Ray ran toward the only person who still looked in control. Vaeldren.
The old dragonkin had already drawn the remaining fighters into a rough line, claws flexing, shoulders squared. Ray slid into place without waiting to be told, sword up, breath rough. He counted them because his brain needed something clean to hold onto.
“How many?” Ray asked.
Vaeldren’s gaze flicked over the line and back to the bulging earth. “Twelve with me,” he said. “That includes you.”
Layla snapped her head around. “Ray, go. You’re not dragonkin. You don’t owe us this.”
Ray didn’t answer. His throat had locked up and his hands were already set in a grip he knew was going to hurt later.
“Do poisons work?” Ray asked, voice raw.
Vaeldren kept his eyes on the rising shape under the soil. “No,” he said. “Not on this. Not any we’ve tried.”
Fear sat under his control, packed down and held in place. Vaeldren scanned the line again, not checking confidence, checking time, and Ray saw it in the tightness around his eyes.
“Listen,” Vaeldren said, low and hard, pitched to carry only to them. “We’ve never brought one down with less than twenty-five warriors. Even then, we bury friends. This is a lost fight. Our job is to stall long enough for the others to escape.”
Layla’s jaw clenched. “Then what about him?” She jerked her chin at Ray. “He isn’t one of us.”
Vaeldren’s eyes cut to Ray for a heartbeat. No pity. No softness. Calculation, then a thin kind of respect.
“He’s here,” Vaeldren said. “So he stalls with us.”
Ray felt something tighten in his ribs at that. He didn’t know if it was pride or disgust at himself for feeling anything at all.
The ground tore wider.
A tentacle snapped out of the earth, slick with rot, thick enough that Ray’s first thought was tree trunk. Another followed beside it. Another. Eight in total, striking and recoiling fast enough to blur. Then the main body heaved itself up behind them, a sagging mass of grey flesh that kept shifting as it rose, eyes scattered across its surface, a mouth opening near the centre with jagged bone points hammered into place as teeth.
Ray’s hands went cold.
He triggered Identify out of instinct.
[Identify Failed.]
[Identify Failed.]
The failures slammed into his mind. No information. No handholds. The System didn’t think he was allowed to know.
“I can’t get a read,” Ray said, forcing the words out. “Anyone else?”
No one answered. The abomination moved.
Two tentacles flashed, not at Ray, but at the left side of their line. One punched clean through a dragonkin’s chest with a wet crack. The second wrapped around another warrior’s waist and yanked him forward. The warrior’s claws scraped at the tentacle’s slick surface as he was dragged off his feet.
The first dragonkin looked down at the tentacle through his ribs as if his brain couldn’t accept what his eyes were seeing. Then the tentacle withdrew and he folded in half, blood spilling dark onto the dirt. The second warrior hit the ground hard enough that Ray heard bone pop. He tried to rise anyway, mouth open in a soundless scream. The tentacle came down again, straight through his neck.
Two bodies. Two seconds.
Twelve dropped to ten.
Layla swore and threw her staff forward. Fire surged, not a grand wall this time, but short bursts meant to force the tentacles to flinch. The flames licked the pale flesh and left blackened streaks, but the abomination didn’t recoil. It shifted, eyes tracking, tentacles adjusting. It had learned what fire meant and decided it could pay the price.
Layla’s breath hitched. Ray saw the panic she tried to bury. She’d burned through mana in the swarm. Everyone had. None of them were fresh.
Vaeldren caught a tentacle on his claws and shoved it aside, using brute force to deflect rather than cut. It struck the ground and carved a trench. Vaeldren landed on his feet anyway, but the strain showed in his shoulders.
“This monster’s higher level than me,” Vaeldren said, voice clipped. “We cannot take this. Run. As fast and as far as you can.”
The line broke. Not in panic. Not in cowardice. In obedience to a call that meant survival.
Ray turned with them, legs already driving. The abomination pressed at his back, a weight in the air. A tentacle cracked forward and slammed down where his head had been a breath earlier. Dirt sprayed his face. Another snapped sideways and clipped a dragonkin runner behind him, catching him across the back and throwing him into the ground.
Ray’s first impulse was to stop.
Vaeldren’s earlier words hit him hard. Stall. Time. Escape.
Ray forced his feet to keep moving.
He triggered Speed Burst.
The world surged forward and his body obeyed. His legs ate distance. His lungs screamed. Mana tore out of him in a chunk, a hollow drop that made his temples pulse. The burst gave him the extra metre he needed. A tentacle snapped past his shoulder instead of through it.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Ten seconds later the burst ended and the drop in pace crushed his stride. His stomach rolled. A headache flared sharp behind his eyes, then settled into a pulsing throb that refused to leave.
He didn’t stop.
Ahead, Layla was running backward in short hops, throwing fire walls behind them in broken pieces. Each wall held for seconds before guttering out, not because she wanted it gone, but because her mana couldn’t hold it.
Ray risked a glance back.
