Rhys walked into the Islander camp, his heart heavy.
He may have buried her, but he'd still done it.

Relay came up to him and the pair began to talk.

"Perhaps cooking the flesh will take care of the effect? I don't know anymore," Rhys said before he started shivering, he felt weak, cold, and hungry.

"God... I'm so hungry..." he said before his eyes widened.

"I need some form of quarantine around me, a box or room or something! Now!" He said, clutching his stomach.

Relay, well, relayed this information and Rhys was escorted to a dark room, and locked inside, able to communicate, but not come out.
Not yet, at least.

"So I may have had to eat human flesh while I was out there... and now I'm tuning into... what are those things from Native American legend? The Wendigo?" Rhys started speaking from his dark box, "I might be turning into that, but I should be safe."

Eventually, they heard cries from the box, scratching and scrabbling as he writhed in pain and hunger.

"HELP ME!!!" He cried out, screaming, begging for food, help, anything, "STAY AWAY!!!"

The Islanders could only watch as he turned into a shadow of what he had been, crying, screaming from how intense his hunger was.
Eventually he stopped, getting up slowly.

"You alright?" Relay asked, concerned.

"So. Update: I have a craving for human flesh," Rhys said, causing everyone to laugh at how he said it, "I'm hungry."

That caused the entire tribe to fall deathly quiet.
Soon, a criminal who had been stealing from the communal storage was thrown in the box and only had the time to emit one horrified shriek before having his jugular torn out by Rhys's teeth, sounds of Rhys feasting were heard for a while, his canines now resembled fangs and his hands had been stained with his first true victims blood.

He took a random deer skull and the skull of the criminal, somehow fused them together, and made a mask that fit him, but he couldn't take off, allowing him to eat but hiding who he was.
He became gaunt and thin, his eyes turning hollow as he became around half a foot taller, his skin turning darker, but in more of a frostbitten way, but he wasn't frostbitten, his outer layer of skin had simply changed color to hide in the dark and the forest.

The Islanders had to quarantine Relay, as he had also partaken in human flesh but of the cooked variety.

Rhys was haunted by nightmares of that day, when he'd consumed his still-living kin.
He couldn't call himself her kin anymore, not after what he did.
Rhys had transformed quickly due to eating his own flesh and blood, while others who ate people did turn, he was the first of the "turned"

He was given criminals, as was Relay, but the Islanders were running dry, when a person arrived, killed Islanders, and left, leaving the extra from earlier to give a risky plan: let the pair of Rhys and Relay out against the killer.

The pair had been dubbed "Wendigos"
To the Bushies, they were Ghouls, and heavily worshipped.
To the Mountainers, they were simply enemies to be killed.

Eventually, the enemy of the Islanders came back, and the Wendigos were let out to chase and kill him, with Rhys taking the lead of the hunt and unknowingly spreading the curse to everyone within a foot of him(a foot is 30 centimeters for my metric system people out there).

When the hunt ended, Relay mentioned to Rhys that the other islanders looked very edible and delicious.

So the two attacked their friends, their people, killing several and turning more, before feasting upon the flesh of the fallen.

The Bushies were traveling nearby to the Islanders camp when they saw the two Wendigos/Ghouls attacking their people, so the cannibals walked to the Wendigos, and were brutally slaughtered by the two turned who then forced the remaining Islanders to eat the Bushies, some eating their relatives.

The Islanders had once been the most powerful and prosperous group on the island, now reduced to flesh-eaters who soon turned on each other for survival.

When the dust settled, only two Wendigos remained, Relay and Rhys, with Relay going feral, he attacked his best friend, who grabbed his old hatchet from a corpse, and caught the charging wendigo, driving the nose of his skull mask into Relay's, the pair fought fiercely, with the hatchet changing hands several times while Rhys and Relay also used their unoccupied hands to strike out at the other, kicking, punching, headbutting, all dirty moves were allowed as the pair devolved into pure, brutal combat, their blackened and malnourished-looking bodies striking hard and fast at the opponent, their masks breaking and cracking.
Rhys's Mask had lost the majority of the snout portion, while many cracks permeated Relay's skull mask.
The pair were bloodied, large wounds and blood all over them as they went in for one last clash, Rhys grabbing the forgotten hatchet and Relay taking control of it, the pair fought for dominance over the weapon once more, it changed from Rhys to Relay to Rhys and back again, until Rhys was able to overpower Relay, causing the latter's arm to break under the pressure, the bone spearing through the skin as Rhys then slammed the hatchet into his best friend's head, splitting it and smashing much of the skull mask.

Rhys sat back and wept, he had murdered someone else that he'd cared about.
The hunger urged him up, carrying the hatchet in one hand, to go hunt and kill, to eat.

And he did so, the hatchet eventually ending up in his abdomen, but nowhere vital, out of a pure miracle.

He continued his hunt, eating as many as he could, whether they be Wendigos or normal humans.

He had become what he had wanted to avoid.

And he wondered why he wanted to avoid this, this rush, this feeling.

Then he saw the cowering innocents, those who had wanted peace.
They were like his sister, all they could do was watch him consume them.

And he wept when he was asleep.
He was a monster.
A husk.
A thing.

He despised himself.