The heavy wagon groaned under the strain, every board singing its age. Men stood shoulder to shoulder on its splintered deck, thrusting spears down through the gaps in the gate. The shafts came away slick, dark, dripping. Below, the wolves clawed and snapped, their eyes catching the slivers of sunlight that bled through the timbers.
“It’s working!” someone shouted.
Rem kicked a timber snug against the wheel rim, feeling the vibration shudder up through his bones. “Now brace the other side just like this,” he called to the gangly group of teens the Captain had roped in to help.
Two surges in, and the gates still held.
“Captain?” a small voice piped up behind them. Rem turned. Fisk—freckles, curly hair, too young for any of this.
“Rem here,” Captain Voss grumbled, nodding at him. “Says there are arrows ready, and more spears. That you could get some boys to bring them.”
“Rem said that, did he?” The boy looked up at Rem, half defiant.
Rem tossed him the whistle, Fisk caught it out of the air, his face brightening.
“By all the gods,” the Captain swore. “Then get them here!” His bark sent the boy running, the whistle’s shrill tweets slicing through the din.
A wolf lunged through a break in the slats. A blade met it mid-leap, pinning it halfway before gravity took it. The men cheered—too soon. More were coming.
“Brace the left side!” Rem shouted, already moving, his coat catching on a splinter. He didn’t notice the blood on his sleeve until the light hit it. Not his.
The fight dragged on until the system message blinked into view:
SURGE THREE: Repelled
Exit now to receive your rewards (2x Uncommon, 220XP).
Warning: Failure later will forfeit all rewards.
Cheers rose—tired but genuine—echoing off the ramparts. Pride, disbelief, exhaustion, all tangled together.
Rem opened his satchel and pulled the pie cloth free, dropping the treasure into the Captain’s waiting hands.
“Next time, same thing,” he said. “Only call for Fisk at the start like I said.”
The Captain nodded, already tearing at the crust with greasy fingers. “Aye.”
Rem smiled faintly. He was gone before the next surge came.
SURGE FOUR: Repelled
Exit now to receive your rewards (Rare, 300 XP).
Warning: Failure in later surges will forfeit all rewards.
The gate held.
The day burned. Sunlight hammered through the gaps in the timbers, gilding every board in blinding gold. The air shimmered, thick with the stink of sweat, resin, and blood.
The men sagged where they stood, clothes plastered to their skin, breathing hard but grinning all the same. The wagon creaked, its metal bands too hot to touch. Someone laughed—half triumph, half disbelief.
Rem hadn’t lifted a finger this run. Just watched, adjusted, corrected. And the outpost had held.
The men cheered till they were hoarse, banging their spear hafts against the wagon’s sides. Rem shouted, joining in, voice cracking in the heat.
Why bring twenty-four potions? How could a challenge meant for children demand that much? It couldn’t. There was always another way—and he’d found it. Persistence, that was all.
And rare. The first rare drop he’d ever seen. His heart thudded with the thought of it. Even as he unwrapped the pie and pressed it into the Captain’s waiting hands, he wanted nothing more than to sprint for his locker and see what he’d earned.
This was the new record. Across every public board on Earth—four surges repelled. The longest run ever logged.
He looked back at the glyph-stone, its carved symbols dim under the glare. The men sprawled in the wagon’s shadow, too tired to move. The air buzzed with flies and pride. Would it hold one more time?
“You don’t have to keep bringing the pie,” Captain Voss said, voice thick around a mouthful of red filling. “Not that I mind. But keeping my people alive a little longer’s all the reward I need.”
Rem blinked, caught off guard by the gentleness buried in that rasp.
“You’re not bad, boy,” the old captain added, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before lumbering away, his armor glinting like a furnace plate in the sun.
Rem stayed where he was, squinting into the brightness, sweat stinging his eyes. The horn rose again—low and rolling, the sound of doom.
The fifth surge.
His confidence faltered. He stepped back, halfway between the gates and the glyph-stone. Then came a sound deeper than the horn—a roar so massive it shook the earth. The laughter died. Despair rolled over the defenders like heat.
The first blow splintered the gate. The wagon exploded upward, iron bands snapping, planks spinning through the air like thrown blades. Rem hit the dirt behind the chapel, lungs burning, the world full of splinters and screams.
Stolen novel; please report.
Something stepped through the smoke.
A wolf, but wrong—massive as a draft horse, fur matted grey streaked with white, jaws wet and shining, eyes burning with pure malice.
Corrupted Alpha Dire Wolf
Level Four
Rem’s breath caught. No—impossible. This was a level three challenge. A fourth-level beast couldn’t appear here. Not in a children’s tutorial.
Yet there it was, stepping through the haze—real, deliberate, merciless.
He eased back behind the chapel, mind racing even as his body refused to move. The men rallied—shields up, spears braced, brave, doomed men. It didn’t add up. The system wasn’t supposed to ask the impossible. Unless… the lesson was to know when to quit.
The thought hollowed him. His face slipped into grim disbelief.
The beast tore through them like parchment. One sweep of its claws, one snap of its jaws—gone. Armor and flesh alike, scattered across the sunlit dirt.
Rem didn’t wait to see the rest. He ran for the glyph-stone.
Rem arrived in his workshop, his legs trembling from the flight. The night lilies stood—not in bloom, but not wilted as before. At least they hadn’t died. The air stank of mud and darkness, though it hadn’t yet turned to decay. A small improvement.
He slipped the satchel from his shoulder and set it on the workbench, turning it over to check for blood. None new. He let out a slow breath, holding it until his pulse settled, then drew out his journal.
two weeks ago you would have been sick on the floor after seeing that carnage.
Two weeks ago Noah was alive. Two weeks ago the world had a shape that made sense. Now everything in it felt misaligned—wrong in a way that drained his will and left only anger.
