Miu kept close, moving low and silent. She didn’t scout wide anymore. She stayed inside his reach, tail stiff, ears turning to every rustle in the trees like she expected the ground to start moving again.
Don’t look back, she sent, sharp and tired. You’ll trip and I’ll have to drag you.
Ray didn’t answer. He didn’t trust his voice. If he spoke, Teddy might come out, and he couldn’t afford that yet.
Layla cut through the bush like she’d grown out of it, staff tapping stone now and then as she picked a line that avoided the worst of the undergrowth. She glanced back often, not worried, just checking, counting breath, making sure he hadn’t folded in half behind her.
“What was your name again? I already forgot” she called over her shoulder.
Ray’s throat scraped. “Ray.”
Layla nodded once like that settled it. “Right. Keep up.”
The ridge opened into a shallow shelf where the wind hit harder. The smell of smoke still lingered from her firewall, mixed with damp leaves and the sharp tang of stone. For the first time since he’d woken, Ray realised he couldn’t hear the skittering behind them. The silence felt wrong. His body kept waiting for the sound to return.
Layla stopped behind a boulder and tapped the rock with the end of her staff. “Here. Sit.”
Ray lowered himself onto the stone like his joints were rusted. The moment his weight settled, his legs started to shake. Not fear. Just delayed exhaustion, all the pain arriving at once because it finally had a gap to squeeze through. He tried to pull the sack strap off his shoulder, failed on the first attempt because his fingers wouldn’t grip properly, then forced it anyway and hissed when the strap rubbed the raw patch of skin underneath.
The System reacted.
[New Skill Unlocked: Sprint Burst (Common) — Active.]
Ray stared at the line until it stayed still in his vision. His heart still hammered, but it wasn’t the same. It felt like the end of a run where your body remembered how to stop.
====================================
Skill: Speed Burst
====================================
Use your legs moron. Move faster.
Level: 1
Rarity: Common
Rank: F
Active:
- Upon activation, gain a short burst of speed. Lasts 10 seconds
Mana Cost: 25
Cooldown: 1 Minute.
====================================
Layla watched his face. “Window?”
Ray nodded once.
“Good,” Layla said. “Means you didn’t just flail around like a panicked possum. You learned something.”
Ray didn’t correct her. He didn’t have the energy to argue about whether panic had been the main ingredient. He just sat there with his hands on his knees, breathing through his nose, counting the breaths the way Miu had told him to, because it stopped him from thinking about teeth.
Miu pressed against his shin, small and warm, still tense.
Ten breaths, she sent. Then we move.
Ray did ten. Then another two because he needed them.
Layla turned her head slightly, listening to something Ray couldn’t hear. “Night’s coming. We’re not spending it out here.”
Ray pushed himself up. His legs protested. His body obeyed anyway. The moment he stood, the weight of the sack returned like a hook in his shoulder, and the sword felt heavier than it had any right to.
“Are we safe?” he asked, and hated how pathetic it sounded.
Layla snorted. “You’re not dead this minute. That’s the deal.”
They moved again, up and across the ridge. The camp came into view a few minutes later, tucked into the slope where the wind didn’t hit as hard. Rough shelters and bedrolls. Three fires. A ring of watchers near the edges, silhouettes with spears and staves, eyes fixed on Ray the moment he stepped out of the trees.
Miu went still beside him.
They’re set, she sent. They’re ready.
Layla glanced back and rolled her eyes. “If they wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”
That didn’t help. Ray stepped into the firelight anyway, sword in hand, sack pulled tight across his chest like it could stop a spear.
Layla lifted her voice toward the camp. “Found this idiot running from rats. Don’t start. I’m tired.”
A few murmurs answered her. No one laughed. Not properly. Too many eyes, too much caution, too much hunger hiding under the surface. Refugees. People who had learned the hard way that kindness could be expensive.
An older dragonkin stood by the nearest fire, leaning on a staff. Scarred snout. Eyes like cold river stones. He watched Ray the way you watched a blade being passed hand to hand, measuring whether it would cut the wrong person.
Layla jabbed her staff at a flat stone near the fire. “Sit, Ray.”
