Aryn sat with his back against a half-crushed sedan, the metal still warm beneath his shoulders. Smoke drifted through the street in thin sheets, carrying the smell of burned rubber and blood. A few yards away, Gregk knelt beside a pile of rubble, methodically wrapping a strip of cloth around his side. The orc worked in silence, jaw tight, movements efficient despite the cut along his abdomen.
"I saw you hesitate," Gregk said at last, voice low. He didn't look up. "More than once, Fledgling Chief."
Aryn shifted, fingers flexing around nothing. "I wasn't sure—"
"Hesitation gets you killed," Gregk cut in. He pulled the cloth tight with his teeth and tied it off. "Or it gets the ones beside you killed. And I have no intention of dying here."
Aryn let out a breath, staring at the cracked pavement between his shoes. "But you're… a summon. Don't you just come back? Like in games?"
The air changed around Gregk and a blackish purple energy surged around him.
Gregk was on Aryn in an instant. One moment he was kneeling, then Aryn's back slammed into the car, metal groaning as Gregk's forearm pressed against his chest. Aryn Resisted but Gregk was unusually strong at the moment.
"I am not JUST summoned," Gregk snarled. His tusks were inches from Aryn's face. "I am Gregk of the Fen'Rukan Tribe. Blooded. Proven. My life has weight. And we only have ONE, do NOT belittle me, I've earned mine!"
He shoved Aryn hard, stepping back as if disgusted.
"If I fall here," Gregk went on, voice rough, "I do not return to my people. I do not stand beside my brothers. I simply end back to the cycle of our ancestors. I'd rather try hard to keep my head…"
Silence followed. The portal crackled faintly in the distance, its light painting broken glass green.
Aryn swallowed. "I didn't know," he said quietly. "I'm for real, I really didn't know." He rubbed his face with both hands. "I don't want to die either."
Gregk didn't respond, eyes fixed on the portal.
"I didn't expect this," Aryn continued, the words spilling out now. "I just graduated. Yesterday my biggest problem was bills, a military test and a dead end job. This—" He gestured weakly at the ruined street. "This isn't something I expected to happen in my life or EVER."
Gregk finally glanced at him and coldly spoke. "It is now."
He stood, testing his weight. "You've killed. You've bled. The Spirit answered you. I saw it, you released your Spiritual Energy" His gaze sharpened. "That is how a path begins."
Aryn nodded slowly. He remembered the heat. The strength. The way the world had narrowed to motion and intent.
"And your Pulse," Gregk added. "All orcs feel it differently. Yours is… rough and untamed."
Before Aryn could reply, the distant sirens faded. The remaining officers were gone, leaving the street eerily empty.
Elsewhere in the city, while Aryn was told stories of a foreign world and learning what it meant to summon something that could truly die, panic had already spread like fire in the city.
A wide public park had turned into a stampede.
People ran in every direction, shoes slipping on trampled grass, screams layering over one another until they blurred into noise. Small, green figures darted between legs and benches, their movements random and feral. They were humanoid, but only just, too sharp, too fast, too eager, they were 'Goblins.'
That was the word was what Jaxon's brain settled on as he shoved through the chaos.
They were barely taller than a six year old, but there were too many of them. Their faces were twisted into expressions that didn't match their size, wide mouths split by jagged yellow teeth, eyes alight with something close to joy but more sinister. They moved like children who had never been told "no," slashing wildly at anything slower than them.
"Jaxon, help me!"
Kaia's scream cut through the noise.
He spun just in time to see her on the ground, a goblin straddling her chest. Its dagger arm shook as it tried to bring the blade down, snapping its teeth inches from her face. Kaia had both hands locked around its wrists, her small muscles trembling as she fought to keep it back.
Jaxon didn't think, he ran, pumped with instinct.
His foot connected with the goblin's side hard enough to lift it off her. The creature tumbled across the grass, rolling three or four times before skidding to a stop. It scrambled upright, hissing, and then three more took its place almost instantly.
Jaxon slowed but not from fear. From something else.
His chest felt tight, like pressure building behind his ribs. A warmth spread outward, crawling into his shoulders, his arms, his hands. It wasn't painful. It wasn't foreign. It felt… right. Familiar, yet like meeting a long lost friend even, like flexing a muscle he forgot he had.
The first goblin lunged and Jaxon stepped into it and swung his first with a brig grin on his face, making the faces on the goblins confused.
The moment his fist connected with the goblin's cheek, the air popped.
Not cracked but literally 'popped'.
A sharp, concussive sound snapped outward, and the goblin's head twisted unnaturally as it dropped to its knees. Half its face blown out, flesh and bone folding like wet clay.
Jaxon stared at his fist amazed and excited.
"…Yo."
Energy bled out of his knuckles in a faint shimmer before vanishing. He didn't panic. Somehow, he already understood what had happened. He grabbed the collapsing goblin by the collar.
More warmth surged through his arms as he shoved that same force into the limp body and hurled it.
The corpse slammed into two charging goblins mid leap. They went down in a tangle of limbs and shrieks, scrambling over each other like kids wrestling for toys, trying to shove the body off them.
Jaxon didn't wait. He closed the distance on the last goblin with a crunching punch to the face.
Then a punch to the arm.
The dagger flew free, clattering uselessly across the grass. Jaxon twisted his hips and dug a kick straight into the goblin's chest.
Then a 'Boom' sound shook near him. The sound echoed louder this time.
The dead goblin's torso he threw from earlier ruptured outward, leaving it blown to bits. Behind it, the two goblins tangled with the corpse were reduced to little more than scattered remains, the impact having finished what Jaxon started.
Jaxon exhaled, breath shaky but laughter bubbling up anyway.
"Hahahaha! Yo, that's crazy."
He cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, the lingering warmth fading from his limbs like a receding tide. He could feel his energy had been drained but he still had enough to move around.
"You good, Kaia?" he called, already turning. "C'mon, don't just sit there, let's move. We gotta get outta here!"
Kaia scrambled to her feet, staring at the carnage with wide eyes and confusion of what she just witnessed.
"I swear," she muttered, grabbing his sleeve, "you're a freak."
Jaxon grinned, even as his eyes tracked the movement beyond the park, more goblins pouring in from broken streets and shattered sidewalks.
"Maybe," he said lightly. "But we're alive. And doesn't Mom always call me a weirdo anyways?"
They ran to a less goblin infested area of the park, making it to the street side.
Kaia's phone buzzed uselessly in Kaia's hand as they weaved through wreckage and overturned cars, sirens screaming somewhere in the distance.
"No signal," she said breathlessly. "But Aryn texted earlier and said he was heading to Jolly King first. I'm guessing the one near his part time job?"
Jaxon nodded, jaw tightening, worry dripping from his face for his friend.
"Then that's where we're going."
Unbeknownst to him, only miles away, Aryn was staring into a swirling portal, both of them standing on the edge of something that would change them forever.
Aryn stared at the portal. "We can't handle what's inside alone," he muttered.
"Perhaps not," Gregk agreed. "But we may not need to."
Aryn closed his eyes.
[Spirit]: Your Pulse capabilities expanded
The warmth stirred along his left arm, calm and steady.
[Spirit]: Pulse Resonance stirs awareness.
Pressure bloomed as he looked at Gregk, measured, and dangerous. Pale green, not seen but felt. Gregk vanished into shadow at once.
"That's… new, and definitely a weird feeling." Aryn murmured.
Then footsteps echoed.
"Aryn!"
He turned as Jaxon and Kaia ran toward him, fear and relief written across their faces.
For the first time since the portal opened, Aryn felt something steady.
He wasn't alone anymore, but he had never truly been alone.