The second morning came in layers of noise and bone.

  First came the coughs. Dry hacking from the far end of the barracks, answered by a wetter one two bunks over. Then the shuffle of wool and leather, the scrape of calloused feet on stone. Someone cursed softly when they swung into the draft from the slit window. The air had that same thin, mineral edge as yesterday, cutting through sleep like a saw through rotten plywood.

  Every bruise Matas had pulsed and moaned as he rolled in the one-man cot. His wrist hummed, ribs ached, and his ankle felt like it had been used as a hinge in the wrong direction. Under all of that, the Level 4 leftover sat like someone had scooped out a handful of whatever counted as structural filling and not quite put it back right.

  The rumble from the deep stone was gone. Or hiding. Hard to say which was worse.

  Merrik’s shadow fell across his bunk. “Up,” he said. Spear in one hand, the other palm thumping Matas’s shoulder. “Slope won’t check itself.”

  “I vote we let it,” Matas muttered, but he swung his legs over the side anyway—the cold floor bit through the thin layer of whatever passed for socks here. His head did that slow tilt thing when he stood up—less roller coaster than yesterday, more like a ladder with one loose rung.

  The mailbox icon pulsed top-right. Quiet. Watching. No new text.

  Still provisional. Still tracked. Still here.

  Serh stood by the door, leaned into the stone like she was bracing the whole mountain out of habit. Bow on her back. Quiver at her hip. Eyes doing that slow, methodical sweep of the room that made you feel like a line item in a ledger.

  She jerked her chin toward the gear racks. “With me.”

  * * *

  The armory nook felt even smaller with three bodies in it. Spears and short bows lined the wall in crooked rows, each one showing scars—nicks in steel, grips darkened by years of sweat and oil. A couple of short-hafted axes hung near the door, their heads stained with old rust and newer things.

  His peg still sat on the far end, empty. The borrowed spear from yesterday leaned against it, haft smudged with dried wolf blood and his own fingerprints.

  Serh looked from the spear to Matas, then to Merrik. “You saw his throw on the retreat,” she said.

  Merrik’s mouth twitched. “Ugly. But it landed.”

  That was one way to describe braining a wolf with a rock on the way back. The memory of the impact lived in his shoulder still—a jolt that had bypassed words and gone straight to the part of him that knew good from bad sound on a job.

  “Stone killed it from a bad angle,” Serh said, as if ticking off a column. “Not nothing.” She turned to the racks, sliding a few pegs aside. Metal clicked. “Spear is fine on clean ground. Our slopes are not clean.”

  She pulled something down and tossed it, hilt-first.

  Matas caught it out of reflex.

  Short sword, not some fantasy greatsword. Blade maybe two feet long, single-edge, with a hint of curve. The grip was wrapped in dark leather that had seen enough hands to remember them.

  Weight settled into his palm. Different from a hammer, but not alien. He rolled his wrist carefully. The balance point sat a hair closer to the hilt than he expected.

  “Closer work suits you,” Serh said. “Walls, doors. Wolves on your chest.”

  “Besides,” Merrik added, “less chance you pitch yourself off a ledge trying to play at spearman.”

  He ducked his head slightly, like he was expecting a boot to find his shin for that. It didn’t. Not yet.

  Serh crouched by a lower shelf and pulled out a narrow leather strip with loops stitched along it. Two short knives sat in the loops, blades slim and thick-spined, edges clean. Not kitchen knives. Purpose-built. The kind you didn’t leave stuck in meat if you meant to get them back.

  “These,” she said, holding the belt out. “Three, when we have enough steel. Today, two. For things that think they are far enough away.”

  Matas took the rig. The knives had a different kind of weight—centered more toward the middle, less blade-heavy than the sword. Throw-balanced. His fingers found the grip without needing to think about it, like picking up a familiar tool in a different color.

  “Don’t waste them,” Merrik said. “We don’t have a knife field where they grow back.”

