Anxiety was spreading through the rescue group like static electricity.

  People shifted their weight, checked weapons that didn’t need checking, and kept glancing toward the bush-lined road that led to town. Smoke wasn’t visible from here, but everyone knew it was there. Everyone knew time mattered.

  That was exactly why Zane had forced them to stop.

  “Enough,” he’d said, loud and sharp, cutting through the murmurs. “We do this properly, or we don’t do it at all.”

  It hadn’t been popular.

  But it had worked.

  Zane, Bell, Emma, and Liam had taken control quickly, turning nervous energy into movement and movement into structure. Names were called. Levels checked. Skills confirmed. Arguments shut down before they could start.

  They split the group into parties of five.

  On paper, it looked clean. In reality, it was messy.

  There were too many frontline fighters—people who had survived yesterday because they were big, stubborn, or angry enough to keep swinging. Shields, axes, bats, spears. Plenty of those.

  Healers, though?

  Not nearly enough.

  Support skills were rare, and proper healing skills even rarer. Emma noticed it immediately, her mouth tightening as she quietly adjusted team lists, trying to spread what little healing capacity they had as thinly—and fairly—as possible.

  Emma and Liam joined parties made up mostly of people from the twins’ birthday gathering. People they trusted. People who listened. Each team was balanced as best as it could be: one frontline, one support if they were lucky, the rest ranged.

  Lucky was not a word anyone would have used.

  In the end, the numbers simply didn’t divide evenly.

  Zane looked over the remaining names, then glanced at Bell and Kai. June stood nearby, quiet as ever, her scouting icon faintly visible when she focused.

  “Well,” Zane said finally, folding his arms. “Looks like we’re an odd lot.”

  Bell snorted. “We’ve been worse.”

  Kai nodded once. “With June scouting ahead, we don’t need a fifth. Speed matters more.”

  June gave a small shrug. “I can keep you out of trouble. Mostly.”

  That settled it.

  Zane, Bell, Kai, and June formed their own party.

  Once the parties were set, they took the next step—splitting the twenty teams into five larger groups, four parties per group. That way, even if a single party got separated or overwhelmed, there would always be at least one healer somewhere nearby.

  It wasn’t perfect.

  But it was smart.

  Zane stood in front of them once more, eyes sweeping across the crowd. These weren’t soldiers. They were parents, teenagers, tradies, retirees. People who, two days ago, had worried about nothing more dangerous than bills or weather.

  Now they were armed and heading into a monster-infested town.

  “Listen up,” Zane said, voice steady, grounded. “We move as groups until we hit town limits. Then we split and sweep. Find people. Stabilise them. Escort them out.”

  He paused, letting that sink in.

  “This is not a supply run,” he added firmly. “You see something useful, you mark it. You leave it. We don’t die because someone wanted a fridge or a generator.”

  A few sheepish looks answered that.

  “Good,” Zane said. “Then let’s go get our people.”

  The group moved out, boots crunching against dirt and leaf litter as they jogged into the bush. Formation tightened naturally, scouts ranging ahead, ranged fighters watching the tree line, shields and heavy hitters anchoring the centre.

  For the first time since the decision to go had been made, the anxiety shifted.

  Not gone.

  But focused.

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  And that made all the difference.

  Ahead of them, somewhere beyond the trees, smoke curled into the sky.

  And they were coming for whoever was still alive beneath it.

  June raised her fist.

  The signal rippled backward instantly—quiet, clean, practiced far better than any of them had a right to be after two days of chaos. The jog slowed to a halt, boots sliding into cover along the tree line at the edge of town.

  Zane crouched beside a fallen log, peering past June through a gap in the foliage.

  Smoke curled lazily into the sky from the town centre, darker and thicker than it had any right to be. The air smelled wrong—like someone had left meat on a BBQ overnight.

  June exhaled slowly. “Contact,” she whispered. “Small group. Goblins. Six, maybe seven. They’re looting the servo.”

  Bell tilted her head, listening. “No alarm cries yet?”

  “None,” June replied. “They’re scattered. Arrogant.”

  “Then we hit fast,” Zane said. He glanced back at the other parties fanning out behind them, each group waiting for the signal

  ________________________________

  Max, Kaitlyn, and their friends reached the Dungeon Cube just in time to hear Lily poking at Tarni, her voice light and deliberately teasing.

  “Oh come on, Tarn,” she said, hands on her hips. “If you glare any harder at that wall, it’s going to file a complaint with the system.”

  Tarni opened his mouth, irritation already rising to the surface.

  “I am not—”

  He stopped.

  teenagers.

  His eyes flicked past Lily and locked onto the small group approaching—Max, Kaitlyn, Skippy half-hidden between them, and their friends hovering just a step behind. Tarni closed his eyes for a brief second, took a slow breath, and when he opened them again the sharp edge was gone.

  The familiar, mild smile slid into place.

