The farmhouse made a lot more sense on the way out.

  Xander stepped out first. He didn’t remember climbing the stairs from the basement, but there he was with his boots sinking slightly into the muddy, dead grass of the yard. The air was colder now as a light, chilly rain fell.

  Still, the numbers didn’t add up. Too many cots and empty bowls. Not enough bodies.

  What happened to the rest?

  He pushed the thought aside before the Simulation gave him a quest to find out. It was not a mystery he had time to solve.

  The others followed one by one, each marked in their own way. Ford’s robes were still scorched. Kane’s shield bore a molten handprint that hadn’t quite cooled. Jo, like Xander, appeared to be lost in her own thoughts. And Zoey... she was stone silent, bow in hand, sharp-eyed and watching everything. She had no quips about the situation they'd just experienced. That worried him more than anything.

  Behind them, the two men they’d pulled out of the dungeon emerged carrying a heavy burden between them.

  Xander turned toward the field beside the barn, taking in the burial pit. The cataclysm handed out a lot of bad endings. Nobody deserved that one.

  The survivors didn’t say a word, just moved to gather all of their fallen companions in one place. There was no choice for it, they had no wagon or other method of transporting the bodies. The next best thing would be to bury them at the farmhouse.

  Xander began clearing a patch of dirt with a survival shovel from his bushcraft belt. The tool’s pick end punched through dirt and old roots. Jo joined him after a beat, her silence sharp enough to cut with. Kane tossed his shield down and grabbed a rusted shovel propped beside the barn’s collapsed door.

  Ford took the opportunity to meditate and periodically cast healing spells while the group worked in silence.

  The digging was slow. Roots snarled like veins in the soil and fought them for every inch. But the graves took shape. A row of rectangles several feet deep, spaced side by side.

  Zoey stood facing the tree line, bow lowered but not slung, as bounced from one foot to the other and paced back and forth several feet. She was still running on adrenaline, nerves probably stripped raw after what she’d seen in the Envelope.

  When they lowered the last body, one survivor finally spoke.

  "Micah was my cousin. The others were... were like brothers." He paused, jaw working as if he were chewing something too bitter to swallow.

  He stepped back from the grave. The other survivor remained beside the fresh earth, staring down with both arms clutched around his ribs as if something might still climb out if he didn’t hold it in.

  Ford cast sanctify over the graves and the adjacent pit.

  [Sanctify] Target area purified.

  They covered the graves together.

  Only when the last bit of disturbed soil was tamped flat did Xander speak. "Name’s Xander Kell. We came here tracking a threat. Looks like you walked into the middle of it."

  The older gentleman nodded. "We weren’t trying to. Name’s Ephraim Lantz. This here’s Caleb Borkholder."

  Caleb looked up briefly, eyes rimmed red, but nodded. "Thanks. For... all of it."

  Xander offered a brief incline of the head. Nothing more needed saying.

  "We’re from Prairiehold," Ephraim added after a moment’s hesitation. "It’s two days southeast."

  "Prairiehold," Zoey echoed from the edge of the yard. "Never heard of it."

  "You probably wouldn’t have," Ephraim said, tone steady but not unfriendly. "Even before all of this mess, we were a pretty self-sufficient community."

  "You’re in luck. Your route back puts us just over half a day from Starlight. We’ll pass close. Could resupply there, maybe flag a ride." Xander said, studying his field map.

  He tapped a point near the crease of the worn map, tracing the faint route Victor had been suspected of taking. Prairiehold sat almost a full day south-southwest of Starlight. It was close enough to matter to Starlight regarding regional stability. The sooner JT knew about this secluded safe zone, the better. Cutting east toward Starlight would only add half a day of travel. Probably one full day by the time they resupplied.

  "No," Ephraim said immediately.

  Zoey turned fully now, bow still lowered, expression neutral. "You sure about that? We just dragged your ass out of a boss fight with a dungeon full of fire Orks. Might be time to take help where you can get it."

  "We’re grateful," the older man said, steady but firm. "But we need to get back. Fast. If danger’s coming, Prairiehold has to be ready."

  He paused, then added, quieter, "We don’t involve outsiders in our affairs. Prairiehold handles its own."

  Caleb shifted uncomfortably but didn’t contradict him.

  Jo stepped forward before Zoey could fire back. "Did Prairiehold used to be the village of Arthur?"

  Xander glanced over.

  Jo met Ephraim’s gaze. "Before the reboot, there was a large Amish community called Arthur in this region. That the origin point?"

  Ephraim’s jaw tightened. "Yes."

  "That explains a lot," Jo said, backing off with a shrug. "Insular, self-reliant, off the grid even before the grid went dark. You’re not hostile, just... not interested in relying on others."

