Chapter 2: Welcome to the Shattered Realms

The first bone wolf hit Cassian like a sack of knives thrown by a truck.

One second he was staring at a translucent warning hanging in the air, its red letters calmly informing him that his chances of surviving the tutorial zone were below one percent. The next, something pale and skeletal burst out of the thorn-grass and slammed into his chest.

Cassian’s back struck black dirt hard enough to punch the breath from his lungs. Ribs screamed. His skull bounced once against a stone. The world flashed white, then red, then settled into a shaking mess of teeth and stink and hot saliva dripping through the cage of fangs snapping an inch from his nose.

The wolf had no skin.

That was the first stupid thing his brain managed to understand.

It was built from bones yellowed like old ivory, bound together by cords of smoky muscle that writhed in the gaps where flesh should have been. Its eyes burned with little blue corpse-lights. Its muzzle split wider than any natural animal’s should, showing rows of teeth like broken glass.

Cassian shoved his forearm between those teeth on instinct.

Pain detonated up his arm.

“Mother—”

The rest of the curse became a strangled shout as the wolf bit down. Teeth punched through the sleeve of his delivery jacket, through skin, into meat. Cassian bucked, kicked, clawed at its skull. His fingers slipped on bone slick with grave-damp slime. The wolf growled, a hollow rattling noise that sounded like stones grinding in a blender.

Tutorial Notice
Hostile entity engaged: Gravebone Wolf, Level 3.
Recommended action: Flee.
Secondary recommendation: Die quickly.

“Oh, helpful,” Cassian wheezed.

A second wolf circled to his left. A third padded through the grass behind it. Their paws made tiny clicking sounds against the scattered stones, delicate as fingernails on tile. More shapes moved beyond them in the reddish haze beneath the blood-colored sky.

Get up.

The thought was not brave. It was not heroic. It was the same frantic command that had kept him moving through blizzards with takeout bags under both arms, across six lanes of homicidal traffic, down subway steps as concrete screamed above him.

Get up or you’re done.

Cassian drove his thumb into the wolf’s burning eye.

The blue light popped like a bubble of cold fire. The wolf recoiled with a shriek that scraped across his teeth. Its bite loosened. Cassian ripped his arm free, felt something tear, and rolled sideways as the second wolf lunged.

Its jaws snapped shut where his throat had been.

He scrambled onto hands and knees. The ground was wrong beneath him—too warm, too soft in places, crusted in others. Ash-black soil stuck to his palms. The air tasted like rust, smoke, and pennies left in rain. Somewhere in the distance, something enormous bellowed, and the sound rolled across the landscape like thunder trapped underground.

Cassian staggered upright.

His left arm dangled, bleeding through the sleeve. Blood. Real blood. Bright and hot and horrifyingly familiar.

“This isn’t a game,” he rasped.

The gravebone wolves answered by spreading out.

They were not mindless. He saw it in the way they moved, one limping with a cracked femur, one low to the ground, one circling behind. They were boxing him in. Herding him away from the jagged mound of stones where he might get his back to something solid.

“Nope,” Cassian said, backing toward the stones anyway. “I’ve dealt with landlord emails scarier than you.”

The one-eyed wolf pounced.

Cassian snatched up the first thing his good hand found—a length of gray wood half-buried in the dirt—and swung with everything he had.

The branch cracked against the wolf’s skull. Pain lanced through Cassian’s shoulder. The wolf’s head snapped sideways. It crashed to the ground, rolled, and came up missing three teeth.

Improvised Weapon Equipped
Rotwood Branch
Quality: Trash
Damage: 1-3 bludgeoning
Durability: 4/5

Every legend begins somewhere. This one begins with a stick.

“Trash?” Cassian spat, gripping the branch as the wolves closed again. “Buddy, this is premium New York craftsmanship.”

The third wolf darted in. Cassian swung too early. The branch hissed through empty air. Teeth slashed across his thigh.

He screamed.

His leg buckled and he nearly went down. The wolf tried to hamstring him, jaws clamping again, but Cassian brought the branch down like an axe. Once. Twice. A third time. Bone cracked under the blows. The wolf released him, twitching, its lower jaw hanging loose.

Damage Dealt
Gravebone Wolf suffers 2 damage.
Gravebone Wolf suffers 3 damage.
Critical hit! Gravebone Wolf suffers 5 damage.

