Turn 2 of 13

Follow the goblin's trail to learn what it feared

The underbrush still trembles where the goblin crashed through, broken twigs and disturbed leaf-litter marking its panicked flight. You grip your bent spoon like a talisman and follow, your Luck 0 making itself known immediately—within thirty paces you twist your ankle on a root, snag your sleeve on thorned vine, and walk face-first into a spiderweb that clings to your eyelashes with gummy persistence.

But you keep moving. The Spite stat thrums behind your ribs, not hot now but focused, a compass needle pointing toward something that matters. The goblin's trail leads deeper into forest where the light grows green and filtered, where mushrooms cluster in patterns that look almost deliberate, almost written.

You find the first marker half-buried in moss: a wooden post carved with goblin script and a familiar initial. R. Not your R., surely—yet the letter sits there smug as a signature, and your stomach turns with recognition. The goblin stopped here, you realize. Knelt here. Then ran harder.

"The Third Warren," you whisper to the silent trees, and somewhere ahead, something answers with movement. Not the goblin. Larger. A figure in faded leather armor steps from behind an oak, bow lowered but ready, grey-streaked beard and eyes that have already catalogued your red-glowing status window, your bent spoon, your absolute lack of survivable stats.

"Well," he says, voice rough as weathered bark. "Either you're the luckiest dead woman I've ever seen, or you're something worse." He doesn't raise the bow. He doesn't need to.

"I'm Ordwin. And you're standing on a border that eats people with your exact numbers."