  "That’s dumb." Zoey said, "Ninety percent of the global population is gone and you want to go it alone?"

  Jo gave her a look. "Doesn't rural Alaska have communities like that too?"

  Zoey turned, bow slung across her shoulder now. "Yeah, I remember. Some native villages didn’t want help because every time the ‘outside’ showed up, it just made things worse."

  Her voice had lost some of its sharp edge.

  "Fair," she added after a beat, then nodded to Ephraim. "Still dumb, though."

  Ephraim’s mouth twitched as if he were almost willing to smile.

  Caleb cleared his throat. "We just... want to get home. Fast. If this Victor fellow is anywhere near Prairiehold, we have to warn them. We can’t lose more."

  Xander looked at the others. No one argued.

  "Then we travel for the next couple of hours. I want distance between us and this place before we make camp," Xander said, glancing at the sun moving across the sky. "Two-day hike if we push steady and nothing decides to crawl out of the trees and eat us."

  Everyone turned in unison, giving him the same incredulous look as if he’d just challenged the Simulation to prove him wrong on the spot.

  Xander didn’t blink. "Okay, yes, I said it out loud. But technically, I didn’t name the kind of surprise, so the Simulation can’t trigger anything specific. Right?"

  No one looked convinced as they moved out.

  The fields had gone muddy from the steady drizzle, just enough to soak boots and darken coats without offering the decency of a full storm. As they pushed southwest, the sky stretched out into the signature midwestern gray that made the horizon feel like a lid. Fence posts leaned like broken teeth across abandoned farms, and every mile carried the scent of wet earth and rot.

  Power lines sagged between leaning poles, wires drooping low enough to brush the tops of rusted mailboxes.

  They’d been walking for nearly an hour when Xander caught a shape high above in the clouds. It was only a speck at first, too far to judge scale, but the motion was unmistakable. Wide wings. Arched back. Almost birdlike, except heavier and more deliberate in its flight.

  Gryphon?

  Maybe.

  He tracked it for several seconds, but the creature never descended. Just moved on like a ghost in the clouds.

  The thought of a mount drifted across his thoughts again. Something fast. Mobile. Badass. Capable of tracking across terrain they couldn’t afford to slog. He'd received a quest to find a mount, so maybe the Simulation already had something in mind. Was he supposed to find any mount or were there specific mounts for the Crusader class?

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Another mystery for later.

  The sound of someone swearing behind him snapped his focus back to ground level.

  Zoey had stopped mid-step, digging through her pack like a raccoon in a vending machine. Bits of gear clattered quietly until she pulled free a cloth-wrapped bundle the size of a thick book. She peeled it back with a wince.

  "Oh crap," she said. "Forgot about this."

  Xander raised a brow. "That better not be a cursed item."

  She stepped up and passed him the bundle. "Smoldersteel. Half a dozen bars."

  He blinked. "Seriously?"

  Zoey nodded. "From Lurgha's fight chest. Phase three was… a lot. We bailed fast, and I didn’t want to discuss loot in front of our new friends."

  Xander nodded and tucked the bundle into his bushcraft belt without another word. That made a full dozen bars between what they had scraped from the Orks and what Zoey had just handed over. He didn’t know what he could forge with it yet, but for the first time since the siege of Starlight, the thought of making something, building instead of breaking, actually sounded good.

  "No other gear?" Xander asked under his breath.

  Zoey shook her head. "Nothing we could use. A hatchet with a bleed effect and a medallion that offered extra fire protection… if you were already on fire." She paused. "Which, to be fair, might’ve helped."

  "Maybe we'll throw it on Kane next time and light him up."

  She grinned. "He’d love that."

  A few more steps passed before she jabbed an elbow at him. "Also, just gonna say it. Losing your spear and forgetting the loot? That’s like, amateur hour. You good?"

  He gave her a sideways look. "I was busy fighting a trauma dump shaped like myself. Plus, I got my spear back."

  "Yeah, and it still kicked your ass."

  The laugh that followed wasn’t loud, but it was real. It traveled down the line, lightening something that had been far too heavy since they climbed out of that basement.

  The moment passed, but the balance had shifted. The rhythm of the party clicked back into place. Step, step, breath. The silence the group had been walking under twisted from a group of people working through some trauma to the type of group who was enjoying each other's company.

  The next landmark came just before sunset.

  Xander saw the outpost from the ridge. Burned walls, a collapsed roof, and the remains of what had once been watch platforms that were now no more than charred stumps. It had to be Fort Octave’s outpost that Rex had told them about.

  Char was still thick in the soil. Defensive posts splintered inward, not outward. Blackened claw marks raked one wall clean down the side, cutting through the militia symbol that had been stenciled there. Ford studied the edges of the wreckage, hand skimming just above the scorched ground. His frown said enough.

