Chapter Four

  The first sensation is cold. Not weather-cold, not even medical-grade hypothermia, but a violence that yanks me backwards through myself. Freezing water surges into my lungs and spine and eyes, filling me with perfect, dispassionate pain. Then I’m spat out, gasping, onto something very solid.

  My face bounces off damp leaves. They’re sticky, not just with water but with a mucus-like film that clings to my cheek. There’s an aftertaste of antiseptic and an unpleasant tang I can’t begin to identify. I groan, roll to my back, and blink up at the sky.

  There is no sky.

  The world above is a mess of trees, but trees that have never been photosynthesized by anything on Earth. They rise and twist and then split at impossible angles, their trunks so thick and knotted that light is forced through in fractured, suspicious-looking beams. The leaves are massive and not the right color. Some are electric teal, some bruised yellow, some the pink of shaved ham. When the wind moves, they slap each other with a noise like wet laundry and then immediately snap still, as if they just remembered someone might be watching.

  I sit up and promptly retch near my legs. The vomit is clear but so cold it feels like I’m upchucking a Slurpee made of dry ice. For a few seconds I can’t even process my own body: the stiffness in my fingers, the chattering of my teeth, the way my brain can’t decide if I’m still in the white void or in a bad acid flashback. I curl up and hug my knees, trying to get a handle on which part of me is supposed to be working.

  It doesn’t help that everything smells wrong. The air is thick and sharp and green, but not like cut grass or spring. More like the chemical spill version. There’s also a rot beneath it, something sweet and spoiled, like old fruit left in a minivan for a summer. And there’s another scent under that, something like an animal, raw, the kind of smell that makes you uneasy.

  “Carter! Where are you, man?”

  I hear Tyson’s voice before I see him, but the voice is all wrong. It’s doubled up, like a cell phone glitch, both inside my ears and echoing weirdly through my skull. It’s panicked in a way that makes me flinch.

  “Here,” I try to say, but it comes out as a damp gurgle.

  Something flutters at my left shoulder. Hard. I twist away, heart hammering, and see… nothing. Just a ripple in the undergrowth. Then it happens again, this time on my other side, and I catch a glimpse of a bird. Not an ordinary one. Its eyes are black and bead-bright, its chest puffed up in perpetual offense. The wings are wrong, too—longer, with some kind of sharp bony tip at the elbow joint. It hops through the leaf mold, ruffling and shaking, as if trying to convince itself of its own reality.

  The sparrow fixes me with a stare. Its head cocks, first left, then right. Then it opens its beak and emits a noise so loud and discordant that I slap my hands over my ears.

  “CARTER! Jesus, answer me!”

  I stare at the bird. The bird stares at me. There is a three-second standoff in which neither of us moves, and then I start to laugh.

  It’s the kind of laugh that makes your ribs ache. A laugh that verges on hysteria. The bird, undeterred, launches itself into my lap and starts stomping, literally stomping, up and down my thigh.

  “Bro. Bro. Are you listening? I can’t—I don’t have hands, Carter. Where the hell are my hands?”

  I’m choking with laughter and horror all at once. “You’re a bird,” I manage. “You’re literally a bird.”

  The sparrow makes a leap for my chest, claws digging through my shirt (which is, astonishingly, the same shirt I wore to work yesterday). Its weight is nothing, but the intent is homicidal.

  “Do NOT fuck with me right now,” Tyson yells, the sound coming both from the sparrow’s open beak and directly into my brain. “I am having a DAY, okay?”

  I try to compose myself. “Okay. Okay. You’re a bird. It’s not a joke. You’re a bird, and I am not hallucinating.”

  There’s a brief silence, as if Tyson is trying to parse what I just said using the world’s worst translator. Then the sparrow hops back, wings out, like a tiny, furious bouncer.

  “Tell me exactly what you see,” he demands.

  I do my best. “You are… a sparrow? A big one. Maybe not a sparrow? You look pissed off.”

  The bird gives the tiniest shake of the head. “No, no, no. This is not the plan. This is not how it’s supposed to go.”

