My legs felt like overcooked noodles, and my three-thousand-dollar boots had officially given up the ghost.
They weren’t shoes anymore; they were two , waterlogged buckets of gray sludge bound to my feet by sheer spite.
All I wanted to do was navigate this stupid, uneven trail without breaking my neck.
But of course, the translucent blue nuisance hovering at the edge of my field of vision had other plans.
[DING.] [ SIDE MISSION: GAIN THE TYRANT’S SYMPATHY!
] [ CURRENT STATUS: -10 (EXTREME IRRITATION) ] [ HINT: APPEAR VULNERABLE, TRAGIC, OR AT LEAST SLIGHTLY IN NEED OF PROTECTION.
] Vulnerable?
I thought, glaring at the back of Dylan’s head as he moved through the dense brush like a silent ghost.
I am currently being dragged through a toxic forest by a man who treats conversational speech like a war crime.
My hair is ruined, my feet are bleeding, and I smell like stale food.
If that doesn’t scream ‘tragic,’ I don’t know what does.
I took another step forward, my left boot sliding on a slick patch of wet moss.
I gasped, flailing my arms as my center of gravity completely evaporated.
Desperate to catch myself, my fingers scrambled against a jagged rock formation jutting out from the embankment.
I grabbed it with both hands, leaning my full weight against the stone structure.
That was a mistake.
A sharp, hollow CRACK echoed through the canyon.
The rock formation, already weakened by years of erosion and high-tier energy exposure, gave out instantly under my panic-induced grip.
The entire section groaned, fractured, and violently collapsed inward.
”Stella, wait—” Dylan turned, his eyes widening just a fraction of a second too late.
I went down hard, tumbling over the ledge in a shower of stones, loose dirt, and crushed roots.
The rock cascade roared into the hidden ravine below like a miniature avalanche, crashing down the steep incline with deafening force.
I hit the slope, rolled three times, and finally slammed to a halt at the bottom, landing face-first in a pile of damp, freezing silt.
Cough.
I spat out a mouthful of grit, my chest heaving as dirt coated my face, stuck to my eyelashes, and filled my mouth.
A sharp sting burned through my right knee where my denim jeans had torn open against a jagged rock.
Pain radiated up my leg, hot and furious.
Above the sound of my own ragged breathing, a horrific sound echoed from the shadowed hollow of the ravine where the rocks had fallen.
The sudden rockfall hadn’t just made a mess—it had crushed the shadowed overhang directly below the ridge, flushing Dylan’s target straight out of cover.
Fifty feet away, a massive shape erupted from the rubble.
It didn’t look like a person anymore.
The creature’s torso was horribly broad, its skin stretched taut over thick, unnatural muscular ridges that glowed with a faint, sickly static.
Sharp, ossified spines protruded from its shoulders, tearing through the shredded remnants of a faded tactical uniform.
Its eyes were milky white, entirely devoid of pupils, and black veins webbed outward across its jaw and neck.
It bared rows of jagged, elongated teeth, hissing at the sudden daylight as it shook off the fallen boulders.
[DING.] [ SIDE MISSION COMPLETE!
] [ ACQUIRED TARGET’S EXASPERATED SYMPATHY: CURRENT LEVEL 1% ] [ REWARD: ENHANCED BALANCE +1 ] Enhanced Balance +1?
NOW?!
I screamed internally, spitting another clump of wet sand onto the mud.
AFTER I’VE fallen off a cliff!
Above me, Dylan stood on the edge of the collapsed ridge.
He looked down at the screaming feral anomaly, then shifted his gaze to me—sprawled out, covered in dirt, bleeding, and chewing on soil.
He didn’t even look surprised.
He just closed his eyes, let out a deep sigh at my chaotic, incredibly clumsy luck, and reached down to unholster his secondary sidearm with a smooth, practiced flick of his wrist.
I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, my knee stinging viciously as dirt pressed into the fresh scrape.
”I hate this forest,” I wheezed, wiping a streak of black mud across my forehead and spitting out another grain of dirt.
“I hate you.
I hate my life.” Dylan didn’t break his gaze from the creature below, raising his weapon without a flicker of hesitation,”Get up, Knox.
You’re blocking my angle.” ”Oh, I’m so sorry to inconvenience your murder spree!” I snapped back, though I scrambled frantically backward on my hands and knees anyway, trying to put distance between myself and the terrifying thing currently tearing at the rocks.
As I dragged myself toward the root of a large birch tree, my hand brushed against something metallic half-buried in the churned dirt right where the creature had been sleeping.
I stopped and picked up the first thing I could see.
It wasn’t a weapon as I had thought.
It was a small, silver-rimmed ID bracelet, snapped in half by brute force.
Resting right beside it in the mud was a thin, simple gold band—a wedding ring, scratched and caked in dry blood, as if it had been frantically pulled off a swelling finger before the skin mutated.
I picked up the bracelet with trembling fingers.
The metal was cool against my skin.
Etched into the worn surface were three simple lines: MARKUS V.
— CLASS 2 TECH WIFE: SARAH IF FOUND, RETURN TO SECTOR 4 My breath hitched.
Whatever I’d been feeling two seconds ago — the mud, the humiliation, the System’s stupid pop-up — just stopped mattering.
There was a name etched into metal in my palm, and a person underneath the thing screaming in the ravine.
I stared from the bloody gold ring in my palm to the shrieking, mutated monster raging fifty feet away.
This wasn’t just a monster anymore.
Somewhere, a woman named Sarah was probably still setting two plates for dinner.
A shadow fell over me, blocking the light.
Dylan stepped down from the rocky slope, his boots crunching softly in the gravel.
He didn’t look at the bracelet in my hand, but the slight tightening around his eyes told me he already knew it was there.
He raised his rifle, locking his sights onto the creature’s chest.
”Dylan…” My voice caught, barely louder than a whisper.
“He…
he was wearing a ring.” Dylan’s finger hovered over the trigger, his voice flat, emotionless, and devastatingly absolute.
”Not anymore.”