  Ephraim and Caleb stood frozen a few feet back, expressions blank. Xander didn’t need to ask why.

  "You knew this place?" He asked.

  Ephraim nodded once. "Passed through here. Weeks ago. They gave us an updated road path to avoid the Ork push east."

  Zoey crouched near one post, fingers brushing a clean burn through the support. "This wasn’t Orks. Looks like Rex might be right, the cult might have done this."

  "I had thought maybe we'd stop here for the night, but I don't think we want to stay in this place," Xander said. "We've got a bit of light left, and I think I can see a grain elevator in the distance."

  No one argued.

  By full dark, they’d made camp under the remains of a small grain storage facility three miles south of the destroyed outpost. Roof intact, if barely. The wind kept close, whistling through broken slats and rusted screws. A thin plume of smoke drifted upward from their small fire, barely enough to cook with, but enough to keep morale from cracking.

  Caleb and Ephraim stayed quiet, eating what rations were handed to them. They didn’t volunteer stories. But they didn’t look like they had many left to tell.

  Xander sat apart from the group, boots planted just outside the reach of the flames. He wasn't avoiding his friends. He just wanted to be far enough away from the flames so that his night vision would kick in. The immediate area might be safe, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  The events from the boss's third stage still lingered behind his eyes.

  Lurgha’s voice hadn’t followed him out of the dungeon, but its weight had. Every judgment, every failure, every moment replayed until the edges felt dull and familiar. He’d made peace with most of it already. But hearing it weaponized... that hit differently.

  He stared out across the open field while catching his companions out of the corner of his eye. Ford leaned against his staff with his eyes closed, head nodding slightly as he cycled through another meditation rhythm. Jo was sharpening her blade with slow, methodical strokes. Kane poked at something in a pan that Zoey had insisted was rabbit, though no one had seen her shoot one.

  The survivors stayed close to the co-op wall. Still not quite part of the group.

  And then the air shifted.

  It started subtly. A distortion just at the edge of vision. It was just a shimmer, like someone had peeled reality open by an inch.

  Xander sat up.

  The shimmer thickened, condensed, and then, like fog drawing breath, something took form in the space between the fire and the creek.

  Cabbot.

  She blinked into existence slowly, her edges ghost-thin, then fuller, more solid with every heartbeat. Her fur had a faint translucence at the edges, like the spirit realm hadn't fully let her go. But her shape was unmistakable.

  She looked tired in a way no creature made of magic and stubbornness should ever look.

  Xander froze.

  The spear slipped from his hand and landed softly against the dirt. His hands moved as if someone else had control of them, reaching forward and waiting to scoop her up.

  Cabbot padded the last few feet and dropped into his lap as if she’d never left.

  He didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. Just let one hand move across her head, fingers settling behind the ears.

  Cabbot let out a low huff and tucked herself tighter against him. Her eyes half-lidded, tail wrapped around her paws.

  Jo noticed first. She gave him a small smile from across the fire. A flicker of warmth beneath all that iron and steel she had built up around her. It was the look of someone who understood what it meant to lose something and get it back. Especially given Xander's love of cats.

  Zoey looked up from her bowl and started humming. "But the cat came back, she couldn't stay away…"

  Ford opened his eyes, and for a moment, the hard lines of his face relaxed. "Welcome back," he said, voice light. "You were missed."

  Cabbot didn’t respond, but her eyes tracked the cleric with faint interest before drifting shut again.

  Later, after dinner had been eaten and the fire had burned down to a steady glow, Zoey leaned back against a busted water barrel and jabbed a thumb at Xander.

  "You know what you need?" she said. "That gryphon we saw earlier as a mount. Did you catch the lightning trailing off its wings?"

  Xander glanced up from where Cabbot was still curled in his lap. "Do what now?"

  "A mount. Like a proper one. Everyone else is out here with wagons or reindeer or whatever, and you’ve got us still sprinting across the continent like an over-caffeinated retriever."

  Kane barked a laugh. "He does jog like he’s chasing a thrown stick."

  "I hate all of you," Xander said flatly, not moving.

  Jo grinned. "They’re not wrong. We need to get some horses, and you need to find your quest mount."

  Xander opened his mouth to protest, but Caleb spoke first.

  "There’s... something," the younger man said, hesitating. "Near Prairiehold. Some folks see it out in the fields. Always around dusk."

  Ephraim’s head snapped up. "Caleb."

  The name hit like a warning shot. Caleb fell quiet immediately.

  Jo, to her credit, kept her voice easy, but Xander could tell she wanted to take Ephraim to task. "What kind of something? Horse? Moose? Reindeer with a bad attitude?"

