The stream ran cold over his hands, turning the water faintly pink where it met the blood.

  Grub knelt in the shallows, fingers scrubbing at his skin until they burned. Behind him, a goblin guard stood a few paces back with his spear planted in the earth, silent and watchful. The forest around them murmured quietly. The cave’s stench felt like another world. Grub kept his breathing even. Kept his face calm.

  Inside, his chest shook.

  Three soft chimes rang in his head, clear as metal struck on stone.

  He flinched, then focused on the pulsing notification in the corner of his vision.

  [You have slain Goblin Warrior - Level 4]

  [You have slain Goblin Warrior - Level 3]

  [Congraulations! You have reached Level 3. 3 Stat Points Available.]

  His stomach lurched.

  The System had waited until the blood dried on his skin to reward him. He swallowed, forced the notice away for the moment, and bent back to his task. The water stung where it touched the scrapes across his knuckles. The fox’s teeth felt like they had done less to him than a pair of goblin skulls. He scrubbed until the last red threads spiraled downstream and faded.

  He lifted his head and stared at his reflection in the black surface.

  A goblin stared back.

  Same green skin, same sharp ears, same too-bright eyes. Blood still clung in faint streaks along his jaw. He looked like every other goblin in the Ironfang tribe, except for the tension in his shoulders and the way his gaze did not quite fit the face. He shut his eyes.

  The memories slammed into him in jagged snatches.

  The other slaves’ eyes constantly followed Grub. They had always hated him. He knew that. Their glares had followed him since the first day he scrubbed their filth instead of shouting for blood. Their whispers were constant background noise.

  “You crawl like a dog.”

  “You shame us.”

  He usually just ignored them. But, resentment was a slow thing, quiet at first, then heavy, then suddenly everywhere. And he had been here long enough for it to rot and swell.

  A little over a week he had been a slave of the Ironfang. Long enough for them to watch him work. Long enough for them to decide what kind of goblin he was. Long enough for hate to simmer until it found a spark.

  This night had felt different.

  The air in the cage had been heavier, like a storm about to break. Grub had sat near the bars as usual, knees up, eyes half closed, listening to the tribe settle for the night. The other slaves huddled together at the opposite side, six of them pressed shoulder to shoulder, pretending distance would protect them from whatever they feared. They sat there muttering to one another, shooting him dirty looks. Grub ignored them as always.

  The burly one with the crooked jaw finally stood and spoke.

  “Better to be dead than licking their boots,” he snarled, voice low but carrying. A few of the others muttered their agreement. Hard eyes turned toward Grub.

  He had not truly believed they would act. Not until they moved.

  The first came at him with a jagged shard of bone clutched in his fist. The strike missed his throat by inches but momentum carried his assailant forward, and he smashed into Grub’s chest shoulder first and knocked him onto his back. The weight of the goblin crashed down on him then, driving the air from his lungs. Nails raked his face. Teeth snapped for his nose. Hot breath washed over him, full of old meat and rot. He could not breathe. Could not get the weight off.

  His hands scrabbled blindly across the matted straw and packed earth. Fingers brushed a stone. He grabbed it and swung upward with everything he had.

  The crack rang up his arm, blinding in its finality. The jolt caused him to lose his grip on the rock, and it fell to the ground and clattered away.

  The body on top of him went slack. The dead weight slammed into his chest harder as its limbs loosened. Something warm and thick slid across his forehead and into his eyes. He tried to shove the corpse aside. It did not move.

  He couldn’t breathe. His heart was hammering in his chest and the blood was rushing through his ears in a deafening roar.

  The second slave struck then, snarling, hands closing like vices around Grub’s throat. Pressure crushed his windpipe. Lights popped at the edge of his vision. He grabbed for the rock again. His fingers found only matted straw and a small, smooth pebble.

  Mana surged, that now-familiar cold pressure rising from his core. Instinct bypassed thought. He did not form the spell name. Did not picture the System window. He simply thought: Hit the eye.