  He tries to flap, but I’m not sure he knows how. He trips over his own feet and lands beak-first in the leaf sludge, then pops up and shakes off the indignity. “Try again, Carter. Maybe you got dropped in the wrong zone. Check your body.”

  I look down at myself: hands, arms, legs, everything present and accounted for. My body is still skinny and awkward, still shivering in the cold that the white void left behind. I can’t help but notice that my pants are already torn at the knee, my skin scraped and leaking a thin, nearly clear blood. “Still me,” I say. “Human. Very, very human. Not a bird.”

  Tyson’s voice is less angry now, more wounded. “Oh, God. I’m the sidekick. I’m literally the sidekick. The System made me a sidekick.”

  He sits down hard and fluffs out his feathers in a slow-motion rage molt.

  I want to help him, but I don’t know the first thing about sparrows, let alone sparrows whose consciousness has been yanked out of a D1 college football career and slammed into a 150g package of meat and hollow bones.

  I reach out a hand, slow and careful, and rest it beside him. “You okay?”

  The sparrow eyes the hand, then hops onto it. His claws are surprisingly cold.

  “I don’t even get talons,” he mutters. “Look at these things. I had hands the size of salad plates. Now I’ve got toothpicks.” He scratches at my palm, then pecks it, just hard enough to prove a point. “You gotta figure out how to get me back, Carter. I am not living the rest of my life as an accessory.”

  I’m not sure what to say. I know, with the kind of certainty that doesn’t require evidence, that if I lie to him, he’ll know. I also strongly suspect that he didn’t come through correctly because he didn’t follow the System’s instructions, but I want to be honest with him without kicking him when he’s down.

  I decide to go for the truth. “I don’t think we get to choose. I think the System picks, but we can hope when you come through next, they’ll have got it right”

  The sparrow is quiet. Not still, but quiet, as if running a hundred mental sprints at once.

  Finally, he says, “So what’s our move, then?”

  I glance around. The forest is so dense it might as well be a prison. The undergrowth is alive with sound, chirrs, crackles, the snap of something heavy moving over wet wood. The light is failing already, or maybe it never arrived in the first place.

  “I think we try to survive until we get to go back and get you fixed,” I say.

  Survival is all I can think about now. Not that I’ve permanently become one of the eight Realmwalkers to represent earth. Not that I’ll have to come back here until earth either wins or loses against the other worlds. No, I need to focus on just getting through the next… I’m not sure, two or three days possibly, until I get to go back home for a break.

  I take a deep breath. “And we don’t get eaten by whatever things are making those noises.”

  We both listen, and as if on cue, something in the distance howls. It’s not a wolf, or a coyote, or even a bear. It’s a frequency that doesn’t belong on Earth, a sound that seems to crawl up the back of my neck and nest at the top of my spine.

  The sparrow gives a one-winged shrug. “You’re the boss,” he says, but it’s not a compliment.

  I realize, then, what’s really bothering him. He’s not just afraid of being a bird. Of being the weak one in here when he’s always been as big as the Hulk. He’s afraid that, for the first time in his life, he has to depend on someone else’s strength.

  I look at my arms, thin, shaking, with not a muscle worth mentioning. The only thing that makes me stronger than the sparrow is that I’m the one who still gets to make decisions. I’m the leader now.

  I cradle the sparrow in my palm. His heartbeat is so fast it’s a vibration. He closes his eyes, just for a second.

  “We’ll get you back,” I reassure. “We’ll both get out of this alive.”

  The lie tastes awful, but it’s the only thing I can give.

  Somewhere above us, the leaves slap together and then snap still.

  The forest is listening. I hope, for both our sakes, it likes what it hears.

  There’s no time to explain. The roar comes again, louder this time. It’s not a lion’s roar, not even bear territory. It’s too long, too wet, too knowing. It vibrates through the leaf mold, making every root and bone in my body say: “Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, get the hell out.”