He opened the journal and picked up his pen.
New rules:
Break everything.
Duplicate everything.
Do what needs doing.
All that matters is growing stronger.
He stared at the list. There was a symmetry to it he found beautiful. No, not beautiful—pure.
a rather bleak philosophy. knowledge is its own reward.
“Well, you keep learning things,” Rem whispered. “Planning things. I’m counting on your discoveries to make this work. Because it’s starting to feel like it’s us against the world.”
okay. let us discuss the problem we have. are you ready for some more math?
Rem nodded. He turned the page, dipped the pen again, and began to write—equations first, then a table mapping out the hopeless problem, and finally a shape that hinted at a solution.
Only when he’d checked the numbers twice did he start sketching the schematic.
By midday the breeze had died, letting the smoke and scents of the crafter’s quarter settle low and heavy over the street. Rem moved through the narrow lanes with his hood up, the smell of soot and wet clay clinging to his coat. Hammerfalls and hissed curses echoed from every smith. Alchemists’ runners darted between carts, balancing trays of molten glass, vials, and cooling rods like offerings to some mercurial god of craft.
Oldetown was bringing back the long-forgotten artistry of the human heart — and with it the greed and malice that followed such wonders. Not for the first time, Rem felt as though he were walking backward through history.
He stopped, opened his journal, and reviewed the hastily scrawled directions. He turned in place, searching for the promised landmarks. There — a cracked fountain, the blue awning, the scent of pitch. He found his bearings and pressed on.
He passed the dye vats, the tanners, the bronze-workers. Sparks leapt from a nearby forge like fireflies born from iron. The air shimmered with heat. Farther in, the noise faded to the deep, rhythmic breath of bellows and the hollow song of glass being shaped.
He found the workshop he wanted — a half-sunken room of brick and timber, its windows made of colored glass, advertisement enough for the artisan within. Inside, the glassblower worked shirtless, skin sheened with sweat, hair silvered at the edges from ash. A long pipe rested in his hands, and at its tip glowed a perfect sphere of orange glass, pulsing like a captured sun.
“Master Corin?” Rem asked.
The man turned, still blowing gently through the pipe. “Who’s asking?” His voice was deep and rough.
“Rembrandt de Vries. Alchemist’s Guild. I was told you take custom orders.”
Corin rolled the glass, watching it cool into red. “Alchemists don’t often want beauty. Mostly practical work.”
“Guilty as charged.” Rem set his satchel down and drew out the folded schematic. “This one requires precision.”
Corin wiped his hands and bent over the parchment. The drawing showed the wooden frame — a plane of timber with perpendicular tines radiating from the center, each dimension marked with care.
“Thin,” Corin murmured. “You expect this to stand up to heat?”
“No,” Rem said. “It isn’t meant for that.”
Corin traced one of the lines. “A one-time jig, then. If I fail the first attempt, I’ll need another.”
“I’ve accounted for that. The tines are part of a larger pattern. You can cut multiples from one piece of timber.”
Corin studied him a moment longer. “You’ve done this before.”
“No. But I know someone good at math.”
The glassblower’s mouth twitched, soot breaking like chalk. “All right, alchemist. Three days.”
“Two,” Rem said.
Corin nodded. “Two.”
Rem left, crossed the alley, and wound back toward the western edge of the artisan’s quarter. Here the smoke thinned, replaced by the clean bite of pine and river water. The hammerfalls grew slower, steadier—not the clamor of forges but the heartbeat of chisels and saws.
The path curved into a timber yard that hugged the canal on one side and opened into a row of shops on the other. Men hauled planks from barges, stacking them beneath tarred awnings, the scent of pitch and sap thick as syrup.
He followed the rasp of planers until he found a low building with open shutters and a wooden emblem of a compass and square hanging above the door. Inside, dust drifted in soft golden sheets. Every surface bore the marks of use—clamps, vises, and the pale curls of shavings that coiled across the floor like dry reeds.
The carpenter looked up from his bench. Broad-shouldered, grey-bearded, forearms laced with scars—he had the solidity of someone who trusted wood more than people.
What were these people doing before the Arrival? Hobbyists turned tradesmen? It all felt too lived-in, too complete, as if the world had decided to move on without waiting for him.
“Afternoon,” the man said. “You’re not the sort I usually see around here. Lost?”
Rem set his satchel down, brushing sawdust from his sleeves. “Not lost. Looking for someone who understands precision.”
“That depends what kind of precision.”
“The kind that means exactly what it says,” Rem replied, drawing a folded schematic from the hidden pocket inside his coat. It was still warm from his body.
The carpenter—Havel, according to the sign outside—wiped his hands and leaned over the paper. The drawing showed a set of interlocking boxes, their dimensions marked to obsessive detail.
“You want this built to these measurements?” Havel asked.
“To the millimeter.”
“Most folks don’t talk in millimeters. They ask for ‘close enough.’”
“I’m not most folks.”
Havel studied him, then nodded slowly. “Fine work. You’ll want seasoned hardwood—ash or hornbeam. Oak’ll warp.”
“I trust your judgment,” Rem said.
Havel crossed to the racks and pulled a few narrow planks free, tapping each with his knuckles, listening for the tone. “Hornbeam, then. Two days.”
“Deal,” Rem said automatically.
The carpenter smiled faintly, already setting the boards on the bench. The first stroke of his saw sang through the quiet.
Rem stepped back into the street, the rhythm of the saw following him—steady, deliberate—a counterpoint to the distant bellows of the glassworks.
He pulled his hood up again and slipped into the slow tide of Oldetown’s workers. Just an alchemist breaking the world. Nothing to see here.
The thought should have made him laugh. It didn’t.