Skill Progress: Improvised Combat 3%

The windows flickered at the edge of his vision without blocking his sight. Somehow that made them worse. The System was narrating his murder with the enthusiasm of a bored customer-service chatbot.

Cassian backed into the stones. They were not stones, he realized as his shoulder hit one.

They were ribs.

Massive ribs, each one taller than he was, jutting from the earth in a half-collapsed cage. The bones belonged to something that had died here long ago and had been large enough to swallow buses. Moss the color of bruises crawled over the surface. Black vines threaded through cracks in the marrow.

“Fantastic,” Cassian muttered. “Scenic.”

The wolves hesitated at the edge of the rib cage.

Cassian noticed because fear made him greedy for details. Their blue eyes fixed on the bones behind him. Their paws scraped the dirt, but they did not immediately rush. The one-eyed wolf snarled and lowered its head.

They don’t like this place.

He glanced back.

Inside the skeletal ruin, shadows pooled too thickly. Something glimmered there, half-hidden beneath a tangle of thorny vines: a metal shape, rectangular and dull. A chest? A crate? Maybe just another piece of weird death-world garbage.

His stomach clenched so hard he almost doubled over.

Not fear this time.

Hunger.

It hit like a switch had been thrown inside him. One breath he was terrified and bleeding. The next his body remembered it had missed dinner, then dying, then however long it had taken to wake up under alien skies. His mouth filled with saliva. His guts twisted.

Condition Applied: Hunger I
Stamina regeneration reduced by 10%.

Condition Applied: Bleeding I
Lose 1 HP every 60 seconds until treated.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

He risked a glance at the status numbers hovering when he focused inward.

Cassian Vale
Class: Unassigned
Level: 1
HP: 22/35
SP: 14/20
MP: 0/0

Strength: 8
Agility: 9
Endurance: 7
Will: 11
Luck: ERROR

Status: Bleeding I, Hunger I, Hunted (Dormant)

“Luck error,” he said. “Of course my luck has a typo.”

The wolves attacked together.

Cassian ducked behind one of the huge ribs as the first leapt. It slammed bone-first into the ancient skeleton with a clatter. The second came around low. Cassian jabbed the branch into its open mouth. Teeth snapped down, splintering wood.

Durability: 2/5

He shoved harder, gagging the thing, then kicked it in the chest. The wolf skidded back, claws carving grooves in the dirt.

The third wolf—the one with the broken jaw—dragged itself toward his injured leg with horrible determination.

“Persistent little nightmare, aren’t you?”

Cassian hobbled backward into the rib cage. The shadows swallowed him to the waist. Cold prickled over his skin. The wolves stopped again at the threshold, growling, blue eyes burning.

For three seconds, nobody moved.

Cassian sucked air through clenched teeth. Blood ran down his arm, warm against his wrist, then dripped from his fingers into the dirt. Each drop vanished too quickly, swallowed by soil that pulsed faintly as if pleased.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay, Cass. You died. You got a stat sheet. You are being bullied by undead dogs. Totally manageable.”

The one-eyed wolf prowled left, searching for an opening between ribs.

Cassian stumbled deeper into the skeleton and nearly fell over the metal crate.

It was not a chest. It was a vending machine.

Or had been, once.

The thing lay half-buried on its side, its glass front spiderwebbed but intact. Faded letters across the top read: SNACK HAVEN AUTO-MART. Rows of items sat inside, untouched by time in neat metal spirals. Protein bars. Bottled water. Something in a blue package that might have been chips or possibly medical gauze. The labels were in English.

Cassian stared.

For one absurd heartbeat, the Shattered Realms receded and he was back in a subway station at 2 a.m., twenty bucks short on rent, debating whether dinner could be a bruised banana and spite.

Then a wolf rammed its skull between two ribs and snapped at him.

Cassian lurched away. The vending machine became the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“If you take cards,” he said, voice shaking, “I am going to become religious.”

It did not take cards. It did not take anything. Its coin slot had been punched inward, and a rusted spear jutted from one side. Cassian grabbed the spear haft and yanked. It refused to move.

The wolf squeezed farther through the ribs. Its shoulder bones scraped. Cracks spidered through the ancient rib restraining it.

Cassian planted one foot on the vending machine and pulled again.