  He slid the belt around his waist, settling the knives on his left hip, sword on his right. The leather dragged at his ribs where wolf teeth and mountain stone had already done their work. Along with the weapons, a bundle of matching clothes rested near his peg—and a pelt with the same fur as the wolf he’d killed with the rock. He shrugged into the new layers. Warmer, heavier, and a reminder that one of those wolves wasn’t just a story now.

  “Eat,” Serh said. “Then we move.”

  Same cold scrap broth as yesterday, cut with the memory of a thicker stew. Same barking at kids in the corridor, same low murmur of jokes and complaints. Different weight on his belt. A different set of bad decisions was waiting outside.

  * * *

  They took a new line out of Samhal that morning, angling along the mountain’s side instead of straight down toward the monastery gate. The air had that brittle clarity that meant any mistake would ring louder.

  “Our watch today,” Serh said, “is for cracks and teeth above the gate, not below. Things that fall on patrols are as dangerous as things that bite them.”

  The path cut along the slope in fits and starts—sections carved into something like steps, then stretches of raw stone where the mountain had shrugged at the effort. Here and there, someone had sunk iron spikes and run rope between them as half-hearted handholds. The rope was worn smooth where hands had hit it most.

  Old jobs, Matas thought. Old workers.

  His head still felt a step off from the Level 4 hit, but his legs knew what to do with uncertain surfaces. Test each foothold. Keep weight stacked over something you trust. Assume anything that looks easy is a liar.

  They paused at a jut of rock that gave them sightline down toward the gate wall. From here, the monastery face looked like a bad drawing—angles slightly wrong, scale hard to judge, the gate itself a thin mouth set into the stone. He could just pick out the alcove where he’d fought the first wolves, a darker smudge against the lighter wall.

  “Tracks,” Merrik said, crouching. His fingers traced fresh scrapes in the dust. “Two, maybe three. Not wolves. See the points? Smaller. More spread.”

  Matas knelt beside him. The marks were narrower than wolf pads, deeper at the tips, like something with hooked claws had tested its grip.

  “Climbers,” Serh said. “They take the high paths. Come down on necks if you let them.”

  Matas didn’t like the sound of that. Gravity was bad enough without teeth.

  They moved on, eyes up as much as down.

  The first one showed itself the way bad trusses did—by the sound before the failure.

  A small rock clattered downslope, bouncing twice before vanishing. Not the lazy roll of something nudged by weather. A sharper, deliberate knock, followed by the scratch of claws retreating.

  “There,” Matas said, pointing to a notch above them where two slabs met at a half-angle. The shadow between them was wrong. Too dense. The air around it felt tight, like a roof space crammed with too much HVAC and not enough venting.

  Merrik’s hand tightened on his spear. “You have a talent for seeing trouble.”

  “My work can be unforgiving,” Matas said.

  The thing made up its mind a breath later.

  It came out of the notch like someone had dropped it, body uncoiling mid-air. Limbs splayed wide, claws scrabbling for purchase as it slid down the rock face. About wolf-sized, maybe a little leaner, fur gone a dirty gray that matched the stone too well. Its head was wrong—flattened and elongated, eyes set farther apart than they should’ve been. The mouth took up too much real estate, full of yellowed, chisel-shaped teeth.

  “Cliff gnawer,” Serh snapped. “Down.”

  Matas ducked as it hit the path in front of them with a wet, scraping thud, claws scoring deep grooves in the stone.

  Merrik met it with his spear, but the angle was bad—haft glancing off slick fur. The gnawer pivoted faster than anything that size should have, jaws snapping for his thigh.

  Matas stepped in without thinking, new sword already in his hand.

  A shorter blade meant faster correction. He brought it up in a tight arc, using the gnawer’s own forward momentum. The edge bit behind its jaw, not as deep as he wanted, but enough to make it flinch and veer.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  It slammed into his chest instead of Merrik’s leg. They went sideways together. His boots skidded on the narrow path. Empty air yawned to his left.

