Three weeks had passed since the wall blocked the cave mouth and the vent settled into place. The wind had come down off the hills harder each day and pressed against the barricade at the cave mouth. Inside, the Ironfangs were glad for the innovations the strange little Goblin had brought them. They were warmer and more comfortable than they had ever been in winter. They did not sit idle though. They did what they always did when the season turned. They worked.

  The children were nearly grown now. They were long in the leg and quick in the hand, their voices settling into lower ranges, shoulders filling enough to carry real weight. Their pet dire wolves had come into themselves too. Heavy fur turned the cold aside. Paws spread wide for snow. They could run hard for long stretches without tiring. They were large mounds of muscle, claw, and fang, and they hunted with their riders with a glee and fervor that was unmatched. The change showed up on the meat racks. Hunts that used to limp back thin were coming home with enough meat and hide to matter, because each run paired a young rider with a wolf that did not slow. The tribe could feel the difference when they ate.

  Sable had not grown like her littermates. Her body stretched lean instead of thick, with jet black fur from nose to tail, long legs, and a body built for quickness and grace where her littermates were more power and muscle. When the pack poured down a slope, Sable was a streak that the eye lost between shadows. She could knife through brush where the others had to muscle a path, and she had a habit of appearing exactly where the quarry tried to bolt. Grub fit with her as if they were made for one another. He was small and balanced, and he had already learned that riding was not about squeezing with the knees and hoping. It was about hands that told a story through the leather loop he had lashed around Sable’s chest, weight that shifted before a turn, and trust that ran both ways. He whistled short and Sable checked, turned, or came, head cocked, yellow eyes bright. Their bond tightened with every day.

  Grub had not spent those weeks only in the saddle. He had approached and asked Dravak for two things. He wanted leave to train his earth spells inside the cave walls, and he wanted to join hunts with permission to take the final blow. The first request earned a grunt and a nod, on the condition that he worked with the Builders and did not weaken anything they could not shore up. The second request drew a longer look. “Why?” Dravak asked, sitting forward on his stone seat. “Because, although I am useful as I am,” Grub said, steady, “it is not enough. If I am going to go outside when winter breaks, I need to be more than the goblin who makes vents and bindings. I need to be able to stand on my own. The System rewards kills. I want to see how far it will carry me if I get them.” Dravak held his gaze, then pointed two fingers at the runt’s chest. “You get in the way, and I pull you out by the scruff. You poach kills without clearing it with the hunt leader, and you stop going. Understand?” “I do.”

  He joined the next hunt and learned the System’s favorite lesson by accident rather than theory. The others in the hunting party hamstrung a boar and turned its charge into a stagger. He clicked a palm-sized stone away with

  A day later, the wolves ran another boar ragged and drove it into brush that snagged it to stillness. Grub struck from ten paces with a stone no bigger than his fist. He checked his

  Inside the cave, he did not throw magic around for the sake of it. He worked with the Builders to begin carving a real storage hall off the main chamber. Every morning, he and three Builders chalked a line for the new wall and marked seams that could take a bite.

  When

  The System marked his pace in quiet ways. A soft chime touched his ear when

  When

  

  

  He looked through the options reading each one twice, then read them once more, slowly, weighing the decision carefully.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  He read each line twice as he thought about it.

  He chose

  

  

  

  The first use of the new spell was cautious. He set a grapefruit-sized stone into a notch in the wall at shoulder height, backed up 10 paces, focused on a spot in its heart, and cast. The stone came apart in a fan of shards that rang off the floor and skittered to a stop. The cave went silent. Heads turned toward him. He just grinned back at them. The Builders swore, then stepped back and nodded for him to do it again so they could learn where to stand while he was working. His second use was bolder. He put his palm to the storage wall, picked a point a foot deep in solid rock, and cast. A plate-sized section cracked behind the face and fell away clean, leaving edges that only needed smoothing. By the end of the day, he could open a whole shelf in three careful casts where it would have taken thirty before. With careful planning, this would greatly speed up his excavation of the storage chamber.

  The next hunt that he went on showed the other side of the spell. The wolves drove a deer into a ravine where the walls pressed in. Grub snatched a head-sized stone off the ground, threw it on a shallow arc over the deer’s path, and broke it in the air. The stone shattered explosively, the jagged shards raking the flank and knocking it sideways. He followed up with another small stone from

  Two weeks after his requests, another chime came with the quiet certainty of a stone dropped in a bucket.

  He had reached

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  Another week turned. He shaped more wall. He took more finishing blows. He slept well because there was no point in staying awake to count anything. Out on a run, a boar tried to turn through brush and found a boulder instead. Grub chose a point in that stone at shoulder height, cast, and the side facing the boar shattered into a spray that slapped its head away from a wolf’s flank. The pack flowed around the stumble, taking decisive advantage of the opportunity. He let the others do the crippling and took the last breath with a thrown pebble when it was time.

