At first, there was just a ringing that attacked his sudden consciousness, but sight, sound, and everything else rushed back in right behind it. It took a few minutes of just lying still to put together his memories.

  Stone pressed a cold ridge into his shoulder through the thin pallet. The band of pressure at the base of his skull had settled from white-hot to just steady, like someone had cinched a ratchet strap around his brain and decided that was tight enough for now. Every time he blinked, the afterimage of the Heart’s last flare painted itself across the dark.

  The barracks around him mumbled and creaked. Men and women shifted on their bunks, coughing, and biting back small noises when their own leveling pains brought them in or out of consciousness. Someone near the door muttered a prayer to their ancestors under their breath; someone else told them, gently, to shut up.

  The mailbox flag in the top right of his vision pulsed on its four-count. Steady. Unbothered.

  He’d seen the headline earlier. The cold block of text in the Heart chamber, while the air still tasted of ozone and bad decisions.

  Behavioral data: Trial of Ascension sequence archived.

  Resource allocation: affinity over-variance resolved via experience redistribution.

  Grant: 201,000 experience units applied per Heart-bound entry.

  That part was for everyone. The next line had been just for him.

  Subject: Matas.

  Classification: Honor-bound Omen Scout. Omen-Step Engineer.

  Level Index: 9 → 15.

  Allocation points: +30 (unspent).

  Strain index: Severe → cumulative.

  He swallowed against the dry ache in his throat and focused, the way he had back at Level 5, staring directly at the line he hated most until it decided to give.

  The mailbox didn’t flare. It simply unfolded.

  Text dropped down the side of his vision like a contractor’s bid sheet.

  Level Index: 15

  Allocation Points: 30 (unassigned)

  Strain Index: Severe → cumulative.

  Numbers sat below that, each with a name he’d learned to live with. Strength. Dexterity. Endurance. Perception. Willpower. No little arrows telling him what a “good build” looked like. Just flat counts and a quiet, implied question: Well?

  Thirty points. Thirty chances to make himself slightly less breakable, improve himself in ways that would help right now. The fact that they didn’t seem to redistribute is honestly the only thing holding him back from just dumping everything into Perception.

  He thought back to the Trial. Every moment where his body had quit but his mind had kept running on fumes. Roof logic. Where did the load actually go if things failed? Expect the worst, and plan for whatever’s even worse than that. The in-between usually gets sold at the hardware store.

  Endurance had carried him up the Throat and back down again on legs that should’ve quit. Perception was why he’d seen the snake-heat in the basin before it cooked them, why he could read hairline cracks and feel when a landing was about to shear. Hell, honestly, it even managed system interaction. Important, no matter the build. Willpower… obviously, willpower was his internal drive to keep moving, but there seemed to be more hidden just below the surface that the system couldn’t be bothered to mention.

  Strength and Dexterity mattered—spears, rope, catches—but he’d already pushed them once at Level 9. A fancy cut didn’t help when the whole building shifted under you. There was already plenty he needed to learn technique-wise, beyond his skill usage.

  He breathed out, long and slow, zoned in on the interface, and did the math.

  Endurance: +3.

  Allocation Points: 27.

  The stat ticked up. No rush of power. No choir. Just a subtle, ugly twist deep in his muscles, like someone had swapped out bone screws for slightly thicker ones while he wasn’t looking. His ribs eased a fraction. The deep ache that had lived there since the basin didn’t vanish, but it redistributed down into something he could breathe around.

  Perception: +12.

  Allocation Points: 15.

  Pain spiked behind both eyes at once. He sucked a breath between his teeth and rode it out.

  The world didn’t sharpen. It… shifted. Edges grew heavier in his awareness. Shadows along stone joints picked up a faint, sickly gold smudge that wasn’t light, wasn’t color—more like an annotation.

  A note in the margin: this will fail here, eventually.

  His left eye twitched. The right went briefly double, showing him two versions of the barracks at once before they settled into a misaligned overlay. For a moment, he couldn’t tell which version was real.

  Both were.

  Willpower: +2.

  Allocation Points: 13.

  Wait. That was wrong.

  He stared at the number. “No,” he said quietly. “Two. You get two, and that’s it. I’m not letting you turn me into rebar for your damn node.”

  The adjustment there was… quieter. No muscle spike. Just a sense of something thickening behind his eyes, like another, thinner strap had been run around the existing band at the base of his skull. The pressure didn’t ease. It distributed.

  Willpower: +6.

  Allocation Points: 7.

