Dawn found them still standing at the edge of the overhang, surrounded by evidence of a battle that should have killed them both.
The grass was torn. The earth was churned. Blood—Rynn's blood, mostly—darkened the ground in wide arcs where he'd dodged and fallen and kept fighting. But no bodies. No remains. Just seven smears of grey ash where the wolves had been, slowly dispersing in the morning breeze.
Rynn knelt beside the nearest ash pile, touching it with a finger. It was cool. Fine. Nothing like the aftermath of a normal death.
[Death Wolf remains]
[Chaos residue: Trace amounts]
[Can be consumed for minimal Capacity gain]
[Consume? Y/N]
He hesitated. The ash was... well, ash. The remains of creatures that had tried to kill him. Consuming them felt wrong in ways he couldn't fully articulate. But the System was offering, and the System didn't offer things without reason.
He thought about the wolves' green eyes. Their coordinated attacks. Their patience. They'd been Tier 0, same as him, but they'd almost won. Almost killed him. Would have killed him, if not for the threshold breakthrough at the last possible second.
He needed every advantage he could get.
"Yes," he said quietly. "Consume."
The ash rose in a small whirlwind, drawn to his hand, absorbed through his skin. It didn't hurt—just tingled slightly, like carbonation under the flesh. The serpent stirred, accepted the offering, settled.
[Chaos Capacity: 2.0 → 2.1 Units]
[Chaos Capacity: 2.1 → 2.2 Units]
The increases continued through all seven ash piles, small but cumulative. By the time he'd absorbed the last trace of the pack, his capacity sat at 2.7 Units. Not a dramatic gain, but every bit helped.
Maya watched from a careful distance, her expression unreadable.
"That's... really weird," she said finally.
"Yeah." Rynn stood, brushing ash from his hands. "Probably going to get weirder."
"No, I mean..." She stepped closer, studying him. "When you did it, your eyes went grey. Completely grey. Like the lightning. For a second, you didn't look human."
Rynn's stomach clenched. "They did?"
"Just for a second. Then they went back to normal." She bit her lip. "Is that bad?"
[Chaos consumption side effect: Temporary affinity manifestation]
[Affinity manifestation causes physical traits to reflect Chaos alignment]
[Duration: Variable]
[Warning: Prolonged or frequent manifestation may cause permanent changes]
[Warning: Permanent changes may include loss of human appearance]
[Warning: Permanent changes may include loss of human identification]
Rynn read the notifications twice, cold settling in his chest. Lose his humanity. Lose his human appearance. Become something other than what he'd started as.
"Is it bad?" he repeated slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, it might be."
They stood in silence for a long moment, the weight of those warnings pressing down.
"We should keep moving," Maya said finally. "More things will come. They always do."
Rynn nodded. They gathered what little they had—the knife, the vial with its two remaining drops, the clothes on their backs—and started walking.
---
The mountains rose ahead of them, green and grey and promising isolation.
They walked through morning and into afternoon, following game trails and old logging roads that wound deeper into the forest. The integration had touched this place too, but lightly—a tree with silver leaves here, a stream that ran in spirals there, small changes that felt almost whimsical compared to the horrors of the city.
By late afternoon, they found the cabin.
It was old—decades old, probably—built by some long-gone hunter or hermit who'd wanted solitude more than convenience. Log walls, a tin roof, a single window beside a door that hung slightly askew. No signs of recent occupation. No signs of anything living nearby.
Rynn approached carefully, Chaos Sight active, checking for threats. Nothing. Just an empty cabin, waiting for someone to need it.
He pushed the door open.
Inside: one room. A bed frame with no mattress. A wood stove, rusted but intact. A table, two chairs, shelves lined with dust and mouse droppings. No electricity, no running water, no signs of the modern world at all.
It was perfect.
"We can stay here," Rynn said. "At least for a while. It's defensible, remote, and the forest will give us cover."
Maya looked around, her expression doubtful. "It's a wreck."
"It's shelter. We can fix it up. Patch the roof, clean the stove, find a mattress somewhere." He shrugged. "Better than sleeping under rocks."
She nodded slowly. "Okay. But I'm not cleaning the mouse droppings alone."
