Sid POV

  Sid’s heart hammered in his chest, beating faster than the dull, rhythmic thumps of the approaching boar riders.

  He tracked the leader’s path, breath easing when it angled uphill instead of cutting straight toward their hiding place. The relief was brief. One rider at the back was drifting closer, close enough that Sid felt the pressure of it in his gut.

  Sid tightened his focus and pulled the veil over his target’s mind. He repeated the same internal motions he had practiced with Mist Blend, guiding the effect outward to include the net he was holding. The level-up notification came quicker this time. The gain felt smaller, though. Half of what Mist Blend had given him.

  The riders thundered past and continued uphill. The noise thinned as they vanished from their sight.

  Sid turned and found Varun locked in place. The man’s knife was already out, his grip rigid, knuckles pale. His mouth had flattened into a hard line, and his eyes never left the far edge of the clearing where goblins kept arriving in uneven waves.

  Pallavi shifted beside him, leaning forward, her spear sliding back into her dominant hand, the motion smooth and practiced. She was no longer holding the net. Her eyes were wide, tracking the mass of enemies as if she were trying to count them and failing.

  “That’s too many of them.” Varun’s voice was low, almost as if he were speaking to himself. His gaze flicked toward Sid for a heartbeat before snapping back to the clearing. “We would’ve been dead if we had run.” He swallowed, then raised his voice slightly as another squad of five boar riders emerged near the bait.

  Sid nodded once. He was too shocked to speak. His eyes were doing the same math as Pallavi, but focusing on the Tier 1s—there were too many of them. This was not a wandering warband. This was a fricking army.

  He forced his focus further out, past the bait, past the front line. That was when he saw it. A spider larger than the rest, its bulk anchoring the formation, and standing behind the beast caller, was a goblin in chainmail and a metal helmet. A general. Weeks too early. The general had a large double-headed axe strapped to his back, oversized for a goblin, nothing remarkable by human standards.

  The realization hit hard. Sid might have returned to the past, but the dungeon was no longer following the rules he remembered. The change had crept in slowly, masked by escalation, easy to miss when taken piece by piece.

  First came news of a hobgoblin on the first level of the dungeon. Then came an attack by a warband featuring five Tier 1 goblins. He thought little about it then, but that level of Tier 1 activity in the first week of the dungeon was suspect. Such squads were supposed to appear in the second or even third week. Before him was an army led by a goblin general.

  Once was an accident. Twice was a coincidence. Three times was a pattern. It was proof that the dungeon had changed, or to be more exact, someone had changed how a dungeon was supposed to behave.

  The general entered the clearing, spider riders pacing him like escorts. They spread as they advanced, settling into position with practiced ease. Sid’s gaze followed the movement, counting beats instead of bodies. The count clicked into place. It was the same as before. The boar riders. The first squad. Different units, same number.

  The only other goblin general Sid had ever seen was during the assault on the Goblin King’s camp. That memory still left a sour taste. That creature had been a nightmare to fight, armed not just with weapons but with a trait that strengthened every soldier under its command. It needed to be eliminated first to minimize casualties.

  Back then, even the Indian Army’s commanders were unaware of that trait. Sid had learned about it later, buried in the Institute library. Seeing another one now, roaming free with an organized force behind it, made his skin crawl. If there were nothing wrong with this dungeon, he’d eat his left foot.

  The general leapt down from his mount. A shaman glided to his side, headdress looming like a crown of trophies. Silver cloth spilled from the shaman’s shoulders, catching the light as they spoke in low, urgent tones.

  Meanwhile, the trackers and scouts were moving uphill, carefully examining the ground for signs of Sid’s team. They were spreading out, likely considering that the first trail found, the one chased by the boar riders, might have been a decoy.

  Sid shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He needed only one tracker to come close, maybe two. Any more and the veil might fail. Alternating targets already felt reckless. He did not know what repeated interference would do to a goblin’s mind, or if the target would gain resistance to the skill.

  Legend has it that ‘Kalki the Dreamer’, Kaliga’s strongest goddess, created dungeons as a last gift to her people before she fell. Multiple organizations backed by other gods had tried to replicate her creation or bend the rules she had set. As far as Sid knew, none had succeeded.

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  If someone had managed that feat, Sid had no desire to meet them, not even in a friendly setting. He did not care what grand design was unfolding. All he wanted was enough space to survive with the people he cared about, unnoticed and unimportant. Yet the thought lingered that this escalation was tied to his return, to the memories he should not have had.

  Soon, one tracker headed in their direction while the others moved uphill along adjacent paths. Sid let out a slow breath, convinced it sounded louder than it should have. When he glanced back, he saw Varun exhale at almost the same moment.

