Calamity Awakens

I put my winter clothes back on and packed away my ruck preparing to return to my new snowy home. I looked around the room that I was sure to be spending a lot of time in and looked at Hal.

"You ready? We need to find a home and get stronger"

Hal cocked his head at me and huffed, I could feel him push his feeling of determination at me and a vague sense of Pack? I think.

"You're right buddy, we're stronger together" I said.

I confirmed it was time to go and we disappeared in another shock of ozone and lightning reappearing in a blast of snow. "We landed in a blast of snow, and I grumbled, 'That's gonna get old fast.'"

Another panel appeared in front of me.

"Dam Vero, you aren't leaving me much time to gather myself here. I need to find a place and get settled. Get this portal up so I can start recruiting people. Come on Hal, we don't have much time."

Hal cocked his head at me as if saying well lets go.

I confirmed I had everything and set off further into the mountains using my skills as much as possible to ease the way. The snow had paused for the moment as we continued up into the forest and into the massive mountains that split the sky.

Once we got some concealment, I took a knee by a tree and tried to put my senses out to confirm we were alone before continuing. If we ran into that bear—or something worse—we'd be dead.
I strained my senses as much as I could. No idea if it helped or not, but I wasn't willing to take the chance.

Not sensing anything and not finding a reason to delay, I continued on. I moved from tree to tree, old habits taking over as I moved better over the snow. The pack was lighter on my back, and I could feel the increased stats helping me move. The extra health gave me confidence I hadn't had before, but I was starting to think dumping points into that stat long-term might have been the wrong move. I'd never get full use out of it. Figuring out how I wanted to build myself would be a debate for later.

I was leaning toward some kind of crowd controller or debuffer, since I couldn't actually harm anyone directly. It made sense to fully commit to the support role. If I played it right, I could save myself a Brand and still contribute to the people I recruited.

As we walked, Hal took the lead. It was interesting watching the young frost wolf move in his natural environment—his coat blended into the landscape, and his paws found solid snow where I sank in deeper. It was easy to see how he'd become a fearsome predator one day.

I found myself wondering how strong the humans who lived here had to be to survive. To avoid being hunted by things like Hal—or worse—they'd need to be damn tough. They were worth looking into once I had a foothold here. If I could bring them onto my side, it'd give me real momentum. But that wouldn't happen without power of my own first.

Suddenly, Hal froze.

I froze too, dropping behind the tree I was near, barely daring to look toward where Hal's gaze was locked.
His fur stood on end, and he slowly lowered himself to the ground.

I tried to question Hal through Oathsense, but either the skill level was too low or Hal just couldn't form words yet. All I got was a wave of raw, overwhelming fear.
He was trying to hide—but he was shaking. If he kept this up, he wouldn't even be able to run.

I slowly lowered myself into the snow, trying to cover myself without making a sound while keeping one eye on Hal. The whole time, he trembled—hackles raised, muscles locked. Whatever he sensed, it was bad. Real bad.

I pushed reassurance through the bond, tried to will him calm, tried to lend him my strength. It was like slamming into a wall.
So I pushed harder. Gritting my teeth, face reddening with the effort, I bore down on the fear in him—tried to drown it with my will.

The wind died.

Not a breath stirred the branches. Even the snowflakes in the air seemed to hang suspended in place.

Then came the sound.

It was soft at first—so faint I thought I imagined it.. Feminine and broken. Not quite human.
Hal whimpered, pressing himself flat into the snow, his body shaking uncontrollably now.

The sound built, winding through the trees like smoke, dragging cold fingers down my spine. A wail, low and guttural, cracked into the still air, echoing through the frozen forest like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

A banshee or something like it.

I didn't know how I knew, but I knew. Every part of me screamed to run, but my limbs were slow—like moving through syrup.
Hal tried to stand, legs wobbling beneath him. He couldn't even whine. Just stared forward, pupils wide, lips peeled back in silent terror.

