Kael kept track of the route as they moved. The mini-map showed him where he was, but he did not trust a newly acquired skill enough to let it do all the work. If the Tower took it away, scrambled it, or filled it with false information, he wanted to be able to find his way back without it.
He marked each turn with something he could recognize in a hurry. A broken billboard hung over the first intersection. Two streets later, they passed a collapsed stairwell jutting from the side of an apartment building. A car lay on its side near the mouth of a narrow alley, its undercarriage stripped bare. Beyond that stood a bent street sign pointing toward a road that no longer existed.
Simple things. Solid things. Easier to remember than street names he had never learned.
He checked the map against them as they walked. The image hovered at the edge of his awareness, clear enough to follow without blocking his sight. It should have felt intrusive, yet his mind accepted it with unsettling ease. Clean lines represented streets that were anything but clean, while colored dots reduced every nearby life and threat to something he could understand at a glance.
There were more red dots than before.
Most were faded grey and remained motionless inside buildings, beneath the road, or in spaces where the map showed nothing at all. Dormant, perhaps. The word did little to reassure him. Dormant did not mean dead. It meant waiting for the proper time to wake.
The silent man remained the only bright red mark moving through the street. Whatever rules kept the other monsters inactive during the day clearly did not apply to him. Kael no longer needed to keep checking whether the color had changed. It had not. That was enough.
The group took a twisting route through the ruined district. They crossed an intersection where the pavement had collapsed inward, forcing them along the edge of a crater filled with black water. Farther ahead, two fallen storefronts had come to rest against each other, leaving a narrow passage between slabs of concrete and twisted metal. John and his companion went through without slowing. The silent man followed, and Kael entered last with his hammer turned sideways so it would not catch.
The air inside the passage smelled of damp concrete and something long dead. Kael kept his shoulder away from the walls and watched the red dot ahead until they emerged onto a wider street.
Their destination stood at the end of it.
The building complex rose four stories around a broad central courtyard. Much of the outer structure remained intact, though several rooms had been torn open and exposed to the street. Broken walls revealed old offices, hanging cables, and sections of floor that ended abruptly above empty space. The surviving portions formed an uneven square around the courtyard, giving anyone on the upper floors a clear view of the ground below.
Kael understood why they had chosen it. The complex had only one obvious entrance, enough elevation to spot approaching enemies, and a courtyard large enough to gather people without placing them directly on the street. With a few competent workers and the right materials, it could have been turned into a respectable defensive position.
That work had not been done.
Several men guarded the entrance behind a metal gate reinforced with salvaged planks. Kael noticed the problems before he reached it. Some boards were already split around the nails. Others had been fixed across weak points without anchoring them to anything capable of carrying an impact. The nails themselves had been driven in straight, making them easier to tear loose when the wood shifted. A hard strike near the lower hinge would buckle the frame and pull half the barricade inward.
It looked reassuring from a distance. Up close, it looked like the work of frightened people using whatever they could find.
Still, Kael considered the possibility that stopping monsters was not its purpose. The gate could slow a desperate person, discourage thieves, and force visitors to approach through a single watched entrance. Against humans, even a poor barricade had value. Humans noticed pointed weapons and understood warnings. Monsters generally required sturdier explanations.
"You're already back?" one of the guards asked.
He sounded wary rather than alarmed. His attention passed over John and the other man first, then settled on Kael. The second guard leaned slightly to one side to get a better look at the hammer resting against Kael's shoulder.
"Who's the new guy?" he asked.
"Someone interesting we picked up. I think the boss might be interested in him."
"I see. Is he…"
The guard left the question unfinished, but his hand had already moved closer to his weapon. Kael could imagine several possible endings, none of them flattering.
"He's good," John said. "I think the boss might like him. He killed a goblin with a sledgehammer, a normal one at that too."
John smiled as he said it. Kael could not tell whether the man was genuinely impressed or simply pleased with what he believed he had brought back. Either way, the guards looked at the hammer differently after that.
