After they moved past King’s party, they picked back up into a jog, heading towards Kaia’s house, weapons resummoned. They slammed on the door, trying to peer into the windows as they called for Kaia.

“Cade, quiet… I think I can hear something.” Brandon shushed Cade. As they listened, they could hear scraping and knocking. They were unable to see anything inside due to the curtains, so Cade decided to kick in the door and figure it out from there.

“Hey, get ready. I’m going to break it down.” He prepared himself, recalling his sword, but kept his shield out to use as a battering ram, trusting it more than his shoulder alone. Brandon’s knives were at the ready and he nodded at Cade. Moving back to the edge of the threshold, he used a burst of speed to slam his shield into the door. Luckily this was a classically cheap rental door and it shattered around the lock, collapsing inward.

As Cade fell forward, he landed with his arms out, luckily commanding his shield to recall as he fell. Unfortunately for him, he slipped on something as he landed and hit his chin fairly hard on the faux wood floor. Standing, he looked at his hands in the light of the doorway and scrambled backwards, realizing that what he had slipped on was blood. Brandon reached out a hand and helped Cade up, a sickly look to his skin as he pointed with his head towards the kitchen, which was immediately inside of the doorway. On the ground of the kitchen in a pool of blood and viscera, was Kaia’s roommate, Bridget. Most of her face was missing, with deep troughs dug into her skin. It was disgusting and Cade had to look away.

Cade was not used to death in any form, and he had known Bridget, so this was a gross sight for him. Even though it turned his stomach sideways, he was glad that it wasn’t Kaia. Brandon expressed the same sentiment aloud, comforting Cade. Brandon had a lot more experience with this type of thing. He had served in the U.S. Military for two years as a frontline Surveillance Officer during the start of the Continental Alliance’s formation. Although he was not directly involved with any ground offense, he was in charge of a sector of the inner states, where the war was predominantly fought, and was used to managing people through death and injury.

Brandon helped stand Cade up and put a finger to his lips, asking for silence. They both heard what sounded like padded feet moving towards them and they watched as a massive void-black cat turned the corner towards them. The world flashed, and they appeared in a twisted version of Kaia’s house. Immediately they both called their weapons and moved to stand facing the monstrous form in front of them. The thing had to be four feet tall at its head, with three tails instead of one, massive bone white teeth protruding from its mouth, and eyes shining the brightest unnatural red Cade had ever seen.

The red bar appeared above the void black form, this time with a twist. Brownie, The Void Riddled. “This thing has a name. I’m going to assume that’s not a good thing.” Brandon floated. Cade grunted in agreement. “Follow me, back to the wall. We are going to draw it in and hit it hard. Get ready to get behind it if I can draw it towards me.” Cade said as he slowly moved sideways, shield and sword pointed at what was once Brownie the cat. They backed up to the wall behind them. As they moved, the Void cat charged at them, moving faster than any of their other fights had before. It reached out as it closed on them and a set of massive bone-white, oversized claws extended. Cade moved his shield to intercept, noting that there wasn’t as much force behind the attack as he expected. “The thing is playing with us, just like an actual cat.” Brandon said. As he said this the cat lunged again, but this time Cade was ready. He blocked the paw and sliced down, aiming for the neck with his gladius.

He missed as it deftly dodged, letting out a low growl. Lunging back at them, Brandon maneuvered himself to Cade’s left, hiding behind his shield, trying to stay in the cat's blind spot. He waited for another strike before darting out to land a strike on the cat's shoulder. His knife sunk down several inches before the cat jumped backwards, wrenching the knife from his hand. Cade cursed and rubbed his wrist, he had made the mistake of trying to hold onto the knife as the cat had leaped away. “That took a decent chunk out of it, look at the bar.” Brandon said- the cat's health showed it at just above half. “Yeah, nice hit. Let’s see what it does now, let’s try to end this fast. I don’t want to know what bag of tricks it has.” Cade said, but he had spoken too soon. As he finished his sentence, the Void cat dropped into a low stance, and a darkness started emanating from below it. The hairs on Cade’s neck stood on end, and the cat screamed. The sound it produced was nowhere as loud as the Procyon, and didn’t damage their hearing. What happened was arguably much worse, as everything went pitch black. Everything in their vision disappeared, and Cade yelled out to Brandon. He was able to respond, and Cade noted that he was still immediately beside him. He felt Brandon reach out and grab onto Cade’s belt. Cade also noticed that the Cursed notification had returned. This time it said VoidBlind next to it.

