Chapter 3

  Ashe’s right leg dragged behind him. Now that the adrenaline was fading, the pain had sharpened into something almost unbearable. Even with his walking stick, he felt like a fish dumped on dry land. His feet snagged on roots, caught in bushes, slipped on rocks. Every misstep tugged at his ruined thigh, and with each pulse of pain he could feel more of his strength bleeding away.

  He was close to giving up when he heard it again—footsteps, distant at first, then closing in. With them came that same skewed warning he’d felt before the first attack, a phantom ache that lit up his shoulder this time.

  He didn’t ignore it.

  He threw himself into a roll just as something lunged past his ear. Air rushed by with a whoosh, followed by the scrape of rough, scaled flesh grazing his cheek. It burned like rug burn dragged over raw skin, sending a fresh blaze of pain across his face.

  He staggered sideways through the strange terrain.

  He barely got his left foot under him before another spike of pain. His injured leg tried to jerk, that wrong, borrowed pain screaming at him to move. He dodged in the opposite direction and fell, uselessly, as pressure shot through his right leg. Two sets of footsteps circled him now.

  He scrambled on his hands and knees, groping for his walking stick, for anything he could use. His fingers closed around something solid and heavy—a rock—just as another jolt of “future pain” fired across his back.

  He turned with it and swung.

  The rock connected with a sickening thud, bone crunching under the blow. A high, broken whimper followed, then a body slumped to the ground.

  He didn’t have time to feel victorious.

  Pain flared along his ribs, sharp, bright, alien. He twisted, but not fast enough. Jaws clamped down on his side, teeth punching through and crushing at the same time. Ashe heard and felt the crack of ribs shattering.

  His chest exploded with pain. Breath turned shallow and desperate; no matter how he dragged at the air, he couldn’t get enough.

  But he held onto the rock because his life depended on it. He slammed it into the creature’s head again and again until the pressure on his ribs loosened and its body slid away, thudding into the ground.

  He might have won, but Ashe was done.

  He knew enough medicine to recognize the signs: punctured lung, broken ribs, blood filling spaces it shouldn’t. He could barely stand, barely crawl. It was only a matter of time before he suffocated or bled out.

  He let himself sink down and closed his eyes, waiting for the dark to swallow him.

  Instead, warmth rushed over him.

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  It washed through his body like sinking into a hot bath. His ribs snapped and shifted, not painfully this time but with a strange relieving pop. He jolted upright, hands skimming frantically over his own skin as cuts sealed under his fingers. Flesh knitted, blood dried.

  Not perfectly—jagged lines remained, hot and raised, bruises blooming underneath—but he was alive. Whole enough.

  He knew this wasn’t normal for portals; his parents worked with Portal Jumpers, and they always came back broken. But right then he didn’t care.

  It had been a miracle, for sure. But he knew a bill would come due, one he hadn’t seen yet. The thought made his stomach knot.

  He peeled off the makeshift tourniquet to feel his leg. Before he could process the patched skin, a voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere at once:

  “Dungeon cleared. One point granted to the Humans.”

  The world lurched.

  His stomach dropped, and then the grass was gone. Stone slid under him, cold and wet. He shivered.

  He was back on the cobblestones.

  Wearing only sneakers and underwear.

  The chill soaked straight through the thin fabric. Ashe let out a weak, disbelieving laugh. He’d survived. Somehow. But now anyone who saw him would assume he was some half-dressed homeless guy having a breakdown.

  He needed to get home.

  He was only a few streets away. Maybe. He had no sense of how much time had passed, no idea how long he’d been gone.

  He’d lost his clothes, his phone, his headphones, everything.

  But he still had his life.

  He tried to stand. His ribs weren’t broken anymore, but his body felt hollowed out, like something had wrung him dry from the inside. Every muscle ached. Still, he forced himself upright.

  As he got his feet under him, someone nearby gasped. He turned toward the sound, face flooding with heat, and staggered away in the opposite direction.

  Without his walking stick, he had no real way of getting home. So he used what he had, his hands. He moved down the street with his arms outstretched, smacking into lampposts, gates, and walls as he went. By the time he found his way to his front door, his knuckles and wrists were scraped raw and throbbing.

  He hoped his parents wouldn’t be home yet, as long as he hadn’t been gone for more than twenty-four hours. They’d still be at the hospital.

  He fumbled for the handle. The door opened. He hadn’t locked it.

  “Thank God,” he breathed, slipping inside.

  He started up the stairs. His foot slid on the first step and he went down hard, smacking his knee and shoulder.

  This time, the tears came.

  All the fear and pain and humiliation spilled over at once. He pressed his forehead to the step and sobbed, his chest hitching silently. For a moment, he wished the portal had finished the job. That he’d died there, quickly, instead of being spat back out into a world he no longer recognized.

  He let himself drown in that feeling—for just a moment.

  Then he forced himself to move.

  He dragged his exhausted body up the stairs and found the bathroom. He stripped off his damp underwear and stepped into the tub, turning the water on hotter than he should have. He scrubbed mud, blood, and monster-slime from his skin, wincing every time his hands passed over somewhere he’d been bitten or clawed. Even healed, everything was tender. His ribs felt dented. His right leg trembled whenever he put weight on it.

  He was still rinsing off when he heard a car pull into the driveway.

  His parents.

  “Shit.”

  He shut off the water, grabbed a towel, and dried himself as fast as he could. He slung on fresh underwear and a T-shirt with shaking hands, careful not to slip on the wet floor, then stumbled to his bedroom.

  He all but dove into bed, yanking the covers up and forcing his eyes closed, arranging his body into what he hoped passed for “peacefully asleep” just as footsteps thudded up the stairs.

  The door creaked open—slowly, quietly.