For a long moment, none of us moved. We were a tableau of exhaustion against the stunning backdrop of Eldoria. The wind, smelling of salt and wild grass, was a tonic, scouring away the lingering stench of damp stone and fear from the cave system we’d just escaped. My knees were soaked from the damp earth, but I didn’t care. The solid, real feeling of grass under my palms was a miracle.

  “Right,” Kaelen said, his voice a low rumble that broke the spell. He sheathed his sword with a definitive shunk. “We’ll camp here. Start a small fire. We need rest, and we need to take stock.”Nolan groaned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Shelter. Yes. Preferably one that doesn’t try to eat us. Or drip on us.”

  “A modest request,” Bartholomew sniffed, meticulously cleaning a paw. “Though given our recent luck, I shall consider a simple overhang a victory.”

  Kaelen, ever the practical soldier, began gathering sticks and twigs from around the cave mouth, dropping them in a pile.

  We dragged ourselves over to it, and I began stacking it neatly in preparation for a fire. The simple act of moving twenty feet felt like running a marathon. My leathers, still damp and stiff, chafed with every step. I missed my pajamas. I focused on the sticks and muttered the word that Bartholomew had taught me, focusing on getting the power to cooperate. A thin tendril of smoke curled up from the tinder, then it burst into flame. I hurried to feed it, and it was soon crackling merrily.

  Under Kaelen’s direction, we set up a pathetic semblance of a camp. We simply dropped our packs in a heap and slumped against the cool stone wall. The silence was thick, punctuated only by Nolan’s heavy breathing and the distant, rhythmic crash of waves.

  Kaelen unbuckled his own pack, his expression grim as he pulled out its contents. Our food stores—wrapped in waxed cloth—had fared the best, but everything else was a disaster. A spare tunic was sopping, a coil of rope was heavy with water, and worst of all, the small pouch of dried herbs Kaelen carried for emergencies was a pulpy, useless mess.

  “It’s not good,” he stated, laying it all out to dry in the weak sun. “The rations are salvageable, but little else. My map is barely legible. We need to find our way back to the horses, and then to a coastal village. We require a boat.”

  “A boat to where?” I asked, stretching my aching legs. “The Not-Getting-Eaten-By-Shadows archipelago?”

  “The Dragon’s Tooth archipelago,” Kaelen corrected, not rising to the bait. He was getting better at ignoring my sarcasm, which was honestly a little disappointing. “It is our only lead. The gate to the shadow realm is there. If the tales are true.”

  “The tales are true,” Bartholomew murmured from his perch on a flat rock, where he was soaking up the sun like a tiny, furry solar panel. “The Wardens of the Isle do not suffer fools, nor do they entertain visitors without cause. It is not a pleasure cruise.”

  “Great. More reclusive weirdos,” Nolan muttered. He was fidgeting with a loose thread on his tunic, a familiar sign of his anxiety. Then he blinked, a sudden, unexpected laugh escaping him. It was a strained sound, but genuine. “Hey. At least we got the XP for that nightmare, right? I dinged. Finally. Hit level six. Got a new skill and everything. ‘Identify Weakness.’ Seems… situational.”

  The mention of ‘dinging’ was so jarringly out of place in this world of gryphon knights and shadow lords that I almost laughed. It was a splash of cold, familiar reality. RPG mechanics. Levels. Notifications.

  “Oh, crap, you’re right,” I said, my mind suddenly clicking into a different gear. The existential terror of our situation momentarily receded, replaced by the ingrained habit of checking my menu after a big fight. I focused inward, and the familiar, semi-transparent blue screen flickered into existence in my mind’s eye.

  [You Killed a Silent Monk Lvl. 12] [x3] [Shadow Spawn Lvl 14] [x1] [Rewards]

  [Monk’s Mask] [x2]

  [Shadow Essence]

  [1,250XP]

  [LEVEL UP!][You have reached Level 10] [All attributes increased!] [New Skill Available: Fast Ascent][Fast Ascent] [Passive][Climb things quickly with less risk of falling.]

  I blinked. Fast ascent? Where was that in the library? The system here was truly unhinged. I scrolled down. There was more.