Ray sat because his legs were shaking again and because sitting meant he couldn’t be accused of edging toward anyone. He rested the sword across his knees and kept his hands visible, even though his fingers kept twitching like they wanted a dagger.
Miu stayed close, body low, watching everyone at once. She didn’t growl. She didn’t hiss. She just looked ready.
Layla dropped onto a log across from him. “Right. Why were you in a cave that’s gone rotten?”
Ray’s mouth went dry. He could give a clean answer. He could play safe. He could pretend he’d stumbled into it.
He didn’t.
“Because Teddy told me to,” Ray said, and his voice cracked hard on the name.
The camp quieted. Layla’s expression shifted, the amusement peeling away. The elder with the staff tipped his head slightly, like he’d just been handed a piece that made the board make sense.
Layla spoke again, slower. “And where is Teddy?”
Ray stared into the fire until the heat stung his eyes. He felt the answer in his chest like a bruise.
“He died,” Ray said. “I saw it.”
Miu’s mind brushed his.
Breathe.
Ray did. It still didn’t make the words easier.
Layla didn’t rush him. She leaned forward, forearms on her knees, watching him like she was waiting for the rest.
Ray’s jaw clenched. “And fuck the System.”
That did more than any explanation. It wasn’t the words themselves. It was the way they came out, sharp and bitter, like Ray had been swallowing them for days.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Layla’s eyes narrowed. “That bad, huh?”
Ray looked up, and his eyes were bloodshot enough that he didn’t care how he looked. “It’s a parasite. It takes and takes and calls it a gift. It marks you when you don’t bend.”
Layla held his gaze for a beat, then nodded once. “Alright. That’s clear.”
A younger dragonkin edged forward and shoved a bowl into Ray’s hands without meeting his eyes. Broth. Hot. Real. It smelled like salt and something fatty, something cooked with care even when care was running out. Ray drank because his body demanded it. His hands shook enough that the broth sloshed over the rim and burned his thumb.
Miu stared at the bowl like it was a trap.
Smells safe, she sent after a moment, reluctant.
Ray swallowed and kept drinking anyway. He could feel grief pressing at the back of his throat, waiting for the moment he stopped moving so it could finally tear him apart. The firelight flickered and, for a second, the shape of Teddy’s body on the ground flashed in his mind so clearly Ray nearly gagged.
Layla watched his face change. “You said you saw it.”
“I did,” Ray said immediately, too fast. “He was… he was there, and then he wasn’t. I watched him get torn apart.”
The elder by the fire shifted his weight. His voice carried that rough cadence, like wind over stone.
“Nay, laddy,” he said, calm as anything. “Ye watched Teddy do what Teddy does.”
Ray’s head snapped toward him. “What?”
The elder didn’t flinch. “He vanishes. He reappears. He makes people think he’s dead, then turns up later like ye’re the idiot for worrying.”
Ray’s stomach twisted. Hope tried to rise and Ray crushed it on instinct, because hope was the thing that got you killed in this world.
“No,” Ray said, hard. “I know what I saw.”
“Aye,” the elder replied, still calm. “And I know what I’ve seen, boyo.”
Layla leaned back on the log, blunt as ever. “He’s done it before. Not saying you’re wrong about what you saw. I’m saying Teddy’s a stubborn bastard who doesn’t die when he should.”
Ray’s throat tightened. He hated that his chest was trying to believe them. He hated it so much it made him angry.
“If he’s alive,” Ray said, voice raw, “then where is he?”
Layla shrugged. “Not here.”
Ray gripped the bowl so hard his knuckles went white. “I left him.”
“You ran,” Layla corrected. “You lived. Don’t dress that up like you had options.”
Ray stared at the fire again. The bowl trembled in his hands. He set it down carefully because if he didn’t, he’d crush it.
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, so he gave them a job. He picked up the bowl again, then put it down, then picked it up again like he’d forgotten how to be a person. His eyes kept sliding off the fire and into the dark between the tents, searching for a shape that would never be there. Teddy’s laugh. Teddy’s voice. Teddy calling him a dumb bastard for looking like he’d swallowed a mouthful of nails. Ray pressed the heel of his palm into his eye until stars burst behind the lids, trying to crush the image of Teddy hitting the dirt, trying to crush the sound that had come out of him. It didn’t work. The grief didn’t come out clean. It didn’t make a speech. It sat in his chest and filled every gap where breath was meant to be.
