The first goblins found them before they found the first clean line of the day.

  Cal traced one of the faintly beaten tracks, charted in his mind. The trail, a pale scar in packed earth, wound through gnarled roots. His Earth-sense trembled—something up ahead rang hollow, a pocket of weightlessness foreign to the dense, loamy ground.

  He stopped mid-step and lifted a fist.

  Jordan froze at his shoulder like he’d been yanked by a wire. His expression was easy by habit, but his eyes were sharp, scanning the undergrowth like he expected it to bite back.

  “You doing the Earth thing?” Jordan whispered. “Cool. Love the Earth thing. Very normal.

  Cal didn’t answer. He stared at the leaf litter until the wrongness resolved into something practical.

  “Loose,” he murmured.

  Jordan's smile twitched. “Trap. Great. Love a floor that fools the ground guy.”

  A heartbeat later, a goblin sprang from behind a fern to their left, spear lancing for Cal’s ribs.

  Cal twisted his shield, angling the rim to deflect the thrust so the spear glanced off and swept past his side. The impact jarred his arm but didn’t unbalance him.

  The second goblin came from the right. Cal had half expected it the moment the first appeared. Their coordination was better than yesterday’s lone scout. Two points of pressure—one man in the middle.

  He stepped forward rather than retreat, choosing to face the threat directly.

  The move wasn’t instinct yet, but Earth-sense made it feel less suicidal. He felt the ground would shift if he retreated—looser soil and a root angled like a tripwire. Forward was firmer.

  He lunged, ramming his shield into the first goblin’s chest and driving it back into the fern. As the second goblin attacked from the right, Cal snapped his baton up and knocked the spear aside. The steel collar scraped the spear’s tip with a sharp screech.

  Jordan slid half a pace wide, not crowding Cal’s line, and drove his scavenged bar into the goblin’s forearm when it tried to recover the spear. It wasn’t a killing blow. It didn’t need to be.

  Cal twisted, dragged the spear wider, and drove his knee into the goblin’s inner thigh. It hissed, leg buckling.

  The baton came down on its wrist.

  Something cracked. The spear dropped.

  The first goblin lunged again, catching the edge of Cal’s shield with its teeth, trying to bite around the metal.

  “Seriously?” Jordan muttered.

  Cal slammed the shield sideways into a tree. The goblin’s head struck bark with a solid thunk. It collapsed, dazed.

  He did not give either of them a second chance.

  By the time his breathing slowed, both lay still, black eyes staring up at the canopy.

  Cal stood over them, chest snarling for breath, waiting for the muscle twitch in his arms to subside. The baton’s rebuilt grip rested firm and solid in his palm, while the shield’s welds gleamed under new dents and fresh gashes—new wounds, old armor enduring.

  “You learned something,” he told himself. “Good. Keep it.”

  Jordan crouched and tugged at his sleeve, checking for fresh blood like he didn’t trust good outcomes to stay good.

  “You okay?” Jordan said, voice light.

  Cal nodded once.

  Jordan exhaled, and the air left him like he’d been holding it since they stepped through the gate. Then he reached down and yanked one ear free with a grimace.

  “I cannot believe we’re doing arts and crafts with corpses for money,” he muttered.

  Cal took the second ear, wiped the baton on moss, and moved on.

  Midday found them staring down a boar with knives for tusks.

  Cal stalked its path by the churned earth—a series of raw furrows, soil torn and flung aside. Through a tangle of branches, he finally caught it: larger than hoped, smaller than feared, the size of a snorting corporate scooter. Muscles rippled under armor-thick hide as it shoveled air and earth beneath a jutting root.

  Its hide, bruised gray-brown and matted with bristles, rippled as it studied them. Beady black eyes glinted; it exhaled a harsh, contemptuous snort that split the hush.

  “Yeah,” Jordan whispered. “I also hate you on sight.”

  Cal glanced around.

  The ground dipped into a muddy trough framed by two massive trees, their roots arching in wide, rib-like arcs. In the hollow, shadows braided with the risk of being driven down. On the uneven rim, each step felt like standing on the bones of the land—a small advantage if he held it.

  He moved up onto the raised strip of earth between the nearest roots and planted his feet, shield forward, baton loose in his right hand.

  Jordan drifted to Cal’s right, farther out than Cal liked.

  “Don’t,” Cal warned.

  "Not brave. Useful. There’s a difference."

  The boar stamped once, twice.

  “Come on, then,” Cal murmured.

  It charged.

  It came fast enough that Cal’s first thought was a stupid one—hold and meet it, prove something. His Earth-sense disagreed.