  Tyson reacts like someone set his tail on fire. He’s off my hand in a microsecond, launching himself into the air with the desperation of a man who has never once considered running away until now. He can’t actually fly well, not being newly in a sparrow’s body, but he gets decent air, then lands in a stumble. “Move, Carter!” he screeches, and this time the voice is inside my head and in the real air at the same time.

  I scramble to my feet. Every joint protests, but the adrenaline is a better painkiller than anything in the Memory Cares pharmacy. The roar comes again, and this time it’s punctuated by a shattering crack, like a tree trunk snapping, but also like a safe door being torn off its hinges. I can’t even process the distance or direction. Sound bounces off these strange trees all wrong, making echoes where there shouldn’t be any.

  Tyson takes point, zigzagging through the undergrowth. I don’t have a clue where we’re going, but I follow, half-crawling, half-falling, stumbling over roots thicker than my thigh and leaves slick with resin. Every step is a gamble: is this ground or is this a pit? Is this branch dead or a snake? The forest is designed to be a funhouse for anxiety.

  We don’t talk. Talking would just advertise our position to every listening thing. Instead, Tyson shouts at me mentally, blaring updates like a malfunctioning GPS.

  “Left! No, other left! Go, go, go! Duck. Shit, that was close!”

  Eventually, I stop shaking so badly and manage to make it to my feet. Tyson, just as soon, begins to fly and flutter all around, as if testing his wings. Or maybe looking ahead, so we can switch directions before running into any monsters.

  Somewhere behind us, the roar is replaced by a sequence of sniffs, huffs, and what I think is the sound of a boulder being tossed aside. I keep expecting to see a shadow or some kind of monster silhouette, but every time I look back, there’s just more forest. That almost makes it worse. If you can’t see the threat, it can always be right behind you.

  We keep running until the air itself seems to get thicker, like we’ve crossed a boundary from one level of hell into another. Here, the trees are even taller, their branches laced so tight overhead that only scraps of light make it to the ground. It should be pitch black, but everything glows faintly: the moss is phosphorescent, some of the bark leaks a syrup that radiates a sullen blue. My clothes and skin pick up the color, and I probably look like a second-rate Smurf at a rave.

  “Stop!” Tyson’s voice cuts through the panic. He’s perched on a low branch, wings out, head cocked. “You see that?”

  I follow his gaze, and at first I think he’s lost it. There’s nothing there. But then my eyes adjust, and I see it: a structure, just off the path, half-eaten by the undergrowth. A shack, or what’s left of one. The walls are planks of mismatched wood, patched with different kinds of trees and what look like pieces of metal scavenged from who-knows-where. The roof is lopsided, but mostly intact. It leans hard to one side, but somehow seems to be in one piece.

  I dart toward it, heart in my mouth. The ground by the shack is less swampy, the leaves packed down into a mat that almost feels like carpet. I skid to a stop at the doorway, but Tyson just barrels right past me and inside, squawking like he owns the place.

  Not sure what else to do, I follow him. It’s pitch black in here. I blink a few times, then realize that the blue glow from outside is even stronger in the shack, reflected off every surface, bouncing in ways that make it hard to tell the wall from the ceiling. The air smells of mildew and wet rope, but also something chemical and oddly comforting. Like the inside of an old tackle box.

  Tyson paces the floor, beak clacking. “Looks safe,” he mutters. “At least nothing in here’s bigger than me.”

  I close the door behind me, which is more symbolic than practical. The latch is a bit of bent metal, barely hanging on, but I flip it anyway. As soon as I do, the world seems to pause.

  A line of pale blue text appears in the upper-right corner of my vision: INSPECT.

  At first, I don’t get it. Then I remember the System overlays, the ones from the white void, the ones that told me I can die here, and that time isn’t the same here as it is back on earth. It has a valuable purpose in the arena that I just can’t ignore.

