As the System’s uncaring declaration of Danto’s death flickered and faded from Galen’s view, his breath caught.

Brin didn’t finish her sentence. She left her hand on Danto’s neck for a moment longer and then sat back on her heels. The two of them stared at Danto in silence. He stared back, unblinking.

“I shouldn’t have made us keep going.” Brin’s voice broke as it rose, fierce and angry. “We should have stayed by the tunnel and waited. The mudders wouldn’t have killed him.”

The raiders didn’t kill him. I did. All my fussing about being careful, and I’m the one who put us in danger. And Danto is the one who died.

Died. Danto was dead. Galen didn’t even know if he’d been a PC or an NPC. How did death even work in this game or its world?

It doesn’t matter.

Somewhere deep inside, Galen knew with absolute finality that Danto, whoever or whatever he’d been, was gone. And whether it should have or not, that did matter.

Galen’s chest tightened. A bright pain filled him until he felt he’d burst from its pressure. A silent wail rang through his mind, filled with a longing to go back, to change things, to make Danto not dead.

To make everyone he’d ever known for real not dead, if he was wishing for the unobtainable. But all those things were equally impossible.

The earth beneath Galen’s feet shivered.

The snake.

The thought came numbly, and Galen looked behind him only from reflex.

The snake hadn’t chased after the fleeing raiders. It remained, loosely coiled but as motionless as a tree root a few yards away. Beyond it, Galen easily picked out a trail of trampled grasses leading out of the clearing.

I wouldn’t have noticed that, not before.

The serpentine creature constructed of mud and twigs and, now that it was close and unmoving enough to see more clearly, plastered with scales of dead leaves and dried insect carapaces, did not chase after the raiders. It seemed to be looking at Galen.

They laughed. The memory pierced the numb cold and raging hysteria inside Galen’s head. When I asked if they would help, the Shining One laughed.

“This wasn’t what I meant.” Heat surged through Galen’s cold and gathered all his pain into a single point. He aimed it toward the snake and the Shining One he was certain had sent it. “This isn’t what I wanted!”

The snake rumbled closer, coiled more tightly, and lifted its head to the level of Galen’s. Where eyes would have been on a real creature, a soft silvery-blue green glow rippled. It reminded Galen of the shimmering light that had surrounded the Shining One.

A sense of questioning returned, similar to what Galen had initially felt what seemed like a lifetime ago, when he’d first encountered the Shining One. This was different, though, less simple. Less bright and curious. Galen felt as if he stared into an open doorway but couldn’t tell what might happen if he stepped through.

Something almost like words rose in Galen’s mind, and the question seemed to translate into, If I, will you?

Beneath the words, on the other side of that figurative door Galen sensed, something shadowy moved, something slippery and clever. A certainty coalesced in Galen’s gut, that this was a trap, somehow, that he was being manipulated.

That everything that had just happened had been part of the manipulation.

“Did you do this on purpose?” Galen squeezed the words from his throat. They came out harsh and jagged.

Beside Galen, Brin twisted to look around and up at him. Tears glittered in her eyes, but her face drew into an angry knot. She staggered to her feet.

She thinks I’m talking to her.

Then Brin saw the snake and stopped. The angry lines on her face eased. She stood beside Galen, hands clenched, but she didn’t say anything after all.

From the snake—or from the Shining One, really—there came no reply. The open-door sensation remained, along with all the shifting undercurrents of Galen’s suspicions.

“I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what you want.”

Did it matter? If the Shining One wanted something from Galen and giving it meant Danto had even just a chance, then did it matter if Galen didn’t understand?

If I don’t do something, who will?

“Yes.” Galen blurted out his answer. His breath caught, and ice encased his spine. But he said it anyhow. “Whatever it is, I will. Help him. Please.”

The questioning sensation faded. The snake lowered its head, and its massive body uncoiled and undulated, approaching Galen and Brin. Brin took a startled step back, and the creature passed between them toward where Danto’s body lay.

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“What’s it doing?” Brin’s eyes widened. “Galen? What did you tell it to do?”

Galen shook his head. The choking pain returned to his chest, but this time it felt unbearably bright.

“Only what you heard. To help him. I don’t know.”

But it’s something. Please, it has to be something.

The earthen creature encircled Danto’s body, wrapping the dead boy in its coils. Panic wriggled in Galen’s gut as Danto’s blond curls vanished in the snake’s embrace. Brin made a small, sharp sound of alarm. Her body jerked as if she’d run forward, but she held steady.

When Danto was no longer visible, the snake fell still. Its coils relaxed. Bits of wood and twigs protruded as the mud between them lost its form. Patches of dried leaves and dead insects shifted and fell. When it was done, the snake had entirely dissolved, leaving behind a mound of earth and detritus with Danto buried beneath it.

Just that, and nothing more. A mound of dirt. A grave.

The bright hope inside Galen darkened. Tears sprang into his eyes.

Maybe this was all it ever intended. To help us bury him.

But a hush settled over the forest around Galen, as if the birds and squirrels and even the trees themselves held their breath. Some ineffable something moved around Galen, gentler even than a breeze, a mere shifting in temperature and pressure against his skin. He shivered.