The wail intensified, creeping into my head, drowning out thought, reason, everything. I grabbed the side of a tree to keep from falling. My fingers were numb. My heart thundered but my body wouldn't respond.

She appeared through the trees. A drifting silhouette of ragged robes, long silver hair flowing in a wind that didn't exist. Her face was obscured, flickering like a candle flame behind a veil of frost. She didn't move fast. She didn't have to. Every step she took bled despair into the world. Every moment she existed made it harder to breathe.

I gritted my teeth. "Move, dammit," I growled, mostly to myself.

I reached into the bond with Hal again and dumped everything I had into it—not reassurance this time, but urgency. Panic. Run.

The wall inside him cracked.

Hal bolted and that broke the spell.

I turned and ran after him, the scream rising behind us like a hurricane at our backs. We didn't know where we were going—only that it had to be away. Snow exploded under our feet. Branches whipped at my arms and face, the forest blurring into streaks of white and gray as we fled blindly up the mountainside.

The banshee didn't chase. Not directly. She didn't have to. Her scream followed us, burrowing into bone and mind, turning every step into a war against freezing fear. But distance helped. Her voice grew thinner, weaker. The trees thickened. The path steepened and still we ran in terror.

Eventually, we collapsed behind a rocky outcropping halfway up the slope. I was gasping, clutching a stitch in my side, knees burning. Hal was curled tight, chest heaving, tail tucked so far under it was nearly between his forelegs.

We were alive.

But just barely.

And now we were deeper in the mountains and I wasn't sure where we were. The run a blur in my mind.

I crawled over to Hal on hands and knees, still wheezing, lungs ragged from cold air and panic. My fingers found his fur—damp with snow and sweat—and I pressed my forehead to his side.

He was trembling. Not from the cold. This was a deep core-shaking fear that refused to let go.

I didn't say anything. I just stayed there, breathing with him, keeping contact, letting him know we'd made it. That we were still here.

After a minute, I placed a hand on his chest and focused.

Oathsense.

The bond hummed—faint, but alive. Fear still clung to him like a shroud, but under it, I caught a flicker of something else. Embarrassment and shame.

"You didn't do anything wrong," I said quietly, voice barely more than a rasp. "She was something else. That scream… hell, I could barely move myself."

Hal's breathing started to slow, and I scratched behind his ears gently, feeling the stiffness start to melt from his muscles.

"She's not here now," I muttered, half to him and half to myself. "We made it. That's what matters."

I sat back and took in our surroundings.

The snow was thinner here—less trees, more stone. We'd climbed higher than I realized, and now we were tucked into a ledge surrounded by jagged boulders and icy crags. The treeline was thicker below us, The wind howled this high up, the cold clawed at my face, and Hal's paws were starting to bleed from the run. His paws had frozen blood on them, my own health reduced by half even though I had no visible injuries. If I didn't increase my health I would have died.

I leaned against the stone and tried to get my bearings. No stars. No sun. Just white sky and endless slope. The wind whistled across the rocks with a mournful tune and howl.

"We're somewhere northeast of where we started," I guessed aloud. "The ground sloped up hard on the right side while we ran, which means… yeah. Northeast. I think."

Hal perked his ears, still too spooked to stand but listening now.

"Let's rest for ten. We'll move again after that, get above the next ridge. With luck, we find a cave or overhang for the night. Worst case… I'll dig us into a snowbank. I've slept in worse."

I checked my pack—Heatstone intact, no tears in the lining. I dug it out and pressed it against Hal's side. He leaned into it without protest.

"Good boy," I said, stroking down his spine. "We'll figure this out. I don't know what that thing was exactly, but if it's lurking down there, then up and away is the only way to go. Until we run into something else."

I paused, glancing back down the slope toward the forest, shrouded now in silence and low fog. I felt a ripple of dread just looking at it.

"Away it is," I whispered.

