Mud. Blood. Burning. The ragged tearing of his own lungs.
Those were the only three things left in Jaxen’s world.
The young feline beastkin tore through the dense, darkened undergrowth of the forest, his footfalls miraculously silent despite his blind panic. Branches whipped at his face, scoring shallow, stinging lines across his furred cheeks, but he didn’t dare slow down. His tufted ears were pinned flat against his skull, twitching wildly as they tried to filter the ambient sounds of the nocturnal forest from the terrifying noises he knew were hunting him.
He cursed his luck. He cursed his ambition. Mostly, he cursed the gods that had decided to crack the sky open and let the abyss pour through.
Just three days, Jaxen thought, vaulting over a rotting, moss-slicked log and landing in a crouch before springing forward again. We had only been at the damn camp for three days.
It was supposed to be the perfect proving ground. That was the pitch the Guild had given back in the bustling city of Verentide. Word had spread that a new goblin dungeon had been discovered, and a vanguard of powerful adventurers had already moved in, pacified the initial surge, and stabilised the area.
Jaxen and his party—four bright-eyed, hopelessly optimistic rookies—had travelled from Verentide with the "second wave." They were part of a large caravan of low-level adventurers, rchants, and opportunists eager to start their real tests. When they had arrived, the camp had looked like a bastion of opportunity. The periter was dominated by a massive, encircling dirt wall. Jaxen rembered marvelling at it. It wasn't just piled dirt; it was a solid, unnaturally uniform ridge of packed earth, the undeniable work of high-tier earth manipulation or advanced skills from whoever had been there a few weeks prior.
The wall had been fresh, but the new arrivals and the Guild had already made basic, pragmatic improvents. Thick, sharpened wooden stakes had been driven into the top of the earthwork at brutal angles, and a rudintary wooden walkway had been lashed together on the interior side so archers and mages could fire over the lip. Inside the protective ring, a roughly hewn wooden town had sprung up nearly overnight. It was barely more than a collection of large, drafty timber fras—a makeshift tavern serving watered-down ale, a lean-to for a travelling blacksmith to repair chipped blades, and a Guild registration desk. Surrounding these few structures was a sprawling sea of canvas tents.
It had felt like the frontier. It had felt like an adventure.
They had only gone into the dungeon once, finally finding the nerve after asking advice for two days and doing their due diligence.
The mory of it flared in Jaxen’s mind, tasting like ash. They had descended into the damp, foul-slling cavern that housed the portal. It hadn't gone exactly to plan. They had expected scattered groups of two or three goblins, which is how it had started. Eventually, though, they had been pushed back almost imdiately by a surging volu of the screeching green creatures. Kael, their human shield-bearer, had nearly lost an arm holding the line, and Elara, their novice mage, had emptied her mana pool just buying them ti to retreat to the surface.
But they had survived. More importantly, as they collapsed just outside the cavern entrance, coughing and bleeding, the System prompts had chid in their minds. They had all levelled up. Jaxen had hit Level 6, his agility stat boosting just enough to make him feel invincible. They had celebrated in the muddy tavern that night, laughing, drinking, and talking about what gear they would buy when they hit Level 10.
That had been yesterday.
Today, the sky had broken.
Jaxen ducked under a low-hanging branch, his boots sliding in the damp soil. His breath was coming in short, agonising wheezes, but he pushed his aching leg muscles to keep driving him forward.
He rembered the sound first. A deafening, cosmic crack that vibrated in his teeth, followed by the sound of a million panes of glass shattering miles above their heads. Everyone in the camp had frozen, stepping out of their tents and looking up.
The portal down in the cavern hadn't just flared; it had violently mutated. Even from the surface, they could see the sickly, pulsing purple light bleeding out from the dungeon entrance, casting long, unnatural shadows across the camp. The ambient mana in the air had turned heavy and suffocating, slling of ozone and rotting at.
And then, the horde had spilled out.
It wasn't a respawn. It was an eviction. Hundreds of goblins, driven mad by whatever was happening inside the dungeon, erupted from the cavern like a geyser of green flesh and rusty iron.
Panic had gripped the camp instantly, but discipline—or the desperate need to survive—had taken over. The call had gone out to man the dirt wall. The horde couldn't be allowed to spread into the wider territory. So even cheered at the prospect of easy kills and easier levels. Fools, Jaxen spat.
Jaxen rembered drawing his twin daggers, his hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped them, as Kael practically dragged him toward the earthen ramparts. The defence had been chaotic, a desperate scramble to find footing on the muddy walkways.
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Command had naturally fallen to the highest-level individuals present. A harried, grey-haired Guild Representative nad Masterson had taken charge of the centre, shouting himself hoarse, while two Level 14 adventurers—veritable gods compared to Jaxen and his friends—anchored a flank each. One was a hulking knight encased in battered plate armour, wielding a massive tower shield that crushed goblins into paste. The other was a lithe spellsword whose blade danced with searing blue flas, turning the dirt wall in front of him into a crematorium.
For a while, it seed like they might hold.
The fighting on the wall had been a relentless, suffocating at grinder. Jaxen stood beside Kael, stabbing his daggers downward into the screaming faces of the goblins that tried to scale the packed earth. The sll of copper, voided bowels, and scorched flesh was intoxicatingly horrific. Every ti Jaxen blinked, another goblin was trying to pull Kael’s shield down.