  He twisted, driving his shoulder into the rock instead of his whole body. Pain flared bright. The gnawer clawed at his torso, teeth snapping inches from his face.

  “Hold,” Serh barked.

  Her bowstring sang. The impact thumped through the gnawer’s ribs and into his. It jerked, mouth going slack. For a second, it just hung there, held up by his grip and its claws, then its weight went dead.

  They slid another foot. His heel hit nothing.

  Matas grabbed for something, anything. His left hand found rough stone. Fingers dug in.

  Merrik’s hand clamped on the back of his jacket and yanked. His boot scraped, then caught. The gnawer’s corpse twisted, half over the edge now, half on the path.

  They lay there breathing for a few heartbeats.

  “Next time,” Merrik panted, “you do not hug the teeth, yes?”

  “Next time,” Matas said, “one of you can fall off the mountain instead.”

  Serh stepped over, boot planting on the gnawer’s shoulder, and yanked her arrow free with a hard twist. The tip came away slick but intact.

  “Two more,” she said, nodding upslope. “Hear them?”

  Matas did now. The faint scrabble of claws on stone, higher above, circling for another angle.

  He slid one of the throwing knives out of its loop.

  The grip settled between his fingers like it had been waiting there his whole life. Different from a rock. Cleaner. Less guesswork about what side should face forward.

  “Gap left,” he said, pointing at the darker seam between two slabs. “They like cover.”

  Serh nodded once, shifting to cover the right. “Yours,” she said.

  The gnawer made its mistake; it needed to see them.

  A darker snout eased into view, eyes glinting.

  Matas didn’t think about form. He just threw.

  The knife left his hand with a hiss of leather and air. For half a second, the balance felt wrong, like it wanted to spin. Then the weight settled into its flight, tip leading.

  It caught the gnawer at the base of the throat, where fur met bone.

  The sound it made wasn’t clean—not like the rock on the wolf. Wetter, a swallowed crack. The gnawer jerked back into the shadows, claws scrabbling, then tumbled out sideways, half-rolling, half-sliding down the face.

  It hit the path ten feet below them in a heap and didn’t get up.

  “Ugly,” Merrik said again, a little breathless. “But it lands.”

  The third gnawer decided it had gotten a good enough look at the odds. It retreated, claws skittering higher, until the sound blended back into the ordinary creaks and sighs of the mountain.

  Serh watched the retreat path, tracking with her bow until the last scrape faded. Only then did she relax the string.

  “Retrieve your steel,” she said. “If you can do it without dying.”

  Matas worked his way down to the second body, testing each step before trusting it. The path here narrowed to the width of a two-by-eight. The knife came free with a hard pull. His fingers slipped once on the grip; he wiped them on its fur before he climbed back up.

  Serh called it there. Two corpses slung over shoulders, one near-fall, and a missing bite out of the local scavenger population. Enough work for one morning.

  On the way back in, Matas caught himself walking a fraction more confidently on the bad patches. Not cocky—just less like every step might be his last. That was probably the most dangerous feeling of all.

  As they started back, a faint red haze flickered high on the far side of the ridge, near a darker line of rock. It might have been nothing more than sunrise hitting iron-rich stone. His left eye didn’t buy that. A sudden ache speared behind it, and for a heartbeat his vision on that side collapsed into a narrow, vertical slit of clarity, the rest of the world dimming around it.

  Then it snapped back. No system text. No explanation.

  He filed it under problems for later and kept his feet under him.

  * * *

  The hit came midway through the afternoon stew.

  It waited until he was sitting down, at least. Very considerate.

  The bowl was halfway to his mouth when the mailbox flag snapped faster. A ring of dull gold flared around the icon, brighter than the faint pulses he’d learned to ignore.

  Text slammed into focus over the table.

  Behavioral data: Sustained scout/hunt contribution.Subject: Matas.Level Index: 5.Resources Partially restored.

