Luke stumbled forward, chest heaving, almost collapsing.

  “Luke!” Curtis shouted from the ground. “Check the others! I’m fine!”

  He wasn’t fine. Curtis's body was riddled with injuries, but none were fatal in the short term. Being able to stay alive for a few hours without help was enough.

  Luke raced back to the others, ignoring the still-fighting goblins, and scaled another ladder. Hiroki sat slumped against the wall, eyes wide, staring at the platform ahead. Hannah stood upon it, cloaked in shadow. No writhing tendrils this time, just a still, featureless figure.

  Still, Luke felt her gaze on him. Judging. Weighing.

  “You okay?” Luke asked, dropping beside Hiroki.

  “I’m fine,” Hiroki said, though his voice shook. “Didn’t even make it to the mage. Hannah…” He shivered. “She started pulling her flesh apart, Luke. Laughing.”

  “That isn’t her,” Luke said. “At least… I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean?” Hiroki asked.

  Luke stared at the silent figure of Hannah turned into a shadow.

  “The Deep Dweller,” he whispered.

  “Hannah!” Luke called, trying to reach her. Hearing his voice didn’t even make her stir.

  Against his better judgment, he stepped closer. From her back, shadowy tentacles erupted, lashing out toward him. Luke jumped back, shouting her name again. “Hannah!”

  This time, something broke through. She moved, hands shooting up to her face as the tentacles withdrew, sinking back into her body. Then she began clawing at herself. The shadows were like a thick, suffocating coat, covering her entire body. Digging at her mouth, Hannah tore at it, managed a hole, and pulled it back, gasping and choking as she fell to her knees.

  “Hannah!” Luke approached, but she thrust up a hand, still wrapped in writhing, agitated shadows.

  “Don’t,” she said. Her voice was distorted, wrong. Too deep.

  Then the coughing came again. Wet. Gurgling. A black viscous ooze spewed from her mouth, splattering across the parapet floor. More and more poured out, until she seemed beyond her limits, collapsing into it on her hands and knees. The pool spread, thick and grotesque.

  Luke staggered back a step. Then another.

  Once it stopped, she gasped for breath, sitting back, her body still half-swallowed by living shadow. Were they hers? Or the Deep Dweller’s? Luke couldn’t tell. Maybe even she couldn’t.

  Hannah dragged herself up, fighting against the pull of the pool as though it wanted her back. Tears streaked her face, but when the last of the shadows bled away into the darkness, her expression wasn’t fear. It was fury. Pure, defiant rage.

  “What—” Luke began, but Hannah cut him off.

  “You can feel me, can’t you?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That skill of yours. The one that let us follow Relian? The echo.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Why?”

  She gave him a grim smile, then turned back to the seething pool. “Because I can’t put this off any longer. If I don’t do this now, it’ll win. And I won’t let it.”

  “The Deep Dweller?” Luke asked.

  But she didn’t answer, only clenched her jaw. “I’ll find you,” she said instead, glancing up at him for just a heartbeat before the darkness reached for her again. “And if I don’t… you come find me.”

  Then she stepped forward. Out over the pool. And jumped.

  She vanished as if she’d plunged into water.

  “No!” Luke shouted, reaching out. But before he could act, before he even knew what he would do, the pool imploded, folding in on itself.

  Gone.

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  Taking Hannah with it.

  Luke searched with Weaver’s Echo.

  Nothing.

  A thud sounded behind Luke. He turned to see Curtis vault over the top of the wall again.

  “Where is Hannah?” Curtis asked.

  “She disappeared,” Hiroki said, pointing at the now ordinary-looking wooden floor of the parapet.

  Curtis only nodded, as if he’d expected this. He strode over to Luke, holding out a hand.

  Sighing, Luke pulled his attention away from trying, and failing, to find Hannah with Weaver’s Echo. Rather than keep trying, he set to work healing Curtis. The man was riddled with injuries. Some small, but far too many. Enough to cripple or kill a normal man.

  Once Luke finished, Curtis rolled his shoulders, gave a curt nod of thanks, then pointed down into the encampment. “We’re not done yet.”

  Below, goblins still clashed, blood coating their bodies until it was hard to tell blue armbands from red.

  Luke patched up Hiroki as well, then slumped onto the parapet edge, feet dangling, exhausted. From there, he watched Curtis carve through the chaos.

  A spell hurtled toward Luke from somewhere in the mob, but it was a crude thing. He unraveled the spellweave before it even touched him, threads of mana pulling it apart like rotten cloth. Hiroki joined Curtis, leaving Luke alone with his thoughts.

  Hannah was gone. For now.

