The goblin hissed, jagged spear wobbling in its grip as it stepped into the road.

  Garren shifted in his saddle, hand falling to his hilt, but he didn’t move further. “My lady.”

  Lia’s chin lifted. Her eyes narrowed, lips moving as she gathered mana into her palm. The air shimmered, heat distorting the space in front of her fingers.

  The goblin snarled and broke into a run, bare feet kicking up dust. Its spear tip caught the light, trembling with each uneven step.

  And a fireball streaked across the path. It hit with a concussive whump, flames swallowing the creature whole. The stench of charred flesh rolled through the air as what remained of it collapsed into smoldering ash.

  John exhaled slowly, lowering his sword back into its sheath. “Well,” he said, eyeing the smoking patch of dirt, “that was fast.”

  He turned to Garren. “You could’ve handled that yourself.”

  Garren’s gaze didn’t leave the smoke rising from the corpse. “I could have,” he said simply.

  John frowned. “Then why didn’t you?”

  The bodyguard’s expression was confused for a moment, then returned to stone. “I am not here to cripple her growth.” His tone held no judgment, no heat, just a flat truth. “My duty is to keep her alive, not to shield her from that which makes her stronger.”

  Lia’s cheeks flushed faintly, but she said nothing. She simply nudged her horse forward, smoke curling in the breeze behind her.

  John adjusted in Bristle’s saddle, eyeing the charred spot on the road. Right. This world’s teaching methods are a little more… hands-on.

  The charred corpse of the first goblin was still smoking when the brush to the left rustled.

  “More,” Garren warned, his hand tightening on his hilt, but he didn’t draw. His eyes flicked toward Lia instead.

  Half a dozen goblins burst from the undergrowth, eyes burning yellow, weapons raised.

  Lia’s eyes narrowed. She whispered a sharp syllable, fire blooming at her fingertips. The first goblin went up in flames. The rest surged from the trees, screaming.

  Garren didn’t move. His gaze stayed on Lia. Watchful, assessing.

  Lia’s spell flared again, another fireburst tearing through the front ranks.

  John was already off Bristle before the mule could protest. His boots hit the dirt hard. Moonfang slid free in a clean arc, the weight familiar now.

  Two goblins came at him. One with a jagged spear, one swinging a rusted cleaver. John stepped inside the first strike and turned his wrist just so. The parry was clean, smooth, the spear slid harmlessly aside. The follow-up cut dropped the creature instantly.

  The second came from the side, but John had seen this pattern before. He pivoted, deflecting the blow with the flat of his blade, then slashed upward.

  A hiss rose from the treeline. A shaman, smaller, meaner, staff raised. Sickly green light gathered at its tip.

  John grinned.

  The bolt fired. He braced, and swung Moonfang perfectly. The light struck the blade and split like water, burning harmlessly into the dirt.

  The shaman froze in disbelief and John started running.

  Through the smoke to his left, a surviving goblin lunged with its blade aimed at Lia's face. Her palm flared, a point-blank flash of white-hot fire bursting from her fingertips. The creature disintegrated mid-scream, ash scattering into the wind.

  John barreled through the stretch of road. The shaman shrieked something guttural, the staff’s gem blazed again as he fired.

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  John swung again, close this time, catching the spell and batting it aside in a burst of heat. His arms burned from the impact, but his momentum carried him through.

  He bore down on the shaman, Moonfang raised high. The goblin hissed, fumbling for another spell, but too late. John brought the blade down in a cleaving arc, splitting staff, skull, and spine in one stroke. The shaman collapsed in silence, smoke rising from the split remains.

  For a moment, only the soft snort of Old Bristle and the crackle of burning underbrush broke the quiet.

  John exhaled hard, lowering Moonfang. His pulse was still hammering, but he was smiling.

  Lia was watching, eyes bright, sweat streaking her brow.

  Garren urged his horse forward, gaze sweeping over the corpses without surprise. “A fair showing,” he said at last, tone clipped. “But don’t get complacent.”

