I moved through the trees with practiced precision. I had grown up in the woods and trained in them most of my career; this was just another day to me. Some tips you pick up quickly when you’re practicing forest movements.

  You never approach a target parallel from the side, too easy to get spotted. Instead, you angle deeper into the woods, looping wide before cutting back in. It’s a constant rhythm of retreat and advance, a dance of shadows and silence.

  I triggered Limit Break every time it came off cooldown. My body was slick with sweat, muscles burning, but something in me whispered it was close to leveling. Balt kept pace without complaint, his staff tapping softly against roots and stone. If the terrain bothered him, he didn’t show it.

  Dusk crept in, painting the forest in bruised light. Then, finally, it happened.

  The wagon train stopped. The clearing offered a wide view of the surrounding area. It would be hard for us to sneak up with any daylight still in the sky. The merchant knew what he was about; it was a suitable spot for a camp.

  I crouched low behind some brush; my eyes locked on the flickering lanterns being hung around the outskirts of the camp. The temperature was starting to drop as night took over. The slavers moved with routine efficiency, no urgency, no fear. That most likely meant they felt safe; this was business as usual for them. That was about to change.

  Balt knelt beside me, whispering, “Four guards on the perimeter all around level 15. One near the oxen. One pacing the rear wagon.”

  I nodded; that had been my count as well. “They’ll rotate when it gets into the night. We wait for the shift to change, then make our move.”

  I kept scanning the camp. The captives were still inside; I could see the faint outline of a child’s head pressed against the canvas. No movement. No sound came from the captives anymore.

  “They’re gagged,” I muttered. “Probably tied as well; they haven’t even let them out to piss.”

  Balt’s brow furrowed. “What’s the plan?”

  My hand hovered near my anchor. I was ready to move as soon as an opening presented itself. “Even if we take a perfect angle of approach, crawling all the way there for concealment wouldn’t guarantee a stealthy entry, with Talents in play, I can't be positive they won't spot us.”

  I still didn’t know the enemy’s full capabilities. “I should’ve identified the merchant when we were close enough to spit on him,” I chided myself.

  “He’s level 30,” Balt murmured, eyes still scanning the camp.

  I turned to him, grateful for how effortlessly Balt interfaced with the system. Identify was second nature to him, like breathing; I was still struggling to make it instinctive.

  “That’s one hell of a level difference between us,” I observed.

  Balt shrugged. “On paper, sure. But he’s a merchant. His class is trade-based: negotiation, appraisal, logistics. Not combat. With the way your stats spike on every level-up, you’re probably closer than you think in raw stats.”

  My gaze returned to the camp. “So, he’s got almost twenty levels on me…and a strange wand that can move a lot of weight easily and no telling what other weird talents he possesses…”

  Balt nodded. “True. But after fighting with you these last few days, you’re no pushover yourself. You may only be level 12, but you’ve done nothing but kill to get there. That’s a different kind of math.”

  I smirked, tension easing a little from my shoulders. My class was built for explosive power, but it faded too quickly. I must not show my hand too early; we’d still lose if I burned through everything on the guards before I got to the merchant.

  “We will need to weed out the perimeter guards, kill the ones we can quickly and silently. Then I will draw the remaining guards and the merchant to me as you lead the captives to safety.”

  “We don’t know what kind of condition they will be in; I handed over what healing potions I had to Balt.

  He looked at me curiously. "Just in case someone needs some extra help to get moving.” I said.

  Balt took them without protest. “I’ll get them settled and get back to you to help as soon as I can. When do we begin?”

  “When it is fully dark, we start.”

  The night air burned in my lungs as we pounded down the narrow forest trail, six riders in a tight wedge. Hooves drummed against the packed earth, the rhythm echoing in my chest like a war drum. The wagons were still out of sight, but I could feel it; we were gaining.

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  Branches whipped at my shoulders, the scent of pine and churned soil filling my nose. My mare’s breath came in furious bursts beneath me, her muscles bunching and stretching with each stride. I leaned low over her neck, urging her on. Every second we lost was another second Charlotte and my girls spent in chains.

  To my left, Thom, my best friend, rode with his father’s hammer strapped across his back, jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might crack. On my right, old Marek the grocer hunched forward, his butcher knife already in hand, eyes scanning the dark ahead like he could cut through it. Behind us, three more townsmen kept pace, not soldiers, but men brave enough to fight.

  The trail dipped, and for a heartbeat I saw it: a faint flicker of orange through the branches. Lantern light. My pulse kicked harder.

  Memory flashed back to a few hours before. Coming home to the merchant king's guards holding a bag of silver and telling me it was my part for the sale of my family. Rage filled him, thinking of Lazz’s guards laughing as they dropped the coins and beat him until he fell unconscious.

  “Slow down, we’re close!” I barked, and the others slowed down with me. The sound of the talking reached us now, faint but steady. The campfires and camp lanterns were easily visible now.

  I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t a soldier. But tonight, I was the one riding to bring my family and our people home, and I’d ride through fire if that’s what it took.

