The first attack came at 3 a.m.
I was awake—hadn't slept, couldn't sleep—reviewing inventory lists when the System screamed a warning.
[PERIMETER ALERT: SECTOR 4]
[THREAT CLASS: MUTATED ORGANISM]
[COUNT: 3]
I grabbed my crowbar and ran.
Sector 4 was the eastern slope, where the fence was still incomplete. I'd warned Liang it was a vulnerability, but we'd run out of time.
Now time had run out entirely.
I reached the edge of the clearing just as the first creature breached the treeline.
It had been a deer once.
Now it was a nightmare—muscles swollen to grotesque proportions, antlers branching into jagged, crystalline spikes, eyes glowing with that same sickly green. It moved in lurching, unnatural bounds, drooling something thick and viscous.
Behind it, two more emerged.
Stage One mutants. Animal variant.
"Alex!" I shouted.
He was already there, emerging from the shadows with a makeshift spear in hand. His eyes were sharp, focused—Tactical Perception mapping the battlefield in real-time.
"Left flank's weak," he said. "Liang's bringing backup."
The lead deer-thing screamed—a sound like tearing metal—and charged.
I didn't think.
I reached for the plants.
The earth answered.
Vines exploded from the ground, wrapping around the creature's legs, thorns digging into mutated flesh. It stumbled, thrashing, bellowing in rage.
"Ryan!" I heard Lily scream.
I turned to see my son standing at the longhouse door, hands blazing.
"Ryan, no—"
But he was already firing.
A bolt of flame—crude, uncontrolled, but hot—shot across the clearing and struck the second deer in the flank. It shrieked and veered off, crashing into a tree.
Lily was beside him, hands raised, and a shimmering green barrier flickered into existence just as the third creature lunged.
It hit the shield with a sound like a hammer on glass—and bounced.
"Good!" I gasped. "Stay behind Lily!"
I turned back to the first deer.
It had torn free of the vines, leaving chunks of flesh behind. Its eyes were locked on me now, intelligent in a way that made my stomach turn.
It wasn't just a monster.
It was hungry.
I prepared to dodge—
A spear punched through its skull from behind.
Liang stood there, breathing hard, weapon buried in the creature's brain.
"Structural weakness," he panted. "Just like timber."
The deer collapsed.
The second one—burned, maddened—came at us again. Alex intercepted it with a precision strike to the throat, his Perception guiding his aim.
The third fled back into the Mist.
Silence.
I stood in the clearing, surrounded by my family and a handful of workers, staring at two corpses that used to be deer.
"Everyone okay?" I asked.
Lily lowered her shield. Her nose was bleeding.
Ryan was crying again, hands still smoking.
Alex pulled me into a hug, trembling.
"Is this it?" he whispered. "Is this the rest of our lives?"
I looked at the blood soaking into the soil of Last Light Valley.
"Yes," I said. "But we're going to make it."
The next morning, I taught them how to harvest cores.
The deer-things had them—small, pulsating nodules of crystallized energy, nestled near the heart. They were worthless, really. Stage One cores barely contained enough power to matter.
But it was practice.
And it was a statement.
"We use everything," I said, holding up the first core. "Nothing goes to waste. Not the meat, not the hide, not this."
I stored the core in my Spatial Compression—the first deliberate use of the ability for storage. A tiny pocket of folded space, invisible and secure.
[CORE ACQUIRED: STAGE ONE (ANIMAL)]
[VALUE: LOW]
[SP: +5]
Five points.
It wasn't much.
But it was a start.