He dragged in a breath and felt it catch. The fire popped, and the sound was too close to the snap of bone. Ray’s jaw tightened until it ached. He didn’t want anyone watching him lose it. He didn’t want pity from strangers with scales and tired eyes. He wanted to stand up, walk back into the forest, and pull Teddy out of whatever hole the world had dropped him in, even if it meant dying. That thought arrived fully formed, stupid and honest, and it scared him more than the rats had, because it was the first time since coming here that he’d wanted something badly enough to throw survival away.
Miu leaned in, pressing her head against his leg with a weight that wasn’t demanding anything, just anchoring. Her mind touched his carefully, like she was approaching a wounded animal.
You can breathe now, she sent, softer than she’d been since the cave. No one is chasing. Your hands can stop.
Ray’s throat worked. “If I’d been faster…” he started, and the words broke halfway out. He tried again. “If I wasn’t so useless, he wouldn’t have had to…”
Miu’s reply hit him instantly, firm and certain. If you were faster, you would have died faster. He chose. He pushed you away because he wanted you alive. She nudged his knee again, then added, quieter, And because he wanted me alive too.
Ray swallowed hard and stared into the fire until his eyes burned. The heat made tears feel like a punishment, but they came anyway, slow and silent, tracking down dirt-streaked cheeks. He didn’t wipe them away. He just sat there, one hand on the sack strap across his chest like it was the only proof Teddy had existed, and let the loss take what it wanted for a minute without turning it into a performance.
Miu pressed against his leg.
You didn’t leave him, she sent, quieter. You carried what he left behind.
Ray’s fingers found the sack strap across his chest. The leather felt worn. Familiar, even though he’d only had it for hours. Teddy’s sack. Teddy’s gear. Teddy’s last act. Ray’s chest tightened again, ugly and heavy.
Layla noticed the movement. “That sack his?”
Ray nodded.
“Keep it,” Layla said simply. “If he shows up later, he can whinge about it.”
Ray didn’t laugh. He couldn’t.
Ray’s fingers dug into the strap until it hurt. He didn’t realise he was doing it until Miu’s paw pressed gently against his wrist, claws sheathed, a quiet warning not to cut himself on memory. The sack wasn’t just weight. It was Teddy’s last decision made physical. The thing he’d shoved into the world because he’d believed Ray would live long enough to need it.
Ray leaned forward and rested his forehead against his knuckles. He didn’t speak for a while, because the first words that wanted to come out were ugly ones. Not heroic. Not respectful. The kind of words you say when you’ve lost someone and you’re furious they had the nerve to leave you behind.
“He called me useless,” Ray said finally, voice low. “Every day. Like it was a joke.” His throat tightened. “And now I’d give anything to hear him say it one more time.”
Miu’s mind pressed against his, warm and steady.
You will, she sent, and she sounded like she was choosing the belief on purpose. You will, because he’s stubborn. And because he owes me for biting my head.
Ray let out a broken breath that tried to become a laugh and failed halfway. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, then stared into the fire again, forcing himself to stay present.
Layla watched him for a beat, then jerked her chin toward the elder again. “He’ll talk your ear off tomorrow. Tonight you eat and you sleep.” Her voice turned sharper. “And you keep that sword close, because if the rats don’t come back, something else will.”
Ray nodded once. It wasn’t agreement. It was survival.
He needed something to do with his hands before he broke. His fingers moved on their own, reaching into his gear and pulling one of the daggers. He rotated it, checked the edge, then took out the small packet of bitter paste he’d made earlier. He started coating the blade with slow, careful strokes, smoothing it into place like he was trying to rebuild his world one centimetre at a time.
Layla watched. “You’re poisoning your own blade in my camp?”
Ray didn’t look up. “I’m not letting rats touch me again.”
The System reacted.
[Subskill Unlocked: Poison Proficiency (Novice).]
Ray blinked at the line. He didn’t feel proud. It just landed. Another box ticked.
Miu’s ears flicked.
You’re doing it without thinking now, she sent.
Ray swallowed. “Yeah.”
