Before Damian woke, he heard the voice of the Great Game again.

  >Class [The Chosen One’s Squire] Level 7 Obtained!

  >Skill [Lesser Tou—

  >Refusal Acknowledged.

  Damian dismissed the level-up, not even having been fully aware he was capable of doing that. The Game was a tool of the gods, and the gods had just murdered his entire family. He wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, he didn’t want to wake up at all. It would be so easy to drift away into comfortable oblivion. To just... let go.

  Reality hit him like ice water.

  He sat bolt upright, sputtering and swiping blindly in front of him as water ran off his face. It was freezing cold, and he shouted more from surprise than anything else. Wiping his eyes clear, he saw he hadn’t moved from where he’d been lying in the mud, but now he was surrounded by the [Seer], Father Garm, and Asta.

  Relief flooded through him. If they’d survived, others surely had too.

  “Are you okay?” Asta asked, staring at him.

  Garm scoffed and bent slightly, offering Damian a hand. He took it, and his father hauled him to his feet. Checking himself over, he felt physically fantastic. The best he’d felt in... ever. “I think so. What was the water for?”

  “You weren’t waking up,” Father Garm explained.

  Damian shivered. The morning air was chilly, and his shirt hung in tatters with a gaping hole burned through the front. His bones were unbroken, muscles untorn, skin unblemished. Whatever Nephret had done to him had restored him to perfect health, except for a large burn scar across his stomach. Better than perfect health—all the scars he’d had before were gone. Where Gunnar had cut the back of his hand. Where Finn had burned Damian’s side by accidentally poking him with burning stick. And a half a dozen others he didn’t even remember the cause of.

  The only scar now was the one Nephret had given him. It made him nauseous to look at, a reminder of what she’d done to him. What she’d done to his family. The only history left on his skin.

  He looked around and saw that most of the lodges surrounding the clearing were burned or destroyed. Corpses were strewn everywhere, and fresh tears pooled in his eyes, threatening to spill over. Nothing moved except for the four of them and scraps of tattered fabric fluttering in the scant breeze. So much destruction, so much death, and for what?

  “Who—” Damian choked on the word as his eyes landed on Mother Revna’s corpse, still facedown in the dirt beside him. He swallowed hard and finished the question. “Who’s alive?”

  Asta looked away, tears heavy in her eyes. The [Seer’s] features hardened as she glanced down at Mother Revna’s corpse. Father Garm was the one who finally answered.

  “A few of us.” His voice was ragged and hoarse. “Maybe two dozen.”

  Two dozen. Bekham had a population of over three hundred. It was too much—too much to even consider. Damian squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists until his nails bit into his palms, tears finally spilling over and running down his cheeks. It felt like Nephret had reached into his chest, just as she had with Finn, and scooped him out until he was hollow. Just a shell of a person. One that couldn’t feel anything, but was still alive.

  He was still alive.

  Damian clenched his jaw so hard he thought he might crack a tooth, then opened his eyes to the cruel world before him. “We have to burn them. Before the scavengers come.”

  “We’ve already started,” Father Garm said wearily. “You were the last one we found alive. The only one uninjured.”

  There could’ve been an accusation in that statement, but there wasn’t. This was one of his fathers. His family. Garm was glad Damian was alive, regardless of the circumstances, just too damn numb to be joyful about it. Damian nodded. “Okay. I can help.”

  And that was that.

  There was nothing left to do but set to the grim task of cleaning up the detritus that had been their family. They tried to be as respectful as they could, keeping body parts together and closing eyes when possible. Asta and Damian accounted for all ten of their brothers and sisters; all dead. They were the last two. By silent agreement, they didn’t talk about it. One look was enough to know they both felt the same overwhelming, crushing despair.

  Damian wanted to handle Mother Revna’s and Finn’s bodies himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to rob Asta of the chance to help. They were her mother and brother too. He used his favorite fur and rug to wrap them, gently closing Mother Revna’s eyes, while Asta did the same for Finn. The bodies of their siblings were piled together into a single pyre, and Mother Revna was laid among them.

  In the end, there were dozens of pyres. If they hadn’t used the ruined pieces of the village for fuel, it would’ve taken them days to manage it all. By the time the sun set, the twenty-two survivors of Bekham stood before their family and friends, and nobody knew what to say. It was customary to offer a prayer to Nephret, to guide their souls to the land beyond death.

  They all silently agreed they’d never again offer a prayer to that wicked goddess.

  The [Seer] cleared her throat and raised her staff. “The loss we’ve suffered today, we cannot hope to put into words. The sorrow we feel today, we cannot hope to give voice to. We—”

  She choked up, and Damian noticed Asta’s shoulders shaking as she sobbed. Most of their parents were openly crying. Father Garm placed a hand on the [Seer’s] shoulder, and her free hand reached up to squeeze his. After a moment, she cried out. An anguished wail beyond words, beyond description. Then another of his parents began screaming, then another. Damian joined them, bellowing hot air from lungs that had been turned to mulch and dragged back from the edge of death, charged with suffering the loss of everything he held dear.

