Chương 6: “Something Comes”

It came at 3am and it was not subtle. A Seeker, one of the things that hunted loose dungeon cores, old and purpose-built and wrong. It moved through the garden wall without slowing. It had been tracking him for weeks. It had found him. He went out through the closet before it reached the house. They met in the garden. He destroyed it in four seconds. Efficient. The kind of destruction that doesn't leave anything to find in the morning, which was the point.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. He stood in the garden afterward. He thought: that was the first one. There would be others. He was degraded and bound and still only partially reclaimed and something had sent this Seeker and something would send more. He needed to be faster. He needed more floors. He thought all of this. Then he went upstairs and stood in the doorway of June's room. She was asleep.

Completely, no part of her still in the waking world, no held breath or braced shoulder. Her fist was curled around the spare pillow just like it had been curled around him that first night. Something had moved in his core while the Seeker was in the garden. It wasn't fear, he knew fear, he had made fear for three thousand years and knew its texture exactly. This was different. Aimed at something specific. He was not afraid for himself. He did not examine this.

He fixed the garden fence before dawn and went back to the windowsill.