  Caleb looked as if he were weighing options. Eventually, he gave a small shrug. "They say it’s horse-shaped. Pale. Real pale. Almost silver. But it never leaves tracks. Shows up at the edge of the fields sometimes."

  Zoey blinked. "Okay, that’s creepy."

  "It’s just nonsense," Ephraim said. "Stories get exaggerated over time. People have been claiming to see it since the reboot. It's probably just a white horse that got loose at some point."

  Xander didn’t press. He just stored the details. Filed it alongside a dozen other things he wasn’t sure he believed in until the world had forced him to.

  A pale mount watching from the fields. Yeah, that didn't sound right.

  He glanced down at Cabbot. She was sound asleep now, small chest rising steadily.

  "Go ahead and rack out, everyone. I'll take the first watch," Xander said.

  The others didn’t argue. One by one, bedrolls unrolled, packs checked, weapons placed within easy reach. Kane snored first. Zoey muttered something about ghost horses and took the far corner. Jo gave Xander a long look before turning in.

  Cabbot stayed curled in his lap until the fire dipped low and the cold moved in again.

  They broke camp at dawn and moved without ceremony. Prairiehold was still a ways out. The road turned rough as fields gave way to stretches of woodland and fence lines swallowed by vines and rust. They passed a rusted-out combine half-buried in the earth, the tines of its corn head sunk deep like it had tried to claw its way out when the world ended.

  Midday brought a brief skirmish. Gnolls came darting through an old drainage ditch like rabid dogs on two legs. Kane met the charge, shield high, while Jo cut their flanks and Zoey dropped two before they cleared the shrubs. The battle was as quick as it was forgettable.

  The undead weren’t.

  They came in the dead of night, just after the second watch change. Only a dozen husks, ragged and fast, drawn to the fire and smell of life like moths to kindling. What made the encounter memorable was that one of the husks wore a bonnet.

  Ford was the first to move, chanting a sharp burst of holy fire that lit the lead corpse like dry paper. The rest fell to blade and spell, but even after the bodies stopped twitching, the scent of scorched death hung too long in the cold air.

  Xander slept in fits and starts after that.

  They pushed harder on the second day.

  The terrain rose in slow, uneven waves. The Midwest had a reputation for being extremely flat, but in reality it was slow rolling hills that didn’t look steep until your knees were screaming. Jo spotted an old railway tower in the distance and used it to orient their route southwest. Caleb stayed close to Ephraim. The older man hadn’t spoken much since the last watch, and even that silence had weight.

  Then came the ridge covered in scrub and half-frozen grass. As they crested it, the land dropped away into a shallow basin carved by old glacial movement and the grind of time. Prairiehold sat at its center.

  It wasn’t on the same site as the village of Arthur, but like Starlight, it had absorbed key buildings in a cluster on one edge of the ruins.

  Reinforced farmsteads huddled close together inside makeshift palisade walls, constructed from scavenged wood, scrap iron, and what looked like old utility poles. A windmill turned in the distance. But there was almost no movement. No one in the fields. No patrols on the roads. Unless you were right on top of it, no one likely would have noticed it because they would have written it off at a glance as part of the ruins .

  Ephraim and Caleb slowed.

  Xander watched as the last hundred yards unspooled before them. Dry grass, broken fences, old tire tracks, broken buildings. There was a border fence ahead, lower than the safe zone wall that looked to be meant more for animals than people. Four guards stood at a raised gate on a scaffold built from sheet metal and barn beams.

  They didn’t wait for identification. As soon as the guards had seen the group approaching, one guard had turned to run back inside the safe zone while the other three drew their weapons.

  Xander was startled as an arrow fired from the palisade further back struck the ground inches from his boot.

  He stopped immediately, hand lowering but not reaching for a weapon. Jo was already between him and the front, sword in hand. Kane and Zoey flanked without thinking.

  "Turn around!" one guard shouted. "You’re not welcome here. Outsiders keep moving!"

  [Crusader's Righteousness] You gain a general sense that a goal is in the westerly direction.

  West. Not inside the walls.

  Well, at least Victor and the cult weren't already in Prairiehold, Xander thought to himself. So at least this wasn't another Saint Joseph situation.

  He looked back at Caleb and Ephraim.

  The younger man looked stunned, while Ephraim stared ahead with his jaw tight.

  "I was afraid they’d already made the decision." He finally said.

  He looked at the guards.

  "They’ve closed the gate."

  Rowlf from The Muppets singing it. That slightly chaotic, cheerful inevitability of it. The indestructible cat. The universe throws everything at it and it still comes back as its still utterly, unapologetically itself. It is the goofy smile the cat gives the camera as it walks back across that gets me every time.