The last stretch of trail down to Fort Octave felt longer than it should’ve. Maybe it was the weight of the day or the way night had crept in without fanfare. Twilight had drained the color from the hills, leaving behind a dreary gray tone that sucks the enthusiasm out of everyone it touches.

  Xander adjusted the strap across his chest and scanned the slope ahead. The fort rose before them as they approached. Blocky watchtowers stood at uneven intervals along the perimeter wall, their shapes lit in slashes by mounted magical flood lamps. He could just make out movement atop the northern tower. A figure pacing. Another posted still, scanning the dark with what looked like a heavy crossbow slung low.

  The place never appeared to be asleep.

  At first glance, the layout hadn’t changed. Same perimeter wall, same inward slope down to the supply yard and central hub. But the tempo was different now. Louder, even in low tones. Steady footfalls echoed along the ramparts. Lanterns burned hot on every outpost. Patrols passed at regular intervals, two or three to a group, eyes sharp and weapons within easy draw.

  Xander didn’t remember it being this tense on the way out.

  Behind him, the others moved in a loose staggered column. No neat formations like they had earlier in the morning when they left. The practical rhythm of people who were more tired than they’d admit was the guiding principle now. Kane was steady but dragging. Ford kept glancing toward Zoey’s limp every third step, though she pretended not to notice. Her bow was long gone, her short sword sheathed, and her pace careful.

  Jo walked just beside Xander, one hand loose near her belt. Her blade was clean but unstrapped. It was unclear whether she was expecting trouble or if she had just forgotten to secure it after the exhaustive day they experienced.

  By the time they reached the gate, Darvos had already peeled off to speak with the outer watch. Two guards met him there in standard patchwork armor with the fort’s insignia etched into the shoulders. After a few brief words, one nodded and signaled to the others on the wall. The great gate creaked inward without ceremony.

  The group filed through.

  Xander scanned the yard as they passed the outer threshold. The lights inside burned brighter than they had any right to. Half-built barricades cast deep shadows across the ground. A team of engineers was still working near the south wall, bolting something bulky onto the turret mount. Another squad moved crates between the storage depot and the east barracks, their conversation clipped, their hands fast.

  Even this late, the fort was fully operational.

  There was no music drifting through the alleys, no casual banter near the fires. Only the constant motion, the weight of armor, clipped voices, and too many eyes watching everything.

  Xander felt the edge settle into his spine. Not paranoia. Something had shifted here. He couldn’t say whether it was an additional threat, or just the accumulation of old ones, but either way, the whole place had gone taut.

  Jo leaned in just enough for her words to carry. "They weren’t this twitchy when we left."

  "No," Xander said quietly. "They weren’t."

  Ahead of them, Darvos fell back into step. His expression was unreadable, but he motioned once toward the group.

  "Gate officer said Commander Rex left instructions," he said. "We’re to report to him as soon as we arrive. Doesn’t matter how late."

  Zoey blinked at him. "Seriously?"

  "Verbatim," Darvos said. "He was clear."

  Jo ran a hand through her hair, muttered something too low to catch, and started toward the inner compound.

  Zoey sighed. "Cool. I guess a shower can wait."

  Ford didn’t comment, but the set of his jaw was grim as he glanced at his brother beside him.

  The administration block looked different. Same concrete shell, same tight offices and flickering oil lamps, but the atmosphere had shifted. What had felt orderly that morning now carried a pulse of urgency beneath the surface, like the building itself was bracing for impact. They moved through the antechamber without a word.

  Rex’s office door stood open. A long table, already surrounded by tired officers leaning over maps that had been unfolded, smoothed flat, and marked up with the urgency of a base trying to get ahead of something it didn’t understand, filled the room.

  The councilor from Starlight was notably absent.

  Xander hadn’t been in the mood for politics, and he didn’t want to waste time pretending this was a negotiation between equals. He wasn’t here to posture on behalf of Starlight. He needed to talk to Rex as a man who had stood in the same fire.

  Darvos took the lead, stepping to the head of the room and delivering his report without ceremony. His voice remained steady as he outlined the mine breach, the coordinated assault, the impossible machinery hiding under centuries of debris, and the cultist’s last words. He stuck to the facts and stacked them in order like bricks in a wall.

  He didn’t scapegoat. When he brought up the confusion at the mine entrance, it came with a note about the absence of a shared command protocol. A flag for future ops.