  The pebble vanished from his fingers and zipped forward. The other goblin’s head snapped back. For an instant Grub saw it clearly, closer than his own hand. One eyesocket suddenly empty, a neat, obscene tunnel punched through it.

  Then the body toppled, collapsing half over his head and chest.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Silence followed. Not around him, but inside the cage.

  He had lain there for a few moments, buried under two corpses, staring up at the ceiling through a haze of blood. The smell of iron filled his nose. His own heartbeat continually roared in his ears.

  He had not felt brave then. He had felt small. And so very, very cold.

  Grub opened his eyes by the stream and plunged his hands into the water again, washing that memory away as best he could.

  He knew deep down that he was not in the wrong, that if the pebble had missed, he would be the one being dragged into the forest for the beasts. If his swing had been a little slower, the bone shard might have found his throat. If he had hesitated, even for a second, he would be meat. The thought did not make him feel much better.

  He cupped his hands in the stream and poured water over his face, shivering as the chill cut through the tremor in his chest. He thought back to his time alone in the forest.

  Killing animals was one thing.

  They had been food, necessary and distant, even when his hands had felt clumsy and wrong skinning that first rabbit.

  These had been goblins. They had spoken to him. Glared at him. Hated him. Lived in the same cage.

  They had chosen to attack.

  He had chosen to live. Why should he feel bad about their choices?

  And yet, his mind kept snagging on something else. Something earlier.

  His first kill. First real kill.

  Not the fox. Not the rabbit.

  The goblin Warrior.

  The nameless one whose face he could barely remember now, only the rush of panic and the flash of the speartip and the way the world had narrowed to a single desperate moment. It had been back when Throk and his group of Hunters had caught him, before the cave, before the routines, before the slow week of resentment and watching eyes. Back when he was still half-wild and starving and running on nothing but fear and adrenaline.

  He remembered the way it had happened: fast, ugly, necessary. A blur of struggle, the certainty that if he did not act, he would die. There had not been time to think. No time to recognize the other goblin as anything but a threat with a weapon and stronger arms.

  Afterward, he had been shaking, yes, but it had been the kind of shaking that came after a sprint. His body dumping the last of its terror. He had not stared at his hands and wondered what they were becoming.

  So why did this feel different?

  Maybe because that first warrior had been a stranger in the morning. An enemy out in the open. An oppressor, drawing a line in the sand. Kill or be killed.

  But these two? These had been slaves. Prisoners. Held against their will, like him. They had eaten beside him. Slept beside him. Whispered behind him for more than a week. They were not faceless Hunters. They were not a single goblin standing between him and the forest. They were just goblins struggling to survive, to come to grips with their situation, same as he was.

  And he had killed them while close enough to feel their breath on his skin. Close enough to hear bone crack. Close enough to smell the blood pouring out of them, to feel it coating him as he lay beneath their bodies.

  That was why it stuck differently in his mind.

  He wondered, for a brief, dangerous moment, what his mother would have seen if she looked at him now. A murderer? A killer? A survivor? If his father could still find his son in the yellow eyes staring back from this stream. If Max would have recognized the way he had reacted, the way he had killed without thinking, or if his best friend would have looked at him and only seen a monster looking back.

  “Enough,” the guard said quietly, pulling Grub away from his spiraling thoughts.

  Grub nodded, pulled his thoughts back under control, and climbed to his feet. His hands were as clean as he could get them. The guard jerked his chin toward the cave. They walked back in silence.

  When Grub stepped into the cage again, the four remaining slaves shrank away from him as far as the wooden bars allowed. They pressed together at the back, whispering, eyes too wide. They had seen. Not everything. But enough.

  Grub settled into his usual place by the bars and finally pulled the System notice fully into focus. He read the last line again.

  [Congratulations! You have reached Level 3. 3 Stat Points Available.]

  The letters pulsed gently, then folded into a familiar window.