The abomination didn’t chase at full speed. It moved with slow certainty, tentacles pushing its body forward in ugly pulses. It drifted to the two bodies it had just made. One tentacle hooked a corpse under the arms and lifted it. The corpse’s head lolled back and the throat was torn open enough that it barely looked human anymore.
The abomination stuffed the body into its maw.
Bone crunched.
A second body followed.
Bile rose in Ray’s throat. He swallowed hard and ran harder.
It started chasing properly once it finished eating.
The thing was slower than them in a straight line, but its tentacles were not slow. They lashed forward, snapping at ankles, shoulders, necks. A dragonkin stumbled when a tentacle clipped his calf. He went down on one knee, tried to push himself up, and another tentacle came down like a whip.
The scream didn’t last. It cut off mid-breath.
Ray kept running. His feet wanted to stop anyway. His body wanted to turn. His mind kept pushing the same brutal line into place. If I stop, more people die. If I stop, Layla dies. If I stop, everyone dies.
Vaeldren’s roar carried over the pounding of feet. “Don’t stop!”
Layla flinched, face twisting, but she kept running. The rest did too, jaws clenched, eyes wet, refusing to look back because looking back would break them.
Ray’s skull throbbed harder. The mana drain sat behind his eyes like a bruise. The headache sharpened whenever he tried to focus on anything other than moving. He pulled his status open for half a heartbeat and the world tilted at the edges. He shoved it away again before he fell.
Mana wasn’t just fuel. It was something inside him that kept him upright. When it ran low, his body started to fail in small, ugly ways.
They ran until the shaking faded behind them and the air stopped tasting like rot. They ran until the sounds behind them were only their own breathing. They reached the old campsite in ragged clusters and collapsed where they stood, not because they were safe, but because their legs stopped taking orders.
Ray didn’t sit straight away. He stayed on his feet, bent forward with his hands on his knees, sucking in cold air. His head pounded. His skin felt too tight. He swallowed twice to keep the nausea down.
Miu was not with him.
He tried to push his mind out along the bond and felt only distance, a blank stretch that told him she was still out there, still scouting, still too far to reach. That thought hit harder than it should have.
The dragonkin began counting.
It took longer than Ray expected because people didn’t want to answer, didn’t want to admit who was missing. Names were called. Silence answered. Names were called again. Someone’s voice cracked on a name that didn’t deserve silence.
When the elder finished, his jaw set like it might break.
“Thirty-four,” he said, voice flat. “Thirty-four dead since we left camp this morning. That includes the swarm. That includes the abomination’s two kills. That includes the ones who didn’t make it back in the run.”
A sound moved through the survivors, not loud enough to be grief, not quiet enough to be calm. Just the realisation settling in that their numbers were shrinking faster than they could replace.
Ray’s stomach clenched again, and this time it wasn’t the abomination. It was the fact that he’d heard that cut-off scream and kept running. He knew it had been necessary. The knowledge didn’t make it clean.
As the roll call ended, Ray’s eyes snapped to a gap that shouldn’t have been there.
“Where’s Vaeldren?” Ray asked.
The elder blinked, then barked a laugh that carried no humour. “Alive. Annoyingly. He’s leaving a message.”
“What?” Ray pressed.
“He went back toward Finrial,” the elder said. “Not to fight. To mark. To warn. We’re heading west now. That was always his fallback. If the undead are planting abominations that close to the road, there is no safe place here.”
Ray stared at him. “So he decided for everyone?”
The elder’s eyes narrowed. “Finrial decided. Finrial died and made the decision for us.”
Ray’s head throbbed again. He reached for his status window and the world wavered at the edges.
Then the System hit him hard.
[Yet another brush with instant death, you’re a magnet for running away. +1 Agility]
Ray clenched his teeth at the cheer in the message.
[Ding! Congratulations, you have reached Level 14.]
[Current unallocated stat points: 5]
The next message landed before he could even breathe.
[Ding! Congratulations, you have reached Level 15.]
[Current unallocated stat points: 15]
[You have reached Level 15. Seek a civilisation crystal to choose your class.]
His stomach flipped. Choose a class? Why had no one told him this mattered now? He’d have to ask later, if his head stopped trying to split open.
Then another set of messages.
[Ding! You have learned a sub-skill: Sword Mastery.]
[Ding! You have learned a sub-skill: Sneak.]
Ray swallowed hard. He didn’t feel stronger. He felt wrung out and hollow and vaguely sick. The System didn’t care. It delivered rewards anyway.
A final message appeared, and it felt personal in the worst way.
[Ding! Speed Burst has reached Level 2.]
====================================
Skill: Speed Burst
====================================
Use your legs moron. Move faster.
Level: 2
Rarity: Common
Rank: F
Active:
- Upon activation, gain a short burst of speed. Lasts 11 seconds
Mana Cost: 25
Cooldown: 1 Minute.
====================================
Ray stared at it and felt a sharp, ugly laugh claw at his throat. It didn’t come out as sound. It came out as a breath he couldn’t quite control.
Eleven seconds.
The System watched him run for his life and decided to give him one extra second, then insult him for needing it.
Ray’s hands shook as he closed the window. His head still pounded. The mana drain still sat behind his eyes. Levelling didn’t erase cost.
