The scream tore through the forest.

  Cal woke with his heart pounding, panic tightening his grip on the baton until his knuckles hurt. Disoriented, fear pressed in, thick as the darkness; the taste of damp bark filled his mouth, and the echo of that sound lingered, sharp and menacing.

  Not an animal. Not one of the sharp hunting cries he’d heard earlier.

  Human.

  Beside him, the branch shifted.

  Jordan was already upright, rope biting at his waist, shoulders rigid beneath the heavy canopy. Gone was any hint of humour; only fear lined his features.

  “Tell me you heard that,” Jordan whispered.

  Cal didn’t answer Jordan. He didn’t need to.

  Below their perch, a flock of small things exploded from the undergrowth. Wings whirred, and bodies thudded against leaves as they scattered. Branches trembled in a chain reaction. A heartbeat later, the forest fell silent, as if every creature had gone still at once.

  The quiet that followed was worse than the scream.

  Cal took a breath that shook.

  His back wedged against the trunk, rope loose at his waist, shield braced on his lap. Sweat dried sticky on his neck and ribs. His legs prickled with pins and needles from sitting too long.

  He swallowed, mouth desert-dry.

  “Please be a dream,” he whispered.

  Jordan’s mouth wanted to joke, wanting desperately for relief.

  He didn’t.

  The forest answered with another sound.

  Not a scream this time. A choked, wordless cry that cut off too fast. It came from somewhere ahead and to the right, muffled by distance and trees, but close enough that Cal could feel it in his chest.

  Jordan looked at Cal.

  Not asking permission.

  Checking the line in him.

  “Still human,” Jordan murmured.

  Cal shut his eyes, head pressed hard to the bark, bracing himself.

  "Dammit," he exhaled, chest tightening.

  The argument started in the same place all his arguments did now.

  He had barely survived today.

  His shoulder still ached where the first predator had slammed the shield. His thigh throbbed from the goblin’s spear-butt. Every muscle protested when he shifted the baton. Fatigue sat heavily on his bones.

  From up here, the forest floor was mostly shadow. Patches of faint light marked where some distant Tower-moon or false sky bled through the canopy. It all looked muted and green-tinted. Anything moving down there had cover.

  Helping meant dropping out of the one piece of high ground he had. It meant walking toward whatever made that sound and hoping it was something he could actually fight.

  He pictured the predator’s teeth sinking into the shield, the goblin’s spear ringing off the welded plates. He pictured how close both had come to getting past his defences. That had been in full light, with time to brace.

  In the dark, he’d be clumsier, vulnerable. One slip, one hidden root, and the forest would claim him before any monster.

  He could stay here.

  He could sit in this tree, rope secure, shield up, and wait for morning. Whatever happened out there would finish without him. The Tower had dropped a lot of people on this floor today. It didn’t need another volunteer corpse.

  Jordan exhaled slowly through his nose.

  “You’re thinking about not going,” he said.

  Cal opened his eyes.

  Jordan kept his voice low, but there was steel under it now. “I get it. I do. But if we don’t go, we’re going to hear that again. And again. And you’re going to carry it.”

  Cal locked his jaw, anger and dread braided tight.

  The scream replayed, stabbing and raw. It tangled with another: his mother’s breath hitching, knees buckling before a classroom of kids.

  He imagined her sway, chalk in hand, eyes going wide. Chairs scraped. A child wailed. The room tilted as he bolted from his seat.

  He had not been there to catch her before she hit the floor.

  He saw Sammy in the clinic hallway after, fists balled in his sleeves, trying to disappear into peeling paint while doctors spoke in words that meant dying slowly but never said it. Tears cut clean tracks through the dust on his brother’s face.

  Cal stood there, hands useless, wishing for something to hit. Something to lift. Anything he could push to change the numbers.

  He had only stood there. Done nothing.

  There had been nothing for him to do.

  Here, there was someone screaming in a forest the Tower had built to kill him.

  If that were Sammy—

  The thought weighed in the air—unfinished, choking.

  Cal shifted the shield higher on his lap.

  Jordan’s hand landed sharply on Cal’s shoulder, solid and grounding.

  Anchoring.

  “We go together,” Jordan said. “No hero stuff. No charging. We get them out if we can. If we can’t, we don’t die pretending.”

  He swallowed, fear and resolve tangling inside.

  “Together,” he echoed.

  Climbing down was gruelling; the ground felt miles away.

  His muscles stiffened in protest as soon as he started to move. The branch flexed under his shifting weight. Bark, rough against his palms. He placed each hand carefully, testing the grip before trusting it.

  Jordan climbed down first, fast and controlled, then kept his body turned so he could watch Cal’s hands and feet.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  The shield knocked against the trunk once, a dull, hollow sound in the quiet. Cal froze, breath held.

  Jordan went still too.

  Nothing leapt up to drag them off the bark.