  At the last heartbeat, he slid sideways and down, pouring his weight into his left leg as the ground cradled him. His shield swept in a calculated arc, grazing the boar’s tusk just enough to wrench its head off balance.

  The boar thundered past, missing Cal by inches, momentum carrying it into the raised roots.

  It stumbled.

  Cal spun, bringing his baton down on the boar’s exposed side just behind its front leg, aiming where bone met softer flesh. The baton struck with a muffled thud that vibrated up to his shoulder.

  The boar squealed, furious and twisted, snapping.

  Jordan snapped a rock off the ground and whipped it at the boar’s face. It hit with a sharp crack. Not enough to injure. Enough to steal the boar’s eyes for a heartbeat.

  Cal used that heartbeat.

  He skipped back as the tusks carved air. His boots slipped on churned soil. His heel hit a root, and his ankle wobbled.

  Earth-sense flared. Bad angle.

  He threw himself forward instead of letting the fall take him, shoulder rolling over damp ground. A tusk swept through the space his torso had just occupied.

  When he rose, mouth gritty with soil, the boar’s front leg dragged. Blood slicked its side, dark and thick where the baton had bitten through hide.

  Three more passes, each one closer than he liked, and it finally went down.

  Cal stood over it, panting, shirt plastered to his skin.

  Jordan bent at the waist, hands on his knees, laughing like it was funny and not terrifying.

  “I want you to know,” Jordan wheezed, “I would like to unsubscribe.”

  Cal’s stomach cramped.

  He’d eaten breakfast hours ago. The energy was gone.

  The Tower provided no loot packages. He had no way to process the meat and only a sentimental, dull utility knife.

  He left the carcass for whatever the floor considered scavengers and kept walking.

  The hidden predator came in the afternoon.

  Cal nearly missed it. Fatigue clung to his muscles, turning each step leaden, and his focus unraveled at the seams. He scanned for familiar forest patterns, which was why a silence—aching and stark—stood out as wrong.

  Ahead, the undergrowth sprawled with ordinary ferns, brush, and scattered stones. But the air in that patch was eerie—no insect whispers, no bird cacophony. Only a dense, oppressive void.

  Jordan slowed first this time.

  “That’s…dead,” he murmured.

  Cal’s Earth-sense hummed, not alarmed, but attentive. The soil felt oddly smooth beneath leaf litter, as if something heavy had recently compressed it in a single, broad swath. No individual prints. Just a band of packed earth.

  He adjusted his route, intentionally circling wide around the suspect patch.

  A branch creaked above them.

  Cal threw himself sideways on reflex. Jordan did too, a fraction of a second late.

  The thing hit where Cal had been standing a heartbeat before, an impact that made the ground jump. Leaves and dirt exploded outward.

  Cal rolled, snapping his shield up between them and the threat as he came to a stop.

  This predator dwarfed yesterday’s. Coiled muscle rippled under overlapping chitin plates that shifted color, mimicking the forest floor. Too many limbs, a head like a flattening, fanged wedge.

  It hissed, tongue flicking, and lunged.

  The shield took the first impact, metal screaming as claws gouged across it. The force drove Cal back a step; his boots slid, but he caught himself before he went down.

  Jordan’s bar cracked into the creature’s nearest limb. The sound was wrong—too hard, too dry.

  "Did that do anything?"

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  “No.”

  The predator clung, limbs wrapping around the shield, weight dragging it to the side. It wasn’t trying to outfight him.

  It was trying to get past.

  Cal abandoned the idea of staying upright.

  He dropped his weight, legs folding, and rolled as the creature pulled. The world spun around him—green, brown, flashes of white teeth.

  He came up on one knee, shield half-pinning the predator between himself and the ground.

  It writhed, trying to free itself.

  Cal drove the baton into the joint where its main body met the thickest limb.

  Once. Twice.

  On the third, something gave.

  The creature shrieked—nails on metal—and thrashed hard enough to rip free of the shield.

  Jordan was already moving, stepping in front of Cal’s right side like he could make himself a wall with pure will.

  “Back,” Jordan said, humor gone.

  Cal didn’t retreat far. He just shifted to firmer ground and raised the shield again.

  The predator vanished into the undergrowth in a blur of shifting color.

  Cal stayed in a crouch, heart hammering, waiting for it to come again.

  It didn’t.

  Leaves rustled, then stilled. The unnatural silence lifted slowly, and the forest’s normal noise crept back.

  His hands quivered; sweat seared his vision. A new gouge slashed across the shield—deep, jagged, wide enough to wedge a finger into the scarred metal.

  Jordan let out a breath he’d been holding and tried to smile.

