Nate gave a small gasp as his ankle buckled for what felt like the hundredth time, the pain radiating out in waves. His brow was slick with cold sweat, and his chest heaved with ragged breath. Still, he gritted his teeth and kept moving. He wasn’t sure what he was moving towards. He had picked his direction at random and started winding his way through the ceaseless gloom with an almost frantic sense of urgency. He had to find a way back to the surface. Back to the city. Otherwise, he would die. That wasn’t what kept him moving long after his body had wanted to give up, though.

The dark figures continued to swirl at the edges of his vision. They were indistinct, but he didn’t doubt they were there. He hadn’t gotten a clean look at anything yet. Nothing had attacked. Yet the sight of those figures moving through the darkness filled his with an instinctual dread. He didn’t know what was out there. But he knew it was dangerous. Nate trusted those instincts. And so he moved.

He had made two surprising discoveries before beginning his flight through the ravine. The first was that, somehow, impossibly, his dagger was there, lying on the ground only a few feet from where Nate himself had landed. The miracle wasn’t that the dagger, which he had dropped when he tripped, had made it all the way to the bottom of the ravine with him. The miracle was that he hadn’t impaled himself on it during his trip down the chute. However it happened, he was armed again. For all the good it would do.

The second was that he had a new icon blinking in his vision that he had never seen before. When he focused on it, a prompt appeared.

{Congratulations, Traveler! You have earned enough skill experience through use to successfully raise the level of your Improved Running skill from Novice to Amateur. Your new level in this skill comes with the following benefits.

* Dexterity bonus +3 while running (previously +2)

* Your running speed has increased

* Running will be less fatiguing}

It had been a surprise, as had the sudden rush of warmth through his body as the skill leveled up, though it was more like a tingle compared to what he had felt before. It was gratifying to see, especially since the impression he had gotten from the trainers at the Traveler’s Retreat was that it took a long time to level skills without spending skill points.

Unfortunately, the improved skill was useless at the moment. Nate’s ankle made running impossible at the moment. More concerning, he had noticed that none of his hit points had regenerated so far. He knew now that HP only regenerated on its own when he was resting. He wasn’t really moving that fast right now, but with his ankle and other wounds, even his modest pace was far from restful.

Nate struggled on for what felt like hours, but might have been only minutes. His ankle pulsed angrily every time he took a step, that one bright spot of pain making all the others feel like dull, distant echoes. He hobbled around another sharp turn in the ravine. Then he stopped. And stared. At a building.

The building was not very big, and it was perfect square, the hard lines of its frame broken only by the sloping dome that capped it. Set in the wall facing Nate was an arched doorway. There didn’t seem to be a door set in the frame. Yet Nate couldn’t see inside. The inside of the building was completely dark.

It was an odd design. But the oddest thing about the building was not its construction. It was that it was here. Solitary and unadorned, sitting at the bottom of a bottomless pit. Why the hell would anyone build a structure down here? What was it for? And who did it belong to?

Nate was suspicious. But he was also intrigued. This was a sign of civilization. That meant someone had been down here before. That, in theory, meant there was a way back to the surface. And that was something worth investigating.

Nate had taken only a single step towards the building when the wraiths made their move.

The darkness in front of him solidified, congealing into a writhing mass of black unaffected by the pale, ambient glow of the rock walls towering above on both sides. Nate gasped and tried to draw back. But the dark form was too close. It lashed out faster than Nate could react. Tendrils of darkness plunged into his chest.

The touched was like ice, the cold radiating through him in pulsing waves. He threw back his head to scream.

Then the pain was gone. Nate blinked. The unnatural darkness that had surrounded him was also gone. Instead, he found himself in the more familiar gloom of a poorly lit room. He looked around himself in confusion. He knew this room. A seedy office in the backroom of a rundown bar. Cabinets and bookcases lined the walls, none of them a match for any of the others. A desk sat in the middle of the room, the only light coming from the desk lamp reflecting off the wooden surface. Nate sat in a chair facing the desk.

His wounds were gone. He felt…good. His clothes were different. Gone was the increasingly familiar leather armor. Gone, too, was the knife at his belt. Instead, he wore jeans, sneakers, and a black t-shirt.

He wasn’t alone in the room.

“You’re in real trouble this time, Nate.”

The gruff voice came from a man seated on the other side of the desk. He was just at the edge of the reflected light, his form vague barely discernable as he rocked back in his chair.

“Someone at the party saw you. They recognized you. Words already out. The Menzini family is looking for you, Nate.”

Nate blinked. He remembered this conversation. Of course he did. How could he forget? It was when everything changed.

“Can’t you help me?” Nate heard his own voice, though he hadn’t spoken.

The man opposite him chuckled, though it was an oddly sad sound.

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“I wish I could. I really do. You’re a good boy, Nate. And you’ve done good work for us. But you knew why we picked you for this job. You’re not part of the family. If things went bad, we could wash our hands of it. And things have gone bad. I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do for you.”

Nate’s insides squirmed, a faint echo of how he had felt the first time this had played out. The anger. The loss. The sense of betrayal. And the cold resignation. He had always known this day would come. He still hadn’t been prepared when it actually did.

“What do I do?” Again his voice came, though he hadn’t opened his mouth. Silence answered for a long moment, heavy in the air.

“You run, boy. Run as far as you can, for as long as you can. It won’t save you. They will find you. Eventually. But it might buy you some time. And that’s what life is, isn’t it? It’s time. So grab as much as you can.”

