Aggro Litrpg || Progression Fantasy

The quality of the path beneath my boots had been dropping steadily with every step away from Sablewyn. What had begun as a respectable dirt road had degenerated into churned muck that looked like it remembered what hooves and wheels felt like but had long since given up trying to be useful. My boots squelched with every step, sucking at the ground like the woods were trying to keep hold of me.

I thought we'd been walking for hours. I was sure the sun was still technically up, but under the thick canopy overhead, it was barely making an appearance. Its light didn't so much filter down as lose interest somewhere in the upper branches. I couldn't believe that we were following a trail to any sort of thriving settlement. This was more a route you took when you were hoping not to be followed.

Although no horticulturist, I thought the type of trees we were walking past had changed, too. Thicker trunks and more gnarled limbs. It looked like they'd started leaning in closer together like they were conspiring against us. There was no birdsong and absolutely no rustle of small creatures. In fact, the longer we walked, the more the forest around us began to feel… familiar. And not in a comforting, nostalgic way. The trees had that same twisted posture I remembered from the outskirts of Little Harrow. Even the narrow dips in the path, where water pooled and midges danced, felt pulled straight from a memory I hadn't dusted off in years.

And then the path curved left through a break in the trees, and for a breathless moment—just a second—I was almost certain I was about to see Halfway Hold. The worn stone outpost where the village kids used to dare us 'outsiders' to climb the roof.

But then the trees closed in again, and the familiarity was gone. Or maybe it had never been there at all.

Still. The resemblance wasn't just close. It was too close. This place, this realm, was meant to be alien, but more and more, it felt like I'd been here before. Alongside all those panicky notifications I was getting, it hardly took all my points in Intelligence to have some very big concerns about the thickness and quality of the threshold in this part of Bayteran.

Again, it would have been nice to have been able to talk through this with someone, but Lia hadn't said more than six words to me since we left the inn.

So, yeah. Good times.

I was still giving her space, kept my pace behind hers, and was trying not to trip over the awkward, quiet weight hanging between us. I'd made the wrong kind of offer at the wrong kind of time, and now I was paying for it in strained silence and aching legs. I didn't know where we were going, but I wasn't inclined to poke the bear.

However, the deeper into the forest we went, the more the atmosphere pressed in. Increasingly, every branch above began to look like a claw and every shadow on the path twisted and uncurled as if it was alive. Or should that be Shadow?

A memory rose, unbidden—Aunt M's voice threading through a memory of my childhood like a well-worn ribbon. I must've been about eleven, curled beneath a patchwork quilt, feigning sleep while she sat in her high-backed chair beside the hearth.

"I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death," she read. "It is as dark as pitch. A narrow path lies before me, hemmed in by a deep ditch on one side and a dangerous quagmire on the other. Hell's gaping mouth lies just ahead. Yet still, I press on."

At the time, I'd barely listened—too busy counting the knots in the rafters or watching the firelight dance across the iron poker. I thought it was just another of Aunt M's dusty bedtime choices. More allegory. More moral fortitude disguised as fairytale. Something to file under 'irrelevant things grown-ups insisted on sharing'.

But now—now, as the trees closed around me and the path narrowed underfoot—those words landed differently. Like they were map coordinates. Had she been the Guardian of the Threshold back then? Had she been preparing me for this walk? Because, right now, it didn't feel like it was literature anymore. It was topography. I was walking through that valley. Ditch to the left. Mire to the right. No light, no guide, and no Aunt M at the fireside to see me through.

Just me. And the dark.

Eventually, Lia's voice drifted back to me. "We're almost at the village. Better you don't know too much before we get there. I'll explain more once we arrive." Her tone didn't invite questions. Not that I had many. It felt like the atmosphere was telling me everything I needed to know.

Then the trees began to thin, branches retreating like questing fingers withdrawing from a gaping wound, and the first outlines of habitation emerged. If you could call it that. Scattered dwellings started to show up, squatting along the edge of the path. They all had slanted roofs stitched together from timber and rusting metal with walls below leaning at awkward angles, patched with mismatched stone and the bones of forgotten furniture.

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A determined wolf on a pig hunt wouldn't just blow them down. It would dismantle them.

But it wasn't the buildings that really bothered me. No. That honour belonged to the banners.