  “Good news: we didn’t die. Bad news: my soul is filing a complaint.”

  Cal swallowed. “Not today,” he whispered.

  They kept moving.

  By late afternoon, Cal’s body had decided he’d proven whatever point he was trying to make.

  His arms shook if he lowered the shield for more than a few seconds. The baton felt heavier with every fight, as if the accumulated dents were dragging it down. His breath came in short, controlled bursts.

  He stopped in a small clearing and experimented.

  Shield up. Step forward. Pivot. Drop his weight. Lean and recover.

  The ground was no smoother here than anywhere else—root nets, uneven hummocks of soil. Still, he could map it in an instant. Earth-sense translated each shift into a correction.

  You’re heavy there. Lighten. This patch will slide. That one will hold.

  He ran through the sequence until his shoulders protested.

  He was not fast yet. Not strong.

  But he was falling less.

  Jordan watched for a moment, then said, too casually, “If you start doing that mid-fight, warn me. I don’t want to get hit with your shield because you’re discovering gravity.”

  Cal huffed a breath that was almost a laugh.

  Good, he thought. Because the floor is not going to get kinder.

  As the light began to thin under the canopy, Jordan jerked his chin toward Hearthpost.

  “We turn back,” Jordan said.

  Cal wanted to argue. His mother’s face rose up instead.

  “Yeah,” Cal said. “We turn back.”

  They reached the gates with just enough light left that the guard on the watch platform didn’t complain.

  The bunkhouse clerk marked their bands with a bored tap of a slate stylus as Cal paid for another night. The notice board’s bounty lines barely moved when they turned in goblin ears and scraps; the chips disappeared into Cal’s pocket with humiliating speed.

  He considered stew.

  His stomach made its opinion very clear.

  He bought a half portion instead of a full one.

  Jordan stared at the bowl like it had personally insulted him.

  “This is the portion size you serve people you actively dislike,” he whispered.

  Cal ate anyway, slow and quiet at the edge of the Second Wind’s crowded common room, listening with half an ear to the talk around him.

  “…cave’s the key, I’m telling you. Clear it once, you’re basically guaranteed your Floor 2 unlock next cycle…”

  “…saw a patrol come back with three stretchers. All unsponsored. Went in with a group, came out without the group…”

  “…going to try the ridge route tomorrow. Less cover, but fewer ambush points…”

  Anya’s warning floated up again.

  Try not to go looking for it alone.

  He wasn’t. Not yet.

  When he finally dropped onto the bunkhouse mattress, his body tried to sigh and cramp at the same time. He stretched just enough to keep his legs from locking and pulled the thin blanket over himself.

  Jordan lay on his back on the neighboring bunk, one forearm over his eyes.

  “Hey,” Jordan said into the dark.

  Cal turned his head.

  Jordan’s voice was quiet, stripped down. “You’re still here.”

  Cal stared at him.

  Jordan cleared his throat and immediately tried to patch the moment with nonsense. “Which is great, because if you died, I’d have to climb alone, and I refuse.”

  Cal’s mouth tightened. “Go to sleep.”

  “Already trying,” Jordan said. “Brain says no.”

  Sleep took longer to come.

  When it did, it dragged Cal somewhere he didn’t want to be.

  He was in the clinic.

  Not as he usually saw it—crowded, noisy, the smell of chemical disinfectant barely covering the stink of too many bodies—but stripped of people, lit only by the harsh white of the aether machine’s status lights.

  His mother lay on the padded table, thin gown doing nothing to hide the way her ribs showed. Lines of faint blue-white light traced under her skin, the wave’s old scars pulsing in time with the machine’s hum.

  “Just a little more,” a voice said. Dr. Imani, though he couldn’t see her. “If we can increase tolerance by another two percent—”

  The machine’s hum climbed.

  His mother’s back arched. Her fingers fluttered, then went still.

  He woke with his heart pounding and his throat raw, fingers curled so tight around the edge of the mattress that his knuckles ached.

  The bunkhouse was dark but for a few guttering lamps. Someone snored three beds over. Another muttered in their sleep, caught in their own nightmare loop.

  Cal stared up at the underside of the bunk above him until the dream lost its immediate edge.

  “Floor Two,” he whispered into the dark. “We get to Floor Two. We get something that helps.”

  From the bunk beside him, Jordan’s voice came, half-asleep, like it had been waiting in his chest.

  “Yeah,” Jordan mumbled. “We do.”

  Day Two in the forest started with less stiffness and more hunger.

  Cal’s shoulders still ached, but they loosened faster. The bruise on his thigh had spread, but the muscle underneath responded when he asked it to.

  The half-portion stew meant his stomach felt like a hollow argument.