Nate gasped, collapsing to his knees as all the pain that had vanished so suddenly swept back. The office was gone. He was in the ravine again. The dark figure was gone.

Nate knelt, shuddering in the darkness, trying to hold onto consciousness as the pain overwhelmed him. What the hell was that? In confusion, he pulled up his activity log, scanning it for clues. The last few lines told him everything without revealing anything.

{You have been targeted by a mental attack.

You have failed your willpower check.

Mental attach successful. }

Slowly, Nate pulled himself back to his feet. The path to the building was once again clear. But the sense of motion, of darkness swirling just at the edge of his vision, was growing. The shadows had been following him for some time, but this was the first time one had made a move towards him. But he could feel the others now. They were pressing in.

Nate took stock of himself. His health was still painfully low, but it hadn’t dropped further from the mental attack.

Cautiously, he took a step forward. Nothing happened. He took another step. Then another.

He made it three more steps before the second attack came.

Again, the darkness before him congealed, and again the strike came too fast to dodge. The dark tendrils struck, and the cold rushed in.

“That one. That’s our mark.”

It was the same gruff voice from the last memory. He was in a different place again, a crowded city street. Nate turned to look at the speaker. An older man, his back slightly stooped, but still lithe and strong despite that. His beard and hair were mostly gray, but there were patches of the black that had been so striking in the photos from his youth. His brown eyes twinkled as he looked back at Nate.

“How do you pick?” Nate’s voice asked.

“I could pretend there’s a science to it. Body language. Clothing. Demeanor. But its more about instinct. We’re predators, Nate. Predators can always find the weak ones in the herd.”

Nate remembered this day. He had been 16, and he had not felt like much of a predator. But the old man’s easy smile and confident words filled him with a sense of strength he had never felt before.

“What do we do?” Nate’s voice again.

“I’ll create a distraction, then you make the lift.”

Again, the memory vanished, and, again, Nate collapsed. He heaved for breath like he had just run a sprint. He checked his log and his status sheet again, but it was the same as before. Another successful mental attack. No new damage. But there was a feeling. A nervous energy coursed through him, the same quivering buildup that he associated with being on the edge of a manic episode. Last time he had one of those, he had stayed up for three straight nights and burned through $20,000. This felt worse. Darker. More dangerous.

With an effort, he pulled himself to his feet again. The ominous pressure, the sense of hands reaching for him in the darkness, had intensified again. He didn’t know what these things were. But they were watching him. Probing his mind. Tasting his memory. Apparently he tasted good.

Nate ignored his aching body as best he could and burst into motion. He wanted to cover the rest of the distance to the building before another attack could come. He hobbled along, more of a trot than a run, covering the space.

He was within twenty feet of the building when the next shadow struck.

“Get up. Get up, you little shit.”

Nate was lying on the ground. All he could see were a set of heavy black boots right in front of him. The voice was gruff, but it was a different voice than the other memories. There was no warmth in the tone, no compassion. But this one, too, was familiar.

“What did I do?” Nate’s voice, but not. Younger. Much younger.

“Stop whining. What did you do? You were born. Now get on your fucking feet.”

Nathan rose, though he didn’t want to. But the memory played out, and he didn’t seem able to change it. He looked up into the angry, beet red face. He looked far older than his forty years, with deep lines scarring his face. He was still strong, though.

“What are you going to do? Don’t you know how to fight? How to defend yourself?” His father asked, a sneer of disdain marring his features.

“I don’t want to fight,” Nate’s youthful whisper answered.

He didn’t see the blow coming. But he felt it. He was on the ground again. Looking at the boots.

“You’re weak. All you know how to do is run. You can’t run from everything forever. You have to learn to fight.”

At those words, something snapped in Nate. He gritted his teeth. He pushed at the memory, fighting against it like it was a nightmare he was trying to wake up from. He felt a strange, ephemeral resistance. He clawed at it.

He felt something tear.

He was back in the ravine again. His limbs were shaking, his breathing ragged. He pulled up his log.

{You have been targeted by a mental attack.

You have partially succeeded in your willpower check.

Mental attack by Wraith of Ulvar partially successful. You have partially succeeded in resisting this attack.

Experience gained.}

Nate shuddered, but he pushed forward. He had no idea what a Wraith of Ulvar was, but apparently his partial resistance of its attack allowed its name to appear in his logs. He didn’t have time to think about what that meant right now. He moved as fast as he could, trying to close the distance.

The building was before him. The archway was right there, just a few feet away. The darkness inside was deep, but Nate could see what he hadn’t been able to before. There was only one thing inside the building. A steep staircase led down, disappearing into the earth below.

Again, a Wraith reached out from the darkness and struck.

A vision started to form. A room. A low bedframe against the wall. A small desk in the corner. A recent memory. He had stayed in this room for a month, rarely leaving. Hiding from those that pursued him. It was in this room he had gone to sleep one night a few weeks ago, only to wake up in a new place. A new world.

Nate didn’t let the vision settle. He pushed back as he had before, feeling for the edges of the pressure in his mind. It resisted, pushing back much harder than it had the last time. There was a sharp stab of pain that seemed to penetrate Nate’s very soul. Yet he pushed, frantically resisting.

The vision popped, vanishing. He didn’t wait. With a roar, he threw himself forward, through the archway and onto the staircase.

His injured ankle gave out as it hit the first stare, twisting beneath him. With a cry of renewed pain, Nate fell. He disappeared into the darkness.

As he fell, a text box filled his vision.

{Congratulations, Traveler! You have successfully resisted a mental attack. Experience gained. You are now Level 2.}