We left at first light.

  The yard still carried the scars of the wave—blackened earth, warped metal near the gate, patches where acid had eaten deep enough that nothing would ever grow again. The abode had held, but it felt thinner now, like the structure had spent something it could never get back.

  Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the metal walls in thin, uneven beams, catching on drifting motes of ash and dust. Where solid steel had once formed clean lines, there were now irregular holes and warped plates—edges eaten into jagged scars by the devourer’s acid. Some openings were small enough to look almost delicate. Others were wide enough that you could see straight through to the ruined field beyond.

  Another demon wave in thirty-six hours wasn’t a countdown anymore. It was a warning. Stay, and we’d be tested again under worse conditions. Leave, and we’d finally see what the system had been pressing us toward since the raid appeared. Or so we hoped.

  But we weren’t going to the raid yet. First, we needed an escape. That was where Glenn came in.

  “Just checking—you have it all, yeah?” I asked.

  He looked at me like I was stupid. “It’s in my inventory.”

  These days, carrying things was easy enough. It wasn’t the gemstone or the star cluster I worried about though—it was the stingers. He had over a dozen of them, and I often spotted him messing with them and they were usually… not in his inventory.

  “Pass out the vessels,” I said.

  It was what Glenn called them, and no matter what I said, I knew he’d keep using that word. Everyone took one reluctantly. Soon enough, we’d be piercing our flesh to fill them. An unpleasant thought.

  “We may not be coming back here,” Lucas said quietly as we stepped out of the battered fortification and onto the mangled asphalt road. A deep groove cut through it where the devourer had dragged its body across the ground.

  We moved out in formation—not a full combat spread, but not relaxed either. Alan and Richard took point. Marcus walked beside them, the Amulet of Deferred Suffering hidden beneath his armor. The rest of us filled in naturally, roles long since ingrained.

  It was a quiet morning. Sixth Sense stayed low but persistent at the edge of my awareness. A pressure was building as we moved—the same sensation I’d felt before the wave accelerated, before the timer adjusted. Not danger, exactly. More like building threat.

  The world felt attentive. Heavy. The distant demonic eye floated on the horizon, always watching. The blood-red sky pressed down on us, dull and oppressive, though it was easier to bear in the daylight.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The site Jessica had chosen revealed itself gradually—a shallow rise off the road, broken stone outcroppings on three sides, sparse trees twisted by age and decay. A rusted metal fence lay collapsed, torn from its hinges and shoved aside like trash.

  Even before all this, it had clearly been abandoned.

  Richard moved forward first, surveying the area with his shield resting against his shoulder. “I like it,” he said. “Nothing about it screams important.”

  “Comforting,” Anna replied dryly.

  We didn’t waste time, following the crumbling dirt road into a small, forgotten enclave. The house there was mostly demolished—front door gone, roof sagging, windows shattered. It was unremarkable, which was exactly what we wanted.

  “Around the back,” Jessica said, already moving. She took her scouting position without waiting for confirmation.

  We followed and found ourselves behind the pitiful structure. Jessica stopped at what looked like an old root cellar—or maybe a wine cellar—ripped the rotting wooden doors free, and disappeared inside.

  It wasn’t spacious, but we could all fit tightly. That mattered. If we ever had to use this together, no one would be left half-in, half-out. I didn’t know if that was possible, but the system had taught me not to rule out stupid outcomes.

  “Perfect!” was what Glenn said when he saw it.

  I suspected he might have said that no matter where we placed it, but this was out of sight—unlikely to be stumbled upon, damaged, or deactivated. It was a lifeline we needed to protect at all costs. Short of leaving someone behind, this was the best we could do.

  Glenn knelt immediately and pulled out his own vessel. He drove the tip into the packed earth, carving careful circular grooves that he filled with the star cluster. The gemstone fragment rested neatly at the center of the diagram, pulsing with restrained power.

  One by one, we pierced our palms and fed a small amount of blood into the stingers before passing them to Glenn. He set each one point-down into the channels, their open ends holding the blood like shallow cups. The structure wasn’t large, but it demanded precision. When he finished, the stingers formed a partial ring angled inward, embedded in the soil and ready to feed their contents through the star cluster and into the gemstone fragment.

  Glenn stood, wiped sweat from his brow, and began muttering a spell under his breath.

  Slowly, the teleporter came to life.

  The gemstone fragment lifted, light bleeding into the channels beneath it. The star cluster anchored the construct, tying it to something deeper than geography.

  The hum settled once it stabilized—low and steady.

  “Each of you add a little MP,” Glenn said. “To finalize the connection.”

  We went one at a time. A drop of blood. A pulse of mana. A brief moment of resistance—like the structure was acknowledging us before letting go.

  Then it was done.

  We stepped back together. No one said what we were all thinking: using the teleporter meant something had gone catastrophically wrong.

  We left it behind without ceremony and moved on. The plan was to rest near the demon compound, then strike before sunrise.

  If this really was the end of the abode, there was no home for us to return to. It was a terrifying thought that none of us said out loud.

  But the thought followed us all the same—

  There was no turning back now.