2: The Hunger

In the wilderness, there are no rules. No law. No mercy. Only need. Out there, beyond the reach of cities and courts, where the trees crowd thick as secrets and the sky closes in like a lid — survival becomes the only religion. It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter what you were. Soldier or shepherd, priest or prisoner — the wild doesn’t care. It strips you down to something simpler. Hungrier.

And in the deepest wilds of 19th-century Tasmania — back when it was still called Van Diemen’s Land — that need could become something far more dangerous than any animal, or any outlaw, or any desperate soul with shackles around his ankles.

It could become hunger. But this isn’t the kind of hunger that comes at the end of a long day without lunch. This isn’t the ache of a skipped supper or the pangs of a rationed winter.

This is hunger as obsession. As madness. As transformation.

This is the kind of hunger that claws through your guts until it speaks for you.
 Until it walks in your skin, whispers in your thoughts, and tells you that you don’t need bread… You need flesh.