  Had it been a mistake bringing her? No, this confrontation with the Deep Dweller was inevitable. The connection ran too deep for her to resist forever. Still, he wished she’d waited until they’d found Relian. Maybe the Fallen Shepherd and the Deep Dweller would have destroyed each other. Optimistic, sure, but Luke figured he was due for a little optimism.

  An arrow hissed through the air. Without looking, Luke swatted it aside by flicking a thread of mana against it. He blinked. Strange. Without even looking, he'd sensed it coming, and didn't even need focus to deflect the attack.

  Another arrow came. This time, he saw it coming, tried to deflect it, and failed. The shaft punched into his chest, missing Luke's heart by a mere inch. He groaned, leaned back, and rolled. The motion cracked the arrow and drove it deeper into his lung.

  Blood filled his mouth. Breathing grew difficult. The lung collapsed.

  And still, Luke was calm. Methodical.

  He stitched himself together, eased the arrow free, closed ruptured veins, and knitted torn flesh back together, unbothered. The many battles he'd lived through were helping. Experience steadied his hand even when injured. He'd considered using Weaver’s Renewal on the lung, but dismissed the thought. Best to save that. Curtis and Hiroki were still fighting, even if it didn't look like much of a challenge.

  At last, he looked up into the sky, testing his lungs by taking deep breaths. It worked well enough.

  Why had he felt the arrow come and been able to deflect it without thinking, but failed when he focused and saw it coming?

  The slap of small feet against wood broke his thoughts.

  He sat and turned to see three goblins rushing him. One raised a bow. The other two came with cutlasses held high, snarling with mouths wide.

  Luke rolled aside, pushed to his knees, then his feet. His quarterstaff appeared in his hand, broken. He’d forgotten. Fine. He’d do this one without a weapon. Luke cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and advanced, angling the melee goblins between himself and the archer. Arrows would still fly, but it was something.

  Hurling both pieces of the broken staff at the archer forced the monster off balance as the two advancing goblins swung at him. Threads flicked out from his hands to intercept. One thread nudged the left goblin’s arm just enough to redirect the strike into his ally’s shoulder, resulting in a shriek of pain and a dropped weapon. Another thread looped around the first goblin's wrist. With a sharp tug, the monster's weapon clattered away.

  Luke stepped in, hand on the goblin's chest. A vicious pull on the monster core tore it free. He didn’t kill the second goblin yet. Not directly. After disarming it, he shoved its body in front of himself, holding it up like a shield.

  An arrow thudded into the goblin's flesh. Then another. And another. The thing screamed as the archer kept loosing arrows, frantic. Luke shoved the goblin forward with a thread of mana. It slammed into the archer, sending both tumbling over the wall into the encampment below. Their screams ended in a wet crunch.

  Luke jumped after them, harvesting both cores before moving on.

  By then, the battle was turning. Curtis had tipped the balance, and red-banded goblins fell in droves. Luke stalked through a field of bodies, filling his inventory with cores, corpses, scraps, crude weapons, rags, and fewer than two hundred credits.

  "Low-level monsters," he muttered. His experience bar had ticked upward at a far too slow rate, but upward nonetheless, and he'd been near leveling up before this battle.

  Congratulations! You have reached Level 16!

  He dropped all five points into Endurance, raising it from eight to thirteen, matching Strength and Agility. This fight had made one thing clear. He couldn’t afford to slack on the physical aspect of growing stronger, not even for a moment.

  A stray goblin charged him. Luke’s glare didn’t slow it down, but a boot to its face did. Luke crushed its skull beneath his heel, yanked free its core, and moved on.

  Mercy? For creatures that attacked first? Not likely.

  Summoning the skill list, Luke checked for worthwhile available choices.

  Wounded Symmetry [Active - Mana Cost: Moderate]: Mirror a tear in the weave and create it anew.

  Strengthen Thread [Active - Mana Cost: High]: Use mana to strengthen the weave.

  Heartthread [Active - Mana Cost: High]: Bind your weave to another.

  Weaver’s Rupture [Active - Mana Cost: Moderate]: Shatter a Thread of Mana into a pulse of force.

  Weaver’s Boon [Active - Mana Cost: High]: Mana not only restores, but empowers.

  Bleed The Weave [Active - Mana Cost: High]: Rupture a weave to make your target weep mana.

  Corrupt Thread [Active - Mana Cost: High]: Force threads together in a harming weave.

  Nothing stood out, and no rank-ups became available at Level 16. He dismissed the menu and kept walking toward Curtis and Hiroki, who stood watching the blue-banded Goblin Leader fighting against the red band wearing one, the two goblins locked in mortal combat.