  Rex listened without interrupting, arms crossed as he leaned back against the side of the table. The other officers glanced toward him now and again, gauging his reaction. He gave them none.

  When Darvos finished, the room fell quiet.

  Xander stepped forward. "Whatever they thought they were trying to power up, it wasn’t super stable. The outcome at the quarry was going to happen whether or not we were there. The only difference is we were on hand to stop its rampage before innocent people got hurt."

  "The real question is how they know about this stuff and what happens when they find something that isn't half broken and insane?" Jo asked.

  Rex nodded once. "This confirms intent. But we have seen no evidence of the cult actually finding a working site."

  "They may not need one," Ford said. "If they’re poking around lost technology, they could be chaining fragments together. Less about finding the whole, more about reverse engineering their own."

  "Maybe," Rex replied. Then he shifted, his tone tightening. "We’ll revisit that at another time. There is something else we need to discuss."

  Which meant not here. Not in front of this room.

  Xander caught the shift. He didn’t press.

  Rex didn’t offer anyone a chance to continue the topic. Instead, he motioned to one officer along the wall. The man stepped forward and unrolled a fresh map across the edge of the table. It was recent. Still smelled like ink. Red marks slashed across the southwest quadrant, curling along Interstates 57 and 74 and terminating at a point that had barely been more than a dot on most maps before the reboot. It was a pair of rest stops just west of Champaign.

  "Victor was spotted heading southwest," Rex said. "Eyewitness report from a scout detail on high ground. They didn’t engage. He wasn’t alone."

  Xander leaned in, eyes narrowing at the markings. The terrain out that way consisted of just small towns of less than two hundred people, farm buildings, and farmland. A lot of places to vanish.

  "You'd said that the other day." Xander responded.

  "This morning," Rex continued, "we lost contact with OP Seven. It was one of our forward positions keeping eyes on the western side of Champaign."

  "Destroyed?" Jo asked.

  Rex nodded. "Confirmed a couple of hours after you all had headed out this morning. Scorched perimeter, no survivors, all their gear looted. It wasn’t a monster attack as there was a corpse trap like the one you encountered in downtown Champaign."

  Kane folded his arms. "You think the cult’s making its move?"

  "I think they already have," Rex said. "And this place feels like the next logical step."

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  "Sir, the scouts reported no troop movements. Myself and the other officers still believe this to be a sentient monster attack like gnolls or rodentia," one officer near Rex interjected.

  The silence in the room changed texture. Xander now understood why everyone outside was on high alert. They thought the cult was going to come at them head-on.

  "Any quest notifications pop up?" Zoey asked.

  "None."

  "That’s worse," she muttered. "Starlight and Saint Joseph got warnings before their hits. This feels... different."

  "It is," Xander said. "Simulation events play by rules. This smells like payback instead of a monster attack."

  Rex tapped the map once, finger landing just shy of Fort Octave’s edge. "That’s my read. Retaliation. Maybe not full-scale, but targeted. We kicked the nest, and now they’re testing the wire."

  The room settled into a grim quiet. Officers exchanged brief looks. None of them disagreed or interjected again.

  "We've been on high alert all day, but nothing yet," Rex said. "There's nothing more to rehash, so let's move on to diplomatic endeavours."

  By the way Rex had said that last part, Xander had guessed a similar conversation had been taking place all day. Xander doubted one destroyed outpost was a prelude to a cult attack. However, whatever was happening would not end in a large-scale monster attack against Fort Octave. There would have been a quest for the defenders.

  Rex turned toward one officer and gestured toward a new file on the edge of the table. "Starlight’s councilor has indicated that Saint Joseph will send a diplomatic and security team to Starlight for a summit. Discussion topics will be around mutual aid and trade."

  There was a slight scowl on Rex’s face when he said it. The name Saint Joseph had poor memories for both of them.

  They’d rooted out the cult cell inside that Safe Zone, sure. But the mess it left behind had exposed several cracks. Too much had been buried in favors and fake civility. That kind of rot didn’t go away easily even after a leadership change.

  Rex continued, "The councilor from Starlight has invited us to send a delegation back to join the summit."

  Jo raised an eyebrow. "I’m sure your people would be welcome to ride back with us. Could be fun. We’ve got good seats, a limping archer, and enough trauma to fill half a campfire circle."

  "The offer was made. We’ll take it," Rex replied.

  He pushed off from the table, signaling that the meeting was over. "We’ll coordinate the details tomorrow. Rest up."

