Kain had walked for days—long days, hard days, the kind of days that stripped away everything soft and left only what was necessary for survival.
His two skills, meager as they were, had become the difference between living and dying more times than he could count. The hiding skill, in particular, had proven invaluable; at night,
when the plains came alive with creatures that saw humans as nothing more than walking meat, he could press himself against a rock or a tree trunk or simply lie still in the tall grass, and the world would look past him like he wasn't there.
In the mornings he walked, covering mile after mile across the golden grasslands that stretched to every horizon.
In the afternoons he hunted—not with a weapon, not really, but with patience and desperation and the small knife he'd borrowed from Sera's kitchen.
Snakes were easiest, their heat signatures visible even to his untrained eyes, and he learned to strike fast and pull back faster, to skin them with quick, efficient movements that made him look away from what he was doing.
Lizards, rabbits, once a bird that had been too slow to fly—he ate them all, cooked over small fires that he buried as soon as the meat was done, leaving no trace of his passing.
His body changed.
The scars from the wolf's stomach remained, silvered and tight across his chest and arms, but the muscles beneath them grew harder, leaner, shaped by endless walking and the constant low-grade fear that kept his senses sharp.
He wasn't a warrior—he would never be a warrior, not in the way that word meant in this world—but he was becoming something else, something tougher, something that could endure.
The towns and villages he passed through told him what he already knew. The war had started.
Newspapers pinned to tavern walls carried headlines that grew larger and more desperate with each passing day.
Austrai Declares War on Demon Realm. King Aldric Vows Revenge for Slain Prince. Southern Front Mobilizes.
Heroes Rise from the Ashes of Tragedy. Kain read them with a hollow feeling in his chest, because he knew what those headlines meant.
Prince Cassian had found his witness—a soldier who had seen everything from a distance, a man who could describe the shadow figures commanding the Alpha Wolf, who could swear on his life that demons had orchestrated the attack that killed the Fifth Prince.
Whether the soldier was lying or simply mistaken didn't matter.
The king believed him, and the kingdom believed the king, and the war that Cassian had wanted for so long had finally begun.
Kain dropped the last newspaper onto a tavern table and walked out into the morning without looking back.
The war would find him eventually—if the demons found him first, they would use him as a pawn against the kingdom that had declared war on them; if the Holy Kingdom of Soul Maria found him, they would see through his borrowed body to the foreign soul beneath and burn him as a heretic or a demon or something worse.
He had no time to waste, no days to spare, no room for error.
He walked for seven more days.
He crossed rivers that rose to his chest and threatened to sweep him away, his pack held above his head, his teeth chattering against the cold.
He climbed mountains that made his lungs burn and his legs scream, using the hiding skill to rest on narrow ledges where a single wrong move would send him tumbling into the void.
He crossed a desert that stretched for miles in every direction, the sun baking the life out of him during the day and the cold leaching it out during the night, surviving on the last of his dried meat and the memory of Sera's bread.
By the time he reached the edge of the Veilborn Expanse, Kain was not the same person who had climbed down from that tree and walked away from the dogs.
His skin was darker, tougher, layered with dust and old sweat and the faint silver of scars that would never fade. His eyes were sharper, harder, constantly scanning for threats that had become as familiar as breathing.
His hands, once soft from a life spent indoors, were calloused and rough, the fingers quick and sure.
And before him, finally, impossibly, was the Veilborn Expanse.
The place where demons did not go. The place where humans did not return. The place where Aldric had dreamed of seven children waiting for someone to save them.
Kain stood at the edge of a violet cloud that stretched from the earth to the sky, a wall of mist that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat, its colors shifting through shades of purple and lavender and deep, bruised blue.
He couldn't see through it—couldn't see more than a few feet into its depths—but he could feel it, a pressure against his skin that was almost like standing at the bottom of the ocean, a weight that pressed against his chest and made each breath a conscious effort.
"System," he said, and the screen flickered into existence beside him, its blue light a pale counterpoint to the violet glow of the mist.
YES, USER. HOW MAY SYSTEM ASSIST TODAY?
"Scan this place," Kain ordered, gesturing at the cloud. "Tell me what's inside. Tell me if it's safe. Tell me anything that might help me survive the next few hours."
The screen flickered. Spun. Paused.
SYSTEM PROCESSING...
HMM... SYSTEM THINKING...
Kain stared at the words, his jaw tightening. "What do you mean, thinking? It's an order. Scan it. Now."
The screen's light dimmed slightly, the way it always did when the system was about to be difficult, and when the words appeared they came out slower than usual, almost sulky.
SYSTEM FINDS SLAVERY TREATMENT FROM USER DISTASTEFUL. SYSTEM DOES NOT APPRECIATE BEING ORDERED AROUND LIKE A COMMON DATABASE.
Kain's eye twitched. He took a breath, held it, let it out slowly. The system was a magical interface from a world he didn't understand, connected to a game he'd never played, running on logic that seemed designed to frustrate him at every possible turn. It had saved his life, warned him of danger, given him skills that had kept him alive through days of walking and nights of terror. It had also told him it loved him, which was its own kind of problem.
What the fuck is wrong with this system? he thought, but he didn't say it, because he was learning that the system responded better to honey than vinegar, and he was too tired, too close, too desperate to argue with a magical computer that apparently had feelings.
He sighed, long and heavy, and when he spoke again his voice was softer, almost gentle.
"System," he said, "please. I need your help. I've come a long way, and I'm tired, and I'm scared, and I don't know what's in there. Please. Scan the Veilborn Expanse and tell me what you find."
