He committed. Pouring Stamina from his body into his legs, Caleb executed a [Dash]. The ten yards of gravel separating them vanished in a blur of motion. The world compressed into a tunnel, his spear point aimed directly at the goblin’s heart.

  But in that fraction of a second before impact, its pale eyes met his.

  Intelligence flickered in those orbs—recognition, maybe even fear. Caleb saw a living thing that didn't want to die.

  His thrust went wide.

  The spear point that should have punched through the creature's chest caught its shoulder instead, ripping through leathery hide in a spray of dark blood. The goblin's shriek tore through the air—high, piercing, utterly inhuman.

  Crumb!

  The creature slammed into him. Caleb had expected it to flee or attack with its claws from a distance. Instead, it barreled straight through his guard, inside the spear's reach where the weapon became useless. The collision drove him backward, his boots skidding on loose gravel.

  Too close. Can't—

  Claws raked across his abdomen. The leather cuirass caught them with a sound like tearing canvas; the material holding but the force of the blow sending him back. He stumbled, and the goblin's momentum carried them both to the ground.

  They hit hard. His back crashed into stone, the force driving the remaining air from his lungs. The goblin landed on top, its face inches from his, needle teeth snapping at his throat. Its breath reeked of rotting meat and something worse.

  Teeth! Block! Now!

  His forearm shot up instinctively, jamming into the goblin’s snapping mouth. Needle teeth dug into skin, punching through his sleeve to draw blood. The creature’s good side clawed rabidly at his torso, carving light wounds across his arm while his cuirass absorbed the worst of it.

  All his training evaporated. The careful forms, the practiced movements, the Skills he'd earned—none of it mattered. This was nothing like Captain Hatch's controlled drills. The fight devolved into a frantic scramble to keep teeth from his neck.

  The goblin's head twisted, trying to get around his blocking arm. Saliva and blood—his or the creature's, he couldn't tell—splattered across his face. Dropping his spear he pinned its good arm, a desperate stalemate to keep the claws from his throat. But its other hand, the one with the ruined shoulder, scrabbled where it could. Weakened or not its nails still drew blood, digging shallow stinging furrows into his skin.

  He bucked his hips, trying to throw it off, but the creature clung with inhuman tenacity. Its legs squeezed his torso, claws digging through his pants into his thighs. His cuirass ground against the gravel, each jagged stone scraping against his spine.

  Weapon. Need a weapon. Need—

  The image materialized in his mind, every detail clear: his earlier survey of the ambush point. One foot to his right, partially buried in gravel. A broken piece of quarry stone, edge naturally sharp where it had sheared from the wall. His [Perfect Memory] showed him exactly where it was, exactly how far to reach.

  There.

  He pulled its good arm to his other hand, protecting his throat as best he could, then reached out, fingers closing on rough stone. The edge bit into his palm but he didn't care. He brought it around in a wild arc.

  The first impact caught the goblin's temple with a dulled crack. It reeled, its grip holding fast. If anything, its attacks became more frenzied, claws and teeth seeking his throat with renewed desperation.

  He struck again. The stone connected with the side of its skull and this time he felt something give. The goblin's grip loosened. Its eyes rolled, unfocused.

  Again. The crack echoed off the quarry walls.

  Again. Dark blood splattered across his face, thick and warm.

  Again. The goblin's body went slack.

  Again. Just to be sure.

  The sudden stillness was deafening. Caleb froze, his chest heaving, and strained his ears against the silence. He waited for the shrieks of alarm, for the thundering of feet from the main cavern.

  Nothing.

  He looked up at the massive spoil ridge standing twenty yards away. The chaotic pile of waste rock and earth blocked his view of the northern sector entirely. It had done its job. The violence in this secluded pocket had remained a secret.

  He was vaguely aware of a series of soft chimes that had sounded during the struggle, lost in the noise of his own panicked breathing. A stack of translucent blue windows now hovered at the edge of his sight, their silver script unread. He didn't have the time or the will to look at them.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The creature's body pressed down on him, just dead meat. Blood—so much blood—pooled around them, mixing with the gravel to form dark mud.

  Caleb shoved the corpse off and jerked back, crawling on all fours. His body moved without conscious thought, pure instinct driving him away from the thing he'd killed. Five feet. Ten. His back hit the quarry wall.

  The shaking started in his fingers and spread outward. Great, wracking tremors that made his teeth chatter. His stomach clenched, twisted, and then everything came up. The morning's breakfast, last night's dinner, bile and water and horror all mixed together.

  He retched until nothing remained, dry heaves that left him gasping.

  The goblin lay where he'd left it. Its skull was... wrong. Misshapen. Broken. One eye stared at nothing while the other was lost in a mess of bone and brain matter. Blood spread in a dark pool, seeping into the thirsty ground.

  He'd done that. Killed with a primal desperation, a stone clutched in trembling fingers and the animal will to survive. He should have been exultant yet he felt so small.

  Oh, how he missed his wife in that moment.

  A memory then, unbidden and perfectly clear. Meriel kneeling beside a fernhorn doe, her green hands gentle on its still-warm flank. Young Thal watched from behind a tree, trying to understand.

