Aris dragged himself onto the muddy bank, the sodden weight of his clothes feeling like a punishment for his own stupidity. He stood there, dripping, his eyes fixed on the silver curtain of the falls with a sudden flare of self-reproach.
"Stupid," he hissed, the word barely audible over the roar. "How could I forget something so simple?"
In his rush to address Lilly's hypothermia, he had defaulted to a primitive solution. But a fire in a confined, fifteen-square-meter space was a death sentence; carbon monoxide would pool long before the oxygen ran out.
And worse—if the gas didn't kill her in her sleep, the smoke would eventually find a fissure in the rock, venting out like a beacon for any orc scout with a working nose.
My profession was about finding exploits, not creating my own vulnerabilities. The thought froze in his mind, realizing he had been standing there in the open, dripping and muttering like a madman, fully exposed to any eyes in the forest. Stupid. Again.
The reprimand hadn't even finished echoing in his mind when a faint snap cracked from the bushes. He bolted for the undergrowth, dropping low as the dense plants swallowed him whole.
Crouched in the wet shadows, he held his breath until his lungs burned, his heart hammering against his ribs. He forced his eyes to scan the treeline—the dark spaces between trunks, the shifting gaps in the canopy, the deceptive stillness of the leaves.
He waited, every nerve screaming for data. One minute passed. Then two. The Biochip remained silent, its scan feature detecting nothing but the drone of tiny insects. No heavy footsteps, no guttural Orcish whispers.
Slowly, the tension in his shoulders began to uncoil, though his hand remained white-knuckled on the hilt of one of his crude knives.
Nothing was moving toward the pool. The only sound that remained was the indifferent roar of the waterfall. It had likely been a falling branch or a small animal, but the surge of adrenaline had served its purpose: it had burned away his complacency.
He exhaled slowly, letting the phantom heat bleed out of his limbs. Yet the relief was short-lived. The foremost problem remained: Lilly was freezing in a cave where he couldn't light a fire.
His mind seized on possibilities, cycling through them—searching for a workaround—only to discard each almost as quickly as it formed.
Dry wood? Pointless. The forest was a soaked sponge, saturated by the morning mist and the proximity of the falls. Even if he scavenged enough for a spark, the smoke would be a flare for the orcs.
The village? He considered it for a heartbeat. He could walk back in, dripping and bedraggled, playing the part of the panicked brother searching for the sacrifice. The Chief had bought the 'Prophet' act once—blinded by the sheer audacity of the play. But twice? The man wasn't stupid. He had those cold, measuring eyes that saw through pretense.
Even if Aris talked his way past the perimeter, he'd never talk his way out again. The Chief would detain him "for his own safety," and a man whose body moved with the power of three average adults wouldn't need chains to keep him there. Aris would be powerless to get back to Lilly.
His gaze drifted back to the waterfall, and froze. The pool. There was no river stretching from it, no stream, no visible outlet leaving the basin. The water fell, churned, and simply... stopped.
He'd been so fixated on survival that he'd missed something fundamental. Waterfalls fed rivers. That was how the physics of this world—of any world—was supposed to work. Unless the system had a hidden drain. Unless the water went underground.
He crept forward, peering over the edge.
The surface rippled with the endless percussion of the falls, but beneath the distortion, he saw no vortex, no gaping mouth in the rock. The gap had to be small. Hidden. A natural filtration system or a subterranean bypass.
He filed the observation away. Whatever secret the pool held, it would have to wait. Lilly was freezing.
If wood didn't work, stones would. It was the only sound idea left. He couldn't risk a fire in the cave, but he could use the stones as a thermal battery, charging them here, in the open air, then carrying the radiant warmth back to Lilly. No smoke, no carbon monoxide; just pure, stored heat.
He shuffled away from the waterfall's spray. The stones nearest the pool were useless—river rock, porous and wet, the kind that expanded and exploded like grenades the moment they hit critical temperatures. He needed something denser, something capable of holding five hundred degrees or more without shattering.
He activated the Biochip's scan. His vision dimmed slightly at the edges as data layered over the world—mineral compositions, heat tolerances, and structural integrity scores scrolling beside each rock in his field of view. He moved through the undergrowth in a crouch, gaze flicking from stone to stone, dismissing most before he even bent down.
Five minutes. That was all it took. A cluster of dark, fine-grained rocks nestled against a rotting log. The Biochip flagged them: high silica content, low porosity, excellent thermal retention. Basalt. Exactly what he needed.
He gathered the stones in a strip of cloth and moved west, putting distance between his planned fire and the waterfall. When the soil felt firmer and drier under his bare feet, he dropped the stones and fell to his knees. His fingers dug into the earth, assisted by the sharp end of a sturdy stick.
He carved two holes, one foot apart, and connected them with a narrow tunnel at the base. The underground current would pull oxygen directly into the heart of the woods, feeding a fire hot enough to bake the basalt while keeping the light and smoke hidden beneath the rim of the pit. Out here, a regular campfire was just a dinner bell for orcs.
For a while, he scavenged whatever dry twigs and scraps of bark he could find and piled them into the larger opening. He took up the flintstones. He struck the stones together; once, twice, three times. Sparks jumped, glowing briefly against the tinder before fading into the damp air.