  [Quest Updated][The Realm of Shadow]

  [Objective Completed] [Survive]

  [Objective Updated][Secure passage to the Dragon’s Tooth Archipelago]

  [LEVEL UP!][You have reached Level 11] [All attributes increased!] [New Skill Available: Sassy Parry][New Skill Available: Phantasm][Sassy Parry][Your witty retorts have a 5% chance to momentarily confuse your opponent, leaving them open to a counter-attack.][Phantasm][Create an illusory copy of yourself that can move independently and speak. Requires concentration.]

  Two levels. I’d jumped two whole levels. The fight in the caverns and the sheer insanity of the escape must have been worth a fortune in XP. A slow grin spread across my face. This changed things. A little.

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, girl,” Bartholomew drawled, cracking one golden eye open. “Did you acquire a new talent for flower arranging, or something actually useful?”

  “I,” I announced with relish, “am now a level eleven Badass. With a capital B. Level 13 with Nightshade.”

  Kaelen looked up from his sodden gear, a faint line of confusion between his brows. Nolan just nodded, understanding immediately.

  “Nice! What’d you get?” Nolan blurted, obviously excited to know someone else with the same system.

  “A climbing skill that’s supposed to make it harder to fall. And something called ‘Sassy Parry’.”

  Nolan snorted. “Of course you did. I could really use that climbing skill, though.”

  “Sorry, non-transferable.” I crossed my arms and did my best to seem like an incredulous city guard.

  “It is a start,” Kaelen said, a hint of approval in his voice. It was the knightly equivalent of a standing ovation. “Not falling is a useful skill.”

  “A start indeed,” Bartholomew said, his tone laced with that unique blend of boredom and condescension. “But do not preen too vigorously, my dear. You are still not Level Sixteen.”The comment was like a pin to a balloon. My grin faded.

  “What’s so special about Level Sixteen?” Nolan questioned, genuinely curious. The cat stretched, every movement infused with lazy superiority.

  “It is a threshold. A point at which your… potential… begins to properly manifest. The system’s scaffolding falls away, and true aptitude is revealed. Most of the riff-raff never make it that far. Their journeys end around level twelve, usually involving a grisly encounter with something possessing too many teeth.”

  “Charming,” I deadpanned. “In our case, though, Nolan, it is a prerequisite for entering the Shadow Realm.”

  “Indeed,” Bart purred, deliberately cryptic. “If you are not of the correct level, the passage can be… damaging. You and Kaelen should be fine. For the portly one… well, we shall see if he makes it.”

  “Hey!” Nolan protested.

  I leaned back against the rock, the momentary high of leveling up tempered by Bartholomew’s ominous foreshadowing. Level Sixteen. Another goalpost in this insane not-a-game.The sun began its slow descent towards the sea, painting the sky in strokes of orange and violet. The temperature dropped, and the wind took on a sharper edge. Our rest was over.

  Kaelen stood, his shadow long against the cliff face. “The horses are a likely half-day’s journey, if we can retrace our steps without the map. We move now. We can cover more ground before full dark.”

  We packed up our meager, still-damp belongings. The view was still a consolation prize, but it was a cold one. We were alive, we were free, and we were now a slightly higher-level, sodden, terrified, loot-bearing mess in the middle of nowhere. But we had a direction. Find the horses, find a boat, and get my ass to Level Sixteen before the next horror show jumped out of the shadows.

  As we began to pick our way down the grassy slope, leaving the cave mouth behind, I took one last look at the shard of blue sky. It didn’t seem painful anymore. It just seemed… far away.

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  “Come along, Paige,” Bartholomew called from ahead, where he was perched on Kaelen’s shoulder like a furry admiral. “The path to power is paved with unwalked paths and, I suspect, significantly more mud. Do try to keep up.”

  I sighed, squared my shoulders, and followed my party into the green, rolling hills of Eldoria.

  The wind, now more bite than breeze, whipped strands of my hair across my face as we descended from the cliff’s edge. The sea was a vast, darkening sheet of hammered silver to our right, its rhythmic crash a somber soundtrack to our trudge. Kaelen led with a quiet certainty, his eyes constantly scanning the terrain, while Bartholomew, from his perch, offered a running commentary on the local flora, the migratory patterns of seabirds, and the general inconvenience of having damp fur.