And then, quieter still, "Let's not ever do that again."

As I leaned back against the stone wall, I felt the familiar mental tug of an ignored system notification blinking at the edge of my awareness.

Right. Skills would have increased after our flight.

I opened the menu with a thought.

I blinked. Oathsense jumping that fast made sense after what we just went through. Pushing that hard to reach Hal in the middle of his panic must have triggered it. I could feel him more clearly now. Not just emotions—intent, hesitations, subtle flickers of his thoughts. The bond had gained some clarity. I could see how it would increase in the future.

And then there was Fear Resistance. I let out a short, humorless laugh.

"Figures I'd need that already."

It hadn't saved me this time, not really—but maybe next time I wouldn't freeze like a dumb ass while Hal nearly came apart at the seams.

I glanced at him, curled against the heatstone now, eyes heavy but still alert. Through the bond I felt the same exhaustion I had—frayed nerves, deep weariness, and the faintest ripple of relief. Not joy, not yet—but something close.

"We lived, Hal," I said, voice quiet in the wind. "We'll keep doing that. One mountain at a time."

The quiet that followed the banshee's wail was unsettling, the silence felt earned. Hal still clung close to me, his body pressed into my side, every muscle tense. I gave his scruff a firm rub, grounding both of us.

"You did good, Hal," I murmured. "Better than I did, honestly."

He whined low but didn't pull away.

"We need cover. Something with only one way in, somewhere we can listen and not freeze to death," I said quietly.

With the fear finally fading, I crouched and pulled out the compass from the survival pack. North—whatever that meant on this world—pointed toward a jagged ridge I hadn't seen before. No map, no landmarks, but at least now I had a direction.

Hal's ears perked as if understanding. He moved out in a cautious, looping arc, his nose close to the ground. I followed, one hand on my belt, the other brushing snow off branches and rock.

After about thirty minutes of slow progress up the slope, we stumbled upon it—barely visible beneath a tangle of snow-covered brush: a natural overhang jutting from the base of a narrow rock face. Not a cave, but a deep enough recess in the stone that it would block wind from three sides. Just wide enough for the two of us to hunker down, and a little room to spare for a fire—if I dared.

I checked the ceiling, the depth, and the floor. Dry, no tracks, no scent of predators—at least none I could pick up. Hal crept in first, tail high but ears alert, and gave a soft chuff of approval.

"This'll work," I said, more to myself than him.

I dropped my pack and crouched inside. It wasn't warm, but it was still. No direct line of sight from the slope below. We were finally out of the open.

Hal curled against the far side, still visibly shaken but relaxing now that stone and earth pressed around him instead of open air. I sat across from him and pulled my cloak tighter.

"Tomorrow we'll figure out what the hell that thing was," I said, voice low. "But for tonight… we live. That's enough."

I coaxed a fire to life using the small fire starting kit from the survival pack. It wasn't much, just a controlled flicker surrounded by stones, but the warmth still felt like a luxury. Hal curled near it immediately, ears twitching at every sound.

After setting up a fire beneath the overhang, I sat cross-legged near the shallow flames, watching them flicker against the rock face. Hal was curled nearby, breathing steady again, though every now and then his paws twitched in his sleep.

The snow outside muffled all sound. For the first time in hours, we weren't moving or running or fighting to survive. So I did what I always used to do after a bad mission.

I picked it apart.

"The fear got us," I muttered to myself. "We weren't ready. Didn't even know something like that could exist."

Hal had frozen the moment he sensed it. I'd tried to help, pushed calm through the bond, but it was all instinct, no control. I needed to practice that. Turn Oathsense from a vague emotional connection into something reliable. Directed.

I poked the fire with a stick, watching embers scatter.

"And I waited too long," I admitted. "Hesitated when I should've grabbed Hal and ran. If that thing had been faster..."

I let the thought trail off. We'd gotten lucky. The banshee was slow. It relied on fear to hold prey still—paralyze, not pursue. If we'd run the second Hal froze, we wouldn't have had to force it.