The spear came free with a wet crunch from something inside the machine. He fell backward, landing hard on his hip, but now he had a weapon longer than his arm. The spearhead was black iron, leaf-shaped and chipped along one edge.

Weapon Acquired
Rustbitten Spear
Quality: Common
Damage: 4-9 piercing
Durability: 11/15
Requirement: None

Someone died holding this. Try not to be traditional.

“Now we’re talking.”

The rib cracked.

The wolf lunged through.

Cassian did not think. Thinking had never saved him in a crisis. Thinking was for after, when hands stopped shaking and bills still needed paying. He set the butt of the spear against the vending machine, angled the point at the wolf’s chest, and let the monster’s own momentum do the work.

The spearhead punched between its ribs and burst through its spine.

The wolf shrieked. Blue fire flared in both eye sockets. Its claws scrabbled inches from Cassian’s face as the spear shaft bent under its weight. Cassian screamed back, half rage, half terror, and shoved until the weapon grated through bone.

Critical Hit!
Gravebone Wolf suffers 12 damage.
Gravebone Wolf defeated.
+15 XP

The wolf collapsed into a heap of bones and smoky muscle that evaporated like steam.

A small tooth remained on the ground, gleaming faintly.

Loot Available
Gravebone Fang x1
Collect?

Cassian stared at the floating prompt.

Outside the ribs, the remaining wolves howled.

“Yes,” he snapped. “Obviously yes.”

The fang vanished from the dirt and appeared in his palm with a tiny flicker of light. It was cold, curved, and sharp enough to shave with.

Item Acquired: Gravebone Fang
Crafting material. Minor necrotic affinity.

“Great. I can open envelopes in hell.”

The other wolves began clawing at the gaps between ribs, no longer hesitant. Killing one had changed the math. Maybe they smelled his weakness. Maybe they were angry. Maybe the ancient skeleton’s spooky real estate laws only applied until someone shed enough blood.

Cassian grabbed the spear and dragged himself toward the vending machine.

His vision pulsed with each heartbeat. HP: 20. Then 19. Bleeding ticked down like a landlord’s patience. His thigh burned. His forearm felt like it had been run through a garbage disposal.

The vending machine glass was cracked.

Cassian raised the spear and smashed it.

The first blow bounced, sending a shock through his injured arm. He cursed. The second blow widened the spiderweb. The third punched through, raining cubes of safety glass across the dirt.

He reached in and grabbed the closest bottle of water.

Item Acquired: Sealed Water Bottle
Quality: Mundane
Effect: Restores minor thirst. Does not cure bleeding, fear, regret, or stupidity.

“You’re developing a personality,” Cassian said, twisting the cap off with his teeth. “I hate it.”

He drank greedily. The water was warm and tasted faintly of plastic, but it slid down his throat like mercy. He shoved two protein bars into his jacket pocket, grabbed a third, and tore it open.

Outside, a rib snapped.

One of the wolves forced its skull through, then a shoulder. Cassian bit into the protein bar and nearly sobbed. Peanut butter. Stale, chalky, miraculous peanut butter.

Condition Reduced: Hunger I duration shortened.

“Food works,” he mumbled around the bar. “Pain works. Bleeding works. Terrible.”

The wolf broke through.

Cassian backed away, spear raised. He had killed one by bracing the weapon. Doing it again while limping and half-delirious would be harder.

A shout cut across the wasteland.

“Over here! There’s one alive!”

Cassian’s head whipped toward the sound.

Beyond the rib cage, past the wolves, a group of people scrambled down a slope of black stone. Four of them. No—five. All human, or close enough at a glance. They wore the same bewildered terror Cassian felt stretched across his own face, but they had weapons. Real weapons. A woman in a torn business suit clutched a round shield and a short sword. A broad man in gym clothes carried a heavy axe with both hands. A teenager with pink hair had a wand that leaked sparks. Behind them stumbled a thin older man in a stained apron and a young guy wearing a college hoodie, his glasses cracked.

New arrivals.

The sight hit Cassian harder than hope had any right to.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Little help would be amazing!”

The woman with the shield stopped at the edge of the clearing, eyes darting from the wolves to Cassian to the vending machine. A translucent glow shimmered briefly around her as she raised her sword.

“How many?” she called.