  Nolan brought up the rear, his breathing a steady, wheezing accompaniment.

  “You know,” he puffed, “back home, my step count would be crushing it right now. My Fitbit would be having a goddamn parade. Here, it just means I’m probably about to have a heart attack.”

  “Think of it as grinding for stamina,” I said, my boots sinking into the soft, damp earth. “Just a really, really shitty RPG with no respawn point and a frustrating lack of convenient fast-travel markers.”

  “The fast-travel marker is called ‘a horse,’” Kaelen called back without turning, his voice laced with a dry humor I was starting to appreciate. “Which is why we are so keen to find them.”

  True to Kaelen’s prediction, full dark found us navigating by starlight and the faint, orange glow of a campfire in the distance. A knot of tension I hadn’t fully acknowledged began to loosen in my shoulders. The horses. We’d made it.

  As we drew closer, however, the details resolved into something far less comforting. The fire wasn’t a neat, traveler’s pit; it was two large torches, jammed into the ground, their flickering light dancing over three large, rough-looking men. They were circling our horses—Kaelen’s massive warhorse, Argent, Steve the Wonder Pony, and the smaller, sturdier gelding belonging to Nolan—with the proprietary air of bargain hunters at a flea market. One of them yanked hard on Argent’s bridle, earning a warning snort and a stamp of a heavy hoof.

  “Oi, easy with the big one, Gorrin,” a second man grunted, hefting a coil of rope. “That’s a knight’s horse. Worth twenty of the others.”

  “Then the knight’s probably dead,” the one named Gorrin spat. “Loot’s loot.”

  My blood went cold, then hot. These weren’t just opportunistic thieves; they were vultures, already picking at the bones of a life they assumed was over.

  Kaelen’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, his posture shifting from weary traveler to lethal predator in a heartbeat. He stepped into the circle of firelight, his voice a low, commanding roll of thunder. “You are mistaken. The knight is very much alive. Unhand my horse and be on your way.”

  The three men spun around, their hands flying to their own weapons: a notched axe, a cudgel, and a rusty sword. Their surprise quickly morphed into nasty grins. They may as well have outnumbered us. We looked like hell—sodden, tired, and travel-worn.

  Gorrin, apparently the leader, smirked. He had a face like a hatchet and a missing front tooth.

  “Alive, are you? Looks like you took a wrong turn through a bog. We’ll be doing you a favor, then. Relieving you of these burdens.”

  “I will not ask again,” Kaelen said, his tone dangerously calm.

  The third man, the one with the cudgel, chuckled. \

  “Or what? You’ll wave your shiny sword at us? There’s three of us, one of you, and your… what are they? Mud-farming apprentices?” His gaze swept over Nolan and me with utter contempt.

  Kaelen didn’t flinch. His eyes narrowed, and a faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. It was the most terrifying expression I’d ever seen him make.

  “In that case,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper that nonetheless carried perfectly, “let me allow Paige to do the honors.”

  All eyes swiveled to me. My stomach performed a perfect backflip into my throat. Three grisly, armed bandits. Me. Kaelen had a sword. A big one. I had a sword too, not that I really knew how to use it.

  The lead bandit, Gorrin, burst out laughing, a harsh, braying sound.

  “Her? You’re offering up the wench first? A generous man!”Bartholomew, from a nearby rock, let out a long-suffering sigh.

  “Oh, for the sake of the nine forgotten gods. Posturing brigands. The all-purpose dung beetles of the world’s ecosystem.” He began meticulously washing a paw, utterly bored.

  This was it. A test. Not from the game, but from Kaelen. He’d seen me level up. He wanted to see what I could do.

  The bandits were still laughing, their guard down, convinced this was a joke. My fear curdled into something sharper, more familiar: pure, unadulterated annoyance. I was tired, I was wet, I’d been yanked out of my world, and now I was being laughed at by a man with worse dental hygiene than a meth-addled troll.

  I didn’t have a big sword. But I had a big mouth and a brand-new trick.

  I stepped forward, mirroring Kaelen’s calm. “Okay, look,” I said, pitching my voice to sound weary, almost bored.