"Next time, no hesitation," I said. "Fear hits, we move. Fall back, regroup, then reassess."

I thought about the terrain, the lack of landmarks. The way I had no map, no markers, no real orientation except the compass and a vague sense of "away from the banshee." That needed to change. If I was going to operate out here, I needed a mental map—landmarks, reference points, trails. Maybe even a system for marking them.

I leaned back against the stone, staring up at the cracked ceiling as the wind blew through.

"And I need more tools," I murmured. "More options. Support or not, I can't just watch and react. I need to control the fight."

The fire popped as Hal let out a low huff in his sleep, as if in agreement.

Tomorrow, I'd start figuring out how to do that.

What if I just stayed in the staging area the whole time? No, that wouldn't work, Hal and I wouldn't grow if we did that.

This place could work as a decent base—at least until we found something better. What if I found a mining pick and carved it out a little more? I could drop the portal stone here, start recruiting. Build something real.

But I was running low on food. I didn't have time to hunt today, and all we found were a few berries. Barely enough for Hal, let alone me.

This next Calamity... I was going to need to scavenge whatever I could. Food. Tools. Materials. Hell, maybe even people.

I glanced around the overhang again, taking in the tight quarters. Not ideal. No easy escape route, and if something slipped in while I was asleep, I'd be dead before I knew it.

I dug into the survival pack and pulled out one of the spare canteens, rigging it with my used wire and a thin branch. It wasn't much, but if something bumped the line strung across the entry, it'd knock the canteen over and hopefully make enough noise to wake me.

Hal watched me the whole time, ears twitching as the wind howled outside.

"Not perfect," I muttered, tying the last knot and giving it a tug to test the tension, "but better than nothing."

Hal was already curled into a ball, his breath fogging in the cold air. I ruffled his fur before slipping into my sleeping bag beside him. It wasn't warm, but it was survivable. The fire crackled softly beside us, the flames a small barrier against the mountain's indifference.

Tomorrow, I'd pick another target and tomorrow I'd get stronger.

I laid my head down and closed my eyes, ears straining one last time for any sign of movement outside.

I didn't sleep much. Not really.

Three times I woke up, heart pounding, expecting to hear the scream of that banshee again or the bear forcing his way into our hideout. Each time it was just the wind scraping over the rocks, or Hal shifting in his sleep, letting out a quiet huff of air.

By the fourth time, I didn't bother trying to sleep again.

The cold clung to me in patches, where the fire had burned low. I stirred it back to life, warmed my hands, then got to work packing up.

Hal stretched beside me, paws kicking out stiffly before he shook out his fur and stood. His nose twitched toward the cave entrance—already alert, already scanning.

We didn't say anything. Not that either of us could. But I could feel his tension and readiness. Maybe he felt mine too.

I looked back at the overhang one last time before we stepped out into the snow-covered forest.

"This place could work," I muttered to myself. "Not ideal… but it's a start."

I tried to orient myself around the hideout so I could find it later, noting the landmarks above it.

We moved out, quiet and careful. The terrain opened up ahead, the peaks above starting to catch the early light. We moved slowly through the forest, careful not to leave obvious tracks. The snow had hardened overnight, making it easier to walk without sinking too deep. Hal kept low, nose to the ground, ears twitching at every sound. I followed his lead, stepping where he stepped, letting instinct and training guide my pace.

The trees started thinning, the wind picking up as the ground beneath us sloped upward. Eventually, we crested a rise—and the forest just ended.

I stepped to the edge cautiously, one hand resting on Hal's side as I knelt beside him. The sight stopped me cold.

A frozen river cut through the valley floor like a scar of glass—wide and solid—except near the far end, where a towering waterfall poured into it from the cliffs above. Steam curled where the freezing water met the mist of the falls, rising in ghostly plumes before vanishing into the mountain air.

