—D—

  The Great Escape! Shawshank Redemption! Prison Break! My mind was a high-octane movie montage of every daring escape ever filmed.

  Oh my, oh my. We did it! My heart was hammering like a runaway locomotive about to derail, each beat a triumphant drum solo against my ribs.

  We'd actually, seriously, unbelievably escaped!

  And all thanks to Zeta’s freaky ‘undo death’ button and Jay’s even freakier ‘Jedi mind trick’ thing. Incredible! Seriously, those were top-tier passive skills. Which, naturally, led to the burning question:

  Where was my cheat code? My super-duper, game-breaking, awesome skill?

  As we pounded through the pre-dawn gloom, reeds whipping at our faces, the baying of hounds growing terrifyingly louder behind us, I risked a glance. Focusing on the tattooed ‘D’ on my palm, I mentally yelled, “Status!”

  [D - Level 1]

  Designation: Subject D-1E6O

  Health Points (HP): 44/44

  Stamina Points (SP): 33/77

  Mana Points (MP): 50/50

  Attributes:

  Strength (STR): 8

  Dexterity (DEX): 14

  Constitution (CON): 11

  Intelligence (INT): 10

  Wisdom (WIS): 10

  Charisma (CHA): 12

  Skills: locked

  Damn. Still locked. No cool new powers for D. My SP was pretty high, though. Probably from all the… uh… enthusiastic fleeing.

  "D! Eyes front, you idiot, or you'll trip!" Jay’s sharp voice cut through my internal stat-check.

  "I'm not gonna trip, I'm super agile!" I called back, just as my foot caught on a gnarled root I absolutely had not seen because I was, in fact, not looking where I was going.

  Whoomph!

  I went down. Hard. And, because my luck was apparently on a coffee break, I landed directly on Zeta, who had been shuffling along behind me with his usual zombie-like grace. He let out a sound like air escaping a punctured tire and crumpled like a sack of very old, very tired potatoes.

  "Seriously, D?" Jay hissed, a vein throbbing in his temple.

  "Oops?"

  There was no time for apologies, or for Jay to deliver the scathing lecture I undoubtedly deserved.

  The hounds sounded closer. Way too close. With a grunt, Jay hauled Zeta – who looked disturbingly like he'd embraced actual death this time, skill or no skill – to his feet, slinging one of Zeta’s limp arms over his shoulder.

  Lyra, moving with that surprising speed and strength she had, grabbed my arm. "Come on, crazy boy! No time for sightseeing on the dirt!"

  Her grip was strong, yanking me up with surprising force.

  And suddenly—she was close.

  Really close.

  My brain, already drowning in adrenaline and the sheer terror of imminent capture by angry men with pointy things and angrier dogs, did a full system reboot.

  For just a moment, the baying hounds, Jay’s murderous glare, even Zeta’s corpse-i-tude blurred into the background.

  All I could register was Lyra—

  The wild tangle of her dark hair, the determined set of her jaw, the unexpected firmness of muscle in her arm.

  And yeah, okay—even in our charming prison-issue sackcloth, with the fabric stretched taut as she pulled me, I could absolutely, undeniably tell that the rough material was doing a spectacularly poor job of hiding her… assets.

  My cheeks burned.

  This was so not the time.

  And her smell… Holy moly. It was a potent cocktail. Sweat, for sure. River mud. Forest grime. A faint, lingering scent of stale jail. And something else, something uniquely, undeniably her. It wasn't exactly Chanel No. 5 – more like "Eau de We're-Probably-Gonna-Die" – but it was… real. And strangely, overwhelmingly, Lyra.

  "The river!" she yelled, her voice slicing through my poorly timed sensory overload. She pointed toward the dark, churning water.

  I was pretty sure it was the same river we’d followed through the forest.

  "It's our only shot!" she yelled. "They won’t expect us to take the crazy escape route!"

  It was, indeed, a crazy plan—Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade vibes, except with less charming Nazis and more actual, slobbering hounds.

  Looking closer, the current was brutal—fast, violent, the kind that didn’t just carry you but swallowed you whole.

  My bladder did a funny little dance.

  Holy moly. I was super scared.

  "Ready?" she asked.

  "No arguments here!" I lied.

  Crazy was, apparently, our specialty after all.