  When their lungs had no breath left to give, the villagers fell silent again, reduced to quiet sobs. Garm was the one who finally spoke. “We hope that whatever comes after death, when our time comes, we will meet again.”

  Garm tossed the torch he held in his free hand onto the nearest pyre, and the oil the villagers had poured over it ignited immediately. One by one, the others threw their torches onto their own pyres. Damian placed a hand over the torch Asta was holding, and together they thrust it into the wood of their siblings’ pyre.

  They stood and watched as the flames climbed, slowly reducing everyone they cared about to ash and dust. Damian cried quietly for a while, but eventually he had no more tears left to shed. Asta sobbed longer than he did. Overhead, the stars twinkled innocently in the night sky. Damian would never be able to look at them the same way again.

  After the fires had passed their peak, what remained of the village gathered to eat. One thing they had plenty of now was food—the storage cellars hadn’t been utterly destroyed like most of the structures above ground. They had fresh meat, bread, and goat cheese, eating what would spoil the fastest. Even in their darkest moment, the village of Bekham was pragmatic.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  For a long while they worked in near silence, sharing only the scant words that were absolutely necessary. Damian thought they were like the golems Mother Revna used to tell stories about on stormy nights. Silent and mindlessly completing whatever tasks they were given.

  But the silence couldn’t hold forever, and there were things that needed to be discussed. Mother Brigit broke it first, having barely nibbled at her food. “Winter will be here soon. What do we... what are we going to do?”

  Everyone looked at her, but at first nobody had an answer. What were they going to do? They couldn’t just lie down and die. Well, they could. But they couldn’t. They couldn’t disrespect their family like that, the ones who had died trying to save Finn and then each other.

  “We stay, or we go,” Father Garm said matter-of-factly. “But there are too few of us to last more than a few years. If we stay, we stay to our graves.”

  “We go,” the [Seer] said firmly. “I need not use my skills to know we must leave. Bekham is... gone. It was a people, not a place, and it will never be whole again.”

  One of Damian’s other mothers poorly stifled a fresh sob at that, and the stoic fa?ades of the rest of the village were strained to the breaking point. Damian himself just felt numb, as if things were happening all around him and he barely had the energy to notice. They were discussing logistics now. What to take, what to leave, and where they might go.

  For the first time since he’d woken, Damian thought about what would happen next. Now that he gave it a moment, he found himself at a complete loss. For so long, all he’d ever wanted was to live among the people he loved, being useful in some small way to his community. That was the entire breadth of his passion, and now it had been ripped away from him.

  Who was he without his hearth?

  “Damian?” a voice asked, pulling him from his spiral.

  He looked up and saw it was Asta. “Hm?”

  “You’re coming with us, right?”

  Of course he was going with them—right? Why was that even a question? But as he asked himself, noticing the [Seer] and Father Garm watching him with the same uncertain curiosity as Asta, he realized he wasn’t sure of the answer either. He loved them—all of them—as his family. But after what Nephret had done? After what she’d said? He didn’t know if he could ever believe they’d be safe around him again.

  The goddess had come for Finn because of his class, that much was clear. But what of Damian’s class? It was [Chosen]-adjacent by the name alone. Would she return for him? Why had she spared him in the first place?

  Slowly, Damian realized he couldn’t stay. There were too many questions, and he was too afraid he’d put what little remained of his family in greater danger. Hesitantly, he shook his head. “No.”

  Garm looked confused, Asta clearly hurt, but the [Seer] simply nodded solemnly, as if she’d seen this coming. “Can’t blame you, after what you went through. And there’s something else, isn’t there, boy? What class did the Game grant you?”

  Damian’s eyes narrowed slightly, even though he knew she probably had his best interests at heart. This was why he didn’t like the [Seer]; she knew things by intuition or her strange magic. But he wasn’t about to lie to his family.

  “[The Chosen One’s Squire],” he answered softly.

  Asta gaped at him, and Damian let his eyes drop to his toes, unsure what they all thought. In a way, it was his and Finn’s fault. Everyone had died because that monster had come for Finn, or for his class. Damian had a similar class. Who knew what that meant?

  A strong hand gripped his shoulder. Damian looked up to see Father Garm smiling at him. It was a bittersweet, steady smile. “What do you need, son?”

  Damian sat stunned for a moment, he’d expected anything but that. Then he felt guilty—of course his family would stand behind him, no matter what. His breath caught, and his chest swelled with an ache he couldn’t name.

  “I don’t know,” he managed to choke out.

  The [Seer] barked a laugh, tapping her staff against the ground. “Good, boy. The first step to discovery is admitting what you don’t know. Best to start by deciding what you do know.”