  Seven points.

  Just seven.

  He stared at that number until the digits wanted to swim. They were a temptation and an insurance policy in one. Really, this was how the village thought now. People had gone to bed at Level 3 and woken up at 7 or 9 because he’d taken the short way down the Throat. They would be counting, too.

  He closed the pane before he could start doing more math. The edges folded up neatly, lines collapsing back into a single innocuous row under the mailbox flag.

  For a while, he just lay there, watching the ceiling not fall and listening to the breaths around him even out, getting used to his new improvements. When sleep finally came, it was fitful.

  ~

  Morning didn’t feel different. The light was still thin and cold, creeping in through narrow slits high in the wall. The air still smelled like old sweat, damp wool, and the sour tang of too many people sharing one room. Everything about it was more vibrant, like he’d turned up the resolution on a monitor, but otherwise it was just another morning.

  The people were different.

  Big time.

  Matas could see it in the way Kera, who hauled water and grumbled about her knees, swung her legs off a pallet and stood without bracing her hand on the frame. In the way two of the younger wall rats moved with a touch more confidence, shoulders unconsciously squared, as if they expected their bodies to answer better now.

  Dangerous.

  And in the way an older lamplighter on the far side of the room sat and pressed his hands over his ears for a long, slow count of ten before he trusted himself to stand. His level hadn’t jumped far enough to make up for years of work. The system took XP like cash; it didn’t rebate wear and tear.

  “Out,” came a voice from the doorway. One of Tharel’s junior guards, eyes bloodshot, armor half-buckled. “Chief wants wall hands and new numbers in the yard.”

  New numbers. Right.

  Matas swung his feet to the floor. His legs obeyed without that half-second of wobble they’d had yesterday. The ache was still there—deep and structural—but the muscles felt like they’d been refitted with slightly better hardware.

  Progress.

  ~

  The yard outside the barracks had the dazed buzz of a job site after an accident where, somehow, everyone had walked away. Men and women clustered in knots, some laughing harshly, some very quiet. Hands lifted wrists and forearms for inspection, the way roofers used to show off scars and bad tattoos.

  “Six,” someone said, tapping their chest. “From two. Six.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Three,” another answered, with the brittle tone of somebody who knew that number meant less than it sounded. “Twelve years on the wall and three.”

  “You were eight,” Kera told a boy who couldn’t be more than seventeen, frowning at him like a mother and a shift boss at once. “Now you’re what?”

  The boy flushed. “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen,” she repeated, as if testing a stranger’s name. “And still too green to go below. Don’t let your feet forget that.”

  He subsided, but the way his fingers drummed on the haft of his spear said the numbers had gone to his head, whether he liked it or not.

  Matas caught snatches of more talk as he crossed the yard.

  “…if we’d had those numbers last time, Jeren wouldn’t’ve—”

  “…just a little more, one more good run, and we could—”

  The vague, hungry shape of it settled under his ribs. They were already building scaffolding in the air. More levels. Better posts. More bodies. As if the Heart was a generous employer handing out hazard pay for a job done well, instead of a cracked node bleeding off affinity strain because it had no other choice.

  The same pattern that had turned Rust survivors into wanderers. The same weight that had nearly cracked the basin.

  “Matas.”

  He turned.

  Serh stood a few paces away, bow unstrung over her shoulder, hair braided tight enough to pull at her temples. There were faint gray smudges under her eyes that had nothing to do with ash-dust. The dust still clung to the leather wrapping on her bow, stubborn as mold.

  “You can stand?” she asked.

  “More or less,” he said. “Brain still feels like somebody used it to sand down stone, but the legs work.”

  Her mouth did that almost-smile thing and then flattened back out.

  “Good,” she said. “Chief wants you in the elder hall. Martuk too. Tharel is already there.” She glanced around the yard, then leaned in just enough that her voice dropped. “You hit them hard yesterday. They haven’t changed anything in decades.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “They just wouldn’t talk about the real problem. If I left, they’d never discuss it again.”

  This time, the smile almost made it all the way to her eyes before she strangled it.

  “Walk,” she said.

  They did.

  The village had always been stone, slope, and improvised bracing to him. Today, the lines glowed.

  Every stair step, every span of corridor, carried a faint light for his path—a gold or blood-red ghost of where his options lay. He’d be lying if he said the skills and abilities didn’t intrigue him, but there was not a time or place to experiment and make mistakes.