  They let the air out slowly and continued.

  By the time their boots touched the forest floor, Cal’s arms trembled. The loam felt strange after so long above—damp and springy. His earth sense rolled out, cataloguing roots, soft patches, and the slope of the ground.

  Jordan adjusted his rope and drew a short length of steel from his belt—more tool than weapon, a scavenged bar with a taped grip. He held it like he’d practised when no one was watching.

  “You’ve got shield,” Jordan said. “I’ve got your blind side.”

  Cal slid the baton into his right hand and settled the shield onto his left arm.

  A cry ripped the dark—closer, desperate, unravelling.

  Closer now. Hoarse. Frayed with panic.

  Cal turned toward it, head tilted, letting his ears and his sense of the ground work together. Sound arrived crooked in a place like this, but faint tremors through the soil were clearer.

  He started walking.

  He wanted the flashlight from his pack. The old battery was the one he’d brought for emergencies. But turning it on would paint them as targets in the dark. He put the thought aside.

  Jordan murmured, “If you light us up, I’m tackling you.”

  Cal didn’t smile. “Noted.”

  They went by feel instead.

  Roots waited to grab any careless foot. Fallen branches lay half-hidden in the undergrowth. Cal tested each step before committing. Jordan moved with him: quieter than he looked, pausing when Cal paused, listening when Cal listened.

  A low, guttural sound drifted through the trees.

  Not human.

  Goblin, Cal thought.

  Jordan’s head snapped toward the noise. “That?”

  “Yeah,” Cal breathed.

  He slowed.

  The last goblin had nearly taken his leg out from under him. That had been one-on-one with light and space. Earlier, the tracks had suggested they preferred groups.

  They found prints in the loam after a few dozen meters.

  Three-toed, narrow prints—deep at the front. Several sets. All heading their way. Here and there, soiled scuffs showed that something had been dragged.

  Jordan crouched, fingers hovering over the smear without touching. “That’s blood.”

  Cal nodded.

  The scream came again, thin and ragged.

  They moved faster.

  Branches clawed at their jackets. Leaves slapped Cal’s face. The forest closed in around them, with the feeling that something was noticing new pieces on the board.

  “Too late to back out now,” Cal muttered.

  Jordan gave a short, breathless laugh that didn’t have any humour in it. “We passed that exit like…ten poor decisions ago.”

  The ground sloped downward, then levelled. Cal’s sense of soil told him they were heading toward flatter terrain, packed and trodden.

  A good place for movement.

  Or an ambush.

  He could hear more than one goblin now.

  Harsh syllables in a language that was all rasp and click. Short, barking laughs.

  And something else.

  A lower growl threaded through.

  Jordan’s voice dropped. “Beasts too.”

  Cal’s grip tightened on the baton.

  They slowed.

  Rushing in blind would be suicide.

  Cal edged forward, angling toward the sounds' loudest point while keeping bushes and trunks between them and the source.

  The smell of blood found them before the clearing did.

  It rode the damp air in a coppery wave. Sweat, fear, and the rank musk of unwashed bodies layered over it. Something burned, too—or smouldered. Charred wood and blackening cloth.

  Cal’s stomach knotted, dread clawing at him.

  Jordan’s hand hovered near Cal’s back, not touching, but ready.

  Voices carried more clearly now.

  One goblin snarled something sharp. Another answered with a hissing laugh.

  Something heavy thudded against flesh.

  A cut-off cry.

  Human speech too, faint and hoarse.

  Cal crouched behind a thick shrub and peered through the leaves.

  The smart part of his brain did math he didn’t like. How many goblins? How many angles? How fast they could get swarmed.

  The Tower had not mentioned moral obligations.

  He could go back to the tree and survive.

  Jordan leaned in close, breath warm at Cal’s ear. “If you say we’re leaving, we leave. I won’t fight you.”

  Cal didn’t look at him.

  Jordan’s voice caught. "But pretending you didn’t hear is a lie. For both of us."

  Cal closed his eyes.

  If that were Sammy—

  He pictured Sammy trapped on the forest floor, ringed by goblins, reaching with shaking hands for anyone—and finding nothing.

  He pictured his mother on classroom tiles.

  His grip on the baton tightened until his fingers hurt.

  “I am not leaving someone like that if I can still move,” he whispered.

  Jordan’s response was immediate. “Then we move.”

  Fear didn’t vanish.

  It sharpened.

  Cal shifted his weight, mapping slope and firmness through earth sense. He took one breath, then another.

  “We do this fast,” Cal said. “We hit what’s in front of us. We don’t stop until nothing’s moving or we’re out of options.”

  Jordan nodded once, then flashed a grin that was pure cover. “Love a plan that includes ‘don’t die.’”

  Cal rose.

  He did not charge straight in yelling.

  He stepped around the last clump of bushes at a low run, shield up, baton ready.