  The vertigo hit like a wave—everything flexing at once, then trying to settle somewhere new. His muscles fired out of order. Hands clenched, then opened. Heat flushed up his arms, across his chest, then snapped cold so fast his teeth ached. The hollow ache behind his ribs deepened, like someone was driving wedges into the load-bearing parts of him to adjust them by fractions of an inch.

  He must have made some kind of noise. Conversations around him stuttered.

  “Breathe,” Merrik said quietly, from the bench to his left. Not loud enough for the room, just for him. “In. Out. Don’t fight it. It’s worse if you fight.”

  Easy for him to say. This was his home field. For Matas, it felt like having his skeleton refiled without anesthesia.

  Then, as always, it peaked and ebbed. The stew steadied. The bench remembered which way down was.

  The hollowness didn’t go away. It never did. It just settled into a new normal.

  Matas forced another spoonful down. The salt tasted metallic now. Around him, the barracks had gone back to its usual noise—spoons on bowls, low talk, the scrape of a bench being pushed back. Nobody stared for long. They’d all seen it happen to someone.

  New text hung in the corner of his sight, faint but there.

  Unspent Points: 25.

  Merrik’s eyes flicked to him, then away. He pushed a bit of meat around his own bowl. “When it marks you like that,” his voice stayed low, “after hunts. You feel different?”

  “That obvious?” Matas said.

  Merrik’s mouth twitched. “First jump to five is not subtle. Everyone looks like their insides got rearranged.” He hesitated, spoon tapping the rim once. “Some of us shift things after. Into arms, or legs, or eyes. To match the work. Easier if you’ve had time to think about what you need.”

  “And if you guess wrong?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Then the slopes teach you. Or the wolves. Or the Hills, if you are lucky enough that someone bothers to ask them about you.”

  Serh, across the table, gave him a look that said he’d said enough. He shut up.

  Later, as scouts peeled off to clean gear or collapse onto bunks, Merrik drifted past and dropped a strip of dried something onto Matas’s blanket. “For later,” he said. “Trail’s longer tomorrow.”

  Serh’s boot thumped the bunk leg, rattling the frame. “Sleep. First light comes faster when you talk.”

  “See?” Merrik said, straightening. “Cheerful.”

  She gave him a look that could have carved stone and moved off to check the racks.

  * * *

  Night brought the usual chorus of snores, muttered dreams, and the occasional clink of someone rolling over too close to a spear. The lanterns had been turned down to embers, throwing the barracks into a patchwork of dark and less dark.

  Matas lay on his back, staring at the rough stone above his bunk, and finally gave in.

  “Fine,” he whispered. “Let’s see the fallout.”

  He focused on the faint numbers in the corner, the way he’d learned to focus on the mailbox without looking straight at it. The rest of the room dimmed a hair. Text snapped into harder relief, then unfolded like more of it had been there all along, just waiting for him to admit it.

  Level: 5Unspent Points: 25

  Strength: 8Dexterity: 9Endurance: 9Perception: 8Willpower: 8

  The labels meant exactly what they sounded like. Someone somewhere had decided his entire existence could be reduced to five sliders and a number on each.

  He scrolled—no gesture, not really. Just the intent to see more. The interface obliged.

  Profession unlocked: Architect (Provisional).Eligible Combat Classes:

  -- Wall Guard-- Honor-bound Mercenary

  Selection required.

  No descriptions. No sales pitch. Just options, as cold as the rest of it.

  If he let the words sit in his head, meaning came in on a short delay, same as the early translation—only this time without the icepick behind his eye.

  Wall Guard: the first defense. Warrior of Samhal.

  Honor-bound Mercenary: risk for pay and contracts kept. Bleed for food, bunk, and the people.

  He thought of Merrik and Serh on the slope, and the way Merrik had yanked him back from the edge without a second’s hesitation. Not because they owed him anything. Because they’d been told to bring him up, and they’d decided that meant something.

  He thought of Alea at the stove back home, telling him to get home safe, idiot. Of the way dishonest work could kill a stranger whose name he would never know. Of every job he’d walked away from because the general said “cut corners” and the framing said “don’t.”