  Lia’s mare stamped once, tail flicking as the smell of smoke lingered. Her eyes swept the tree line, alert.

  “Do you think they came from the dungeon?” she asked quietly.

  Her staff rested across her saddle, but her grip betrayed the tension in her knuckles.

  Garren’s reply came steady, almost dismissive. “No way to tell. Goblins breed like rats. Could’ve wandered here from anywhere.”

  Lia said nothing, but the doubt in her eyes lingered as the smoke drifted away.

  They pressed on. Old Bristle plodded on with unshakable patience, while Lia’s gelding stepped more nervously now, ears twitching at every rustle.

  He was half-lost in the rhythm of hooves and creaking leather when he saw it.

  A gnarled tree, half-burnt, leaned crooked beside the road. Beyond it, a line of boulders sloped down into what seemed like nothing more than thick brush and shadow. But John knew better.

  In the game, this was where you turned. Down a narrow cut in the rocks, barely visible unless you knew where to look. A way into the ravine to the dungeon’s entrance.

  He forced his expression neutral and nodded casually toward the overgrowth. “We cut left here.”

  Garren frowned, reins tightening. “That way?”

  “Yes,” John said simply.

  He nudged Bristle forward, the mules hooves crunching on stone as he steered toward the hidden path. The air grew cooler as they entered the shadows, the noise of the forest muffling into a strange hush. Ahead, between the rocks, the land dipped sharply into shadow.

  John swung down and took the lead, Moonfang angled low in his grip. The brush was thicker here, thorn and ivy strangling the path until it was nearly impassable. He swung the runeblade through it like a machete, each stroke cleaving branches that should have blunted an axe. Leaves and splinters rained down as the glowing runes along the steel hissed faintly, slicing wood as if it were mist.

  Behind him came a sharp intake of breath. “You can’t be serious,” Lia said, scandalized.

  “It’s a sword,” John grunted, hacking another tangle of vines aside. “It cuts things. Seems like the right tool for the job.”

  “It’s a rune-forged relic,” she snapped. “Made for battle, not hedge-trimming!”

  Garren’s expression was darker still, his jaw tight as his hand hovered over his own blade. “If my lord had ever treated his arms so carelessly, they would have whipped him bloody.”

  John just shrugged, pushing forward, Moonfang biting clean through another branch. “Good news, then. This one doesn’t dull.”

  The path opened under his rough clearing, and the mule followed without hesitation, brushing aside the leftover thickets with its shaggy flanks.

  The descent was steep, the path narrowing until the rocks closed them in on either side. Their mounts’ hooves clattered on loose shale, sending pebbles rattling into the shadows. The further they went, the more the noise of the forest above seemed swallowed, as though the world itself held its breath.

  Lia drew her cloak tighter, her eyes scanning the cliffs. “It feels… wrong here.”

  “Wrong?” John asked.

  “The mana,” she whispered.

  Even Garren’s expression had hardened, hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

  John said nothing. In the game, he remembered this exact dip in terrain, the concealed switchback trail that led to the dungeon. Except this wasn’t a game, and his stomach twisted with the thought of seeing it here, real and waiting.

  The path widened suddenly into a bowl of stone. And there, against the cliff face, the black arch of a dungeon gate. Its surface crawled with faint lines of mana, like veins pulsing in rhythm with some unseen heart. Around its edges, the rock had cracked outward as though the land itself had been forced apart to make room for it.

  The ground before it was torn. Grass and brush scorched, gouges clawed into the stone. As though something had already come through.

  Lia reined in sharply, her breath catching. “By the Light…”

  Even Garren’s hand tightened visibly around his sword. “Overflow.”

  John froze, staring at the pulsing gate.

  In game, this place had been safe. You could clear it half-asleep, fresh from character creation. Yet here it was, overflowing, spitting monsters into the world like a wound refusing to heal.

  He clenched his jaw, frustration boiling inside him. No one would believe the Carrion Mother came through the Ward Wall now.

  Behind him, Old Bristle gave a low, uneasy bray.