A minute passed. The fire crackled. Someone on the other side of the circle laughed softly at something Layla’s friend said, the sound tired and thin. Ray sat there and let time exist, because he had been sprinting through it for days.
Layla scratched at her jaw and looked at Ray again. “You’re not from here, are you?”
Layla waited longer than Ray expected, letting the quiet sit without poking it. Around them, the camp lived in small, careful noises: someone stirring a pot, someone coughing into a sleeve, the crackle of burning wood, the soft scrape of claws against stone as a watcher shifted their stance. There weren’t many of them. Ray kept noticing that, like his mind was counting bodies the way it counted threats. Too few tents. Too few voices. Too many eyes on Layla when she moved, like she was the only sharp thing left.
One of the younger dragonkin limped past, favouring one leg, and Ray caught a glimpse of dried blood on the wrap around his thigh. Another sat with her back to a rock, shoulders hunched, staring into the fire like she was trying to remember what warmth had felt like before it became rationed. Ray looked at their faces and saw the same thing he’d seen in Finrial’s outskirts: people who had been forced into survival so long they’d forgotten what normal looked like.
He swallowed and forced his mind back onto Layla, because if he kept looking at the camp he’d start asking the wrong questions out loud. He wasn’t ready to hear the answers yet. The second he understood how bad things were, the grief would get a new shape and turn into something worse.
Layla’s eyes flicked to the sack strap across his chest. Not judgement. Recognition. A quick calculation of what it meant to carry someone else’s weight.
“You don’t have to tell me your whole sob story,” she said, voice rough but not unkind. “Just tell me if you’re trouble that follows, or trouble that’s already here.”
Ray’s laugh came out dry. “Both.”
Layla snorted once, like that was the most honest answer she’d heard all week. Then she nodded toward the elder’s staff, the scarred one who’d spoken earlier. “If you’re going to ask questions, ask the old bastard. He remembers things.”
Ray hesitated, then nodded. “No.”
Layla’s eyes narrowed. “And you still talk like you are.”
Ray huffed a breath. “I don’t know what I’m talking like.”
Layla shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
Ray’s brain finally latched onto the other question that had been gnawing at him since she’d spoken.
“How are you speaking my language?” he asked.
Layla frowned. “Your language?”
“English,” Ray said.
Layla rolled the word in her mouth like it was nothing. “Never heard of it. You’re speaking Dragon Tongue.”
Ray stared at her. “It sounds like English.”
Layla shrugged. “Maybe your world stole it. Maybe your world invented it. I don’t care. You want to talk to people without getting stabbed, you need cores.”
Ray’s pulse jumped at the word. Cores meant access. Means a way to not be blind.
“I can’t use the shop,” Ray said.
Layla tilted her head, studying him again. “Because of what you said earlier.”
Ray’s jaw clenched. “Yeah.”
Layla exhaled and reached into a pouch. “Two only. Human and Dragonkin. Anything more and you can pay later.”
“I’ll pay now,” Ray said immediately.
Layla smirked. “Good. I like humans who don’t pretend they’re owed things.”
She produced two translucent orbs and tossed them to Ray like they were stones. Ray transferred coin to her, then swallowed the first, then the second, because waiting felt like something you did when you weren’t about to die tomorrow.
Knowledge hit his mind in a tight wave. Letters. Sounds. Reading. Writing. It settled into place like a lock clicking shut.
The System reacted.
[New Skill Unlocked: Universal Language (Common - Passive).]
[All communications skills merged. You can now speak all Arkus languages.]
[Congratulations. You’re probably too dumb to appreciate the convenience.]
Ray stared at the last line, then let out a breath that almost became a laugh and didn’t.
Layla noticed the change in his eyes. “What?”
Ray hesitated, then said, “It… it insulted me.”
Layla barked a laugh. “Really? Never does that for me.”
Layla’s laugh faded and she stared into the flames for a moment, the light catching the edges of her scales and the tired lines around her eyes. “It’s got time to play games with you,” she said, quieter. “Must mean it’s not finished with you.”
Ray tightened his grip on the bowl again, then forced himself to loosen it. “You talk like you’ve seen it do worse.”
Layla’s mouth twisted. “I’ve seen it do what it does. First it gives. Then it makes you think the giving was kindness. Then it makes you pay interest.” She spat to the side. “Dragonkin were in the way for a long time. We didn’t bend. We didn’t clap for it. We fought it.”