“Two here, maybe more in the grass,” Cassian said. “Level three. They don’t like the big bones, but that’s apparently negotiable!”

The gym man swallowed visibly. His axe trembled. He was huge, thick-necked, the kind of guy who looked like he could bench-press Cassian and the vending machine together, but fear had shrunk him.

“We can’t fight a pack,” the man said.

“We have to,” the pink-haired teenager snapped. “The blue line points through here.”

Cassian noticed it then: a faint glowing trail running across the ground, visible only when he focused. It threaded past the rib cage and vanished toward distant ruins where a tower rose crooked against the blood sky.

Tutorial Objective Updated
Reach Safe Zone: 2.7 km
Time Remaining: 05:41:12

Optional: Survive.

“Optional?” Cassian barked a laugh that hurt his ribs. “Optional survival. Bold design choice.”

The woman with the shield took one step forward. She was maybe thirty-five, hair pinned in a collapsing bun, one heel missing from her shoe. Her face had the pale, furious look of someone who had been important five minutes ago and had not yet accepted the universe’s resignation letter.

“If we help you,” she said, “you help us get through.”

“Lady, if you help me, I’ll write you a glowing review on whatever insane afterlife Yelp exists here.”

“Name,” she demanded.

“Cassian.”

“Mara.” She jerked her chin at the others. “Brent. Lio. Mr. Alvarez. Theo.”

“Pleasure. Wish it was under worse circumstances so I could be pleasantly surprised later.”

The wolf inside the rib cage lunged.

Cassian stabbed. The spear scraped along its skull instead of piercing. The monster slammed into him, knocking him against the vending machine. Pain burst down his injured arm. He lost his grip. The spear clattered away.

“Now!” Mara shouted.

Brent charged with the axe, roaring so loudly it sounded like he was trying to scare himself into bravery. The axe came down on the wolf’s spine. Bone cracked. Blue fire flared. Lio thrust the wand forward, eyes squeezed shut.

“Spark! Spark! Uh—whatever! Shoot!”

A bolt of yellow light spat from the wand and struck the wolf in the face. It exploded in a shower of sparks and teeth.

Party Assist Detected
Gravebone Wolf suffers 6 damage.
Gravebone Wolf suffers 4 lightning damage.

Cassian grabbed the spear and drove it through the wolf’s neck vertebrae.

The creature collapsed.

Gravebone Wolf defeated.
Contribution: 41%
+8 XP

Another fang dropped. Cassian reached for it on instinct.

Mara’s sword point touched his wrist.

He froze.

Her eyes flicked to the tooth, then to him. “Shared kill.”

Cassian stared at the sword, then at her. “Are we negotiating loot while the murder dogs are still—”

A howl answered from the grass.

The older man, Alvarez, whimpered. Theo adjusted his broken glasses with shaking fingers.

“We should move,” Theo said. “The tutorial message said safe zone. There are probably more spawns behind us. They killed Jenna and Rob.”

His voice cracked on the names.

Mara did not lower the sword.

Cassian held up his bloody hand. “Take the fang. Congrats. Dental plan achieved.”

Mara snatched it, and the item vanished into motes around her fingers. She blinked, startled by the inventory transfer, but recovered quickly.

“Formation,” she said. “Brent front. I’ll guard left. Lio, stay center. Theo, guide. Alvarez, stop shaking and keep up.”

Alvarez looked at Cassian with miserable apology. He smelled like flour and smoke. A baker, maybe. Or a diner cook. Someone who should have been complaining about supply prices, not watching skeletal wolves circle under a red sky.

“What about him?” Alvarez asked.

“He has a spear,” Mara said.

“He’s bleeding.”

“Everyone’s bleeding.”

Cassian pushed away from the vending machine and tried not to sway. “I’m touched by the team spirit.”

Mara finally looked directly at him. “Can you walk?”

“I can complain and move forward at the same time.”

“Good enough.”

They ran.

Not a heroic charge. Not a disciplined retreat. They fled along the glowing blue line while the wasteland tried to kill them.

The tutorial zone unfolded in fragments of nightmare.

Fields of thorn-grass waved without wind, each blade tipped with tiny hooks that caught at Cassian’s pants and tore fresh lines into his shins. Patches of ground steamed green vapor that made Theo gag and warned of poison when one unlucky insect the size of a pigeon flew through and dropped dead midair. Cracked statues lay half-buried in the dirt—human faces with too many eyes, stone hands clutching broken tablets covered in symbols that writhed when Cassian looked too long.