Each shack, no matter how collapsed or crumbling, bore one. Weather-worn cloths hung from wooden posts or nailed straight into the walls. They fell limp in the airless stillness yet somehow managed to feel loud. Black fabric, frayed and tattered at the edges, with a jagged crimson wolf's head daubed across the centre. Around the snarl of its muzzle, angular runes twisted like barbed wire.

I didn't recognise the symbol, but the eyes of those wolves seemed to follow us as we passed. And not in a 'local curiosity' way. In the way a locked door watches someone checking the handle.

Not a soul stirred in any of these houses. No dogs barked. No chickens scratched in the dirt. There was just the quiet. And the banners. And that feeling that somewhere beneath the surface of things, something very bad was waiting to be noticed.

"This doesn't look like the friendliest place," I said. And I'd had to cross into cartel-held districts in Mexico City with nothing but a burner phone and my smile to rely on.

Lia hadn't said a word since the banners came into view, but the way she walked told me enough. She didn't want to be here either.

By then, we'd reached the very edge of the village proper and we started to see some people. There was no gate to mark its beginning. No guards. Just a stretch of packed earth bleeding into timber and stone.

And the stares. They weren't hostile or welcoming, and heads stayed bowed. Faces stayed blank. But eyes followed us from shadowed doorways, from behind shutters left just slightly ajar. Kids didn't run out to stare. Dogs didn't bark. And that absence made my skin itch.

I knew this rhythm. The sound of neighbourhoods where the wrong patch on your shoulder meant you didn't walk out again. Where someone else's silence could cost you your teeth. Places where those in power didn't need to be seen to be obeyed. Those banners weren't decorations. They were a territory claim. A protection notice. And these people had learned how to survive under them.

No one challenged us. But no one welcomed us either.

They just watched. Eyes narrow, shoulders tight. Fear, yes—but not the kind that makes you run. The kind that hardens. That sours. That comes with history. And under all that fear? Rage. Raw and unfiltered.

These people didn't just distrust us—they hated us. Deeply. Collectively. Like the sight of us was a wound they'd learned to live with but never let scab over.

And it wasn't just me. I've seen my fair share of dirty looks—I spent half my adolescence collecting them like merit badges. Teachers. Shopkeepers. Parents of various girls with double-barrelled names and futures that didn't include a boyfriend who arrived on foot and left by the window.

But this wasn't personal. Or rather, it was personal in a different way. We weren't strangers. We were something worse.

Symbols.

Whatever we were here to do, we'd already failed it in their eyes.

"What's their problem?"

Lia pointed at the banners. "They're on the other side of the war."

That pulled me up short. "Wait… war?"

"How can you be alive and still this addled?"

"It's a gift," I said. "Now, explain it to me like I'm thick—"

"That won't require much adjustment."

"Fair. But go on. What war, Lia? What exactly have I walked into here?"

She didn't answer straight away. Just glared at a woman and her child who didn't scurry fast enough out of our path. The woman flinched, dragging the child behind her like we were plague-bearers. "It's not complicated, Eli. Sablewyn and its border villages … we don't get along."

"'Don't get along' as in passive-aggressive letters about hedge placement? Or 'don't get along' like border raids and mass graves?"

"The second one."

Ah. Right. So, it's not the fun kind of regional tension. The kill-your-neighbours-and-burn-their-fields kind. I looked around at the villagers ducking into doorways, the way no one made eye contact for longer than a blink and the low hum of hostility that clung to everything. "Okay, then riddle me this: why aren't they attacking us?"

"Because I'm Level 7," she said, "and you're with me. Out here, they probably haven't even seen anyone over Level 3 before. They might hate us on spec, but they're not suicidal."

Most people… didn't get past Level 3? I thought back to Kal, Elsie and Ivor. I'd assumed that Lia was babysitting a weaker party. Not that she was an aberration. And I reckoned I must be pushing Level 3 already. Just a day after arrival.

So that made sense of all the looks I was getting I wasn't just some clueless stranger in a hoodie anymore. I was from Sablewyn. And that, apparently, made me one of the villains.

Up ahead, the road curved deeper into the village, toward the cluster of longhouses that passed for a centre. The banners flapped harder as the wind picked up. The eyes of the wolf-symbols seemed to watch us pass, unblinking.

"Come on," Lia said, voice low and cold. "We're almost there."

Where there was, I still didn't know.

But I had a feeling I wasn't going to like it.