  He ignored it.

  Jordan met him outside the bunkhouse, hair slightly less feral than yesterday, shoulder wrapped tighter. He tried to stand, as if it didn’t hurt.

  “Morning,” Jordan said. “I would like to file a formal grievance with the Tower. My body is not designed for exercise.”

  Cal started walking. “We’re going out.”

  “Obviously,” Jordan said, and the humor tried to hold. “Loyalty and love, remember? I signed up for murder woods because you did. I’m committed to the bit.”

  At the gate, Rafe gave them a long look.

  “Still breathing,” he said. “You boys collecting bad decisions or just the usual?”

  “Both,” Jordan said.

  Rafe snorted and waved them through.

  Under the canopy, Cal didn’t wander.

  He angled toward the routes he’d traced in his head the day before, the ones where goblin sign had been thickest. Broken branches at consistent heights. Scrape marks on trunks. The faint, sour tang their bodies left behind.

  If the cave was the nest, the patrol patterns would bend around it.

  First, though, he had to live long enough to read those patterns.

  The morning goblin group found them near a pair of trees that had grown close together, roots intertwined in a low arch. The ground funneled between them before widening out again—a choke point.

  Three goblins.

  If he’d met them yesterday, he might have died.

  Today, he backed up a few paces and put the trees at his shoulders.

  They saw the move and liked it. Three spears, one narrow lane.

  Cal dropped his weight, set his shield, and waited.

  The first goblin rushed in with a high thrust aimed over the top of the shield. He met it with the rim, knocking the spear upward. The second moved to the right flank and found bark blocking the line of sight. The third tried left and hit another trunk.

  For a moment, the three of them clogged the space in front of him, weapons and limbs colliding.

  He stepped into that mess.

  The baton cracked across the first goblin’s forearm. Bone snapped. The spear dropped.

  He shoved the shield forward, crowding the remaining two. Their spears tangled.

  Jordan leaned in from behind Cal’s right shoulder and jabbed his bar into a goblin’s ribs, sharp enough to fold it, not so deep it slowed Jordan down.

  Cal drove the edge of the shield into a knee, then stomped down on a bare foot.

  Both goblins went down in a tangle.

  He finished it quickly.

  By the time he stepped out from between the trees, his breath was hard but not ragged.

  Progress, he thought. Not enough. But something.

  Later, a pack of scavenger beasts trailed them for nearly an hour.

  Cal caught glimpses through the undergrowth—lean shapes with patchy fur and too-bright eyes, loping just beyond easy throwing distance. Their smell rode the air: old blood, sour and hungry.

  They were waiting for someone to slip.

  Jordan’s voice stayed bright, but he’d stopped talking about anything that didn’t matter.

  “Keep your shield up,” Jordan said. “If they rush, they’re rushing you.”

  “I know,” Cal said.

  Jordan blew out a breath. “Yeah. Sorry. That’s just my mouth trying to do something besides panic.”

  Cal picked a battleground.

  A low rise offered higher ground and a fallen trunk as a partial barrier. He climbed onto it, feeling the give of half-rotten wood under his boots, and waited.

  The scavengers hesitated.

  Then hunger won.

  They came in from three sides, claws scrabbling, teeth flashing.

  Cal’s world narrowed to where his boots met the wood and where the wood met the earth beneath.

  He shifted constantly, never letting full weight rest on any one spot for more than a heartbeat. The shield turned teeth and bodies. The baton smashed into skulls and shoulders.

  Jordan stayed low at Cal’s flank, using his bar like a lever—hooking a beast’s foreleg, yanking it off balance, feeding it into Cal’s shield.

  One beast managed to get its jaws around Cal’s forearm, teeth scraping leather and flesh.

  Cal wrenched free, pain flaring white, and drove the baton down hard enough that something inside crunched.

  When it was over, three bodies lay at the base of the trunk. The rest melted back into the forest.

  Cal climbed down slowly, every limb trembling.

  He flexed his bitten arm. The teeth had broken skin, but not deeply. He wrapped it with a cloth torn from his jacket.

  Jordan stared at the bite like it was personal.

  “We go back if it gets red,” Jordan said.

  Cal didn’t argue.

  By midafternoon, Cal was close to burning out.

  His arms shook if he lowered the shield for more than a few seconds. The baton felt heavier. His breath came in short, controlled bursts.

  He leaned against a tree for a moment, forearm across his eyes, and listened.

  No immediate threat.

  He could turn back now. Make it to Hearthpost before dark. Sleep. Do it again tomorrow.

  The image of his mother on the clinic table slid into view.

  A number followed it.