A couple of heads turned at that, not sharp, just tired. A few of the watchers stared harder into the dark beyond the firelight like they were listening for something that wasn’t there anymore.
“With the Dragonkin out of the way,” Layla said, voice roughening, “the System started chewing on everyone else properly. Waedra are hard pressed on the front. Dark Elves have already lost cities. High Elves…” She exhaled through her nose, slow. “They opened the door and invited it in. Thought it was a bastion of power. Thought they were smart. Now they’re gone as anything I’d call free.” She shook her head once, and Ray saw wetness glint at the corner of her eyes before she blinked it away. “We saw what it does up close. It doesn’t just take your choices. It changes what you are, piece by piece, until you call the cage a home.”
Ray’s stomach tightened. “So how do you stop it?”
Layla looked at him across the fire, and for a second the humour was gone entirely. “There is a way,” she said. “If the races fought together and rejected it, properly, it would bleed. But they don’t. Too much history. Too much pride. Too much fear.” Her gaze slid past Ray toward the trees. “Finrial village, for example. We sent envoys for decades. Not once did they bother to answer. Too far away, they thought. Not their problem. Now it’s their problem, and the rebellions have already started.”
Ray shot her a look.
Layla just grinned wider, unbothered. “You’ll live.”
The elder with the staff shifted closer again, stopping at the edge of the firelight. He didn’t crowd Ray. He didn’t loom. He just offered his presence like it was a tool.
“Ye’ve got questions, laddy,” he said, voice steady. “A mountain of them. But tonight ye eat, ye drink, ye sleep, and ye keep yer blade close. Tomorrow, if ye’ve still got that stubborn look on ye, I’ll sit you down and tell you what’s really happening.”
Ray’s throat tightened, partly from relief, partly from dread. “Who are you?”
The elder’s mouth twitched, like he found the question fair. “Tomorrow, boyo.”
Layla stood and stretched, rolling her shoulders like she’d carried worse burdens than today. “He means it,” she said. “He likes talking.”
The elder snorted. “Better than your mouth, lass.”
Layla laughed and wandered off toward another fire, calling something crude over her shoulder that got a few tired chuckles from the camp.
Ray stayed where he was. The fire warmed his hands. The sack strap still cut across his chest. Miu pressed against his side, steady and watchful.
Ray’s eyes drifted down the slope toward the trees, toward the direction they’d run from. He didn’t say Teddy’s name out loud. He held it in his throat and let it burn, because letting it out felt like admitting something final.
Miu’s mind brushed his again, softer than before.
Later, she sent. We survive first. Then we hurt.
Ray nodded once, because it was all he had.
When he finally lay down near the fire, sword within reach, sack strap still across his chest like a promise he didn’t understand yet, he kept his eyes open for longer than he should have. The camp sounds faded as people settled. The wind moved through the scrub above them. Somewhere deeper in the trees, an owl called, and Ray’s body flinched like it was the start of skittering.
He stared at the underside of the night sky and tried not to picture the cave mouth, the swarm, Teddy’s body on the ground. It didn’t work. The memory kept cycling back, the same half-second of Teddy going down, over and over, as if Ray’s brain thought if it replayed it enough times it could find the moment where he could have changed it.
Miu’s thoughts brushed his again.
You don’t have to carry it alone.
Ray swallowed. “I’m not,” he whispered, and the words felt like admitting weakness even though they were just truth.
Good, Miu replied. Then, after a pause, Sleep, Master. If you don’t, I’ll bite you. Comforting bite. A supportive bite.
Ray’s mouth twitched despite himself. It wasn’t a smile. It was the first crack in the wall that had been holding him upright. He let his eyes close, hand still resting on the sack strap, and for the first time since Teddy had fallen, he let himself imagine the impossible.
Not Teddy dead in the dirt.
Teddy walking back into the firelight, scowling, calling him an idiot, and demanding his emergency sack back.
Ray didn’t believe it.
But the thought kept him from breaking apart completely.
As Ray started to roll onto his side, the elder’s staff tapped stone beside his head. “Not yet, boyo,” he murmured. “Come. Private word.”