now? How much had he evolved? Was he a threat to the island? Was he climbing up the food chain?)
(Find out in the next chapter....)