The blood-red sky had no sun. Instead, three jagged moons hung overhead, chained together by arcs of pale light. Pieces of land floated in the distance, upside-down mountains trailing waterfalls that vanished into mist before reaching the ground. Far above, something with wings the size of office buildings glided between them.

Cassian had no room to marvel. His HP ticked from 19 to 18. Then 17.

“Does anyone have bandages?” he asked.

“Do I look like I packed for reincarnation?” Brent snapped.

“You look like you packed for leg day.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Keep axing.”

Lio, the pink-haired teen, glanced back at Cassian. They had a silver nose ring, tear tracks through soot on their cheeks, and a wand clutched in both hands like it might run away. “I got a cantrip called Minor Mend, but it says non-living material only.”

“Great. If my jacket starts bleeding, you’re up.”

Despite everything, Lio barked a laugh. It came out too high and ended too quickly.

The wolves followed.

Sometimes Cassian saw blue eyes in the thorn-grass. Sometimes only heard the clicking paws. They were patient now. Waiting for the group to tire. Waiting for the bleeding one to stumble.

That would be him.

He tore the sleeve of his delivery jacket with his teeth and wrapped it around his forearm, pulling tight until black spots danced in his vision.

Bleeding I partially treated.
HP loss interval increased.

“Ha,” he panted. “Take that, medical debt.”

The blue line led them through a ravine made of fused subway cars.

Cassian stopped so abruptly Theo crashed into his back.

The cars jutted from the earth at impossible angles, their silver bodies twisted and rusted, windows dark. Some bore markings he recognized from New York transit. Others had scripts he had never seen. One train car hung vertically from a cliff face like a broken elevator, its doors opening and closing with a tired ding though no power should have fed it.

His throat tightened.

For a heartbeat he smelled dust and ozone. Heard concrete cracking. Felt the stranger’s fingers slipping from his grip as he shoved them toward daylight.

You died.

“Cassian,” Mara snapped. “Move.”

He blinked. The ravine returned. The wolves were closer.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Moving.”

Inside the subway ravine, the air grew cooler. Advertisements peeled from the walls of buried cars. Some were mundane—lawyers, phone plans, coffee. Others shifted as Cassian passed.

TIRED OF MORTAL LIMITATIONS?
ASCEND TODAY WITH THE CELESTIAL ARENA PACKAGE.
FIRST DEATH FREE.

“First death free,” Cassian muttered. “They better not charge for the second.”

Mr. Alvarez crossed himself repeatedly. “This is purgatory.”

“Purgatory had better snacks,” Cassian said.

“You found snacks?” Brent demanded.

“Past tense, big guy.”

Brent’s expression darkened, but Mara lifted a hand for silence.

Ahead, the blue line passed through an overturned train car blocking the ravine. Its windows glowed faintly gold. For one impossible second, warm light spilled from inside, and Cassian heard music—a soft piano melody, clinking glasses, laughter. Then the glow flickered, revealing only darkness and hanging straps.

The System chimed.

Micro-Dungeon Discovered: Last Stop Diner
Recommended Level: 2-4
Clear Reward: Food Cache, Basic Healing Supplies, Random Tutorial Equipment
Time Dilation: Minimal

Enter?

Everyone stopped.

Food.

Healing supplies.

Cassian’s stomach cramped again, savage and immediate. His arm throbbed. The makeshift bandage was already soaked through.

“We enter,” he said.

Mara shook her head. “No. Safe zone first.”

“I’m at—” He focused. “Sixteen HP and dripping. If I don’t patch this, I become decorative.”

“Dungeons have bosses,” Theo said, voice thin. “The help panel mentioned instanced threats.”

“The help panel also told me dying quickly was a recommendation,” Cassian said. “I’m not letting it plan my day.”

Brent stared at the golden window in the train car. “Food cache?”

Lio licked cracked lips. “My stamina’s almost gone.”

Mara’s jaw tightened. Cassian could see calculation moving behind her eyes, fast and cold. She was not heartless. That would have been simpler. She was afraid, and fear had found a clipboard.

“We don’t know what’s inside,” she said.