  I focus on the word. Immediately, more text appears, this time hovering over objects in the room, like I’ve unlocked a new layer in a video game.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  The first object: battered leather armor, slumped over a wooden chair. The overlay calls it:

  BASIC LEATHERS (CONDITION: USED)

  PROTECTION: MINIMAL

  STATUS: STIFF, BUT WEARABLE

  Under the armor, a dagger rests on the table, its blade dulled and the hilt wrapped in leather. The overlay flickers into view:

  SHORT BLADE

  DAMAGE: LOW

  GRIP: SLIPPERY

  STEALTH BONUS: NONE

  Next to it, a belt and sheath, both cracked but functional.

  On the table, there’s also a battered cloth pack, barely held together by a mesh of laces. Inside, according to the overlay:

  STARTER MEDICAL KIT

  CONTENTS: GAUZE (3), ANTIBIOTIC PASTE (2), SUTURE THREAD (1)

  EFFECT: STOP BLEEDING, PREVENT INFECTION

  Tyson flutters onto the table, nearly knocking the dagger off the edge. He pecks at the armor, then steps back. “What does it say?” he demands.

  I blink, and the overlays crowd my vision. “It’s… gear, I guess? Starter stuff. You want the armor?” The second I ask the question, I feel stupid, but I let him answer anyway.

  He shakes his tiny head so violently his whole body vibrates. “It’ll crush me, man. You take it. I’ll find something bird-sized.”

  I don’t hesitate. I remove my other clothes and slip the leathers over my shoulders, shuddering at the cold, waxy feel against my arms. It’s two sizes too big and smells like some kind of oil I’m not familiar with, but the weight is comforting. Then, I put on the pants before I buckle the belt, shove the dagger in the sheath, and sling the pack over one shoulder.

  As soon as everything is on, the overlays go away, replaced by a single, cold line:

  GEAR EQUIPPED

  PERSONAL STATUS: IMPROVED (Minor)

  It’s the closest I’ve come to a compliment all day.

  “Feel better?” Tyson asks.

  I nod. “Not really, but it’s something.”

  He snorts. “You look like you’re cosplaying as a discount Batman.”

  There’s a window in the far wall, just big enough to see out. I move to it, careful not to trip over the loose floorboards. Outside, the blue glow makes everything look frozen, even the mist that coils between the trees. The roar is gone, for now. But the silence is worse, because it means the thing making the noise is listening, too.

  I turn back to Tyson. He’s pacing, restless. His wings make tiny shadows on the wall, like he’s fighting himself in triplicate.

  “Do you think it’ll come for us?” I ask, barely above a whisper.

  He shrugs. “Probably. But if it does, we’re not totally helpless. You got a weapon now. Maybe it has some kind of weakness to tiny birds.”

  I almost laugh, but then I notice that Tyson is serious. He wants to help. He wants to fight.

  I want to hide. But the System, or whatever runs this place, clearly has other plans.

  “Let’s check the rest of the shack,” I say. “See if there’s more stuff.”

  Tyson nods. “Good idea. We’ll need whatever help we can get.”

  The next room is a bedroom, or was. The bed is a slab of wood, what looks like a mattress made of straw, with a blanket and pillow thrown on it. There’s a small chest at the foot, the kind you’d see in an old-timey cartoon. The overlay says:

  SECURED CHEST

  STATUS: UNLOCKED

  CONTENTS: ???

  I kneel down, hands shaking, and lift the lid.

  Inside, there’s a coil of rope, a candle stub with matches, a tin cup, a pot, and a few other minor items. Underneath, there’s something else: a folded scrap of paper.

  Tyson hops onto my shoulder to get a better look. “What is it?”

  I open the paper. It’s a map, hand-drawn, the lines shaking and uneven. There’s a big X at the edge of the forest, and under it, one word:

  SETTLEMENT.

  Below that, in tiny writing:

  BEWARE OF —The rest had been scratched away.

  Tyson whistles, low and impressed. “You think someone left this for us?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  His little bird head bobs up and down. “They say Realmwalkers are dropped at random all over the arena. The other ones mostly had to build their own home bases. I’m thinking we just got lucky and probably stumbled across a cabin the natives even built and abandoned.”

  “Possibly.” I don’t want to admit that I’ve barely watched the Arena. That I know next to nothing about how all of this works. He’d think I was a moron. Not that I could even argue that my chances of being chosen as a Realmwalker seemed pretty slim when I decided not to focus on the coming apocalypse.