Then, the attrition began.
It wasn't a sudden defeat; it was a slow, agonising bleeding out. There were simply too many of them. The sheer volu of bodies pressing against the wall began to take its toll.
Elara was the first to fall. Jaxen hadn't even seen it happen. One mont she was beside him, casting small darts of arcane energy, and the next he heard a wet, sickening thud. A stray, jagged arrow fired blindly from the mass of goblins below had caught her in the throat. She hadn't even had ti to scream, just drowning in her own blood as Kael roared in grief.
Brog, their stout dwarven cleric, went next. A section of the makeshift wooden walkway gave way under the weight of the defenders. Brog slipped, his heavy mace dragging him downward. Jaxen had lunged to grab the dwarf’s thick leather harness, but a massive, grey-skinned hand—an orc that had mixed into the goblin tide—had reached up, grabbed Brog by the ankle, and pulled him screaming into the sea of monsters below. The sound of him being torn apart was sothing Jaxen knew he would never stop hearing. If he survived.
Every so often, the line would buckle. A pocket of defenders would run out of stamina or mana, and the green tide would pour over the lip of the earthwork. Goblins and hulking orcs would breach the periter, slaughtering so of the adventurers in their path before scattering past the tents and vanishing into the deep forest beyond the camp.
Twelve hours.
They had fought on that wall for twelve agonising hours. Night had fallen, turning the battlefield into a nightmare illuminated only by the purple glow of the cavern and the erratic, dying flashes of the spellsword’s magic. Jaxen’s daggers were dull, his arms felt like lead, and his health was dangerously low. He was fighting on pure, animal instinct, staying alive only because Kael had refused to let the periter around him collapse.
Until suddenly, Kael wasn’t.
The young shield-bearer, battered, bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, and exhausted beyond reason, simply couldn't raise his arm fast enough. A goblin with a rusted at cleaver brought it down squarely on Kael’s collarbone. The human crumpled without a word.
Jaxen had been left alone. The only survivor of a party that had been dreaming of the future just hours before.
He had backed away, terror overriding his loyalty. He couldn't fight anymore. Nobody could. The Guild Rep had taken a spear through the chest, and the two Level 14s were entirely surrounded, fighting a dood, isolated battle in a sea of enemies.
But the true breaking point—the mont the defence completely shattered—hadn't co from the front.
It had co from behind them.
The monsters that had breached the wall hours ago, the ones that had scattered into the forest, hadn't just run away. They had regrouped in the darkness. Just as the defenders on the wall were reaching the absolute limits of their physical endurance, a massive war horn had blasted from the treeline behind the camp.
A fresh horde of goblins and roaring orcs tore out of the forest, crashing into the rear of the camp. They set the canvas tents ablaze, slaughtering the wounded and the non-combatants who had taken shelter near the Guild tent.
The defenders on the wall realised simultaneously that they were trapped between two oceans of monsters. The line evaporated. It wasn't a retreat; it was a rout. Adventurers threw down their weapons and scattered, diving off the walls, sprinting blindly into the dark woods, praying they wouldn't run straight into the jaws of the ambushers.
Jaxen had been one of them. He had triggered his one movent skill—Feline Dash—and bolted, abandoning his party's corpses, abandoning the camp, abandoning his dreams.
Which brought him here. Running blindly through the black, unforgiving woods.
Keep moving, Jaxen told himself, his lungs screaming in protest. Just keep moving. They’re slow in the woods. You’re a scout. You can lose them. Maybe they’ll find soone else. He dared to glance over his shoulder. The forest behind him was a wall of blackness, illuminated only by the faint, distant orange glow of the burning camp miles away. He couldn't hear the snapping of twigs behind him anymore. Maybe he had done it. Maybe his beastkin agility had put enough distance between him and the massacre.
He turned his head forward just as his right foot caught on sothing rigid and unyielding hidden in the tall, dew-soaked grass.
"Wha—"
Jaxen’s montum betrayed him. He went flying forward, the world spinning in a sickening blur of dark trees and starry sky. He hit the forest floor hard, his shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, sending him tumbling head over heels through the dirt and dead leaves until he slamd against the base of a massive oak tree.
He groaned, his vision swimming. For a terrifying second, the breath was knocked completely out of him. He lay there, gasping like a landed fish, pain and grief overtaking him.
Slowly, the world stopped spinning. Jaxen blinked the dirt from his eyes and pushed himself up onto his elbows. He rolled his shoulder. It flared with pain, but it held. He flexed his legs. Nothing broken. Phew. A wave of dizzying relief washed over him. He had survived the fall. He was fine. He just needed to get up and keep moving. He was going to live.
He let out a ragged, shaking breath and tilted his head back, resting it against the rough bark of the oak tree as he looked up into the dense canopy of leaves above.
Sitting on a thick branch, perfectly camouflaged in the shadows fifteen feet above him, was a goblin.
It wasn't screaming. It wasn't wildly waving a rusted blade. It was crouched with absolute, terrifying stillness. In its hands, it held a crude, but tightly strung shortbow, the arrow already nocked and pulled back to the creature's ear. The iron arrowhead was pointed directly at the space between Jaxen’s eyes.
The goblin looked down at the exhausted, battered beastkin.
And it smiled.
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