  Jordan came with him—half a pace behind, angled to Cal’s right.

  The clearing opened like a wound.

  Goblins ringed the space, grey-green bodies crouched low, weapons catching dim light. At least half a dozen turned toward them at once.

  In the centre, a young woman stood with her back to a moss-slick boulder, a short staff braced in both hands.

  She was bleeding along the left sleeve.

  She was also still standing.

  A faint, pale glow shimmered around her like heat off stone, brightening whenever a goblin lunged too close.

  Cal didn’t slow.

  The welded shield caught the first goblin he reached square in the ribs. The impact rang up his arm and knocked the creature off its feet.

  Every head snapped toward them.

  “Great,” the woman said between breaths. “More trouble.”

  Jordan shouted, loud and sharp. “Hey!”

  Three goblins broke off toward them immediately.

  Two stayed with her.

  Jordan wasn’t trying to be brave.

  He was trying to make sure Cal wasn’t taking all of it.

  Cal raised the shield, angling the battered metal disk to catch the first spear thrust. The point scraped across with a shriek, leaving a fresh groove.

  Cal twisted, letting the force glance off.

  The goblin stumbled past.

  Cal chopped the baton down on the back of its knee.

  Wet crunch.

  Strangled howl.

  It went down.

  The second jabbed for Cal’s side.

  Jordan slammed his steel bar into the spear haft from the flank.

  Not enough to break it.

  Enough to spoil the line.

  The point skated off the shield rim and dug into packed dirt.

  Cal stepped in and cracked the goblin across the jaw.

  Teeth flew.

  It reeled back, gurgling.

  The third had circled wide, coming in low for Cal’s ankles.

  Cal saw it late.

  The shaft scythed in.

  Before it connected, the ground between them erupted.

  Thin roots shot up through packed dirt as if the soil were water and they were spears. They tangled around the goblin’s legs, coiling tight. The creature shrieked and stumbled, its strike going wide.

  “Duck,” the woman snapped.

  Cal dropped automatically.

  Jordan dropped a heartbeat later.

  A pulse of soft green light flashed overhead, followed by a sharp, whiplike crack.

  The goblin snapped backwards as if yanked by an invisible rope. A thin length of vine, bright as fresh leaves, wrapped its throat and jerked. Its feet left the ground for a second before it crashed down, choking.

  Cal risked a glance.

  The woman had one hand on her staff, the other flung out toward the goblins. Light ran in faint lines beneath the skin of her forearm—branching patterns like roots.

  The earth around her boots stirred.

  A goblin lunged for her exposed side.

  Jordan moved first.

  He stepped into its path and took the hit on his shoulder with a grunt, spear tip biting through cloth into muscle. Pain flared across his face, but he didn’t go down.

  “Jordan!” Cal barked.

  “Still here!” Jordan snapped back, teeth bared.

  Cal slammed the shield into the goblin’s chest, knocking it off balance.

  The woman breathed out harshly. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime,” Jordan said, too bright, because he could feel his own blood.

  They fell into a rhythm that wasn’t a plan—just survival.

  Cal took the brunt with shield and baton, redirecting impacts, using ground contact and angle to keep from being pushed into bad footing.

  Jordan stayed just off his shoulder, spoiling spear lines, dragging attention with loud, ugly taunts when a goblin tried to slip around Cal.

  “Come on,” Jordan called, voice cracking. “Yeah. Pick me. I’m cute.”

  A goblin hissed and lunged at him.

  Jordan backstepped, and Cal’s shield caught the blow meant for Jordan’s ribs.

  When two goblins rushed the woman at once, she slammed the butt of her staff into the ground.

  A circle of pale light flared low across the dirt.

  The goblins hit the invisible line and staggered like their legs forgot how to work.

  Cal stepped in.

  The baton rose and fell.

  He lost track of individual strikes.

  He remembered flashes.

  The taste of his own breath, metallic in his mouth. The sting in his hands every time metal hit bone. The way goblin eyes widened when his shield didn’t fail where they expected.

  The smell of sweat and sap and blood.

  One goblin broke and ran.

  It didn’t get far.

  The woman lifted her hand.

  A low shrub near the clearing’s edge spasmed. Branches stretched, then lashed in a single whip-like motion. Bark and leaf snapped across the goblin’s back.

  It screamed.

  A second lash caught its legs.

  It went down hard.

  Cal limped over and finished it with a strike to the head.

  Then there was only the sound of all three of them breathing.

  Jordan swayed once, caught himself, and looked at Cal first.

  “You good?” he asked.

  Cal’s throat worked. “Yeah.”

  Jordan nodded as if that was the only answer that mattered.

  Then his gaze slid to the woman.

  She stared back, staff still up, eyes sharp and wary.

  “You two…” she began.

  “Bad timing?” Jordan offered.

  Her mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not yet.

  “Something like that,” she said.