  "We take only what we need," she said, her voice soft but certain. "And we honor what was given." Her fingers drew a pattern over the deer's heart—some Mycari blessing Thal never learned. When she drew her knife to begin the harvest her movements were swift, precise, and respectful. Every cut served a purpose. Each motion honored the kill. She worked with the reverence of someone who understood the burden of taking a life.

  "Death feeds life, little sprout," she told him, separating the useful from the waste with ease. "But we must never forget the cost."

  The contrast sickened him. Meriel's clean kill versus his bludgeoning frenzy. Her whispered thanks versus his panicked brutality. Her respect for life versus his desperate scramble to preserve his own.

  The shame burned worse than the claw marks.

  He forced himself to look at the goblin again. Really look at it. Beneath the blood and damage, it was... young. Thin. Those scratches on its hide that he'd identified as wounds from pack mates stood out starkly now. This creature had been hungry, probably in pain, definitely at the bottom of its social structure.

  Just trying to get water. Just trying to survive another day.

  Like him.

  "I'm sorry," he said. The words came out cracked, barely audible. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I'm... I'm sorry."

  His apology was a pale imitation of Meriel's blessing. He lacked her words, her faith and cultural framework. Still, it was something. An acknowledgment that the act had been necessary and terrible in equal measure.

  His hands still shook as he pushed himself to his feet. Every movement hurt. The scratches on his shoulders were bleeding through his shirt. His forearm felt like it'd gone through a woodchipper. His palm, where he'd gripped the stone, was a mess of cuts.

  But he was alive.

  That fact was a bedrock he could build upon. He forced a long breath into his aching lungs, then another. Compartmentalize. The word was an old tool, a mental switch he'd flipped a thousand times. The emotional response is a liability. The task is the priority. He had a contract. Proof of kill was required. The job wasn't finished.

  He retrieved his spear first, checking it for damage. A few scratches on the shaft, but the head remained sharp and secure. Then he looked up the steep slope toward the forest edge.

  His pack. His knife.

  He had left them up on the observation rise to keep his approach silent. Now, they felt a mile away.

  The climb out of the quarry's pocket was a misery. He scrambled up the scree, his boots sliding on loose stone, every step agitating the claw wounds on his legs. When he finally reached the ferns and retrieved his gear the safety of the forest was right there. He could just walk away. Leave the corpse. Leave the gold.

  He looked back down into the pit. The southern pocket was a deep, isolated bowl behind the spoil ridge. Going back down there felt like stepping into a grave.

  One gold piece.

  The practical part of his mind asserted itself through the nausea. Felicity said the stone is in the sternum. His gut roiled at the idea of more butchery, but the grim math was undeniable. A single stone was worth more than a month of laborious work at the inn. It was another step away from being the helpless victim in an alley.

  The descent back into the kill box was terrifying. He felt exposed, a tiny figure trusting his life to a pile of dirt and the inattention of monsters three hundred yards away. He reached the corpse, prodded it with his spear, and laid the weapon aside.

  Unsheathing the knife he took the goblin's clawed fingers, the skin cool and rubbery beneath his own. He tried to channel Meriel's reverence as he worked. Quick cuts at the knuckle joints separating claw from finger with minimal additional damage. The knife was razor sharp—he'd made sure of that—and the job went quickly despite his unsteady fingers.

  Two thumb claws. Proof of kill. Contract requirement satisfied.

  Just check. Check. Gritting his teeth against a fresh wave of disgust he repositioned himself. He used Gareth's knife to make a deep, exploratory cut through the creature's breast. The blade grated against ribs. His fingers, slippery with gore, explored the cavity, seeking a hard, unfamiliar object within the soft tissues. Nothing. Bone and viscera. The emptiness of the creature's chest felt like a final, bitter joke. With a shuddering breath he accepted the result. Low formation rate, indeed.

  He trudged away from the corpse, holding his gorge, and drove the knife into the soft earth again and again to clean it. The barbaric work had been a failure, leaving only a sour taste in his mouth and a grime on his hands that felt as if it would never wash away.

  He wrapped the claws in a piece of cloth from his pack, tucking them away securely. Then he stood, shouldering his pack with a wince as the straps pressed against scratches.

  One last look at the goblin. It would be gone within a day, he figured. Scavengers would come. Other goblins might drag it back to their cave. The forest would reclaim it, as it reclaimed everything eventually.

  "Thank you," he whispered. For what, he wasn't sure. For dying? For teaching him what violence really meant? For showing him the vast gulf between planning a kill and executing one?

  All of it, maybe.

  He turned his back on it and faced the slope leading back to the treeline. Time to go.

  A screech split the air.

  Caleb's head snapped up.

  A figure stood atop the spoil ridge, silhouetted against the morning sky. It rose tall on the mound of waste rock, scars crisscrossing its hide like a roadmap of violence as it looked down into the secluded pocket.

  The large goblin raised a clawed finger and let out an undulating cry.

  Movement erupted along the ridge. A dozen feral goblins crested the spoil pile, lining the top of the earthen wall like vultures. They blocked the path back to the main quarry floor, but more importantly four of them were already sliding down the scree, moving to cut off his scramble up the slope to safety.

  The kill box had become his cage.