Cade raised his shield, unable to see what or where he was, and heard Brandon cry out in pain. “It got me, took a fuckin chunk out of my arm. I’ll live, but this thing is bleeding fast.” He could hear the pain in Brandon’s voice, but his attention did not stay on him for long as he felt the Void cat smack aside his shield. The follow up was something Cade would never forget. He slashed out with his sword, catching something fleshy, feeling it run up to the hilt, a wet feeling appearing on his hand, dripping down on his pants and shoes. That wasn’t the important bit though. Cade cried out in pain, and as the light returned to their eyes, the cat was dead, but four of the cat’s claws had sunk into Cade’s chest, several inches deep. Cade felt his head swim, and noticed his health plummeting fast. The weight of the cat on his chest went away as the world flashed, Cade falling hard backwards, barely being caught by Brandon behind him. He could just barely make out Brandon’s left arm bleeding, and was having a hard time hearing Cade as his heartbeat pounded in his head as he passed out.

Brandon

Brandon scrambled to catch Cade as he fell, his vision clearing from the curse just quick enough to see him starting to fall, barely catching him before he hit his head on the floor of the house. He started inspecting Cade, his limited medical training, beaten into him through repeated drills guiding him through what to do. He started to yell for Kaia to call an ambulance, but quickly realized that wouldn’t be an option. Cade had clearly passed out - his shirt shredded, skin much the same beneath as blood poured from the four wounds near his shoulder. Brandon knew Cade would bleed out if something wasn’t done, and put pressure on the wound, yelling for Kaia for help. “Brandon? Is that you? What is going on?” He could hear Kaia yelling from behind the door. “I need help, Cade got hit, he’s bleeding out. Get me some towels, we need to stop the bleeding!” He could hear Kaia scrambling to unblock the door before she barrelled through the open door, stopping and flinching when she saw Bridget on the floor nearby. Her eyes watered, but they didn’t have time for that. “Kaia, I know she's dead, but I need you to help me right now. I need you to apply pressure here, find some towels.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Kaia opened a nearby closet, grabbing linens before running over to Brandon and Cade. She folded them and offered them to Brandon. “No, I need you to apply pressure. I need to see if there is anything we can do about this.” He shakily said to her. “What do you mean? What can we do?” Kaia asked as she took over for Brandon. “Not right now, I’ll tell you later after we save him.” Brandon commanded his menu to open, pulled out the Guidebook, and quickly wrote that his friend was dying and he needed help. Seconds passed, feeling like minutes as he hoped a solution or medical professional would read it. He knew it was a long shot, but it was all he could think of.

[Do you have any Void Coins?] Appeared underneath his entry. He wrote back mentally, [Yes, what do they have to do with this?]

[Pull out a coin, and will it to open the shop. If you have enough, there should be an option to buy a Regen Elixir.]

Brandon called up a Void Coin and mentally shouted at it to open “the shop.” His display changed from the normal shade of blue, to a deeply black shimmering window. Void Market flashed at the top of the window and a list appeared below it. He quickly read through the various options.

* Weapons

* Garments

* Consumables

* Items

* Sell

Brandon mentally selected the consumables tab, scrolling through quickly, looking for something titled Regen Elixir. He found the tab, mentally selecting it, and was given several options.

* Unfiltered Regen Elixir

* Filtered Regen Elixir

* Infused Regen Elixir

* Void Changed Regen Elixir

Selecting the first one, it brought up a price. 14 Void Coins. He pushed at the store to purchase the Unfiltered Regen Elixir, and was rewarded with a ping and a notice that it had been added to his inventory. Commanding the menu to close, he summoned the Elixir to his hand. He noted Cade’s health had fallen to nearly a quarter of its total. “Kaia, raise his head if you can, I’m going to pour this into his mouth.” Kaia nodded and with a confused look on her face, lifted Cade’s head onto her lap. Brandon gripped Cade’s mouth and forcibly pulled his jaw apart. He unstoppered the dark liquid in the vial and breathed out. “Come on buddy, I hope this works.” Pouring the liquid into his mouth slowly, he tried to give it time to make its way down. As he poured the last half of it out, he pulled the last few drops to his own mouth, hoping to maybe heal his arm a little.