The screen flickered. The violet mist pulsed. And somewhere, deep in the cloud, something stirred.
The system's voice cut through the violet mist like a blade, sharp and urgent in a way Kain had never heard before.
ALERT. MASSIVE DUNGEON DETECTED. REPEAT. MASSIVE DUNGEON DETECTED WITHIN THE VEILBORN EXPANSE.
Kain stopped mid-step, his foot hovering over a patch of rotten purple soil that steamed faintly in the morning light. The mist curled around his ankles like it was trying to pull him in, and somewhere in the distance—close, too close—something rumbled, a sound that was less like thunder and more like the earth itself groaning in its sleep.
"What do you mean, dungeon?" he asked, keeping his voice low, his eyes scanning the fog. "I know what a dungeon is. Everyone knows what a dungeon is. Hidden caves, monsters, rewards, leveling up. But why is there one here? This is the Veilborn Expanse. Nothing is supposed to be here."
SYSTEM THINKING. SYSTEM DOES NOT KNOW. USER MUST HAVE PLAYED THE GAME BEFORE. USER MUST HAVE THE ANSWERS.
Kain's hands clenched into fists at his sides, his nails biting into his palms, and for a moment he just stood there, breathing, trying not to scream. The system had no idea what it was talking about—had never had any idea—and every time he thought it might finally be useful, it reminded him that he was alone in this, that no one was coming to help him, that the only thing standing between him and whatever was in that mist was a magical computer that apparently thought he was an expert on a game he'd never played.
"I haven't played this game," he said, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. "I told you this already. I only heard about it. Fragments. Conversations. I don't know the details. I don't know the maps. I don't know why there's a dungeon in the one place everyone said was empty."
SYSTEM PAUSED. SYSTEM SHOCKED. SYSTEM PRAYS FOR USER.
Kain's eye twitched. "What do you mean, you pray for me? I can still survive this place. I've survived everything else."
SYSTEM REGRETS ASSIGNING TO NOOB USER.
That was it. That was the breaking point. Kain's hand shot out and grabbed the floating screen—or tried to, his fingers passing through the blue light like it wasn't there, but the gesture was enough, the intention clear, his voice rising to a shout that echoed off the dead trees and the rotting ground.
"You shitty system! I've had enough of you! What do you think I am, calling me a noob? First of all, I didn't ask to be dragged into this world! Second of all, how was I supposed to know this game existed? I was broke! I didn't have money for games! I didn't have money for food! I didn't have money for anything except dying in a room that smelled like piss and regret, so forgive me if I didn't memorize the lore of a game I couldn't afford to play!"
He was breathing hard now, his chest heaving, his face flushed, and the system was silent, its light dimmed to almost nothing, and Kain had just opened his mouth to continue when—
Thwip.
The sound was almost nothing—a whisper, a breath, a needle pulled through silk—but Kain had spent days on the plains learning to hear the difference between safe sounds and deadly ones, and his body was moving before his mind caught up, throwing itself sideways as something blur past his ear and embedded itself in the tree behind him with a sound like a hammer hitting meat.
He touched his cheek. His fingers came away red.
A spear—no, not a spear, something smaller, something faster, something that had been thrown with enough force to crack stone—had passed close enough to slice his skin open, and he hadn't even seen it coming.
His passive skill flared to life, wrapping around him like a second skin, and he dropped to the ground, pressing himself into the rotting soil, making himself small, making himself invisible. The mist swirled above him, thick and purple and full of eyes he couldn't see, and another spear shot past—closer this time, close enough that he felt the wind of it on his neck.
He rolled, scrambled, crawled behind a boulder that had been split in half by something that looked like it had hit with the force of a cannon. Another spear struck the boulder, and the rock shattered, pieces of it spraying across his back like shrapnel.
"System!" he shouted, his voice raw, his hands over his head. "What is that thing?"
SCANNING. DUNGEON WALLS HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED. THREAT RETALIATION IN RESPONSE TO USER'S PROXIMITY.
"Dungeons can attack?" Kain rolled again, barely avoiding a spear that embedded itself in the ground where his chest had been, its shaft quivering with the force of impact. "Since when do dungeons attack? I've never heard of such a thing!"
USER HAS MUCH TO LEARN.
"Not helpful!" He was running now, crouched low, weaving between dead trees and shattered rocks, the spears following him with an accuracy that felt almost intelligent. "How am I supposed to win against something I can't even see? How am I supposed to fight when I don't know where the attacks are coming from?"
He ran until the mist thinned, until the ground beneath his feet changed from rotting purple soil to something harder, grayer, until the spears stopped falling and the silence returned, heavy and expectant. He collapsed behind a ridge of black rock, his chest heaving, his cheek still bleeding, his hands shaking against the stone.
The Veilborn Expanse stretched out before him, a wasteland of dead trees and dried-up riverbeds and the bones of animals he couldn't name.
The mist hung over everything like a shroud, violet and thick and somehow watching, and the ground beneath his feet was not dirt but something else—something that had once been alive and was now only memory, crushed and rotted and pressed into a landscape that looked like the aftermath of a war no one had survived.
Kain pressed his forehead against the cool stone and closed his eyes.
This is the only place I can survive, he thought. The demons won't come here. The humans won't follow. The war can't reach me in a place that's already dead.
He opened his eyes and looked out at the wasteland, at the mist and the bones and the dungeon that had tried to kill him for simply standing too close.
But I'm not sure this place will let me live, either