  "Wait a freaking moment," Jay said, eyes locked on the river. "Do we even know how to swim? Because I don’t freaking remember."

  He hesitated, gaze flicking between the water and the rapidly approaching trouble. "What I do remember is that people tend to drown in rivers this torrential."

  "And what other choices do we have?" Lyra snapped, breathless, already halfway down the slope.

  Oh gods. She looked criminally good with that furious scowl, mud streaked across her cheek like war paint.

  “Stop right there!” a voice bellowed—right before an actual dog barked. Loud. Close.

  “Oh fuck it—GO!” Lyra roared.

  Jay, already dragging a barely-breathing Zeta, didn’t bother with words. He just grunted and lunged forward.

  We didn’t run so much as tumble down the slick, muddy bank—feet skidding, hands clawing at anything for balance. Then—

  WHAM.

  The river hit me like a truck full of ice knives. Cold, relentless, and pissed.

  “Shit—!” I tried to scream, but water punched down my throat. Lyra’s hand clamped around my wrist like a vise, hauling me along as I flailed.

  Jay crashed in behind us, cursing between gulps of river. “Zeta’s dead weight—again! Dammit!”

  We weren’t swimming. Not really. We were being hurled downstream, buffeted by churning waves, branches slapping at us like the river itself was trying to beat us senseless. The bank was a blur. The sky spun.

  “Keep your head down!” Lyra barked, spitting water. “And stop flailing, you noodle-armed maniac!”

  “This is—not—how physics is supposed to work!” I choked out, already swallowing my third helping of fishy backwash. “Water should be—buoyant! Not evil!”

  Jay’s voice came from somewhere to my left. “Remind me—whose plan was this?!”

  “Yours!” I gasped, blinking out river grime. “This is your fault!”

  “I suggested escape. Not suicidal waterboarding!”

  Zeta gurgled weakly between us, his head lolling like a broken bobblehead. Jay’s arms tightened around him, his jaw clenched.

  “Don’t you dare die,” Jay growled through his teeth.

  A surge slammed us into a half-submerged tree, sending Lyra and me spinning. She cursed, kicked off, and grabbed a floating log. I slammed into it right after her, coughing up river like a human fountain.

  Lyra heaved a breath, clinging to the log with one hand, the other still locked on my wrist. Her lips were blue. Her glare was intact.

  “Oakhaven,” she rasped. “Closest town. Border fortress. King's pet war machine.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I blinked. “There’s a king? We’ve got—kingdoms now? What’s the kingdom called?” My teeth were chattering, but I needed to know. Crucial world-building!

  "Solmara," she said, her eyes scanning the bank we’d just left. Torches were already bobbing along it. "Ruled by King Alaric the Stern. And those 'Mystic Swords' you mentioned? They're his personal instruments of justice. Or vengeance. Ten of them. Legends. Each one supposedly worth a hundred regular soldiers. They don't get sent out for petty poachers. You three have stirred up a real hornet's nest."

  "Ten of them?" I gulped. That sounded less "elite knight" and more "final boss squad."

  Jay’s head popped up from behind a swirl of reeds, soaked and furious. “Ten elite murderers. Fantastic. What next? Fire-breathing tax collectors?”

  Lyra ignored him. “You three have kicked a goddamn hornet’s nest.”

  I hacked up another mouthful of despair. “So... we're famous?”

  “Infamous,” Lyra shot back. “And for the life of me, I can't figure out why.”

  She cast a sideways look at Jay, then me. "A walking ego trip, a nonstop-talking lunatic, and a guy who eats his own fingers—"

  "Oh—no, he didn’t eat it. That was part of my idea—"

  “I don’t care. I never want to hear that sentence again.” She shuddered. “You freaks better not be contagious.”

  She shook her head, like she could physically expel the thought. "So no. Can’t figure out why. Maybe you guys are some kind of experiment that went… obviously wrong."

  Suddenly, a sharp electronic chime echoed—not through the air, but in my skull. Like a notification popping directly into my frontal lobe.

  [New Quest Received: Fly, You Fools!]

  

  
• Objective 1: Escape Oakhaven Town.


  
• Objective 2: Take Arian with you (Optional).


  

  Time Limit: 4 Standard Terrestrial Hours.

  Rewards:

  

  
• 40 Experience Points


  

  Failure Penalty: Potential System Deletion.