  "Stan, stand down from alert but keep the sentries doubled for the night," Rex said to one officer leaving the room. "Xander, can you stay a minute, please?"

  Jo turned toward the door without hesitation. "Shower, food, bed. That order."

  "Seconded," Zoey said. "And if someone tries to brief me in the bath, I swear I’ll drown them."

  Kane raised his hand. "Before we break for the night. Does anyone know if there’s a blacksmith around here that can bang my shield back into shape?"

  Xander turned toward him slowly, mock offense painting his face. "Excuse me?"

  Kane blinked. "I mean… yeah, obviously you could fix it. Best smith I know. But like, I just need a temporary fix. Just to hold until we get back to Starlight. That way you can give it the proper love and hammering it deserves."

  Xander narrowed his eyes.

  "Big hammering," Kane said, nodding. "Gentle touch. Precision. You know. Real artisan stuff."

  Jo was already laughing as she walked out.

  "Nice save," Xander said. "Fine. You're right, I’m not touching that thing tonight anyway. Let someone else abuse it."

  Ford stepped around the table and followed the others. "I’m going with them. Could use a meal before I pass out."

  Zoey looked back over her shoulder. "You’re not joining our shower. Let’s be clear."

  "I wasn’t…" Ford stammered, flushing. "That’s not… I didn’t mean…"

  Jo leaned in just enough to poke him in the ribs. "We’re not that kind of adventuring team, Ford."

  Ford looked like he wanted to cast Invisibility and walk through the wall. "I meant the food. Obviously."

  "Sure you did," Zoey said.

  Darvos and the remaining officers filed out in order, a few exchanging glances with Rex and offering crisp nods. None of them looked surprised to leave Xander behind.

  At the doorway, Jo hesitated. Looked back.

  Xander met her gaze and gave her the smallest nod. It’s alright. Go.

  She held it for a moment longer, then turned and followed the others.

  The door clicked shut.

  Rex didn’t speak right away.

  He crossed the room slowly, as if putting off the next sentence just long enough to give both of them a moment to shake off the audience. His boots echoed once on the tile. Then again, softer, as he stopped beside a narrow cabinet in the corner. A quiet click, the soft clink of glass, and he came back with a squat bottle and two mismatched tin cups.

  "Got any of the good stuff?" Xander asked, pulling out one of the leather chairs by the wall.

  "Define good." Rex poured three fingers worth into each. "It gets you drunk and doesn’t make you go blind."

  "Add in a cigar and we'll call it close enough."

  They sat. The chairs weren’t comfortable, but they didn’t creak, and the little table between them looked like it had survived more than one argument between old officers. The drink had a bite, but it didn’t linger.

  For a while, neither said anything.

  Then Rex gave a long exhale of smoke and turned slightly in his seat. "You good?"

  Xander gave a glance, then shrugged. "Define good."

  "I mean it." Rex’s tone was level. "Charging a fortified mine entrance blind? That doesn’t sound like the guy I fought beside in Saint Joseph."

  Xander didn’t answer right away. He let the silence carry while he sipped, let it draw out just enough to organize the memory into something usable. Then he told Rex the story. Not as a formal report, but as a sequence of choices, instincts, and bad timing. Darvos had already covered the basics. What Xander added filled in the missing pieces.

  Rex didn’t interrupt. When it was done, he nodded once.

  "Sounds like you made the right call based on the hand you had," he said. "Hope Cabbot pulls through. I liked her."

  "So do I."

  "Remember when you used her as a decoy to slip back into that ghost dwarf's room?"

  "Decoy!? She actually ate half of my sandwich!"

  Xander glanced toward the office door before continuing. "What about you? I didn’t notice it last time, but this place feels... wired. Like everyone’s waiting for something to pop, and I don't mean this notion of an invasion."

  "You asking as a friend or a representative from another safe zone?" Rex said, not missing a beat.

  "Friend question," Xander said. "Not as Starlight’s representative."

  Rex smirked. "Didn’t think you were running for council. Besides, I was mostly joking."

  "Were you?"

  Rex tilted the cup in his hand. "About fifty percent."

  Another pause. The noise of the soldiers outside seemed louder now that the room had stilled.

  "It’s the little things," Rex said. "The things we never planned on. Sundries, morale rotations, food quality. Most of these men and women have been running ops since the reboot. No leave, rotation, or real downtime."

  "You’ve basically been operating as if on deployment since the reboot?"