  “Here’s the deal. You can drop the rope, apologize to the very pretty horse for your terrible manners, and walk away. Or…”

  I focused on the space between me and the man with the axe. I pushed my will out, feeling the strange, mental muscle I’d acquired flex. The air shimmered, and a second me—a faint, translucent, slightly glitchy copy—appeared right in front of him, hands on its hips.

  “Or you can deal with both of me,” the illusion and I said in unison.

  The bandits’ laughter died instantly. The axeman yelped and stumbled back, swiping his axe through the illusion’s torso. The image wavered like a heat haze but held.

  “What devilry is this?” Gorrin snarled, his confidence cracking.

  “Devilry?” I scoffed, willing the illusion to take a dramatic, threatening step forward. It was draining, like holding a heavy weight with my mind. “It’s a basic fucking phantasm, you half-wit philistine. I literally just learned it today. You’re being punked by a day-one noob.”

  Nolan, seeing an opening, decided to lean into it. He puffed out his chest and pointed a dramatic finger. “Yeah! And she’s the nice one! I’m thinking about turning one of you into a newt!” He wiggled his fingers mystically. It was the least convincing threat in history, but in the flickering torchlight, backed by my shimmering doppelg?nger, it added to the weirdness factor.

  The men were confused, off-balance. Their brute force arithmetic wasn’t adding up.

  It was the moment Kaelen needed. He moved.

  It wasn’t a charge; it was an eruption. He closed the distance to Gorrin in two strides. His sword remained in its sheath. Instead, his gauntleted fist slammed into the bandit leader’s jaw with a sickening crunch. Gorrin dropped like a sack of potatoes, out cold before he hit the ground.

  The man with the rusty sword screamed and lunged at Kaelen’s back. Kaelen didn’t even turn. He sidestepped, caught the man’s sword arm, and used his own momentum to throw him face-first into a tree with a solid, meaty thud. He slid down the trunk and didn’t move.

  The last one, the cudgel-wielder, stood frozen, his eyes wide with terror, looking between the unconscious forms of his friends, the stoic knight, my flickering illusion, and the madman wiggling his fingers at him.

  He dropped his cudgel. It thudded on the soft grass.

  “I… I’m going now,” he squeaked, before turning and sprinting headlong into the darkness. We listened to the sound of his panicked flight fade into the night.

  I released the illusion, the mental strain evaporating and leaving a dull headache in its place. The sudden silence was broken only by the crackle of the torches and Argent’s soft whicker.

  Kaelen walked over to me. He looked at the two unconscious men, then back at me, a genuine, approving glint in his eyes.

  “Efficiently done. You created a distraction without a single drop of blood spilled. A clean victory.”Bartholomew leaped down from his rock and sauntered over to sniff disdainfully at Gorrin’s boot.

  “Yes, quite the paragon of pacifism. She terrified them with a light show, and you concussed the poor dears. A truly moral triumph.” He looked up at me. “The illusion was serviceable, though the posture was dreadfully modern. Do try for a more classical menacing stance next time.”

  I let out a shaky breath, the adrenaline starting to recede.

  “Noted. Next time I have to scare off highwaymen with a hologram, I’ll work on my form.”Nolan clapped me on the shoulder, beaming.

  “Dude! That was awesome! You basically cast Minor Image! That’s a classic!”

  Ding!

  I looked at the stolen torches, our reclaimed horses, and the two bodies lying in the grass. We had our transportation back. We’d won. A tiny notification, visible only to me, shimmered at the edge of my vision.

  [You defeated a Brigand Lvl 10] [x3][Rewards]

  [Torches] [x2]

  [Old Jerky] [x3]

  [1200 XP]

  [LEVEL UP!][You have reached Level 12] [Augment +2, Item: Nightshade][All attributes increased!] [New Skill Available: Wayfinder][Wayfinder][Seamlessly navigate the landscape with the use of a map, compass, and waypoints.]

  I guess I had been riding right on the edge of another level. I couldn’t help it. A grin spread across my face. Almost there. Now, all we needed was that boat. And supplies. And to sell all this useless loot. And a few more levels, but we were getting there, and that was the point.