The ground shook. Not a tremble, but a rhythmic, nauseating quake.

  Fifty Iron-Wood Golems marched down the hill. They were crude things massive tree trunks bound with iron bands, animated by green alchemical engines. They didn't have faces, just glowing vents that hissed steam.

  "They are slow!" Brandan roared, charging the center line. "Hit the joints!"

  "Slow is relative when you are a walking bruise," I muttered inside my Ironvine helmet.

  A Golem loomed over me. It raised a fist the size of a carriage.

  I couldn't block. I couldn't tank.

  "Thwip!"

  I fired a web at the Golem’s raised fist. I didn't pull myself up; I swung around it. The fist slammed into the mud where I had been standing a second ago, creating a crater. Mud and stones exploded outward.

  A rock hit my chest.

  "Gah!" I gasped, swinging around the Golem’s back. "Everything hurts! Why does everything hurt?"

  I landed on the Golem’s shoulder. It swatted at me like I was a fly.

  "Thermal Shock!" I screamed, driving the Cinder-Cleaver into the iron band holding its neck together.

  The blade flared white-hot. The iron band glowed orange.

  "Freeze!"

  The magic snapped. The iron shattered.

  CRACK.

  The Golem’s head a massive log toppled off. The green light in its chest flickered and died. It collapsed forward, crushing two Ironvine soldiers beneath it.

  Golden light washed over me, repairing the bruise on my chest but doing nothing for my exhaustion.

  I stood on the wreckage, panting.

  "Too many," I whispered. "There are forty-nine left."

  I looked around the battlefield. It was chaos. Brandan was wrestling a Golem. Malachia was Flickering through wood.

  But then I saw him.

  Dr. Fenris Vulpine.

  The Master of Flesh wasn't fighting. His mechanical wolf was wrecked one leg sheared off, sparking in the mud. Fenris was dragging himself through the tall grass. He was bleeding. A nasty gash on his leg, deep enough to see bone.

  He wasn't running away. He was crawling toward the burning village. Toward Foxglade.

  "Liora..." I heard him wheeze. "Ember..."

  A squad of Ironvine soldiers was closing in on him. They saw an easy kill. A crippled fox.

  I looked at my Skill Point.

  I looked at the army between me and Fenris.

  "I can't fight them all," I realized. "I need to vanish."

  I dumped the point into [STEALTH].

  I tapped my Spider Web.

  "Thwip."

  I swung low, skimming the ground. I didn't engage the soldiers. I didn't yell. I moved like a ghost in my Shadow-Weave Coat.

  I landed next to Fenris.

  He looked up, his blue eyes hazy with pain. He raised a scalpel, his hand shaking.

  "Back off," Fenris snarled. "I'll cut you."

  "Put the knife away, Doctor," I whispered, kneeling in the mud. "Your ride is here."

  "Wilhelm?" Fenris blinked. "Go away. I have to... I have to get to the house. The third one on the left. The blue door."

  "You can't walk," I said, looking at his leg.

  "I can crawl," Fenris spat. He tried to move, and cried out in agony.

  I shook my head.

  "No crawling today."

  I grabbed him. I hauled the fox-man onto my back. He was lighter than he looked mostly fur and sarcasm.

  "You're heavy," I lied, grunting as my own bad leg protested.

  "You're bony," Fenris shot back, his voice weak. He clung to my neck. "Why are you helping me? The quest... the gold..."

  "I hate gold," I wheezed, standing up. "And I hate math. And right now... the math says you die if I leave you."

  I triggered [STEALTH].

  The shadows seemed to wrap around us. The soldiers ran past, shouting, looking for the fox, but they didn't see us huddled in the gloom of the broken Golem.

  "Hold on, fluff-ball," I whispered. "We're going to the blue door."

  Fenris’s grip on my coat tightened. His breathing was ragged, wet against my ear.

  He wasn't just shivering from the pain in his mangled leg; he was shaking from a terror I hadn't thought him capable of.