  As they crossed one of the inner walkways, his new Perception picked out a hairline crack running through the underside of a support arch. It had been there before; his eye just hadn’t been sharp enough to see it. The Omen overlay, red and thin as a cut, traced along it now, showing how failure would travel if the wrong person jumped in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He made himself keep walking. He couldn’t stop and point at every bad joint in Samhal. Not yet.

  The elder hall was quieter than the yard, but only just. Voices echoed off the high stone, layered and tense.

  “…can’t just send them back down,” someone said as Serh pushed the door open. “We barely got them out with all their limbs. The Heart’s already cracked.”

  “Yes! The Heart gave,” another voice answered, smooth and patient. “Should we pretend we did not see? The ancestors walked those steps for less.”

  “Ancestors,” Tharel said, his voice carrying an edge like a brick on a roof. “They died for us, they stay here to protect us. Show some respect. Our Heart is working cleaner than it’s been in ages.”

  Serh stopped just inside the doorway. Matas stepped up beside her.

  The elders sat or stood around the long stone table. The Chief held the far end, expression carved with indifference, one hand resting near a stack of ledgers. Martuk sat a little down from her on the right side, shoulders hunched, fingers smudged with ink, the look of a man who would rather be arguing with numbers than people. A bearded elder who looked like a direct descendant of Rasputin had taken the opposite side, hands folded, listening more than talking. Tharel stood near his left, jaw set. A little further down sat Ekher, the youngest of Samhal’s elite. His eyes a shade too bright; he kept his hands clasped as if in prayer, attention fixed on the Heart chamber. Every gaze in the room hit Matas at once.

  “Good,” the Chief said. “You’re upright.”

  “Give it an hour, and I might even be polite,” he said.

  A few of the elders twitched. The granite one did something that might have been a token head tilt of acknowledgment.

  “We won’t take an hour,” the Chief said. “Sit, if you can. Stand, if you must.”

  He chose to stand. Sitting felt like it might turn into collapsing if this went sideways.

  “We have three matters,” Martuk said. “First, work assignments. New levels mean new loads.” He nodded toward Matas, almost an apology, the closest thing to friendly Matas had seen from the table so far.

  A low murmur rippled through the room at that.

  The Chief lifted a hand. Silence settled again, taut as a too-tight rope.

  “We won’t decide all of it this morning,” the Chief said. “But we start. So we don’t pretend the numbers didn’t change.”

  She nodded to Tharel.

  “Wall,” Tharel said. “Some of my people went from three to nine overnight. They can pull more weight now. They know it. They’ll want to prove it.” His gaze flicked to Matas, then away. “That doesn’t mean I hand them gates and send them down the Throat.”

  A few elders grunted in agreement.

  “The Heart gave because we honored the old trials,” Ekher said, mild as ever. “We should not spit in its face by turning back to small tasks only.”

  Something in Ekher’s attention made Matas’ skin prickle, the way a foreman’s gaze did when he was already on step four to cut time on step three.

  “We honored the old trials,” Matas said before he could stop himself, “and it nearly killed us. Then it nearly cracked your node, finishing the accounting.”

  All eyes swung back to him.

  “Explain,” the Chief said.

  He swallowed. His tongue felt dry and too big for his mouth.

  “You’ve all seen a bad beam,” he said. “Wood go soft at the ends, rust eating the brackets. You can still walk on it. Maybe even run once or twice. That doesn’t mean you keep throwing parties up there and calling it a blessing every time it doesn’t drop you through the ceiling.”

  “We have stone,” one of the traditional elders said, faintly offended.

  “Stone fails too,” he said. “You just don’t see it until it’s already halfway done.”

  His eyes flared red-gold on instinct, bringing up the stress-lines in the memory of the Heart chamber. For a second, the band around his skull cinched tighter. He rode it.

  “That Heart of yours already had cracks,” he said, softer. “You all saw them. Yesterday dumped six levels’ worth of extra load into it in one go. You think doing that again tomorrow is smart?”

  “Not tomorrow,” Ekher said. “Of course not. We are not fools.” His smile didn’t touch his eyes. “But the Heart chose to share when we walked the old path. It may choose again. We must at least...prepare to listen.”

  “Prepare to listen,” Tharel echoed flatly. “By what? Drawing up another rope, another party, another ledger of who we can afford to lose?”

  “We can’t afford to lose him,” someone murmured, just loud enough for the words to carry.

  Matas wasn’t entirely sure whether they meant his levels, his eyes, or the fact that the Heart had just tied their XP economy to his spine.

  Martuk cleared her throat.