"That's tight. C'mon in, John," the first guard said.
He pulled the gate open, allowed John and his companion through, then paused when the silent man passed him. His nose wrinkled. For the first time since leaving the store, someone other than Kael seemed to notice that there was something wrong with him.
"This guy keeps creeping me out…" the guard muttered, quiet enough that he probably did not expect the others to hear.
Kael suppressed a snort. Good. At least someone here had eyes.
He entered after them, and the gate closed at his back. Metal scraped against metal before a heavy bar dropped into place.
The sound tightened something in Kael's stomach. A moment earlier, the street had offered alleys, broken storefronts, and dozens of directions in which to run. Now there was one visible exit, several armed men standing in front of it, and a barricade designed to delay anyone trying to leave without permission.
He continued walking without allowing the concern to reach his face. Panic would accomplish nothing. He had already identified the weakest point in the gate, and the sledgehammer on his shoulder was far better suited to opening it than the knives and stone weapons around him. If things went badly, he was not trapped. He simply had a wall in need of demolition.
The courtyard widened beyond the entrance. Half-standing walls blocked most of the wind, leaving the air warmer and thick with the smells of sweat, smoke, unwashed clothing, and old blood. Several people sat on broken chairs or chunks of concrete dragged into rough circles. Some spoke quietly while repairing straps and chipped weapons. Others watched Kael enter with the hollow attention of people who had learned to measure strangers before welcoming them.
This was more than a temporary gathering. Bedrolls had been arranged beneath the covered walkways. Crude, filthy, and poorly reinforced as the place was, people had been living here long enough to establish habits.
At the center of the courtyard sat a middle-aged man shaving thin curls from the end of a piece of wood. Each pass of his knife produced the same dry scrape. He never looked toward the gate, even after the bar fell into place, though Kael doubted the man had missed their arrival.
The knife caught Kael's attention first.
It was metal.
Until now, most weapons he had seen were goblin-made things of stone, bone, or poorly fitted scrap. The knife in this man's hand had a proper edge and an even shape. It was not something hammered together out of desperation. It was an actual Tower item.
The man holding it had the thick forearms and heavy shoulders of someone accustomed to physical work. A bald patch had begun spreading across the top of his head, and a rough leather vest covered his tracksuit. He appeared more interested in the wood than in the newcomers, but the act felt deliberate. A man who truly did not care would not have positioned himself where he could see the gate reflected in the dark glass of a broken window.
"Boss!" John called.
The scraping stopped.
The man looked up, gave John a brief glance, and spat the small stem of weed from the corner of his mouth before rising. He did not hurry or reach for another weapon. The knife remained loose in his hand as he crossed the courtyard, and the people nearest his path moved aside without being told.
"Who's this?"
"New guy we recruited, says he ain't from the other faction, but wanted to bring him to you."
The boss stopped several steps from Kael and breathed in once through his nose.
"Stinks of goblin blood…"
He said it as a fact. Kael had washed what he could, but some of the blood had dried into the seams of his clothes and along the handle of the hammer.
"He killed a couple with a sledgehammer," John explained.
The boss's gaze dropped to the weapon, then returned to Kael's face.
"Who is to say he's trustworthy?"
His knife remained low beside his thigh. He did not wave it around or use it to emphasize the question. That made Kael more cautious, not less. Loud men displayed weapons because they wanted others to imagine what they could do. This man held his as though using it required no imagination at all.
"That's why I brought him here," John replied.
John stepped aside, clearing the space between them. Kael stayed where he was. Retreating would make him appear frightened, while stepping forward would turn an inspection into a challenge. He rested the hammer against his shoulder and allowed the boss to approach.
"Kid," the man said.
"Yeah," Kael replied.
"You don't strike me as someone who climbed high. You're too… relaxed."
Kael nearly laughed. The boss had mistaken the absence of panic for comfort. Right now, Kael's idea of being relaxed was simply managing not to scream.