  "Exactly. No end date in sight either." Rex glanced at the bottle. "That’s why this summit matters. If Starlight can offer trade or comfort or a damn tavern that doesn’t double as a mess hall, it could take pressure off my people. They need something to fight for beyond surviving another week."

  "Three-day passes. R&R. Reminders that they're still human." Xander said.

  Rex smiled thinly. "Every good soldier needs one. And I’m running out of excuses."

  They sat for a while longer, the weight of that admission settling between them.

  Xander leaned back in the chair and tilted his head. "That brings me to something else. What’s going on with the magic tech? The mine, the mech, the tech scrap the cult keeps sniffing around. What aren’t we seeing?"

  Rex didn’t answer at first. He stood, walked back to the desk, and pulled a slim folder from the drawer. No title on the cover, just an old elastic band holding it closed. He passed it across the table.

  "Operation Catalyst," he said.

  Xander opened it. Typed reports. Maps. Old schematics printed in faint blue lines. Some pages were marked with faded government seals, others with hand-scrawled corrections. None of it looked recent.

  "What the hell? This sort of sounds like the military knew that the reboot was coming?"

  "That's what I believe," Rex confirmed. "Near the end, upper command started pushing out orders for strategic fallback sites and moving around a ton of supplies. I was ordered to rally to this base in case something happened, as you know. What 'something' meant was never explained."

  "But you delayed in Saint Joseph."

  "Yeah. Didn’t get to the site in time because I stopped to help. When I arrived, they had already abandoned the base. Looks as if no one thought to leave a note of where they were going either."

  "Anything left behind?"

  Rex nodded slowly. "Palettes of rations. A bunch of material. A couple of impossibly old-looking but also advanced cannons. They didn't leave a note of where they were going, but they left enough here to start a safe zone."

  Xander turned another page. The schematics shifted from blueprints to terrain overlays. He caught a glimpse of Fort Octave’s region, marked with old grid lines and annotations in faded ink.

  "They knew," Xander said. "Someone did."

  "Maybe not the timeline. But something was coming. These fallback plans weren’t made overnight."

  "You think the cult found something like this? Their own version?"

  "I don’t know," Rex admitted. "But the timing is getting harder to ignore. They keep showing up where these sites used to be. And they’re not wandering. They’re pulling gear. Like they know what they’re looking for."

  "Coincidence doesn’t do this kind of legwork."

  "Exactly."

  Xander flipped to the last page, then closed the folder and set it down. "I’ll see what Thalindra knows when we get back."

  Rex gave him a look. "The Valdren lady?"

  "Yeah. Councilor mentioned her?"

  "She did. Said she looked like something that walked right out of a fantasy."

  Xander smiled faintly. "That’s her."

  A silence settled as Xander focused on his cigar for a moment, trying to center his thoughts. They both knew what the cult was becoming. They’d seen enough of it to stop pretending it was still a fringe movement. The old playbook wasn’t going to cover it.

  "You heard of the Veins of the World?" Xander asked after a few moments.

  Rex shook his head. "Not in anything I've seen."

  "I hadn’t either until a dying cultist muttered it with their last breath."

  Rex's face had a look of contemplation on it before changing to a frown as he spoke up.

  "That phrase means something to him," Rex said. "Let me know if you find anything out."

  "I will."

  "This isn't Fort Octave & Starlight here. This is you and me." Rex added. "You personally need anything and I'll move heaven and earth."

  "I appreciate it and you know I'll do the same."

  The conversation drifted after that. Easier talk, mostly. They fell into a rhythm, trading stories from the weeks since they'd last crossed paths. Xander shared how Jo had once got caught in her own electrical attack mid-fight, and how Zoey had tried to name every monster they fought after old cartoon characters. Rex countered with a tale of a rookie officer who’d baited a burrowing monster nest using beef jerky and half a pack of glow sticks.

  By the time they had reached the bottom of the second bottle, the room had gone quiet again.

  Xander stood, legs slower than usual. Rex mirrored the motion with a grunt and a tilt of his cup.

  "Still alive?" Rex asked.

  "For now."

  Xander paused near the door, then turned back. "We’re going to find them, you know. The cult. Wherever they’ve dug in, whatever they think they’re hiding behind. We’ll drag them into the light and burn it down."

  "Good."

  "And after that…" Xander tapped the folder still lying on the table. "You and me are going to find out what the hell Project Catalyst really was."

  Rex’s eyes didn’t flinch. "And if we don’t like the answer?"

  "Then we break that too."

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