Beyond that, the valley stretched far, hugged by dark ridge lines, towering pines, and the skeletal remains of ancient stone ruins half-swallowed by snow.

"Damn," I muttered. "That's beautiful."

But it wasn't just the view, it was the feeling.

The wind up here was wild and sharp, cutting through the trees and howling along the cliffs like it had somewhere to be. The open sky above was endless—no walls, no cages, no one barking orders or pinning me down. Just the raw, untouched wild. The kind of place no one owned. The kind of place where a man could make his own rules—or die trying.

Something inside me stirred.

Not like a memory, but like a spark. A source of energy and inspiration—quiet, dangerous, and alive.

Freedom.

Not the cheap kind people talk about. Not a slogan or a flag or some lie you tell yourself in a locked room.

Real freedom.

The kind you feel in your bones when no one's watching. The kind that demands you earn it.

The wind pushed against me—not harsh, but insistent—and I felt the barest pull of something deeper inside me. Like a string I didn't know was there had just gone taut.

My first step onto the Dao, I think.

I exhaled slowly and looked over at Hal. He didn't seem to notice anything had changed, but his body was relaxed, ears still, gaze steady on the distant valley.

We'd go down there. We'd explore.

Not because we were told to—but because we chose to. Because I wanted to.

If this was the scenery just past the first mountain in this massive range, what else was out there? The wind didn't congratulate me. It howled past, it didn't care what path I walked. That was freedom too.

I let out a small laugh, light and unexpected.

I couldn't wait.

The system prompt resonated with me, Freedom didn't come with safety rails, it was the decisions you made and consequences you accepted because you blazed your own path.

The words faded, but the sensation didn't. Something inside me—small, steady, alive—had taken root. I didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't power I could swing or stats I could assign. Just… presence.

I filed the feeling away and got back to work.

I began scanning the valley again, this time with purpose. I marked the ridge lines overhead, the jagged spines of rock that curved around the upper cliffs. A twisted tree with black bark clung to the cliff's edge like a sentinel—easy to spot, even from below. I committed its shape to memory. If I had to fall back to the hideout, I'd need to know how to find it again.

The valley wasn't empty. It was too perfect a place for that. The river alone would be a draw—water meant prey, and prey meant predators. Probably worse than bears or wolves, too. The ruins down there hinted at old power, or at least something someone fought to bury.

The falls churned at the far end, mist curling like breath over the broken ice. It looked peaceful and that worried me. Peaceful places in this world were either illusions, traps or didn't remain that way for long.

"Don't trust the view," I muttered under my breath, and Hal flicked an ear in agreement.

I pulled out the small, weather-worn notebook from the outer pouch of my pack and knelt down with my back to the wind. Hal stood beside me like a sentry, eyes on the valley as I flipped to the first blank page.

I sketched a rough top-down map of the valley. Not to scale, but good enough to track my direction and note elevations. If this turns into a fallback point or even a base in the future, I'd be glad to have a record.

Snapping the notebook shut, I slipped it back into its pouch and gave Hal a quick scratch behind the ears. "Let's see what the bottom looks like."

We started picking our way down.

The slope was steep but manageable if you were careful and had claws—or steel-toed boots. I had one of those. Hal had both.

We zigzagged along a narrow trail that was probably made by animals—or something worse. The snow here was crusted and old, hiding loose rocks beneath. I tested each step with my weight before committing. One fall here wouldn't kill me outright… but it might invite something that would.

Hal moved ahead, pausing now and then to glance back at me. His pace was cautious and deliberate.

The air grew damper as we descended, the sound of rushing water growing louder with every switchback. Mist drifted up from below like breath from a sleeping giant. I tightened my jacket and kept going, finally reaching the valley floor. Mist creeping in from the frozen river in front of us.

Whatever was waiting in the valley… I wanted to be the one who found it first. But first it was time to bring Calamity.

Yes.