People began packing again, not because they wanted to, but because staying still in the open felt like begging for the next disaster. The non-combatants clustered close. Wounded sat with their backs against trees while others wrapped bandages with clumsy hands. Layla moved among them with her staff and a grim face, doing what she could, saving mana where it mattered.
Ray found himself standing at the edge, watching, with fifteen unallocated points burning at the back of his mind.
He didn’t allocate them yet. He didn’t trust his judgement while his head felt like it might split.
He tried to reach for Miu again.
Nothing.
That blank stretch tightened something in his chest. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like needing anyone. He didn’t like the silence where her cheeky voice should have been.
***
Vaeldren moved through the ruins, low and careful.
The abomination had buried itself again near the road, sinking into the soil once the runners were gone. It hadn’t chased far. It didn’t need to. Abominations got left behind. They held ground. They warned the living not to come back.
Vaeldren kept patient, and kept angry.
Finrial was worse than he hoped.
The wards were gone. The road markers were smashed. The village stank of rot so thick it coated his tongue. He didn’t walk into the centre. He didn’t need to. He could see enough from the outskirts to know it was done.
He picked a tree near the western side and carved the first message with his claw, fast and deep.
Dragonkin heading west. No refuge here. Survivors, follow.
He wrote it in dragonkin first. Then in elvish. He didn’t trust the living races to read dragonkin. He didn’t trust them to help either. He wrote it anyway.
He moved again, skirting collapsed fences and broken carts, watching for sentries. Necromancers were rare, but scouts were not. The undead didn’t need clever plans to kill. They needed numbers, and time, and the System kept providing both.
The last estimate Vaeldren had heard put the dead at fifteen percent of the known world. That number had been lower a year ago. It climbed every season. Every territory that fell became a foothold. Every foothold became spread.
Vaeldren had watched it for a century.
He’d also watched every council meeting end the same way. Humans wanted human power. Elves wanted elven power. Dwarves closed their doors and told the surface to burn. Nobody wanted to kneel. Nobody wanted to share. Everyone told themselves they’d solve it later.
There was no later.
He left more markers, small and subtle, carved on the backs of posts and the inside edges of trees, placed where a living traveller might glance while resting. He didn’t make them pretty. He made them clear.
When he finished, he returned to the west gate and carved the final line deeper than the rest, because this one mattered.
Dragonkin heading west. Seek us if you live.
Then he turned his back on Finrial and slipped into the overgrown trail beyond the village, following the scent of his people and the thin hope that the mountains still held spaces the undead hadn’t swallowed.
He reached the campsite as the line was already beginning to move.
Ray stood near the front with Layla, both of them dirty and exhausted, both of them still upright. The dragonkin didn’t treat Ray as one of their own in the ways that mattered, but Vaeldren could see something shifting. Ray had run back to warn them. Ray had fought. Ray had not frozen when the abomination appeared. Those things mattered more than blood when the world was trying to kill you.
Vaeldren didn’t announce himself. He stepped out of the brush beside Ray, right at shoulder height.
Ray startled so hard he stepped back, half-drew a dagger on reflex, and then tripped over Layla’s tail and went down in the dirt with a thud.
For a heartbeat there was stunned silence.
Then a child snorted.
Then the camp laughed.
It wasn’t a big laugh. It wasn’t joy. It was a handful of people letting out a sound that reminded them they were still alive. Even Layla’s mouth twitched before she forced it flat again.
Ray pushed himself up, red-faced, brushing dirt off his armour with furious hands. “You didn’t need to do that,” he muttered.
Vaeldren’s eyes crinkled with amusement that didn’t reach the grief behind them. “On the contrary,” he said, voice softer than his earlier orders. “People need a laugh when the world is chewing on them. We lost family today. We lost friends. If we can’t laugh once, we’ll crack.”
Ray glared at him, then let the glare fade because there was nowhere for it to go. He looked out at the line forming, at the wounded being helped to their feet, at the non-combatants clutching each other with white knuckles.
He finally nodded once. Small. Reluctant. Real.
Vaeldren stepped past him and raised his voice to the group. “We go west,” he said. “No more arguing. Finrial is dead. The road is compromised. We find mountains. We find empty land. We find somewhere the undead have to bleed to reach.”
No one argued.
They started moving.
Ray felt the absence of Miu as a constant pressure. He sent a thought down the bond again, hard enough to sting.
Still nothing.
He swallowed, tightened his grip on his sword, and walked into the westward trail with the others, head pounding, mana low, and fifteen unallocated points sitting in his mind like a question he didn’t have time to answer yet.
Dreamlike LitRPG Psychological Thriller
?? Updates:
Tue Thu Fri
? Polished & Ongoing
Alex Dawson's quiet life of classes and gaming shatters when he dreams of a crimson sky, a fallen moon, and a stranger on a mirror-like sea.
The dream doesn't fade. An ancient system awakens, and Alex is dragged into the hidden realms of dreams where some want him to awaken, others want him to break, and one wants him back.
Free to read on Royal Road