First Steps
The days stretched long after Maia left.
The routine of the orphanage pressed on like the turning of old gears—slow, familiar, comfortingly unchanging. Koda repaired chairs. Chopped wood. Helped the younger ones with their lessons when the matron's eyes grew tired. He smiled when he had to. Answered when spoken to.
But every evening, when the sun dipped below the jagged rooftops of Oria and the mist crept back in from the outer marshes, his eyes drifted toward the wall.
The city was waking up to fear again.
The slums, already brittle from poverty and age, now buzzed with whispers. Another gate might open. Another breach. The church guilds had tripled their patrols near the outer rim, but even they could not be everywhere at once. Access to dungeons—already strictly regulated—had been locked down completely. Not even rookies from the churches' inner programs were allowed through without direct escort and sanctioned quests.
And Koda, with no patron anyone recognized, was beneath even their concern.
They saw an error when they looked at him.
So be it, he thought.
But that didn't mean he would sit and wait.
He needed strength. Levels. Experience. Whatever he was, whatever the system was becoming—he had to grow.
The answer wasn't inside the walls. It never had been.
⸻
The first time he found the break in the city wall, it was by accident.
He'd spent the better part of an afternoon wandering the lowest southern edge of the slums, skirting the border where the last row of stone homes gave way to marsh reeds and half-drowned alleys. The wall here had long ago lost its guard rotation. Cracked from age, stained by creeping moss and black mold. Forgotten even by the guild's bureaucratic mapping teams.
It was a low seam beneath a collapsed aqueduct. Half hidden behind a slouching barrel and overgrown briarweed. A tear in the stone barely large enough to crawl through on his stomach.
Now it was his way out.
⸻
That night, the moon hung dull and low, veiled behind slow-moving clouds that pulsed with an amber hue.
Koda crouched beside the aqueduct, listening.
The silence here was different than in the city. There were no footsteps. No cries. No coughs or laughter in the distance. Just wind and rustling marshland.
He exhaled once. Then slipped through the crack.
The stone scraped his ribs as he wormed his way under. Cold dust clung to his skin and the smell of damp mildew clotted in his nose. When he pushed through to the other side, he emerged into a shallow gully beyond the wall.
The outside.
⸻
It wasn't wild.
Not yet.
The land outside Oria's walls used to be farmland. Long before the first fall, before the first invasions, when the soil was still considered safe to till and the world hadn't split open at its seams. Now, it was a wasteland in waiting. The old fields had gone feral—grass grown tall and coarse, dotted with the crumbled skeletons of old storage barns and fences that twisted in strange angles.
The marsh had claimed most of it. Pools of stagnant water gleamed dully in moonlight, reflecting the dark clouds overhead. Insects sang in alien tones, chirps too high or too low, punctuated now and again by the splash of something unseen slipping just beneath the surface.
Beyond the marshland, to the west, low hills rose in soft folds against the horizon. In the dark, they looked like sleeping beasts themselves.
Koda adjusted the satchel across his back and stepped forward, boots sinking slightly in the soft mud. A worn scarf wrapped high on his neck, shielding against the worst of the chill. His tunic, patched now more than once, moved stiffly against him. In one hand, he held the hilt of the weapon he'd summoned the night before—Blade of Conviction—the pale light of it kept low, flickering like a lantern smothered by fog.
He didn't know what he'd find out here. But there was a feeling under his skin again, something alive. A tension. A pull.
Something is waiting, he thought.
And this time, he would not run from it.
The deeper Koda pushed into the marshland, the quieter the wind became.
Gone were the distant city bells, the sleepy shuffling of feet over stone. Out here, only the sucking of mud beneath his steps, the whisper of grass brushing his legs, and the slow, rhythmic drip of water from leaf to pool. The air was thick with decay—wet earth, rotting foliage, and the iron tang of something long dead.
He stepped lightly, crouched near the reeds.
Then—he heard it.
Click.
Not the sound of a twig or an animal.
Click-click. Grunt. Snort.
Then again, closer.
Click-click-click.
The sound was unmistakable. The same sound he'd heard in the orphanage courtyard—the sound that soaked into your bones before you understood it.
Goblins.
Koda dropped lower, letting the tall marsh grass swallow him. The moon had slipped behind a thick veil of cloud now, and only the dim blue haze of the night sky cast shadows across the pools.
He saw them before they saw him.
Three of them.
They moved in staggered patterns—one limping on a hunched left leg, dragging a jagged length of bone behind it like a crude machete. Another waded ahead, twitching its head erratically from side to side, its bulbous eyes slick and glinting. The third, slightly larger, kept its nose to the air, sniffing and snorting with deep, wet grunts.
Their skin was the same sickly, mottled green—lumpy and porous, as if diseased. Folds of flesh trembled with each movement. Their fingers were thick and gnarled, the arthritic roots, ending in splintered claws dark with blood and muck. One wore the tattered remains of a butcher's apron, stained in streaks too dark to tell if it was old gore or swamp rot.
They moved in jerks, slapping the mud with every awkward step, unbothered by the terrain. This was their element. The wetland sucked at their feet, but they did not stumble—they'd learned its rhythm.
And they were close.
Koda gripped the hilt tighter. The Blade of Conviction hissed into being—whispering into shape from air and thought, a matte steel-gray saber with no reflection, no gleam. Just purpose, clear and cold.