  Weeks. Months. Not enough.

  He pushed off the tree.

  “Just a little farther,” he told himself.

  Jordan made a sound beside him—half sigh, half laugh. “If ‘a little farther’ kills you, I’m dragging your ghost back to the gate.”

  Cal didn’t smile. Not quite.

  He found the tracks when he stopped looking for a fight and started looking for a pattern.

  Goblin sign shifted along the mid-level ridge. Footprints grew more numerous, overlapping until they were almost a solid churn of three-toed impressions. The earth was packed down hard enough that Cal’s boots slipped on the polished surface.

  This wasn’t a patrol route.

  This was a road.

  He crouched, fingers brushing the compressed soil.

  Fresh. The topmost prints still held sharp edges. Whatever had made them had passed through recently. Not just one group—a lot of feet, over and over, all going the same direction.

  Jordan crouched on the other side of him, eyes on the trees.

  “You seeing what I’m seeing?” Jordan whispered.

  Cal nodded.

  The path angled downslope, cutting between two broad trees marked with symbols.

  Crude shapes hacked into bark, filled with something dark that might have been sap or blood. Bone charms hung from thin cords, clacking softly when the breeze shifted.

  The air tasted different, faint acrid tang beneath the usual forest scents.

  Territory marker, Cal thought.

  Jordan’s humor was gone again.

  “Okay,” Jordan breathed. “That’s a sign that says ‘please die here.’”

  Cal stared through the marked gap.

  Beyond it, the ground dipped into cooler air. Rock outcrops began to show through the soil—first as scattered teeth, then as a more continuous line.

  His Earth-sense changed near that line. The ground felt layered. Hollow in places.

  Cal’s steps slowed.

  Jordan caught the shift.

  “You’re not going in like this,” Jordan said.

  “I’m not,” Cal replied.

  Jordan didn’t sound relieved. He sounded scared anyway. “Good. Because I’m not carrying you out. My shoulder will file a restraining order.”

  Cal eased back behind a tree at the edge of the rise and waited, watching.

  A small group of goblins emerged from the undergrowth within minutes. Four of them, weapons slung casually, talking in low, hissing voices.

  They passed within ten meters of Cal’s hiding spot, heading toward the dip.

  None of them looked up.

  They vanished between the marked trees without hesitation.

  Cal’s pulse hammered.

  Jordan leaned close, voice tight. “So that’s the route.”

  Cal nodded.

  “Rendezvous,” Cal whispered.

  Jordan gave a single nod and drifted back, silent now, taking the long angle that kept him out of sight and gave Cal space.

  Cal waited a count of ten, then moved.

  He crept downslope, boots careful on packed soil, shield held close so it wouldn’t catch on branches. Cold air seeped up through the ravine like breath.

  The forest fell away into a shallow crease ahead. At the far end, half-hidden by hanging ferns and twisted roots, a dark opening yawned in the rock.

  Cold air breathed out of it.

  Even from here, he could feel the difference. The earth around the entrance felt hollow. Not empty. Layered.

  Goblin tracks led straight to the mouth, a worn trench of packed soil that disappeared into the dark.

  Cal ducked behind a tree and watched.

  Another pair of goblins came through ten minutes later. Then nothing.

  Floor One’s objective hung between him and that black mouth: clear the goblin cave, reach the exit, unlock something that might finally turn this from a one-sided beating into a fight.

  His whole body ached. His shield was gouged. His baton was one bad block away from cracking. His stomach felt like a hollow ache lined with sand.

  “Not today,” he whispered.

  If he went in like this, he’d die in the first corridor.

  But at least now he knew where it was.

  He backed away slowly, retracing his steps until the symbols on the trees were out of sight and the air tasted like regular forest again.

  Jordan was waiting where Cal had told him to wait, pressed into the shadow of a broad trunk, bar held low.

  He looked at Cal’s face and read the answer.

  “You found it,” Jordan said.

  Cal nodded.

  Jordan’s smile tried to appear but failed.

  “Okay,” Jordan said. “Then we go home.”

  They angled toward the routes Cal knew would take them back to Hearthpost before full dark.

  Tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, they’d come back with a little more in the tank, a few fewer dents, and whatever scraps of courage Cal could scrape together.

  Tonight, he would eat, patch his gear, and try to sleep without dreaming of machines failing to save the people hooked up to them.

  He touched the band on his wrist once, as if the Tower could feel it.

  “Found your cave,” he murmured. “Next time, we see who walks out of it.”

  Jordan, walking close enough that Cal could feel him there without looking, answered softly.

  “Together,” he said.

  Cal didn’t respond.

  He didn’t have to.