  Wall Guard was the safe pick. Stand where they tell you, hold what they hand you. Honor-bound Mercenary was the one that fit—not because it sounded good, but because it assumed the work mattered more than the uniform.

  “Honor-bound Mercenary,” he said softly.

  The log didn’t care about the weight of the words in his mouth. It just updated.

  Combat Class assigned: Honor-bound Mercenary.Skill unlocked: Identify (Basic).Class Skills granted: Brace (Rank 1), Weighted Strike (Rank 1).

  No new vertigo, no extra jolt. Just more ink on an invisible report.

  Brace. Weighted Strike. Names only. Whatever they actually did, he’d have to find out the hard way, same as everything else.

  Merrik’s voice drifted back. Arms, legs, eyes. Match the work.

  Matas wasn’t a duelist, or a line-breaker. He was a man who spent his days on bad angles, trusting his feet, his lungs, and his ability to spot the thing that would kill him three steps from now instead of three inches.

  “Bones and breath first,” he whispered. “Then eyes. Then hands.”

  He focused on Endurance. The number pulsed once, faintly. A thin cursor appeared beside it.

  He pushed it up.

  Endurance: 10

  Heat bloomed in his chest, focused and sharp. His ribs ached in a different register, as if someone had swapped out a bent stud for a straight one and the load hadn’t quite settled yet.

  Endurance: 11

  Another spike. Less intense. His pulse steadied. The grinding ache from the wolf bites and gnawer claws dulled half a step.

  Endurance: 12

  A line crossed somewhere between pain and usability. Like turning a ladder from the wrong way round to the right way—not safer, exactly, but less guaranteed to get you killed.

  Dexterity next. Nine to ten gave him a hot-cold ripple through wrists and ankles. Ten to eleven sent a brief shiver up his spine, like every tiny muscle that handled balance had just run a drill and filed a new report.

  Perception sat at eight. The first point dug under his eyeballs, scraping at the tender places behind them. Nine to ten sharpened the edges of the room for a heartbeat—every crack in the ceiling, every scuff on the bunk frame jumped into too much focus, then settled. The final point hurt less but left a lingering itch, the sense that if he focused on something, the resolution would be different now.

  When the heat and cold evened out, the panel read:

  Strength: 8Dexterity: 11Endurance: 12Perception: 11Willpower: 8Unspent Points: 17

  He let out a slow breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  Seventeen points in the bank. The rest stayed until he knew what the rules actually were.

  Identify ticked at the edge of his awareness, a new presence, like having another tool in the belt he hadn’t used yet.

  “One test,” he said.

  He drew the short sword from beside the bunk, its edge still carrying a faint smear where gnawer blood had dried. He focused on it the way he’d focus on a suspect joint—not staring, but letting his attention settle until the thing revealed itself.

  “Identify,” he whispered.

  Identify (Basic): Wall-scout short sword.

  Material: Local steel / leather wrap.

  Condition: Common (minor pitting).

  Attunement: None.

  A spike of pain lanced behind his left eye, sharp enough to make him wince. The words blurred, then vanished.

  Useful. But not something to spam on every fork and floor tile.

  He slid the sword back and pulled the thin blanket up to his shoulders. The aches had shifted registers; his body felt less like a half-collapsed scaffold and more like a long, bad day on a clean job. Better. Not safe. Just better.

  Somewhere under them, deep in the stone, the mountain hummed again. Softer than last night. Or maybe he was just getting used to it.

  Sleep came on a delay. When it did, he dreamed of Alea—not the stove, not the dogs, but the sound of her voice saying something he couldn’t quite hear, and a light behind her that was the wrong color.

  He woke before dawn with the taste of copper on his tongue and the mailbox pulsing a rhythm he hadn’t seen before—not the lazy four-count, but something faster, urgent, like a flag trying to get the attention of someone who wasn’t looking.

  New text waited in the corner of his sight, already fading.

  Structural anomaly detected.Source: Sub-Node entity.