The roof came down in a roaring cascade of burning timber, and for one suspended, horrifying second, Caius genuinely believed all three of them were about to die buried under a collapsing dormitory while a three-story horror stood in the only doorway out.
Then his new Agility screamed again, and his body moved before his mind finished processing the danger.
He shoved the maid and her child hard to the left, away from the main beam crashing down through the center of the room, and threw himself the opposite direction, rolling across scorched floorboards as a support pillar the size of a tree trunk slammed into the ground exactly where they’d been standing.
Splinters and burning ash exploded outward, and Caius felt several bury themselves in his forearm, hot needles of pain lancing up toward his shoulder.
Seventeen Vitality meant he didn’t scream.
It meant he could feel the wounds without them shutting his body down entirely, a strange clinical distance settling over the pain even as blood welled up along the gashes.
“Are you hurt?” he shouted at the maid, barely audible over the roar of collapsing timber.
“N-no, Young Master, but—” Her voice cracked, and she pointed with a trembling hand toward the doorway, or what remained of it.
The Thornwood Warden’s bark-plated head had lowered to fit through the ruined frame, dozens of its sickly green eyes swiveling independently, several of them fixing directly on Caius.
Its lipless maw peeled open, rows of concentric teeth glistening wet in the firelight, and a low resonant hum built somewhere deep in its chest, like a swarm of hornets trapped inside a church bell.
Caius’s blood turned to ice.
It wasn’t attacking yet.
It was deciding.
He had exactly one working combat skill on cooldown, exactly one whip made of condensed ash currently useless, and exactly zero business standing within melee range of a monster that had casually backhanded an armored Blessed soldier fifty feet through the air.
“Is there another way out?” he barked at the maid.
She shook her head frantically.
“The window, the back window, it’s small but Talia can fit through it, I don’t know if—”
“Get her there. Now.” Caius didn’t wait for a response.
He turned, planting himself squarely between the collapsing doorway and the two of them, and summoned every scrap of nerve his borrowed body still possessed.
The Warden’s hum sharpened into something like a shriek, and its thorned limb lashed forward through the burning frame, vines uncoiling in midair to triple their reach, aimed directly at Caius’s chest.
He threw himself sideways, feeling the wind of the strike whip past close enough to singe his hair, and the vine-limb obliterated an entire support wall behind him instead, sending burning debris raining down across the room.
Caius didn’t have time to check whether they made it.
The Warden’s second limb was already coming, faster than the first, thorns extending and retracting like a striking serpent.
Ember Lash’s cooldown clicked over with a soft internal chime he could actually feel, a strange pulse behind his sternum, and Caius summoned the whip the instant the limb closed the last few feet toward his skull.
The condensed cinder weapon met thorned bark in an explosion of sparks, and this time Caius didn’t get thrown backward.
He held his ground, boots scraping against burning floorboards, arms shaking violently from the impact, and watched with something between horror and vindictive satisfaction as a thin line of ash-fire scorched clean through several inches of the creature’s vine.
The Warden recoiled, an ear-splitting shriek tearing out of its maw, several of its green eyes narrowing with what almost looked like genuine fury.
“Oh, that got its attention,” Caius muttered, backing toward the shattered window as fast as his legs would carry him.
Behind him, he heard the maid’s voice screaming something that might have been his name, might have been a warning, he couldn’t tell over the roar of the fire and the creature’s furious shrieking.
The Warden lunged fully into the collapsing building, its massive bark-plated body barely fitting through the ruined doorframe, timber and stone crumbling further under its weight.
Its main body surged forward faster than something that size had any right to move, and Caius realized with sick clarity that he had bought the maid and her daughter perhaps ten extra seconds of life, and he was about to pay for every single one of them personally.
He threw Ashveil around himself again, the gray mist bleeding out from his skin, thinning the smoke and hopefully dulling the creature’s ability to track him precisely, and dove sideways just as the Warden’s massive body crashed through the space he’d occupied a half second earlier.
The impact shook the entire building’s remaining structure, and Caius hit the ground hard, rolling twice before slamming into the wall beneath the back window.
Pain screamed up his shoulder where he’d landed wrong, but he forced himself upright, scrambling the last few feet toward the window frame the maid and her daughter had already escaped through.
He didn’t make it.
A thorned vine wrapped around his ankle with bone-crushing force and yanked, and the world spun violently as Caius was hauled backward across the burning floor, splinters tearing at his clothes and skin, directly toward the Warden’s waiting maw.
He twisted, summoning Ember Lash on pure instinct even though he knew the cooldown wasn’t finished, felt nothing happen, and understood in a flash of pure animal terror that he had exactly one option left before those concentric rings of teeth closed around him.
His fingers found the hilt of a fallen kitchen knife lying discarded near the collapsed pantry, some servant’s dropped tool, utterly useless against a monster like this by every rational measure, and he drove it directly into the vine wrapped around his ankle with every ounce of strength his borrowed body possessed.
The Warden shrieked, its grip loosening for just a fraction of a second, and Caius tore his leg free, scrambling backward on his hands as the creature’s massive head descended toward him, jaws unhinging wider than should have been physically possible.
Then a wall of crimson flame slammed into the Warden’s flank hard enough to stagger its entire massive frame sideways, and Caius looked up to see Kaelan Draxos standing in the ruined doorway, greatsword still trailing fire, his crimson eyes blazing with something that wasn’t quite concern but wasn’t contempt either.
Caius didn’t need to be told twice.
He scrambled toward the window as Kaelan pressed his advantage, driving the burning greatsword into the Warden’s exposed flank with a force that sent bark and pale flesh scattering in every direction, but even as Caius reached the window frame, hauling himself up on trembling arms, he felt it.
A subtle shift beneath his sternum.
A warmth pooling somewhere deep in his chest that had nothing to do with the fire raging around him.
[Notification: Ash Affinity has increased to Level 3]
[Notification: Combat data recorded. Proximity to lethal danger detected. Bonus experience awarded.]
The system’s cold blue text flickered across his vision even as Kaelan’s greatsword finally drove the shrieking Warden backward through the ruined breach in the outer wall, the two combatants disappearing into the smoke and firelight beyond, leaving Caius alone in the ruined shell of what had been the servants’ dormitory.
He collapsed against the window frame, breathing hard, blood dripping steadily from the gashes on his forearm, and stared at the small blue notification still hovering patiently in front of his eyes.
Level 3.
He’d been Level 1 an hour ago.
Whatever had just happened, whatever the system considered worthy of that kind of jump, it had happened because he’d nearly died twice in the span of ten minutes.
‘Great,’ Caius thought numbly, watching smoke curl up into the night sky where the sounds of Kaelan’s ongoing fight with the Warden still echoed across the estate grounds.
‘Terrific system.
Really solid incentive structure you’ve built here.’
He didn’t have long to process it.
A fresh notification chimed into existence, and this one made his blood run cold in an entirely different way.
[Warning: A Second Signature Has Been Detected Beyond the Outer Wall.]
[Warning: Divine Authority Fluctuation Rising. Source: Unknown.]
[Warning: This Signature Does Not Match Any Registered Deity of the Thirteen.]
Caius stared at the words, his stomach dropping through the floor entirely, because he knew, with the sick certainty of someone who had read this exact lore compendium a hundred times in his old life, that there was only one kind of authority in all of Ur that deliberately avoided registration among the Thirteen Major Gods.
Somewhere beyond the smoke and the burning wall, something Heretical had just arrived.