The dirt that had once been a snake shuddered. Something pale poked through its surface, like a much smaller snake, and for a moment Galen couldn’t recognize what it was. Another emerged from beside it, and then another.

Brin gasped and scrambled forward. She fell onto Danto’s burial mound and shoved her fingers into the earth, digging it away with her bare hands.

Hands. Fingers.

That was what pushed up through the dirt—Danto’s fingers.

Galen dived after Brin and fell to his knees in the blood-slicked grass. He reached into the soft dirt, pulling it away. A thick scent like rich earth and springtime rolled up from the burial mound, sweet as any perfume.

They found Danto’s hands, clasped them tightly, and pulled him upright. Dirt fell away from Danto’s head and shoulders. He emerged, gasping for air and coughing, and Brin and Galen helped him clear as much detritus as they could from his face and mouth and nose. A sweet music began, and Galen realized that Brin was laughing. An answering laughter swelled from him, as well, although he thought he might still be crying, too.

And then they plopped onto the ground, and there Danto sat between them. Dirt clung to every crease of his face, and dead leaves and twigs decorated his hair. He coughed and grimaced, and dirt coated even his teeth. He spat out blood and earth and then stared at it with utter confusion.

Brin dug gently further down Danto’s chest toward his stomach. Blood stained her fingers a deep crimson.

“But he’s healed.” Brin held up a shred of Danto’s green and brown tabard. “His clothing is cut, but I feel no wound. It’s like he was never hurt.”

“I was never hurt.” Danto’s voice vibrated oddly. His shoulders trembled. “It was all just a dream.”

Then Danto’s eyes rolled and shut. He teetered for a moment and then fell back onto the remains of the mud snake, a pillow of earth that cradled his head. But his chest rose and fell steadily—no rasping or rattling.

Sleeping. He’s just unconscious.

Brin sat back on her heels and frowned at the streamer of blood-darkened tabard between her fingers.

“Galen. What did you do?”

Galen made himself look directly at Brin. Her braid had started to come undone, and tendrils of dark hair fell into her sweaty, muddied face. But her gray eyes remained unflinching. Nothing about her demeanor betrayed anything like the fluttering, racing sense of near hysteria Galen had been through.

“You’d make a really good soldier.” Galen hadn’t known that was what he’d say, but he shrugged sheepishly and tried to act like he had. It was the truth. She had all the talents, and steady nerves to boot.

Brin blinked and frowned. “Thank you. But that doesn’t answer my question. What did you do?”

Galen thought about saying he hadn’t done anything, and that was mostly true. The snake and the Shining One or whatever he’d been hearing without hearing, those were what had done all the work. But he had done something. Hadn’t he?

“I don’t know.” He paused to think if there was more he could put into words.

Back in the trees, in the direction he and Brin and Danto had just come from, branches and leaves sighed in the afternoon breeze. Suddenly, though, their rustling seemed crisper. More deliberate.

Galen hauled himself to his feet. “Someone’s coming.”

Brin scrambled up, as well. Her head turned, and her braid swayed as she scanned the ground around them. With a quick movement, she snatched up the spear she’d thrown at the fleeing raider.

After the raider killed Danto—Danto, who isn’t dead.

“I think it’s the militia.” It made sense, but more than that, Galen felt no sense of alarm in what he heard.

Which was ridiculous, he realized, and he started to turn and look for his own spear. But that had loosened and fallen beside the raider he’d killed, and before he could get further than staring at that bloody sight, a pair of scouts in green and brown tabards emerged from the tree line.

Brin rushed forward to meet them. As her voice rose and fell with theirs, Galen blinked hard, as if waking, and took in the scene around him with fresh eyes.

Blood drained from the bodies of two raiders, the one the snake had killed and the one Galen had killed, and into the grass. The rest were long gone.

Even as Galen thought it, he heard Brin relaying the information. A half dozen militia ran past Galen, tabards untouched by gore or dirt and spears at the ready. They headed in the direction the fleeing raiders had gone. In the clearing’s center, hens clucked and scratched at their cage, left behind along with the bags and the swords and the shields.

All the burning and killing, and the raiders had gone home empty-handed and far fewer in number. It seemed infuriatingly futile.

Why even bother? All those dead, and for nothing.

More voices rose and fell, and more militia spilled into the clearing as the full force caught up to the scouts. Commander Farsafe, a statuesque woman with braided red hair and a sun-weathered face, spoke with Brin. The commander’s gaze flicked once toward Danto and then toward Galen, and Galen suffered the sense that there would be many questions to come. Commander Farsafe was no fool, and many things had happened which made no sense even to Galen.

For the moment, though, Brin held the commander’s attention. And as the clearing filled with brown and green tabards, a sense of relief flowed across Galen’s shoulders.

It’s done. They’ll take over, now.

But despite his relief, Galen kept thinking about Brin’s question, the one he hadn’t had a chance to truly respond to.

Galen. What did you do?

“What did I do?” he whispered tentatively into the sun-warmed air of the forest clearing.

Nothing responded. But an earthy scent in the breeze and a weight in the air reminded him of that sensation of an open door and something waiting beyond it. He’d definitely stepped through that door. He felt like maybe it had shut behind him. The real question maybe wasn’t what had he done but who did he owe?

And what exactly had he agreed to?