The Biochip offered constant feedback—angle adjustments, strike speed, tinder positioning—but the interface couldn't swing his arm for him. His hands were numb, his patience thinning in this open area.
Finally, on the eleventh attempt, a curl of bark took hold. He cupped the fledgling flame, feeding it his breath and a few dry twigs until the fire finally roared in the pit.
He watched the yellow flames dance within the hole, the intense heat radiating upward to lick at the basalt. He fed the blaze more wood, enough to sustain the burn for an hour. By his calculations, the stones would climb past five hundred degrees Celsius—hot enough to save Lilly, yet enough to sear his own flesh to the bone if he mismanaged the transport.
He looked back toward the falls, his mind already dissecting the next problem.
How am I going to carry them? Walking back meant moving through the waterfall's spray. If that cold water hit five-hundred-degree stones, they wouldn't just cool down; they might shatter and injure him.
The problem was still cycling through his mind when muffled cries hit him. Wails from the distance—unmistakably human. Aris's body froze. His breath hitched, trapped in his lungs as his heart slammed against his ribs with a violence that felt as though it would betray his position to the entire forest.
He bolted from the fire and threw himself into the undergrowth, pressing his chest into the wet, decaying ground to stifle his presence.
The sounds grew closer. The wails wove through the trees, tangled with the grinding, guttural phonics of Orcish. Each word he recognized with his ten-percent fluency made his pulse spike with a fresh surge of adrenaline.
Meat... Fresh... Tender.
Through the leaves, he saw the nightmare. Three orcs led the vanguard, tearing raw strips of flesh from a severed human leg. They ate as they marched, heavy jaws working with rhythmic, wet crunches while blood slicked their chins and stained their chests.
Five more followed, heavy iron chains coiled in their massive fists. Tethered behind them like livestock, nearly twenty humans stumbled through the damp mulch.
Women. Children. Men with lowered heads and hollow eyes—the eyes of those who had already surrendered.
"Valrog save us!" a woman's voice cracked, a sliver of desperate hope in a hopeless place. "Valrog, deliver us from the jaws of—"
A guttural snarl cut her off. The chains rattled with a sudden, violent jerk, and she fell silent.
The procession moved on, leaving only the stench of orc sweat, rust, and blood in its wake.
Aris lay frozen, his fists clenched so tight his nails bit into the calloused skin of his palms. A clawing dread warred with his analytical need for data. Where were they taking them? How many more of them are there?
I have to follow. I have to see. I have to understand.
For long minutes after the sounds faded, he remained rooted to the earth. Then, slowly, he forced his body to stand. He stayed to the right of their trail, weaving through the deep shadows and using the massive trunks as sight-line breaks. Every silence felt fragile; every shadow looked like an ambush.
Minutes later, he stumbled upon remains. It had been a man. The head was still intact, eyes wide and fixed on a canopy he would never see again. The abdomen remained untouched, but everything else—limbs, pelvis, ribs—had been ripped away. Stripped clean.
Aris stared. The urge to flee surged from his gut, a primal scream warning him: This could be you. This will be you.
He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, forcing the fear back down. This was something that had to be done. He stepped past the corpse and moved on, his pace slower, his presence vanishing into the trees.
Minutes later, the canopy began to thin. The footprints ahead broke from the forest's suffocating shadow and spilled into the raw, open glare of the clearing.
Aris halted, watching the backs of the disappearing group, his heart hammering against a body that felt increasingly fragile. He chose a massive, ancient trunk near the treeline and began to climb.
His hands found purchase in the deep fissures of the bark, muscles straining with every vertical inch. Near the crown, he steadied himself on a thick branch and turned his gaze toward the horizon.
A vast, circular expanse of trampled grass lay before him, scarred by the deep ruts of heavy traffic and past brawls. At the clearing's heart, several hundred meters away, sprawled the orc settlement. It was ten times the size of his village—perhaps more.
A grim, ivory palisade ringed the settlement. Even from this distance, Aris could tell the walls weren't made of timber or stone, but bones. Thousands of them. Femurs, ribs, and skulls were lashed together into a jagged, sun-bleached architecture of the dead.
Looking at the sheer volume of the remains, a sickening jolt hit him: most of those bones were human.
The absence of wildlife in this region finally made sense. Since entering the forest, he had seen no deer, no boar, no predators. The villagers spoke of "hunting grounds," but Aris saw the truth now: those grounds were managed pens.
The humans were permitted to hunt only what the orcs allowed, ensuring the livestock remained healthy until the harvest.
A ranch within a ranch, he thought, his stomach turning.
He forced his focus toward the center of the bone-city. Tiny, chained silhouettes moved between the structures—hundreds of humans, a massive labor force of the damned. At the settlement's heart, a statue loomed: a violent, horned figure standing over a monolith.
Carved into its back was a great wheel with three razor-sharp points. Valrog.
He had no time to process the sight. Heavy, rhythmic footsteps thudded from below.
He pressed his chest against the rough bark, peering down. Three orcs emerged from the trees, moving with the casual, bored menace of owners.
Trailing behind them, his head lowered in a submission, was the Chief. The set of the shoulders and the deliberate, measured stride were unmistakable. The grim confirmation settled over Aris: the Chief hadn't bought the "Prophet" act.
He had merely used the time to report to his masters, verifying the anomaly of a villager who could speak their tongue.