  “What do you think–?”

  A noise interrupts me. Not the roar, not the howl, but something closer. There’s a creak and a groan from the far side of the shack. Not the sound of the cabin naturally shifting, but the presence of another living thing.

  I stand up too fast, the chest slamming into my knees. Tyson nearly loses his grip on my shoulder.

  The overlay is back, in deep, urgent red:

  MANA BEAST DETECTED

  THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE

  LOCATION: IMMINENT

  Something on the other side of the bedroom door moves.

  I don’t want to open it.

  Choosing to fight in the Games was never something I imagined happening, but some logical part of me knows I won’t have a choice in the days to come, and that this is just the first of many battles I’m going to have to face. As terrifying as that sounds.

  I pull out the dagger from its sheath and take a step toward the bedroom door. My hand is sweating so badly that the leather grip of the dagger feels like it’s already been dunked in a deep fryer. Behind me, Tyson bounces from foot to foot on the table, wings splayed, head darting left and right.

  The System overlay hovers just at the edge of my vision:

  MANA BEAST DETECTED: HOLLOWEYED FOX

  THREAT TIER: LOW

  BEHAVIORAL FLAGS: SOUND-TRACKING | AMBUSH PREDATOR | FRAGILE FRAME

  LEVEL: 1

  EVALUATION: UNTRAINED COMBATANT ENGAGED HOSTILE ENTITY UNDER SURVIVAL CONDITIONS.

  OBSERVATION LOGGED: PANIC RESPONSE OVERRIDDEN BY CONTINUED ACTION, ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS INCREASING, IMPROVISED COORDINATION DETECTED (PAIRED ENTITY)

  The door bulges inward as something slams into it from the other side. Not a massive hit, but sharp, like someone jabbing at the crack with a crowbar. Then it’s quiet again. I try to hear breathing, or footsteps, or anything, but the silence is total.

  “Carter,” Tyson whispers. “You got this.”

  I nod, and the motion makes my teeth click together.

  I raise the dagger in my right hand, put my left on the latch, and count to three.

  The door opens so easily that I almost fall through it. The room beyond is dark, but I can see the outline of the fireplace, the table and chairs, the warped floorboards, and the blue moss creeping up one wall. But I don’t see the fox.

  Then the overlay pings again:

  MANA BEAST: PROXIMITY — IMMEDIATE

  And it’s already on me.

  It launches out from under the table, a long, low bullet made of fur and shrieking hunger. It’s bigger than I thought, maybe three feet long, not counting the tail, which fans out in a plume of rotten feathers. Its skin is hairless in patches, the color of ancient chewing gum. Its face is all wrong: too flat, too wide, the muzzle split by a row of human-like teeth. But what really sticks with me is the eyes.

  There are none. Just twin sockets, caved and black, oozing a thick blue mucus. They don’t move or track, but I know—know—that this thing sees me anyway.

  I bring the dagger up, but the fox is already on my leg, biting deep through the leather and into the meat. It burns, a static crackle that sprints up my thigh and detonates in my hip. I slam the hilt down at its skull, once, twice. The first hit bounces off. The second splits the skin, a little, enough to make it shriek and let go.

  It scuttles back, tail lashing, and hisses. The overlay fills with red lines:

  STATUS: INJURED

  BLEED EFFECT: MINOR

  PAIN RESPONSE: MANAGED

  The fox pivots, listening for my next move. I try to hold still, but my breathing is so loud I might as well be screaming. I edge to the left, putting the table between me and the beast. It comes for me again, this time silent, skittering low to the ground. I stab at it, but the blade misses and the fox latches onto my calf.

  I scream for real now. The sound rips out of me, wild and desperate.

  Tyson takes that as his cue. He launches from the table, wings pumping furiously, and hits the fox right in the back. For a second, bird and beast are a single tangled mass. Tyson pecks at the fox’s open wound, hard, and the fox yelps, then whips its head around, jaws snapping.