  The approaching tracker bore a long scar down his left cheek. Sid named him Scar without thinking. Scar followed their trail with unnerving precision, drawing dangerously close to the screen of ropes, leaves, and mud that separated Sid’s team from certain death.

  Sid fixed his attention on the goblin and applied the veil over its mind.

  Scar’s eyes went unfocused for a moment. He seemed to lose his train of thought and glanced around in confusion, never once focusing on the area where the net lay hidden. Sid held still, counting breaths, until Scar moved on.

  Scar whirled and shouted, his voice cutting through the quiet slope. The answering calls came fast. Sid caught none of it. The language was wrong, jagged and sharp, nothing like Kalish. All he heard were shrieks packed with urgency.

  Sid pulled Mist Blend back into place, drawing the mist tighter around their net as another goblin closed in on Scar.

  Scar pointed at the ground, then jabbed toward a nearby tree. He tilted his head as he spoke, repeating the gesture. Sid followed the exchange closely. Scar thought they had climbed the tree and escaped that way.

  The second goblin crouched to examine the tracks, fingers tracing the broken soil, then lifted its gaze toward the mist-shrouded hideout. Sid immediately dropped Mist Blend and applied the Veil to the second goblin. He could not afford to push both skills. Not now. Not with night closing in.

  If the goblins camped here, he would need his skills intact through the night.

  The second goblin’s gaze went slack, unfocused, as though it were staring past the net and into nothing. It glanced back down at the tracks, then ignored the tree Scar had shown and instead looked uphill.

  Sid kept his full attention on the two trackers and did not react when Varun nudged him from the side. His heart pounded so hard that he feared it might give them away. Whatever Varun had noticed would have to wait.

  Faint thumping rolled through the ground from behind. The boar riders were returning.

  The lead rider halted beside the second goblin, babbling. Scar watched them both, silent, his eyes flicking between their faces. Sid could see only those three. The rest of the riders were hidden behind the slope, and the thought of one climbing onto the outcropping tightened his chest.

  The second goblin mounted the boar behind the beast caller. A rope circled the animal’s head and neck, pulled tight. The goblin gripped the boar’s sides while the beast caller held the reins. With a sharp command, they turned and charged downhill.

  Only then did Sid look at Varun. Varun’s eyes followed the riders until they vanished. Sid nudged him and tilted his head, a silent question.

  Varun blinked, then his eyebrows lifted in understanding. He pointed toward the main goblin force, brought his palms together beside his head, tilted it, and shut his eyes.

  The goblins were settling in for the night. Did he nudge me just to tell me that?

  A cough behind him made Sid’s heart jolt. He spun and saw Rohan waking, eyes blinking as he tried to sit up. Sid pressed a finger to his lips in a sharp warning, then turned back before Rohan could speak.

  Scar stood directly in front of him now, separated only by the thin screen of netting and drifting mist. The goblin leaned forward, eyes narrowed as he tried to peer through the haze. Sid applied the veil without hesitation. The change was immediate. Scar’s focus slipped, his expression clouding, as though he no longer understood why he had been staring so hard at an empty patch of air.

  Scar reached out, fingers moving in a lazy grasping motion, as though trying to touch something just beyond his reach. Sid’s free hand slid to his dagger. If Scar disturbed the net, they would have to kill him before he could raise an alarm and then run. If that happened, Sid could guarantee no one’s survival, including his own.

  A stone suddenly clattered behind Scar. The goblin turned at the sound. Sid glanced sideways and saw Varun lowering his hand, the hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. For a moment, the veil on Scar flickered, then held.

  Scar paced in short loops, restless. His eyes kept sliding back toward the mist, as if something there refused to let go of his attention. Sid held steady, aware that the veil was being stretched thin. Scar’s mind seemed to sense a wrongness it could not resolve.

  The goblin moved to a nearby tree and circled it slowly, scanning the trunk. Finding nothing, he went to the next tree, drifting farther away until Sid could no longer see him.

  A breath escaped behind Sid, loud in the sudden quiet. He turned and saw Rohan upright now, Pallavi beside him, both watching Sid closely.

  “What’s going on?” Rohan’s voice was lower than Sid had ever heard it. The fear in it was impossible to hide.

  “We’re hiding from the goblin army,” Sid said, meeting Rohan’s gaze. “We need to stay here until they leave.”

  “They’re camping there. We’ll have to stay here overnight.” Varun eased down from his crouch and sat, still watching the camp, his jaw set.

  Sid gave him a brief nod. Varun’s timing with the rock had been perfect. Both he and Pallavi had carried their weight, pulling the team back from the edge.

  Sid’s attention drifted back to the goblin general. The figure stood out even from this distance. This was the clearest sign yet that the dungeon had changed. If the difficulty had increased, there had to be a way to turn it into an advantage. Danger and opportunity went hand in hand.

  He just hoped that whoever had altered the rules would not notice him doing it.