  The trees broke, and the trail spilled us into a wide clearing. The wagons sat there like fat spiders in a web, lanterns swaying, shadows dancing across the canvas sides.

  I hauled back on the reins, my mare skidding to a halt in a spray of dirt and pine needles. The others fanned out beside me, horses snorting, breath steaming in the chilly night air.

  That’s when they came.

  From the shadows around the wagon, men stepped forward, half a dozen at first, then more coming from the wagons, until the firelight caught the gleam of a dozen spearheads, short swords, bows and the dull shine of leather armor. Merchant King’s colors. Lazz’s colors.

  They moved with the lazy confidence of the entitled, grinning, spitting, rolling shoulders as if they were warming up for sport. I recognized two of them from that day. The ones who’d laughed as they dropped the silver at my feet. My fingers tightened on the reins until the leather creaked.

  A voice cut through the low murmur of the guards. Smooth. Amused. “Well, well… look what the wind blew in.”

  The crowd of guards parted just enough for a man to step through. I’d seen him step down from the biggest wagon earlier, and he was moving steadily through the crowd. Jordan, Lazz’s right-hand man, stepped forward.

  Draped in a fur-lined coat, rings flashing in the firelight, he looked more like a man arriving at a feast than one guarding stolen lives. His smile was slow, deliberate, the kind that was so slimy it made you want to bathe afterwards.

  “I was wondering if you’d come for them, Grant,” he said, talking to me as if we were old friends. “I even saved you a seat by the fire. You really ought to teach your little girl not to cry so much; it’s been extremely annoying, honestly.”

  The surrounding men chuckled, the sound low and ugly. My mare shifted beneath me, sensing the tension in my legs.

  I didn’t answer. Not yet. My eyes were on the wagon, on the faint movement behind the canvas. Charlotte. The girls. They were right there. I yelled out to them, but got no response.

  I was done waiting. I jumped down from the horse, and the others followed.

  “Give me back my family, Jordan. Lazz does not have the right to take a man’s family.”

  Actually, the loan you took out last month for your little healing crisis with your daughter does state… he reached into his anchor and produced a contract. Flipping through the pages, he said, “ah, right here on page 8, subsection C… hereafter the agreed upon signer… that’s you, does not pay the loan in full by this date. Merchant Lazz has the right to confiscate signers’ property until the loan is paid in full.”

  Jordan rolled the scroll up, and it disappeared back into storage. “We even gave you some collateral back to make us all square, so how could you not appreciate the graciousness of our benevolent leader?”

  It was indeed the contract he’d signed. He was furious with himself now. “To interpret the contract that way…there is no way that is legal!”

  Jordan just shrugged his shoulders. “We say it is; you’re the one who signed it. You could always take us to court, but we all know how that will go.” Grant was white-knuckling his short sword as Jordan and his men were laughing.

  My grip on the sword hilt tightened until my knuckles ached. Every laugh from Jordan’s men was another spark on the powder keg in my chest.

  “Enough,” I growled, “With me!”

  Thom and the others surged ahead with me. They were outnumbered, but he didn’t care. He was closing in fast. If he killed Jordan, the others might scatter. I could already see the surprise flicker in a few of the guards’ eyes—

  —and then the merchant stepped forward.

  He had a wand in his hand that glimmered like polished bone. He didn’t even flinch as we bore down on him.

  He just flicked his wrist.

  The world slammed to a halt.

  It was like invisible chains snapped tight around my chest, my arms, my legs. My breath came in shallow, panicked bursts as the magic pressed down, heavy as stone.

  Around me, the others strained and cursed, but none of us could move more than an inch. Jordan’s smile was thin and cold.

  Boot steps crunched on the dirt in front of me. Two men stepped into the lantern light, the same bastards who’d beaten me bloody in my home.

  “Well, look at this,” one of them drawled, his grin wide and rotten. “Guess we get our silver back now.”

  The other leaned in close enough that I could smell the sour ale on his breath. “And maybe we take a little interest while we’re at it out of your cute little girls tied up in the back.”

  I wanted to lunge, to cut them both down where they stood. But the magic held me fast, every muscle screaming against the invisible bonds. Their swords unsheathed, and he heard Jordan say to “Kill them all quickly so I can get back to bed.”

  Their swords were coming down. I am so sorry, girls, I failed you. Their blades were halfway through the downswing when the night split with a sound like tearing steel.

  A blur of sparking armor crashed between us, almost too fast to follow.

  The first guard’s eyes went wide, his sword never finishing its arc. The second barely had time to gasp before being cut in half with a single, brutal sweep of a glowing silver sword.

  The stranger pivoted. The glowing sword illuminated his face. He looked pissed. The magic holding me shuddered, cracked, and fell away.

  He straightened, squaring himself against the remaining guards. The large silver sword easily a two?handed weapon, rested in one of his hands. It moved when he shifted, light and fluid, and even he blinked in brief surprise at how effortlessly it obeyed him, as though the blade weighed no more than a small stick.

  “Let’s. Fucking. Go.” Was all the man said.

  Who the hell was this guy?!