  “We will not send anyone down until we have clearer readings,” he said. “On the Heart. On the Throat. On the basin and the ash gallery.” He glanced at Matas again. “On our…Engineer.” The word came out dry, but his eyes were less hostile than most; more curious than hungry.

  The title sat on Matas’s shoulders like another coil of rope.

  “I can walk around and tell you where the cracks are,” he said. “Doesn’t make them go away.”

  “No,” Martuk said. “But it tells us where not to jump first.”

  The Chief let out a slow breath.

  “Work assignments stand for today,” she said. “No one goes below. No one touches the Throat without my say and Tharel’s agreement.”

  Tharel’s jaw eased by a measurable fraction.

  “As for the Heart,” the Chief went on, “Martuk will organize an inspection. With you.” She nodded at Matas. “You will walk our walls and halls. Put your roofing logic on the stone. We’ll see what it gives us.”

  “And when the people ask,” Ekher said, “what we are doing with the strength the Heart gave them?”

  “Tell them we are not spending it all on the first shiny thing we see,” the Chief said. Her voice had gone flat and dangerous. “Tell them we are not rust-mad.”

  A few of the older elders flinched at the word. Rust-mad meant something specific here. Old stories of wanderers who couldn’t sleep under the Heart anymore without screaming. Who’d walked out rather than carry what they’d brought back.

  The bright-eyed elder dipped his head, accepting the rebuke. His smile said he’d already filed it under future reference.

  “Go,” the Chief told Matas. “Drink. Eat. Then fetch Martuk and walk.”

  He bowed his head, because that seemed like the least structurally unsound option, and backed out with Serh.

  In the corridor, the air felt thicker. Or maybe that was just his awareness of the load paths humming in the stone. The Omen overlay picked out not just cracks and failing joints now, but… tensions. Places where stress gathered, then bled off.

  “You spoke too much,” Serh said quietly as they walked.

  “Bad habit,” he said. “My wife used to say my mouth had a leak I couldn’t patch.”

  “She sounds smart,” Serh said.

  He smiled, small and sharp.

  “She married a roofer with bad knees and worse life insurance,” he said. “Questionable judgment.”

  Serh huffed something that might have been a laugh.

  “They will push,” she said, voice flattening again. “For another run. Maybe not today. Maybe not this moon. But they will push.”

  “I noticed,” he said. “Half the yard was already building castles in the air with their new numbers.”

  “You can say no,” she said. “You know that?”

  He thought about Alea. About the fact that every line of hostile stone here was one more day he wasn’t walking on a Chicago sidewalk. About the Heart’s hum under his feet.

  “I can say a lot of things,” he said. “Not going to make them care about my wellbeing all of a sudden.”

  They turned a corner into one of the main galleries and almost ran into the aftermath of last night’s failure.

  A section of corridor ceiling near a junction had collapsed in the dark hours. Not full-on cave-in—just a chunk the size of a small car that had decided it didn’t like being overhead anymore.

  Guards had cordoned it off with rope and chalk marks. Two workers were chipping away loose stone at the edges, faces set in the weary lines of people who knew this was the first of many. One of them moved with a stiffness that said his level hadn’t jumped enough to erase old injuries.

  Matas’s eyes lit red-gold without asking permission.

  Stress-lines spidered out from the hole, tracing load shifts into adjacent walls and up into unseen rooms above. The Omen overlay ran a thin, quivering thread through them, showing where the next failure would start if nothing changed.

  The mailbox flag pulsed, just once, a fraction brighter than its usual four-count.

  He opened it on reflex.

  Environmental log: structural variance noted.

  Recommended action: none.

  His hand tightened on the nearest bit of wall.

  “Of course,” he whispered. “Why would you recommend fixing the roof before the rain?”

  Serh watched his face.

  “Where?” she asked.

  He pointed, tracing the path only he could see.

  “There,” he said. “And there. And three rooms up and to the right, in somebody’s ceiling they’re still sleeping under.”

  She followed the line of his finger, eyes narrowing.

  “I’ll get Tharel,” she said. “And Martuk.”

  “And a ladder,” he said. “Preferably before the ceiling decides it wants to be a floor.”

  She nodded once and moved off at that clipped, economical pace that meant she was trying not to run.

  Matas stayed where he was, palm flat against the stone, feeling the hum of the Heart somewhere deeper down. His eyes ached where the overlays crossed. His skull felt like it had been rewired by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.

  The village had gotten its numbers.

  Now the load paths were changing to match.