I moved.
Didn't wait for the System. Didn't wait for a prompt. Didn't wait for the golem to acknowledge me.
It wouldn't.
Didn't matter.
I sprinted left across the arena, boots slipping in goblin blood, pain spiking through my half-healed thigh with every stride. The thing tracked the node, not me, so I hit it from the flank.
I slammed the hatchet into its knee like a monkey, trying to cut down a mountain.
Thunk.
Like hitting a well... stone.
The blow knocked a chip of rock off the outside edge of its calf. Barely a scratch. It didn't even pause.
It just rotated slightly. Not to face me, to correct the course.
Like I was wind resistant.
"Oh no you fucking don't," I growled.
I ran again. Circled wide. Screamed at it. Threw a half-eaten squirrel.
The golem kept walking.
Toward the node. Toward my pile of blood and bone. Toward everything I'd built to make it to this moment.
I cut in front of it.
That did something.
Its head twitched. Shoulders shifted. Like maybe the pathfinding finally logged me as terrain.
Then the arm came up.
It wasn't fast. Just inevitable.
I dove under it. That thing lands and I'm paste.
Stone missed my face by inches, and shattered part of the arena wall behind me.
Debris stung the side of my head. I rolled through it and came up on hands and knees, coughing blood and brick dust.
And the golem, turning back toward the node.
No.
No, no, no.
I forced myself upright.
I ran.
Not because I had a plan. Not because I saw an opening.
I ran because if I stopped moving, it would walk straight through me and everything I'd stacked onto that crystal, all the limbs, all the ribs and meat and spite-packed corpses, and end this whole farce in a single step.
So I ran.
My boots slid on cracked stone and puddled blood. I vaulted over a goblin torso I barely remembered killing. I cut behind the node, angled hard right, and came around from the opposite side.
The golem adjusted.
Slow. Measured.
It didn't lurch or flinch or get confused. Just... shifted its path by a few degrees and kept walking. Like a train switching tracks. Like nothing I did changed its destination, only the route.
I grabbed a half-broken javelin from the ground and threw it.
It bounced off the thing's shoulder with all the impact of a thrown pencil.
"Fucking hell," I gasped, and kept moving.
This wasn't combat. This wasn't a duel.
This was gravity, and I was trying to argue with it.
But after a minute of sprinting loops and ragged breath, something clicked.
Just math.
The golem didn't speed up.
Didn't chase.
It always locked back on the node, unless I was in its path.
If I broke line-of-sight, it went for the crystal. If I threw meat or junk or a rock, it didn't care. But if I cut across its path, got in close, it hesitated. Adjusted. Tracked.
Not a lot. Not long.
But it was something.
Okay. Fine.
New objective:
Keep it adjusting.
Forever.
I kept it dancing.
Wide arcs. Sharp turns. Cutting across its path like a bastard shepherd herding a stone bull.
I didn't have a tank's taunt.
Didn't have a healer watching my bar.
Didn't have a rogue waiting to backstab while I drew fire.
And for a minute, just one beautiful, horrible minute, it worked.
I kept it circling. Off-balance. Caught between my movement and the meat-covered node. Every time it tried to path toward the crystal, I threw myself in its way. Screamed. Swung the useless hatchet like a drunk conductor.
It followed.
And then the tempo changed.
No warning.
Just, wham.
It didn't roar. It didn't glow. It just pivoted clean, one leg rotating hard on stone, and lunged.
Lunged.
It was a goddamn ambush.
I was mid-turn, already wheezing from the last rotation, and didn't see it coming until the stone fist was already blotting out my peripheral vision.
I tried to twist out of the way.
Almost made it.
Almost.
The backhand caught me just under the ribs and sent me airborne.
I hit the wall five meters away, shoulder-first. Something cracked.
The rest of me followed, elbows, knees, hip, skidding across the blood-slick floor until I slammed against a pile of dead squirrels.
I didn't move for a second.
Couldn't.
My lungs tried to inflate and failed. Everything inside felt out of place. Like someone had yanked my bones out and put them back in the wrong order.
I blinked through dust and stars.
The golem wasn't looking at me.
It was already moving again. Back on target. Back toward the node.
I watched the golem walk.
Not fast. Not mean. Just steady.
Like it had a place to be and I was less than debris.
Something about that, that dismissal, cracked something behind my ribs.
I'd felt this before.
A different kind of stone building.
A waiting room that smelled like recycled air and silent judgment.
A wooden bench. A number on a plastic card.
I remembered the clock ticking too loud.
The way the man behind the desk didn't look up.
Didn't need to.
I had been sixteen. Fresh out of holding. Two broken fingers, bruised jaw.
Some prep-school kid with too many connections and a shattered nose.
The story didn't matter. The truth didn't matter.
Only one thing did.
"He shouldn't have been there in the first place," the man had said.
Not to me.
Never to me.
Just into the room. Into the record.
Like I was a scheduling error. A form misfiled.
That was what made it burn.
Not the cuffs. Not the sentence. Not the three-month wait before anyone reviewed the footage.
Not even the way his own goddamn lawyer had sighed like he'd seen it coming.
No, it was that it didn't matter.
That his pain had never even registered.
I wasn't punished.
I was processed...
The golem kept walking.
Its footsteps weren't angry. Weren't rushed.
Just rhythm.
Just weight.
Just another line in a file.