  Name: Grub

  Race: Goblin

  Level: 3

  Resource Pools:

  Health: 30/30 | Stamina: 20/20 (+2/10 mins) | Mana: 50/50 (+4/10 mins)

  Stats:

  Strength: 2 | Constitution: 3 | Dexterity: 3 | Intelligence: 5 | Wisdom: 4 |

  Skills:

  Quick Feet (Level 2)

  Climbing (Level 1)

  Stealth (Level 2)

  Dagger Proficiency (Level 2)

  Identify (Level 2)

  Mana Manipulation (Passive)

  Earth Affinity (Passive)

  Skinning (Level 1)

  Cooking (Level 1)

  First Aid (Level 3)

  Perks:

  Goblin Agility [Racial]:

  (+2 DEX, +1 WIS, -1 STR)

  Miscast [Unique]

  Spells:

  Pebble Toss [Tier 1 – Lv 1 – 65%]

  Stone Chip [Tier 1 – Lv 1 – 1%]

  Stone Tap [Tier 1 – Lv 1 – 1%]

  Grain Shift [Tier 1 – Lv 1 – 21%]

  He stared at it for a long moment.

  The System had taken his name without hesitation. Now it rewarded him once again for killing a fellow goblin. Cold. Impartial. Absolute.

  He remembered why he had avoided Strength before. No matter how much he put there, he would never be as strong as an orc or a hobgoblin. Goblins were small. That would not change.

  But Strength meant Stamina. Stamina meant running longer. Climbing higher. Fighting a few moments more before his body gave out. Sometimes survival came down to those last few moments.

  He put one point into Strength.

  Stamina: 30/30 (+3/10 min)

  A faint heat spread through his limbs. Muscles coiled a little tighter along his arms and legs, lean and ropey. Not a huge change, but he felt more solid when he flexed his fingers.

  He placed the second point into Intelligence.

  Mana: 60/60 (+4/10 min)

  Then the last point into Wisdom.

  Mana: 60/60 (+5/10 min)

  The final result hovered in front of him.

  Resource Pools:

  Health: 30/30 | Stamina: 30/30 (+3/10 min) | Mana: 60/60 (+5/10 min)

  Stats:

  Strength: 3 | Constitution: 3 | Dexterity: 3 | Intelligence: 6 | Wisdom: 5

  Better. Not much, but better.

  He let the window fade and stared at his hands instead. They looked the same, but he knew the numbers behind them had changed. Knew the System had made him a little more dangerous.

  “You think killing them makes you one of them?” a voice rasped from the back of the cage.

  Grub did not look over. “No.”

  “Then you are nothing but their dog,” the tall slave spat. His face was still swollen from earlier beatings, one eye ringed in purple. “You fetch. You scrub. You wag.”

  Grub let the words drip off him.

  “What’s the alternative?” he asked quietly. “Fight them and bleed for nothing? Try to run and die in the forest on the first night? I’ve been out there, alone, starving, listening for wolves in the dark. Here, I am a slave, yes. But the fire keeps me warm. The food is foul, but it fills my belly. Numbers keep the predators away. I know which I prefer.”

  One of the others spat on the floor. “Better free and dead than alive and chained.”

  “Easy to say while you are still breathing,” Grub murmured. “Harder when something has its teeth in your throat.”

  He heard his own words and felt a twist inside. He sounded unlike himself. He sounded cold.

  He wondered how Max would have answered. Max, who had thrown himself into a group of bullies without thinking. Who had gotten his nose broken for someone else more than once. Would Max look at him now and see the same friend, or just another goblin?

  Grub shut his eyes for a moment.

  The others fell silent. They had no answers for him. Neither did he.

  Eventually exhaustion dragged him under.

  Sleep was not kind to him. When he finally drifted off, dreams came to him, vivid and terrifying. Bone cracking in his hand. Blood pouring on his face. Max’s voice shouting his name and then fading into distant goblin laughter.

  He woke to the noise of the tribe stirring, and for a moment he lay still, listening.

  The cavern sounded the same as always. Crackling embers. Shuffling feet. Low voices and distant arguing. Life continuing, indifferent.

  Grub flexed his fingers slowly beneath the thin blanket of straw, feeling the phantom ache of bone against his palm.

  Then he sat up, stretched briefly, and exited the cage. Work was waiting.