  “I know that monster needs to die,” Damian said quickly. “I know I’m going to kill her.”

  Father Garm shifted slightly, glancing at the [Seer]. Asta’s expression hardened, and she nodded in agreement. “I want to go with you.”

  “No.” Damian shot down the idea. “You’re not sixteen, and you’ve got no class. I know it’s not fair, but you... listen—you’re the last of our hearth. And right now, they need you.”

  “You need me,” Asta argued.

  But Damian shook his head. “No. I don’t know what I need, and I can’t put you at risk. I won’t. I don’t know where I’m going or where it’ll take me. If you want to help, get older, get stronger, and when I know what I need to do, I’ll come back for your help. Fair?”

  Asta growled in frustration but nodded. “Only if you promise you’ll come back.”

  “I promise,” Damian said earnestly.

  Before Damian could protest, Asta pulled him into a tight hug that crushed his chest. For a moment, he hesitated, then returned it. He’d never felt particularly close to Asta, but none of that mattered anymore. They were all they had left.

  “So, you need enough travel goods to reach wherever you’re going, but you don’t know where that is,” Father Garm summarized as they separated.

  “I guess?” Damian said. “But I don’t want to take anything you all need.”

  Father Garm sighed wearily. “That’s not a problem, son. We’ve got more than we know what to do with, and we’ll have to leave a lot behind anyway. Come, let’s get you packed. Best you get going as soon as you can; the rest of us are in no rush.”

  Father Garm insisted Damian take one of their bags of holding, and together they raided the cellars, packing it full of as much food as they could. They also gave him several sets of clothes, a bedroll, a seax knife, a hatchet, a fire kit, cooking gear, a small tent, a compass, and courtesy of Asta, a comb. Damian didn’t think he really needed a comb; his hair was far too short, but she insisted it would be good for his curls.

  Then came the items Damian felt guilty taking.

  “You’ll need them if you end up in half as much trouble as I expect,” Father Garm said, pushing the bag of clinking glass bottles into his hands.

  “You might need them too,” Damian protested, trying to push the bag back.

  “We’re keeping some,” Father Garm said firmly. “But still, we’re looking for safety, you’re looking for danger. Take the potions.”

  Begrudgingly, Damian added the healing potions to his bag of holding. The village had only ever kept a few dozen for major injuries, and many had been used yesterday. Garm gave him eight to take.

  The [Seer] offered another sack, heavy in her hand. When Damian took it, it jingled, and he realized it was full of coin. Opening it, he saw glittering pieces of copper, silver, and gold. His face went slack.

  “How much is in here?”

  “Enough to keep you going for a while,” the [Seer] said, then shrugged. “You’ll need to find a way to make money quickly—things cost more than you think out there. You’re not used to money, boy, so be careful. The world is not as forgiving as Bekham, people who think they can take anything of value from you will try. Hold your money closely; spend it wisely.”

  Father Garm grunted. “She’s right about that. The world is hard. Especially on your own, especially when you’re young.”

  “I’m not that young,” Damian muttered.

  “No, but you are inexperienced,” Garm countered, squeezing Damian’s shoulder. “It’ll be hard at first. I was in your shoes once. Or, well, I mean I also left the village when I was young and came back later.”

  Damian blinked at his father. He’d never heard that before. “Really?”

  “Really. Just... be careful, and don’t expect anything to be easy.”

  Quietly, Damian decided that was alright. Struggle would make him stronger—and he needed to be stronger. Strong enough to fight a god, if that monster was truly what she was taking the guise of.

  “Do you have any idea where you’re going to start?” Asta asked.

  Damian adjusted the strap on his bag of holding. “Er... no, not really. I figured I’d start by finding someone who knows more about Nephret.”

  “Did your class give you any skills that might help?” the [Seer] asked.

  “No.” Damian shook his head. “[Dangersense: The Chosen One] and [Locate Chosen One], which are both useless now.”

  Before he could dodge, the [Seer] smacked him over the head with her staff. Not hard enough to cause damage, but damn well hard enough to hurt. Damian staggered backward and swore. “Shit—what was that for?”

  “The Great Game never gives you something you can’t use,” the [Seer] admonished. “It is the fabric of all things, it knows better. Have you even tried your skills?”

  Damian scowled. “Of course I’ve tried my—”

  He paused, realizing he technically hadn’t since last night. The Great Game had visited him again, offering more levels. That meant it still thought his class was applicable, didn’t it?

  “[Locate Chosen One].”

  Damian felt a sudden tug in his core, pulling him in a specific direction—behind him, in fact. He blinked in surprise, turning as though expecting someone to be standing right there. Then he realized it was pulling him somewhere far, far from here. How far, he couldn’t say. But far. With a direction and a faint sense of distance, he knew in his bones he could find what was pulling him. Who was pulling him.

  The [Seer] barked a laugh. “I think our little [Adventurer] has found his direction.”