  The commotion gives me just enough time to yank my leg free. The fox comes at me again, but this time it’s slower, leaking a trail of blue across the floor. I line up the dagger and jab, more by accident than skill, and catch it just under the jaw.

  It howls, a sound that feels like it comes from the bottom of the world. The whole shack vibrates.

  I jam the knife again, this time into the body. The blade sticks and bends, but I push with all my weight, driving the point between two ribs.

  The fox spasms, legs cycling in place. Then it goes still.

  For a moment, nothing happens. I can hear only the rush of blood in my own ears and Tyson’s heavy, ragged panting.

  Then the fox’s body starts to dissolve.

  It’s not melting, not really. More like it’s turning to dry ash, the fur and flesh flaking off in fractal patterns. The blue goo evaporates, leaving behind a faint, luminous residue. The air fills with the smell of blood and meat.

  When the process is done, all that’s left is a gray, powdery outline and something pulsing with light in the center.

  The System overlay pops up, triumphant:

  TARGET NEUTRALIZED: HOLLOWEYED FOX (LEVEL 1)

  KILL CREDIT: SHARED (PAIRED SURVIVAL CONDITION)

  EXPERIENCE AWARDED: EVAN CARTER: +120 XP | TYSON BROOKS: +120 XP

  NOTABLE FACTORS: FIRST MANA BEAST DEFEATED, SUSTAINED INJURY WITHOUT RETREAT, CONTINUED ENGAGEMENT DESPITE SKILL DEFICIT.

  There is a pause, then a second message:

  SYSTEM UPDATE — LOOT ACQUISITION

  LOOT IDENTIFIED: HOLLOWEYED FOX ESSENCE (COMMON), TAUT SINEW STRIP

  ESSENCE CLASSIFICATION: UNREFINED — COMPATIBLE WITH CRAFTING, SKILL CATALYSTS, OR TRADE

  NEW OPTION UNLOCKED: BASIC CRAFTING (ESSENCE-COMPATIBLE)

  I’m on the floor, shaking, when I realize the wound on my leg is still leaking. The pain is worse now that the adrenaline is gone. I roll up the pant leg and see a bite the size of a golf ball, blue-black at the edges. The medical kit in my pack winks with a small overlay: “ANTIBIOTIC PASTE: APPLY TO OPEN WOUNDS.”

  I open the kit and slather the paste on. It burns, a little, then numbs out. The System overlay says “Bleed Effect: Neutralized,” but there’s still a chunk missing from my leg, and it’s already swelling.

  Tyson is perched on the bed, feathers ruffled, staring at the outline where the fox used to be.

  “That was nuts,” he says, voice thin. “You okay, man?”

  I can’t answer. I just sit and stare at the place where it feels like I almost died.

  After a while, I crawl over to the loot drop. There’s a clump of glowing blue, like an ember that can’t make up its mind about whether it wants to be solid or liquid. Next to it, a strip of tissue, dry and strong as fishing line.

  I reach out, half expecting it to vanish, but the System overlay says “INVENTORY UPDATED: HOLLOWEYED FOX ESSENCE (COMMON), TAUT SINEW STRIP (LOW QUALITY).”

  As soon as I touch the essence, it floods my body with a low, electric warmth. The overlay pings again:

  SYSTEM NOTE: ESSENCE CAN BE CONSUMED FOR TEMPORARY STAT INCREASE OR RESERVED FOR LATER CRAFTING. CHOOSE WISELY.

  Putting my loot into my inventory, I feel it as Tyson hops onto my shoulder. “You did it, man. First kill.”

  “We did it,” I say, and mean it.

  The room is quiet again, the silence somehow warmer.

  I go and sit in one of the wooden chairs by the table.

  For the first time since arriving, I think we might have a chance.

  Then the System overlay pulses one more time:

  QUEST UPDATE: SURVIVE 24 ARENA HOURS. 23:41:17 REMAINING.

  And I realize: that was just the warm-up.

  The real game has barely started.