  Cool.

  I blinked water out of my eyes. “But. Who the hell was Arian?”

  Jay’s expression had frozen. “Fuck!”

  Zeta twitched weakly between us, moaning. His eyes still closed.

  Lyra let out a strangled growl. “Talk later—MOVE!”

  She kicked away from the log and the current snagged us again like a hungry hand. Downstream we went, spiraling through chaos.

  It felt like hours. Water slammed into my chest. Something—possibly a fish—hit me in the ribs. I couldn't feel my feet. My lungs burned. My optimism? Actively drowning.

  And then—blessedly—a curve in the river. Lyra grabbed me and shoved me toward a break in the reeds.

  “Bank!” she yelled. “NOW!”

  I lunged, scraped elbows, faceplanted in mud, and didn’t care.

  Jay staggered out right behind us, cradling Zeta like a drowned baby. He collapsed beside me, eyes wide and wild.

  We all just lay there for a second. Shivering. Breathing. Not dead.

  Maybe.

  Except one.

  I turned my head, eyes landing on Zeta.

  "Okay," I wheezed. "We really needed a bath, so… it wasn’t that bad."

  Jay groaned.

  Lyra was already squeezing the water from her shirt, muscles flexing beneath skin gone pale from cold. The soaked fabric clung to her like a second skin—painted-on, defiant, and utterly illegal in at least three interdimensional codes of decency. Her breath came in sharp, controlled bursts, jaw tight, eyes scanning the treeline with soldierly focus.

  I glanced. Just once.

  And then I looked again. Because of course I did.

  There was a long moment where time kind of... hiccupped. Her shirt hugged every contour of her like it had fallen in love mid-river. Her toned arms gleamed with cold spray, her hair a wild, dripping halo of fury and adrenaline. A single droplet traced the curve of her collarbone and disappeared beneath the fabric like a lucky bastard.

  Every neuron in my brain lit up and collectively screamed:

  Dude.

  “Focus, brain,” I muttered to myself, physically turning away. “Not the time. This is not the time. Apocalypse now, awkward feelings later.”

  But the image burned into my retinas anyway—Lyra, fierce and alive and wild like something out of a fever dream I didn’t know I’d ordered.

  She caught me looking.

  Just a flicker.

  One eyebrow lifted.

  Not seductive. Not flirty.

  Pissed.

  Like she’d gut me with that glare if I said one word out of line.

  So of course I smiled like an idiot and gave her a thumbs up.

  Because that’s what cool, functional people do. Right?

  She didn’t say a thing. Just turned and glared at the treeline.

  "There’s a cabin," she snapped. "Hunter’s post. Up the ridge. We’ll make it before dawn—if you stop gawking."

  I saluted, partly because I was terrified, partly because it was reflex, and mostly because I was trying not to visibly short-circuit.

  Jay groaned as he dragged himself upright, still clutching Zeta’s limp form like an overgrown seaweed burrito. “And people say I over-plan.”

  “Move or freeze,” Lyra growled, already stomping up the ridge like the river hadn’t just tried to murder us.

  We followed.

  I had recovered enough to walk, though every step felt heavy, sluggish, strained. Zeta, however, was like a corpse—or close enough to make me uneasy. Only a faint, wheezing sound from his lungs proved he was still alive.

  Had he already activated his passive skill? Or was he just too far gone to respond?

  I helped Jay with Zeta, trading off between us as we dragged him up the treacherous path.

  ***

  Almost two hours later—according to my internal clock, which was calibrated using pain, awkward silence, and the repeated near-death wheeze of Jay’s lungs—Lyra finally stopped us.

  We’d been hiking uphill in the dark, soaked to the bone, tripping over roots like blindfolded idiots in a survival minigame, and I was about five seconds away from asking for a fast-travel option. No such luck.

  The sky had started to lighten, leaking streaks of gold and violet through the thinning canopy above. It was one of those moments where everything looked beautiful—right before something terrible usually happened. Classic dramatic foreshadowing.

  The trees parted to reveal a sheer rock wall, mostly hidden behind a cascade of water trickling down from above. Like, full-on waterfall curtain. I half expected a hidden boss battle prompt to pop up.

  "Behind here," Lyra said, pushing aside a curtain of ivy like she was unlocking a secret dungeon in Ark: Survival Evolved.