Another unwanted presence to be cleaned up because it didn't fit the design.
And here I was again, on the floor. Uncounted. Unconsidered.
"I'm not in your file,"
It came out slurred. Wet. My jaw wasn't moving right.
"Not in your system. Not your plan."
The crystal pulsed again in the corner of his eye.
The meat-shield he'd built, the shrine of everything he'd survived, was a heartbeat away from being ground under a thing that didn't even know he was still breathing.
"I'm here,". Louder this time.
"I'm here, you stone-faced fuck."
I shoved myself up on one arm.
Fire lanced down my side. My vision whited out.
It felt like I was watching someone else get up. Not me. Just some idiot with blood in his mouth and not a lick of sense in his bones.
"I don't care if you see me," he snarled. "You're going to feel me."
And something deep inside, something behind the ribs, beneath the bone, shifted. Not snapped. Just coiled. Tight.
Like an old muscle waking up.
Or something older than muscle.
There was a sound.
Not out in the arena, not the scrape of stone feet or the dying hum of the crystal, but inside. Behind the chest. Beneath the ribs. A vibration, low and deep and wrong, like something had been holding its breath for a very long time.
I staggered upright. His body moved like a machine someone had kicked back into motion, not smooth, just moving because not moving was no longer an option.
The golem was five steps from the node.
I bled. I limped. My left eye kept blinking red from something crusted and wet. I couldn't feel my fingers properly. One leg didn't seem to know how to bend anymore.
I didn't care.
Something else was driving now.
A popup from the System appeared.
[BATTLELUST: ACTIVE] ⚔️
[PRESENCE EFFECT: DEGRADED] ⚠️
[ROOT RESONANCE: UNSTABLE] 🌑
[WARNING: USER AT RI—
Shut the fuck up.
I charged.
No thoughts of dodging. No tactics. Just refusal.
I hit the golem in the side with everything I had, shoulder-first, meat and bone and rage behind it. It didn't move. Not even a stumble.
But it turned.
Slow. Reluctant.
Like maybe, for the first time, something about me registered.
I screamed. Not words. More of a roar. Just raw, vocal violence.
I threw a punch. Then another. Then another. Didn't matter that it was stone. Didn't matter that my knuckles were already split and broken and screaming.
I hit it again.
And again.
And again.
Blood sprayed in arcs with each impact. My own.
I couldn't tell.
Couldn't see.
The air flickered.
Light shifted.
My thoughts vanished into a tunnel of motion, red and white and noise.
My heartbeat roared like a furnace in my skull.
Something cracked.
Maybe the golem.
Maybe the world.
Maybe me?
I didn't care.
Because fuck you that's why.
Same thing, different desk. Back then it was a parole officer. Now it's a rock with no face. Still the same message: "You're not worth caring about."
[ROOT RESONANCE— OVERRIDE DETECTED]
[USER IS UNDERGOING NONSTANDARD AFFINITY TRANSITION]
[PHYSICAL STATE: UNSUPPORTED]
[̷B̸_̵A̴R̵]̷
̷[̵—̶]̶
̴[̷.̸.̴.̵]̷
I wasn't there anymore. Not really. Just noise, heat, and the feel of something watching from deep inside. And maybe... from outside too.
Red.
Red in the mouth.
Red behind the eyes.
Red in the ribs, pushing outward, wanting out.
Something moved.
Roar.
Teeth.
Fist.
Stone.
Hit.
Slam.
Mine?
Theirs?
Didn't matter.
Breathe,
No.
Too hot. Air was ash. Blood maybe.
Couldn't tell.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Not the same spot. Not the same time.
Sound folding in on itself, wet and tearing, like meat pulled too fast.
One hand broke.
The other kept swinging.
The arm kept going.
The shoulder screamed.
Everything screamed.
Something hit my chest,
no, my back,
no, both, like pressure from every direction.
I hit the ground.
Or the wall.
Or the golem.
Or it hit him?
Didn't matter.
Didn't stop.
Red again. Not the soft kind.
Thick red. Vein red.
The red behind the skin when you press too hard.
Teeth bared.
Was I biting?
No weapon. Just hands.
Hands like hammers.
Hands like claws.
Stone split.
Something screamed.
Maybe the golem.
Probably me.
The world spun, but not out.
In.
Everything narrowing.
Closing.
Choking.
And still moving.
I was always moving.
Then, stillness.
No breath.
No heat.
Just the sound of my own pulse, slowing.
Even the rage was quiet now.
Like it didn't know what to do either.
"I will not be ignored."
Then just black.
[UNAUTHORIZED OBSERVATION LOG – SOURCE UNKNOWN]
"Oh. So that's what it looks like when a meatbag snaps."
A long pause. Something wet chewing.
"I thought you'd fold. Or cry. Or die. But no, you screamed until your bones forgot they were bones."
Clicking. Teeth maybe. Or claws on bark.
"Didn't even win, really. Just got blood into a part that doesn't play well with fluids."
Another pause. Watching.
"I liked the biting."
Sniff. Snort.
"You're not strong. You're not sane. You're barely housebroken."
A low, pleased chitter.
"But he noticed you."
"Old Shagpile. The one who growls in the dark between Systems."
"He felt your rage. Heard your stubborn little heartbeat. And he grunted back."
A loud crunch. Something splintered.
"And that's going to ruin so many files."
Another chew. Mirthful.
"You're disgusting. But you'll do."