  Later, a lean gray furred predator nosed the edge of the backtrail. The dire wolves turned and fanned as trained. Grub skimmed a palm-sized stone forward and broke it a stride in front of the animal. The shards cracked earth and stung its muzzle, hitting its eyes and blinding the creature. It bolted clumsily into the forest. They chased it down easily, and when Grub took the final blow with a well aimed

  

  

  He placed the stat points with the same care as a brace under a beam. One into Intelligence for more Mana, one into Wisdom for quicker regeneration, and finally, one into Dexterity because hands that move slightly quicker matter when a wolf lunges or a rock slips. He was closing the pane when the next notice slid up to meet him.

  

  

  He blinked at the new windows floating before him. "I guess Level 5 is when Classes unlock. Let's see what my options are..." he murmured to himself as he began reading the short list.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Grub stared at the words until they blurred, then rubbed his eyes and forced himself to read again, slower this time.

  

  It was tempting. He had spent weeks carving the storage chamber with the Builders, shaping shelves into the wall and smoothing the ground so no meat rack would tilt. He could already picture what it would mean to double that strength. The tribe would have deeper caves, stronger doors, a place that could be called home instead of just a hole in stone. But… in a fight, an

  

  His pulse quickened at the description. Raw destruction. Hurling boulders, splitting ground. He could see it: standing on a ridge, throwing ruin into an enemy line. The stats backed it, too. Intelligence, more than anything else. Power. But

  

  Control. He thought of hunts where boars charged and wolves dragged them down by the hocks. A

  He looked again at the final choice presented to him by the System.

  

  His eyes lingered here the longest. It was marked Special. That alone meant something. He read the description once more.

  Grub let out a slow breath, and considered everything once more. This was not a decision to make lightly. He mulled it over in his head as he read the descriptions over and over again, analyzing the pros and cons of each choice.He had made up his mind. His hand hovered in the air, then closed into a fist.

  

  Steadiness settled under his feet. It was not obvious to the eye, but it was obvious to him. The System kept going. The Class Selection window closed and a sense of fulfillment took its place. He felt like he had taken an important step forward in this world.

  Another window opened in front of his eyes. His eyebrows rose in surprise. The System was being quite generous at Level 5.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  He considered the

  The spells were much stronger asks.

  He chose

  

  

  He immediately felt the change. A grit-thin sheath, almost like sand, raised along his forearms and then sank away, ready to be called. He rubbed his arm and felt smooth skin. He tried casting the new spell, and immediately felt his skin harden where he willed it. He flexed his hands and imagined a boar’s tusk hitting it and glancing enough to give him room to move. It was not bravado. It was math.

  He did not spend the rest of the day staring at System windows. He went back to the wall, back to work.

  Over the course of the three weeks, the newly emerging storage chamber took on the look of a place that had always been there. Racks breathed with the faint lift of smoke headed for the vent. Bins held wood that would catch with one spark instead of hissing and wasting fuel. Tools leaned where they were supposed to instead of in a heap that ate edges and bent teeth. The Builders took quiet pride in it. So did Grub.

  Dravak watched without saying much. He could feel it when he stood near the cave mouth. The cold still pressed, but the tribe did not hunch under it the way they used to. The hunts came back with more good news than bad. The children stood straighter with wolves prowling by their sides. The Builders had calluses that were not the calluses of guards, and that was no insult. The chief did not forget caution, but he nodded once when Grub caught his eye across the fire and did not look away too quickly. Maybe, just maybe, this runt was the harbinger of good things to come. He felt an anticipation rising in his chest for when winter finally broke. The Ironfang tribe would emerge stronger than his rivals would expect, and he would use that to his advantage and benefit. He grinned wickedly, already planning the raids in his head.

  By the end of the third week, the work had settled into a comfortable rhythm. Heat sat in the cave without choking. The wolves slept in knots of fur with children’s hands in their ruffs. The racks kept meat dry. The bins kept wood ready. The small chimes kept coming, not in a rush, but one at a time, each saying he had used what he had well enough to use it better.

  Grub stood at the mouth of the storage chamber he had helped carve and listened to the fire cracking, its smoke lazily drifting upwards and drawing up the vent. He ran a hand along Sable’s neck and felt the wolf lean into it, solid and whippy under the fur. He could picture the forest with snow sagging the branches and ice on the stream. He could also picture it when the thaw came and the paths became passable. He wanted that day. He wanted to step past the mouth of the cave not as a problem to be guarded, but as a piece of the answer.

  When winter broke, he meant to walk the forest where he had been reborn, with Sable under him and earth under his feet, certain that what he had built and learned would carry its weight.