  Which, honestly, this place looked a lot like—minus the angry dodos and my inexplicably tame, level-300 otter named Sir Snuggles.

  Damn. Another memory of my past life that didn’t really tell me anything about who I was.

  Or maybe it did?

  I followed her in, barely squeezing through the narrow opening…

  And then—

  The world opened.

  Inside the rock face was a massive cavern—like, stupidly huge. The ceiling soared thirty, maybe forty feet overhead, glittering with faint veins of quartz and something bioluminescent that gave everything a kind of dreamy, underwater glow. Greenish-blue light shimmered off the cave walls, dancing in pools of condensation. Thin shafts of morning sun leaked in through cracks up high, catching the mist in midair and making it sparkle like pixelated magic dust.

  And in the middle of this surreal, alien cathedral of stone?

  A cabin.

  Yup. An honest-to-god cabin. Tucked into the far side of the cave, leaning like it had once been built with love and duct tape, and was now being held together by sheer spite. The roof was lopsided, the chimney crooked, and the door hung from one hinge like it was too old for this post-apocalyptic nonsense.

  “Home sweet highly suspicious murder shack,” I mumbled.

  Lyra didn’t react. Jay just grunted.

  But honestly? I was impressed. Not just by the cave or the surprisingly cozy corpse-hut—no, what really had my attention… was Lyra.

  She’d taken the lead after we got out of the river, stomping ahead like she was trying to intimidate the mountain itself. She hadn’t said a word, just moved with this raw, furious energy, soaked from head to toe, shirt clinging to her like vacuum-sealed packaging.

  I tried not to stare. I really did. But her pants—which, like ours, were the thin, scratchy kind issued by whatever discount prison supplier the facility used—were now plastered to her skin like paint.

  And I couldn’t help but notice something.

  Either she’d lost her underwear at some point in the river... or she hadn’t been wearing any to begin with.

  I mean, I couldn’t confirm it, obviously. But the way the fabric clung, leaving... uh... landscape detail fully visible under the shifting light, well—

  Let’s just say my inner teenager was running victory laps while my outer adult was screaming FOCUS OR DIE, YOU MORON.

  So I did the responsible thing.

  I looked away.

  And then looked back again.

  And then immediately regretted it, because my body decided now was a great time to consider launching an awkward, utterly treasonous reaction. You know the one. The kind that makes standing up in school presentations a nightmare.

  I thought about taxes. And cold showers. And grandma’s feet.

  Didn’t help much.

  I clenched every internal muscle I had, willing my personal... enthusiasm meter to stand down.

  "This is not the time," I muttered through clenched teeth.

  Lyra turned her head slightly, shooting me a glare like she knew. Like she had some sort of sixth sense for teenage idiocy.

  She stepped into the cabin, lit a crusty lantern hanging from a hook, and the room lit up in a soft amber glow. Crude and dusty, the inside was basically a medieval studio apartment: one big room with a stone hearth, a table with two and a half legs, a few crates, and a bunch of cobwebs that looked like they could trap squirrels.

  But it was dry. And more importantly? It didn’t have any monsters in it.

  Yet.

  Jay laid Zeta down near the hearth with surprising gentleness. Zeta groaned softly, face pale and sweat-soaked, but alive. Barely. His foot still twitched with unconscious sarcasm, which was encouraging.

  I exhaled. The tension in my shoulders finally eased for the first time in hours.

  “We made it,” I whispered, mostly to myself. “Again. Like actual survival pros. We should get, like, jackets or something.”

  I took a step toward the fire pit, already picturing warmth, maybe a nap, maybe just not bleeding for five minutes—

  THWACK–SHHHNK!

  Agony. Pure, blinding agony.

  I looked down. There it was.

  An arrow. Black-fletched. Driven right through my left boot and into the floor like it hated me personally.

  Before I could scream, a hand slammed over my mouth.

  Lyra.

  Her other hand pointed toward the darkened corner between stacked crates, where the shadows pooled thick and unforgiving.

  Silence. Just the drip of the waterfall outside.

  Just my heartbeat hammering like a dubstep remix of doom.

  We weren’t alone.

  And judging by the arrow piercing through my boot and driven straight into the wooden floor, pinning me like a butterfly in a collector’s case?

  Whoever was out there wasn’t coming over to borrow sugar.