He stepped forward.
The tall grass parted.
The goblins froze.
For half a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then the largest one shrieked—a shrill, barking call—and charged, the other two flanking behind it with erratic, hunched gaits. Water sprayed. Mud exploded beneath their feet.
Koda braced.
The world narrowed.
The goblin came in low, fast—too fast for its malformed body. Its lopsided gait tricked Koda's eyes, made it seem slower than it was. The moment he braced, it twisted, shoulder-first, and rammed into his chest.
Air burst from his lungs.
Koda staggered back, boots sliding in the mud. He lashed out with the Blade of Conviction, catching the creature's side. The blade bit through flesh, a wet resistance like cutting into raw muscle. The goblin shrieked—a shrill, bubbling noise—and twisted away, black-green blood hissing into the marshwater.
Another was already closing in.
Koda barely ducked under the crude bone club it swung, the weapon hissing through the air and slamming into a tree trunk behind him with a sick crack. Bark exploded outward. He kicked at the creature's knee, felt it give with a soft crunch. It collapsed, howling.
Koda didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward and drove the blade into its chest, up under the ribcage. It was like plunging his arm into a sack of wet gravel. The goblin screamed again—choked—and went still.
One.
Koda ripped the weapon free. The sound was grotesque, a slippery tear of sinew and cartilage. His stomach lurched.
But he didn't have time to breathe.
The third goblin—the limping one—came barreling in with its bone weapon raised high. Koda pivoted, foot catching on a hidden root. He slipped—saw stars as he slammed into the earth.
The blow came down.
Koda rolled.
The bone shattered the soil where he'd just been, spraying mud into his eyes. He swung from the ground, a desperate arc. The blade carved across the goblin's throat, not clean—jagged, resisting—before finally tearing free. Hot blood sprayed over his face, metallic and rancid.
The goblin fell, convulsing, legs kicking.
Two.
Koda pushed to his feet, chest heaving.
Then pain exploded across his back as the largest goblin—the first one—slammed into him from behind.
He went down hard. His face struck the marsh, reeds splintering around him. His blade flew from his hand, lost somewhere in the muck. The weight atop him was enormous, a mess of clawed hands and twitching limbs.
And then—pressure.
Thick fingers closed around his throat.
Koda thrashed. He tried to twist, to elbow, to scream—but the grip only tightened. His legs kicked uselessly in the water. Mud filled his ears. The goblin snarled in his face, breath rancid and hot like spoiled meat.
His vision blurred.
Black crept in from the edges.
Move—MOVE—
His hands reached out, scrabbling across the marsh floor. Fingers closed on nothing but wet grass, then air.
He couldn't breathe.
His vision tunneled.
Then—
Something inside him snapped.
Not fear. Not panic.
Resolve.
Through the blur, his hand raised, palm to the sky.
"Conviction—"
Light flared.
The blade materialized in his grip, formed of smoke and steel and need.
He drove it up.
The point punched through the goblin's eye socket with a crack, sinking deep into the skull with a sickening shudder. Its body spasmed once, twice—then collapsed.
Koda coughed, choked, rolled out from under it. His lungs screamed as he dragged in breath after breath, eyes wide, chest hitching.
The goblin's body twitched beside him, the blade still jutting from its skull like a dark flag.
He stared at it.
The blood.
The twitching.
The silence.
Then—ding.
A soft chime.
Followed by words:
Level Up.
You are now Level 3.
Stat points: +5 (distributed through Balance)
Koda sat there, soaked in blood and marsh water, bruised and shaking.
Alive.
He was alive.
The goblin corpses steamed gently in the cold night. The wind returned, brushing against his torn tunic. His hands trembled—not from fear, but from the weight of surviving.
He leaned back against a stone, head tilted to the stars overhead.
They looked colder than usual.
But he was still breathing.
He'd faced death.
And earned one more step forward.
Koda sat with his back to the moss-slick stone, legs half-curled beneath him, the marsh stretching quiet and dark in every direction. The bodies of the goblins cooled nearby, sinking slowly into the soft earth like they'd never belonged to this world in the first place.
He flexed his fingers, pain spiking up his arms. Bruises bloomed across his ribs. Gashes stung along his side, one still bleeding sluggishly. But he was alive.
Alive—and stronger.
He opened the window.
—-—-
Koda of the Eternal Guide
Level 3
HP: 70 / 70
Mana: 70 / 70
Stamina: 70 / 70
Stats:
Strength: 7
Vitality: 7
Agility: 7
Intelligence: 7
Wisdom: 7
Endurance: 7
Traits:
Balance (Divine) – All stat increases apply equally to all attributes. Harmony is growth.
Skills:
Blade of Conviction – Active
Summon a weapon forged of pure will. The more clarity and purpose you hold, the stronger the blade. Willpower and Wisdom affect damage.
—-—-
The screen hovered in the air before him, silent and sharp-edged, faintly luminous in the dark. That number—3—sat heavier than he expected.
But it meant something now.
Koda exhaled slowly, closing the window with a blink. Somewhere in the distance, a night bird cried across the reeds. The wind shifted, and the trees bent like they were whispering secrets he wasn't ready to hear.
He didn't know where this path led.
But step by step, he was walking it.