The younger guard on the ground, clutching his leg, eyes wide with shock.
The driver alive, face pale, hands shaking.
The woman standing still, watching the tree line like she expected more.
Victor expected more too.
Because predators that came in packs didn't quit after one bite unless something had changed.
Something had changed.
They had lost their biggest.
Victor heard a sound from the woods—a low, frustrated rumble—and then movement pulling away, not toward.
Retreat.
Not because they were scared.
Because the math had shifted.
Victor stayed still and listened until the forest returned to its normal loudness, until the insects stopped sounding like a cover and started sounding like insects again.
Only then did he let himself stand fully.
His ribs felt wrong.
Not just pain.
A deeper instability, like something had shifted.
He tested his breath.
Small inhale.
Burn.
He could still breathe.
He could still move.
But the cost was higher now.
He looked down at his forearm.
The wrap was torn.
Blood seeped through fresh scratches.
Not life-threatening.
Dirty.
Infection risk.
He would need water.
He would need time.
Neither were guaranteed.
The woman spoke again, quieter now, the same "gloam" sound in it, followed by a string of words Victor couldn't parse.
The spear-man answered, then pointed at the dead larger creature and made a short cutting gesture.
Then he pointed at the tree line and swept his hand outward.
They were gone.
For now.
The woman's gaze shifted to Victor.
Not warm.
Not grateful.
But different.
A fraction.
Recognition that the variable had acted like a tool.
A useful one.
Victor didn't meet it with pride.
He simply nodded once.
Victor stepped back.
He turned to the younger guard on the ground.
The spear-man crouched beside him, hands moving with practiced efficiency—checking the leg, testing the knee, looking for blood.
The guard's mouth was tight. He wasn't crying.
But his hands shook.
Shock.
Pain.
Adrenaline.
Victor didn't have language to offer comfort.
He didn't have interest in pretending.
He watched, then moved away to his bed position uphill.
He needed to check himself.
He sat against the rock and let the night air cool the sweat on his skin.
His ribs burned.
His shin throbbed where stone had scraped it raw.
His forearm bled.
He felt the tremor in his hands now—the delayed shaking that came when your body realized it had survived.
He forced himself to stay still.
He forced himself to count breaths again.
One.
Two.
Three.
The rectangular overlay flickered into existence like a clerk opening a ledger.
[ CONDITION: STABLE ]
Victor stared at it.
"According to who?" Victor asked.
Then, beneath it, thinner lines formed.
[ STATUS: INJURED ]
[ STATUS: BLEEDING — MINOR ]
[ STATUS: PAIN — ELEVATED ]
No advice.
No instructions.
No reward.
Just record.
Victor let the text sit there for two breaths.
Then it faded.
Down in camp, someone began cutting straps to salvage what hadn't been ruined.
Someone else dragged bodies away from the firelight, not out of respect, but because dead meat attracted attention.
The woman spoke low instructions.
The spear-man resumed his perimeter, slower now, spear tip down, posture heavy.
The night had taken something from all of them.
Victor sat on the rock and felt the cost settle into his bones.
Not fear.
Not guilt.
Trauma didn't announce itself with speeches.
It announced itself with the way your body refused to unclench afterward.
With the way your eyes kept searching shadows that were empty.
He looked toward the tree line where the biggest one had appeared.
He could still see those wet-stone eyes in his head.
He could still feel the weight of it trying to roll him into its teeth.
Victor tightened his grip on his knife sheath until his knuckles whitened.
Then he forced his hand to relax.
Tomorrow, there would be water.
There would be cleaning.
There would be movement again, because staying meant getting found.
…
Morning did not arrive like relief.
It arrived like inventory.
Ash in the air. Cold in the bones. Smoke that clung to cloth and hair and made everything smell like last night's violence, even when no one spoke of it.
Victor woke the way he had slept—wrong.
Not wrong in the sense of confused.
Wrong in the sense of ready.
His eyes opened before his body wanted them to. His hand found the knife sheath before he registered the shape of the log behind his back. His breathing stayed shallow on instinct, ribs refusing anything deeper without payment.
Down in the camp, people were already moving.
No one had slept well. You could see it in posture—shoulders pulled tight, faces set, movements slightly too sharp for the tasks they were doing.
The wagons looked worse in daylight.
Not destroyed.
But marked.
Harness straps torn clean through. Leather hanging in ragged loops. A wheel with a splintered spoke bound temporarily with cord. A smear of dried blood along the rear cart's side where something had slammed into it hard enough to leave an impression in wood.
Two of the dead creatures had been dragged away during the night. They were gone now—disposed of somewhere down the slope where scavengers could take the bodies and carry the evidence away.
One remained.
The largest.
It lay where it had fallen near the bowl edge, spear still buried in its shoulder like a stake.
Victor kept his eyes on it as he stood.
The shape was clearer now.
Low-slung, thick in the shoulders, heavier skull. Hide dark enough that it had vanished into shadow last night even when it was close. Teeth built for crushing.
It looked less supernatural in daylight.
More frightening because of that.
It just needed muscle and intent.
The caravan leader was already kneeling near the injured draft animal, hands moving with slow, practiced efficiency.
The animal's eyes were dull.
It stood, but it stood like standing cost it something.
The spear-man walked a slow perimeter, spear still in hand, but his sweeps were tighter. He wasn't patrolling the forest anymore.
He was patrolling the camp's nerves.
Victor stepped down from his high-ground spot and approached at an angle that kept him visible.
He didn't enter their center.
He stopped just outside it, close enough to be useful, far enough to not force anyone to accept him.