  "She hates the blue door," Fenris murmured into my neck. He sounded delirious. The sarcasm was gone, stripped away by the smoke. "Liora. She wanted to paint it red. Red like autumn leaves. I told her blue was calming. Scientifically proven."

  He let out a choked sob.

  "I’m a bad husband, Wilhelm. I argue about paint while the world burns."

  He fumbled with a pocket inside his blood-soaked lab coat. His claws, usually so precise with a scalpel, were clumsy. He pulled out a piece of crumpled paper. It was scorched at the edges.

  He held it up in front of my face as I crept through the shadows.

  It was a drawing. A child’s drawing done in charcoal and berry juice. It showed a tall, stick-figure fox with a cane, holding hands with a smaller fox. The big fox had a heart drawn on his chest in bright, messy red.

  "Ember drew this," Fenris whispered. His tears dripped onto my shoulder. "She thinks I heal people. She doesn't know about the Flesh Pits. She doesn't know I cut things apart to see how they scream."

  He pressed the drawing against my cheek.

  "They are the only ones, Wilhelm. The only living things in this cursed system who look at me and don't see a monster. They see... Papa."

  He buried his face in my coat, his voice breaking completely.

  "If they burn... if Dankmar burns them... then I am just a butcher again. Don't let me be a butcher, Wilhelm. Please."

  I swallowed hard. The lump in my throat felt bigger than the Vorex I’d eaten.

  "You're not a butcher today, Fenris," I whispered fiercely, adjusting my grip on his legs. "Today, you're just a dad who is late for dinner."

  I moved.

  Click. Tap. Silence.

  We slipped through the chaos. Past the raging King. Past the burning silos.

  We reached the edge of the village. The heat was intense. The houses were burning.

  "There," Fenris pointed, his claw shaking. "The blue door. It's... it's burning."

  The house was engulfed. The roof was collapsing.

  "No," Fenris whispered. "NO!"

  He tried to jump off my back. I held him tight.

  "Wait," I said. "Look."

  I tapped my [Ironvine Helmet]. [PERCEPTION +5].

  Through the smoke, through the flames... I saw heat signatures. Small ones. Huddled in the cellar.

  "They're alive," I said. "Under the floorboards."

  I ran toward the burning house, carrying the fox who had saved my life, into the fire.

  "Keep your head down, Doctor," I yelled over the roar of the flames. "I'm going to kick the door in."

  And for the first time, I didn't care about the gold, or the stats, or the levels.

  I just wanted to save the family.

  The cellar door was stuck. Warped by the heat.

  "Stand back!" I yelled, coughing in the thick, black smoke.

  I raised my boot. [STRENGTH 12] + Adrenaline.

  CRASH.

  The wood splintered. I tore the planks away with my bare hands, ignoring the splinters digging into my palms.

  "Liora!" Fenris screamed into the dark hole. "Ember!"

  For a second, there was only silence. Then, a cough. A small, dusty cough.

  A female Fox-kin climbed up the ladder. She was covered in soot, her russet fur singed, holding a bundle of rags tight to her chest.

  Liora.

  She saw Fenris bleeding, clinging to my back, looking like a wreck. Her eyes widened.

  "Fen?" she whispered.

  Fenris slid off my back. He forgot his leg. He forgot the pain. He fell to his knees and dragged himself forward, wrapping his arms around her legs.

  "I’m here," Fenris sobbed, burying his face in her fur. "I’m here. I didn't let them take you."

  The bundle of rags moved. A small head popped out. Huge ears. Big blue eyes. Ember.

  "Papa?" the little girl squeaked. "Did you bring the army?"

  Fenris looked up. He was crying freely now, tears tracking through the soot on his snout. He kissed his daughter’s forehead, then his wife’s hand. The sarcasm, the cynicism, the bitterness... it was gone.

  All that was left was a father.

  "I brought a Bastard," Fenris laughed through his tears, pointing at me. "He’s better than an army."

  I stood there, leaning against the burning doorframe. My chest felt... full. Warmer than the fire.