  “Hey,” he called out, voice calm and even. “What are you lot doing here?”

  The effect was immediate. Sam stiffened. Hayden subtly shifted back a half-step. Even Mia hesitated, eyes flicking to the black cube behind Tarni before returning to his face.

  Only Max didn’t flinch.

  “Hi, Tarn. Hi, Lily,” Max said easily, the same steady confidence he’d reclaimed somewhere in the last twelve hours. “We’ve been given a mission to help you two here.”

  Tarni blinked. Once.

  Lily’s grin widened like she’d just been handed a gift.

  “That’s great!” she said, clapping her hands together before Tarni could respond. “We’re very glad you came to help us, aren’t we, Tarni?”

  She shot him a sideways look that dared him to disagree.

  “Yes,” Tarni said after a beat, the corner of his mouth twitching despite himself. “Yes, we are.”

  Lily stepped closer to the kids, crouching slightly to put herself more at their level. “And,” she added brightly, “you can tell us what’s been going on with everyone else. We’ve been stuck out here guarding the door, completely starved of gossip.”

  Skippy peeked out from behind Max just enough to look at Lily, then immediately ducked back again.

  Tarni noticed.

  His smile softened—just a fraction.

  “Alright,” he said, folding his arms and leaning back against the cube. “Looks like we’ve got company. Let’s hear it.”

  And for the first time since Zane and the others had left for town, the dungeon entrance felt a little less tense.

  _________________________________________

  Tash was not happy.

  She’d been hoping—counting—on ending up in the same party as June, but somehow the system, the organisers, or sheer bad luck had dumped her into a completely different section of the rescue force. Worse, as one of the few healers available, she hadn’t really had a choice in the matter.

  So she swallowed it.

  No complaining. No sulking. She was a big girl.

  She followed her assigned party as they moved cautiously toward the south side of town, sticking close to walls and broken fences, stepping over shattered glass and abandoned bags. Smoke still drifted lazily through the streets, stinging her nose and tightening her chest.

  They slipped past their first group of hobgoblins without incident, the monsters too busy smashing a storefront further down the street to notice them. The reminder from Zane echoed clearly in Tash’s head.

  Rescue mission. Not a supply run. Not a fight.

  For a few blessed minutes, everyone seemed to remember that.

  Then the whispering started.

  “It wouldn’t slow us down much,” someone murmured. “Just a quick stop. My house is right there.”

  Tash turned sharply and found herself facing an elderly woman she barely knew, clutching a small goblin bow with white-knuckled hands.

  “I just want the family photo albums,” the woman whispered urgently. “My whole life’s in those scrapbooks.”

  “No,” Tash hissed back, keeping her voice low but firm. “We’re here to find and rescue people, not grab stupid keepsakes.”

  The words left her mouth and she knew—immediately—they were the wrong ones.

  The woman’s face flushed a deep, angry red.

  “Stupid keepsakes?” she suddenly shouted. “My life is in those scrapbooks!”

  Tash lunged forward, panic spiking. “Be quiet! Keep it down—”

  The woman jabbed a finger hard into Tash’s chest and kept yelling, her voice echoing far too loudly through the empty street.

  The rest of the group didn’t hesitate.

  They backed away.

  One by one, they slipped around the corner of the house they’d just passed, weapons up, eyes wide—leaving Tash and the shouting woman exposed.

  Too exposed.

  None of them noticed the three hobgoblins that had been shadowing them from a distance.

  The attack came fast.

  The first hobgoblin rounded the corner in a blur of muscle and rusted metal and smashed into the nearest ranged fighter. The impact was sickening. A single, brutal swing crushed the man’s head, dropping him lifelessly to the ground before he even had time to scream.

  The street exploded into chaos.

  The two frontline tanks rushed forward, raising their homemade shields just in time as the remaining hobgoblins barreled into them. Wood splintered. Metal rang.

  The elderly woman—the last ranged attacker—froze.

  She stared at the fight, eyes wide, bow hanging uselessly at her side.

  Tash ran.

  She pushed toward the tanks, already calling up her healing skill, but the third hobgoblin broke away and stepped directly into her path, snarling. She skidded to a halt, heart hammering, unable to get past it.

  She watched helplessly as one of the tanks took a heavy blow from the side. There was a sharp crack—bone breaking—and the man screamed as his shield arm bent at an unnatural angle.

  The sound drew his partner’s attention.

  He turned his head.

  That was all it took.

  A hobgoblin struck him from behind, then another from the front. The shields dropped. The screams didn’t last long.

  Both men fell.

  Dead.

  The street went eerily quiet.

  Tash spun toward the woman, breath ragged, ready to scream, “RUN!”

  The words died in her throat.

  The woman was already running.

  She was halfway down the street, bow discarded, not once looking back.

  “That bitch,” Tash swore, her voice shaking with rage and terror.

  And then the hobgoblin in front of her smiled.