The leader looked up.
Her eyes moved over him the way they always did—arm, ribs, face.
Assessment.
Victor gave her what she needed without making her ask.
He pointed at the younger guard's leg, then at the way it was wrapped.
Then he mimed loosening and rewrapping.
The woman stared for a beat, then made a short gesture.
She reached for the wrap with careful fingers and tested tension.
Too tight above the knee. The cloth was biting into flesh, turning skin pale.
Not a tourniquet. Not compression.
Just wrong.
The woman loosened it a fraction at a time, watching color return.
The guard hissed.
She adjusted again, then retied it with more even pressure.
Victor took a skin, drank a controlled amount, then poured a little over his hands.
He washed the fresh scratches on his forearm, letting cold water bite the raw skin clean.
He rewrapped it tighter.
Victor climbed the shallow incline, ribs complaining, and took a higher angle that kept the wagons in view while giving him a line into the trees beyond.
He walked parallel to them for a time, high ground to their low.
He watched the road.
He watched the brush.
He watched for that specific kind of quiet that had preceded the first crack of his marker branches last night.
Nothing came.
But the fact that she had pointed him there mattered.
It was an assignment.
A small shift in the caravan's internal math.
Late afternoon, they stopped.
Not fully.
Just long enough to water the animals and tighten bindings that were already loosening.
He took a strip of dried meat when it was offered without question and ate it slowly.
When the caravan moved again, his ribs reminded him he was still injured.
But he noticed something else too.
His timing—the half-beat delay that had haunted him since waking in this world—was smaller again.
Not gone.
But smaller.
His foot placement on uneven ground was cleaner.
His balance corrections were faster.
The instincts underneath the adjustment were learning the new limits.
Victor didn't celebrate it.
He filed it.
Then night began to fall.
They chose their camp before full darkness—another rocky rise, another crescent of wagons.
The fire was built smaller than usual.
Everyone was too aware of what light invited.
They didn't speak about last night's attack.
They didn't name it again.
They simply moved with the quiet urgency of people who expected another test.
The spear-man took first watch again.
The younger guard wanted to, but his leg said no.
He took a position near the wagons instead, club in hand, face turned outward like sheer stubbornness could replace mobility.
Victor didn't settle into his bed immediately.
He walked the perimeter line once, slow, learning the terrain the way he always did.
Choke points.
Dips.
Angles.
He found a boulder with a clean line of sight down-slope and made his bed there again—raised off damp ground, backed by stone, view protected.
He placed two flat stones within reach.
He checked his knife.
Then he sat.
Night came fully.
Insects rose into their hum.
Wind moved the canopy.
The world sounded normal again.
Victor's body did not believe it.
He sat through the first watch rotation without sleeping, eyes tracking the dark until his neck ached.
The spear-man's steps circled.
The fire cracked softly.
The wagons creaked as wood cooled.
And then—without warning, without buildup—the rectangular overlay flickered into existence.
Clean text in the dark.
Victor kept his face still.
He didn't react like the text mattered, because no one else could see it and reacting would make him look like he was losing his mind.
The ledger hovered in his vision anyway, indifferent to his control.
[ OBJECTIVE: COMPLETE ]
Victor stared.
Under it, a second line formed.
[ LEVEL UP AVAILABLE ]
Victor held his breath for a heartbeat, then forced himself to exhale slowly.
So the system tracked milestones and kills.
It had decided he had crossed a line.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he had lived through something that should have killed him.
A third line appeared.
[ CONDITION: STABLE ]
[ STATUS: INJURED ]
[ STATUS: PAIN — ELEVATED ]
Then, like a clerk turning a page, the ledger added something new.
[ UNLOCK: SKILL — THREAT FOCUS ]
Victor's eyes narrowed by a fraction.
Last night he hadn't won because he hit harder.
He'd won because he'd chosen the right threat each time—mobility, animals, the driver, the bigger one that could end the fight in one mistake—then acted before the camp's panic could drag decisions in the wrong direction.
The system had seen that.
Not the emotion.
The outcome.
Another line formed beneath the skill, thin and unemotional.
[ NOTE: CONSISTENT APPLICATION REQUIRED ]
Victor felt something cold settle in his gut.
Of course.
Not a gift.
A requirement.
A thing that would only become real if he continued to earn it through repetition.
He stared until his eyes hurt.
Then the ledger faded like fog burned off by morning.
Gone.
No afterimage.
No lingering glow.
Just the dark and the insects and the quiet movement of watch steps.
Victor didn't move for a long moment after it vanished.
He kept his posture neutral.
He kept his face blank.
He listened to the forest like nothing had happened.
Inside, he cataloged the information with the same discipline he used on pain.
Survival threshold.
Level 2.
Skill unlocked.
Requirement attached.
No other notes.
No promise.
The system wasn't helping him.
It was recording him.
Labeling what he did well enough to survive.
Victor's fingers flexed once near his knife sheath, then relaxed again.
He didn't feel excitement.
He felt confirmation.
This world had rules.
Not moral ones.
Mechanical ones.
And even if he didn't understand them yet, he could learn them the same way he learned everything else.
Through repetition.
Through restraint.
Through surviving long enough to see patterns.
He lay down carefully on his bed of boughs, ribs protesting but manageable.
He kept one hand near the stones.
One hand near the knife.
He did not sleep deeply.
Not after last night.
Not after seeing the ledger turn a page.
But he slept enough.
Enough to move again tomorrow.
Enough to keep his mind sharp.
Because now he had something more dangerous than fear.
He had a system that could name what he did.
And a world that would test whether that name meant anything.