  For the first time in my life, I wasn't Wilhelm the Thief. I wasn't the Master of Coin trying to balance a ledger. I was the guy who kicked down the door.

  So this is what Gutrum feels like, I thought, a stupid grin spreading across my face. This is Honor. It’s... addictive.

  "Let's go," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "The carriage awaits."

  We scrambled out of the burning house. Coin-Biter was waiting, stomping nervously. Fenris’s broken mechanical wolf limped over, gears grinding, but loyal to the end.

  We loaded them up. Liora and Ember on Coin-Biter. Fenris clinging to the side of his machine.

  "We did it," Fenris whispered to me. "We actually did it."

  "We're heroes, Doctor," I winked. "Don't tell anyone. It’ll ruin my reputation."

  We turned to leave. To ride into the forest and vanish before the Ironvine army could regroup.

  Then, the world stopped.

  It wasn't a sound. It was the absence of sound. The fire stopped crackling. The wind stopped blowing. The screams of the battle faded into a dull, muffled buzz.

  The air in front of us shimmered. It folded in on itself, like paper being creased.

  A square of reality simply... replaced itself.

  There was no flash of light. No explosion. Just a sudden, heavy presence.

  A desk appeared.

  A heavy, polished oak desk, sitting perfectly level on the muddy, corpse-strewn road. An inkwell. A stack of parchment. A single, burning candle that didn't flicker in the wind.

  And sitting behind it, pen in hand, was Duke Dankmar Ironvine.

  He didn't look like he had teleported. He looked like he had been sitting there for centuries, and the world had just decided to revolve around him.

  He finished a sentence. He dotted an 'i'.

  He looked up.

  His eyes were dead calm. The eyes of a man who owns the mortgage on your soul.

  "Going somewhere?" Dankmar asked.

  His voice wasn't loud. But it hit me like a physical weight. My knees buckled. Coin-Biter whinnied in terror and froze.

  "Duke Ironvine," I stammered, stepping in front of the horse. "We... we were just leaving. Checking the perimeter. Tactical retreat."

  Dankmar looked at me. Then at Fenris. Then at the wife and child on the horse.

  "Unauthorized asset relocation," Dankmar noted. He dipped his quill. "That is theft, Master Storm."

  "They are people!" Fenris screamed, hugging his wife’s leg. "They are my family!"

  "They are numbers," Dankmar corrected. "And your numbers are disappointing."

  He opened a drawer in his desk. He didn't pull out a sword. He pulled out a heavy stamp. A seal made of green iron.

  "I do not run after children," Dankmar said, inspecting the bottom of the stamp. "I do not sweat. I do not shout."

  He looked at me.

  "I simply... process."

  He raised the stamp.

  He brought the stamp down on the parchment.

  THUD.

  It sounded like a gavel hitting a block.

  But the force... the force wasn't on the desk.

  It was on us.

  Gravity multiplied by fifty. Instantly.

  "GAAAAH!"

  I slammed into the mud face-first. It felt like the sky had fallen on my back. My ribs my reinforced, level-up ribs creaked ominously.

  Coin-Biter’s legs buckled. The horse went down. Liora and Ember screamed as they fell into the muck.

  Fenris was flattened. Pinned to the earth like a butterfly on a board.

  "Move!" I gritted my teeth, trying to push myself up. My arms shook. My veins bulged.

  I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I was a bug under a thumb.

  Dankmar didn't even look at us. He went back to writing.

  "Stay there," he said calmly. "Until the guards arrive to collect the biomass. I have letters to finish."

  I stared at him from the mud. One eye pressed against the dirt.

  He was sitting at a desk. In a burning village. Destroying us with paperwork.

  He’s not a warrior, I thought, my vision tunneling, black spots dancing in my eyes. He’s the System itself.

  "Fenris..." I wheezed.

  But Fenris was already unconscious.

  The pressure increased. My lungs burned. The darkness crept in from the edges.

  "Class dismissed," Dankmar murmured.

  And then, the lights went out.