Nothing happened for several seconds, feeling like ages for Brandon and Kaia, before Cade sputtered and coughed. Brandon watched as his health stopped falling, breathing out in relief, the endorphins from the fight finally catching up to him. He noticed that his arm had stopped bleeding, his health only missing maybe an eighth of his total. As he relaxed, he noticed another notification had appeared. Bringing up his display, he saw that his inventory was lit up, and after selecting it he noticed that the Home Stone from before was backlit. He summoned it to his hand from his inventory, and suddenly a menu appeared. It was similar to the normal screen he saw, the only difference being the color and the text at the top. The text read, Establish Safe Zone? Brandon selected yes and the stone glowed gold before dissipating into motes of light, shooting away from him in every direction. He noticed that a new status had appeared below his and Cade’s health in the corner of his vision. SAFE ZONE was written in large golden letters, but no other information was available, and he had other pressing matters to attend to.

“Kaia, can you stay with Cade? I’m going to barricade the front door as best as we can, we destroyed it when we came inside earlier.”

“Uh yeah, I don’t understand what is going on, but I’ll stay with him.” Kaia responded, Brandon realizing just how scared and confused she probably was. “Can you hand me that blanket? His breathing is evening out, but I think we should make him comfortable before we call the authorities.” She added.

“Kaia, there are no authorities. At least not like there used to be. We are on our own here. This shit is way above and beyond anything we have ever dealt with before. This is more akin to a video game or one of our D&D campaigns.” Brandon hadn’t said that out loud, but he realized he had accepted it to be true for longer than he had realized. Leaving Kaia, he moved to block the front door, propping up the old destroyed pieces before pushing a couch behind it on its side to cover the actual entrance.

He stepped past the kitchen and stopped. He needed to cover Bridget before Kaia remembered and actually saw what had happened. He pulled a blanket from another piece of furniture in the living room and threw it over Bridget's body.

He went back to Cade and Kaia, guessing that Kaia likely had a million questions. He went over and put his arm around her, comforting her in silence as he tried to find the words to explain what they had experienced so far. “Kaia, Bridget is dead. It looks like Brownie was changed into a monster, and she was unable to hide. I am so glad you are safe. We came to find you as soon as we could. I’m sorry we couldn’t save her.” Emotions rushed into Brandon, the situation catching up to him, hitting him harder than he realized it would. He felt a tear fall from each eye, reaching up to wipe them before Kaia could notice. She was quicker than he was though, and gently wiped his cheek with her sleeve. “It’s okay Brandon, you guys have obviously been through a lot. I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to help. I don’t want to die.”

“Thanks Kaia. I really am glad we got here in time. I know Cade feels the same.” As he said this, he heard Cade grunting, and turned his head to see Cade opening his eyes slowly, almost as if waking from a deep sleep. His health was above half way now, trending in the right direction.

“What happened? I remember not being able to see, and then pain.” Cade groggily got out.

“Dude you took a bunch of claws to the chest; they went deep. I don’t know how it works, but I was able to buy a potion from some kind of store with the Void Coins we got from the fights before, and I made you drink it. It looks like it stabilized you and brought your health back from the edge. I was really worried man, I’m glad you’re good.” Brandon said warmly to him.

“A shop? I didn’t see that option before, woulda been good to know ahead of time, huh.” Cade laughed lightly.

“Yeah man, now sit still and rest until your health returns to normal. I’ll tell you how to access the store, and we can check it out. First I need to thank someone.” Brandon opened the Guidebook and found the past passage he had written out. Below it, he mentally wrote out a message.

[Thank you to whoever it was that told me about the store. It saved my buddies life. I owe you one. Name’s Crow.]

[Glad your friend made it, Crow. Pleasure to meet you. I’m Jury. I’ll take you up on that if we ever meet.]

Brandon closed the Guidebook, mentally noting that he should return to it and submit what they had found out when he had the chance.