  There’s no such thing as adrenaline fatigue. At least, that’s what my old bio teacher said, right before his body proved him wrong in the middle of a fire drill. I’m proving him wrong again, right now, as I lean back in the chair and wait for my blood to remember how to stay inside my body.

  I think my hands will never stop shaking.

  Tyson is having the exact opposite reaction. He’s zipping around the shack, bouncing from table to window to my shoulder, each time repeating some new theory on how to level up faster or how I should have “kited” the fox around the room to maximize DPS. He’s got enough energy for both of us. He might have enough energy for all of humanity.

  “You see how you tanked that second bite?” he says, eyes shining. “That was sick. If you keep this up, you’ll be the MVP for sure.”

  “I wasn’t that impressive. I almost died,” I say. My voice sounds like it’s coming from someone else’s body.

  He laughs. “But you didn’t! The clutch factor, man. You can’t teach that. I knew you had it.”

  I don’t argue. There’s nothing to say that will make either of us less of what we are.

  Digging through the med kit again, I decide to see what else is inside. The paste is already working. Where it touched the bite, the flesh is hardening into something pale and rubbery. I’m not sure if that’s a good sign. I use the suture thread to close the worst of the wound, then wrap it with the remaining gauze. It’s not pretty, but the overlay says “INFECTION RISK: MINIMAL.” I’ll take it.

  Tyson lands on my knee and cocks his head. “You know what this means, right?”

  “No,” I say, but I do. “It means the next thing will be worse.”

  He shrugs, feathers rippling. “Maybe, but we’re smarter now. We know what to expect.”

  I don’t want to admit he’s right, so I say nothing. Instead, I open my inventory and look at the loot. The Holloweyed Fox Essence is still pulsing with faint blue, like a heart that hasn’t decided whether to quit or double down. The overlay gives me options:

  CONSUME FOR TEMPORARY STAT BOOST

  SAVE FOR CRAFTING

  BARTER AT SAFE ZONE

  I think about eating it, just to see what happens, but the idea of putting that thing inside me is too much. I leave it in the inventory and hope I don’t regret it later.

  The Taut Sinew Strip is more straightforward. The overlay suggests using it to reinforce armor, or as a makeshift sling, or as a garrote if I’m feeling creative. I’m not, but it’s good to have options.

  Tyson nudges me with his beak. “You should try crafting something. See what happens.”

  I sigh. “I don’t know how.”

  He laughs, a harsh cackle. “Neither did I, first time I used a lat pulldown. Just do it, man. The System’ll walk you through.”

  Fine. I open the crafting menu, which overlays the entire room with blueprints and prompts. It’s like Ikea instructions for the homicidally depressed. I select the leathers, the sinew, and the dagger. The overlay suggests a “PRIMITIVE ARMGUARD (REINFORCED).” It even shows a little animation of how to wrap the sinew around the leather.

  I follow the steps, hands moving on autopilot. It works. The armguard is ugly but solid, and it fits over my forearm snuggly without being uncomfortable. The overlay says, “PROTECTION: IMPROVED (MINOR).”

  Tyson bounces with excitement. “See? What’d I tell you? You’re a natural.”

  I’m about to answer when the outside world reminds us it’s still there.

  The roar is back. Louder. Closer. The window vibrates in its frame, and dust sifts down from the ceiling.

  The overlay pings:

  THREAT LEVEL: ELEVATED

  SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: DECREASING

  Tyson goes quiet. He hops to the window, stares into the dark. “If we’re going to survive in this world, and use this as a base, we’ve got to figure some stuff out,” he says softly.

  I nod. “Just let me breathe for a minute.”

  He stays by the window, wings folded tight, scanning the trees. He looks smaller than before, suddenly aware of how much world there is and how little bird.

  I rest my head against the wall. My body is buzzing with pain and leftover fear, but somewhere inside there’s a tiny glow of pride. We made it through a fight. We’re still here.

  For now.

  The System overlay blinks, counting down the time until morning.

  23:13:06 remaining.

  The numbers feel like a threat.

  I close my eyes, just for a second. The forest howls, and I know we won’t be sleeping tonight.