They worked through the evening, clearing debris, sweeping floors, making the space livable. Rynn found a spring nearby—clean water, running cold and clear. Maya discovered a cache of canned goods in a buried chest behind the cabin, left by some previous occupant who'd planned for hard times. By nightfall, they had a fire in the stove, food in their stomachs, and a roof over their heads.
For the first time since the wish, Rynn felt almost safe.
---
The days that followed fell into a rhythm.
Mornings: hunting and gathering. Rynn's lightning made short work of small game—rabbits, squirrels, the occasional deer that wandered too close. He was careful now, keeping his power usage minimal, broadcasting only what he needed. No more all-night practice sessions. No more glowing beacons in the darkness.
Afternoons: repairs and improvements. They patched the roof with bark and ingenuity. They reinforced the door with logs. They dug a simple latrine away from the spring and built a smokehouse for preserving meat. Small steps toward sustainability.
Evenings: training.
Rynn practiced Grey Lightning until his control climbed and his capacity fluctuated and his eyes flickered grey with every expenditure. He learned to shape it into bolts that could strike targets at twenty paces. He learned to weave it into barriers that could deflect arrows and claws. He learned to channel it through the kitchen knife, turning an ordinary blade into something that crackled with potential death.
[Grey Lightning control: 10.3% → 12.7%]
[Grey Lightning control: 12.7% → 14.2%]
[Grey Lightning control: 14.2% → 15.8%]
By the end of the first week, he could maintain a lightning barrier for thirty seconds. By the end of the second, he could fire three consecutive bolts before needing to recover. By the end of the third, he could do both simultaneously—barrier up, bolts firing, moving and attacking like someone who actually knew what they were doing.
Maya trained too, in her way. She couldn't fight—not really, not with her affinity limited to healing—but she learned to set traps, to read the forest, to spot dangers before they became threats. Her medicine was precious, but her eyes and ears were priceless.
"You're getting faster," she said one evening, watching him practice. "The lightning, I mean. When you first started, it took you seconds to aim. Now it's instant."
Rynn dismissed the bolt he'd been forming, letting the grey light fade. "Control's almost 16%. The System says 20% is the next threshold."
"What happens at 20%?"
"I don't know. New abilities, probably. Maybe better control over Blacksoul Fire." He hadn't even attempted the fire yet. One element at a time. One expression to master before moving to the next.
Maya was quiet for a moment. Then: "Do you ever think about before? About the world we lost?"
Rynn sat beside her, looking out at the darkening forest. "Sometimes. Not as much as I used to."
"I think about my mom. My dad. My little brother." Her voice was steady, but he could hear the pain underneath. "They were at home when the wish happened. I was at a friend's house. By the time I got back, they were... they were gone. Just empty. Like something had taken the insides and left the shells."
Rynn said nothing. There was nothing to say.
"I used the first drop on my brother," she continued. "Even though he was already gone. Even though the medicine only works on living things. I poured it into his mouth and waited for him to wake up, and he didn't, and I used another drop because maybe the first wasn't enough, and he still didn't, and then I ran out of the house and kept running and I've been running ever since."
She was crying now, silent tears tracking down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry," Rynn said.
"Don't be. You didn't kill them. The System killed them. Their own wishes killed them." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I just... I needed to say it out loud. To tell someone what happened. So it's real."
"It's real."
They sat in silence as the stars emerged—strange stars, unfamiliar constellations, the sky of a world that would never be the same.
---
The fourth week brought visitors.
Rynn sensed them before he saw them—a disturbance in the forest's normal rhythms, birds falling silent, small creatures freezing in place. He activated Chaos Sight and saw them approaching: three humans, two men and a woman, moving with the careful confidence of people who'd learned to survive.
Tier 0, all of them. No affinities that registered as threats. But their body language said they were hunting, and their direction said they were hunting toward the cabin.
"Maya," Rynn said quietly. "Company."
She was at his side in seconds, peering through the cabin's single window. "Who are they?"
"Don't know. Don't look friendly."
The three emerged from the treeline, stopping at the edge of the clearing. The taller man stepped forward, hands raised in what might have been a peace gesture.
"Hello to the cabin!" he called. "We're not looking for trouble! Just saw your smoke and thought we'd check if anyone was home!"
Rynn stepped outside, leaving Maya inside with instructions to run if things went bad. His knife was at his belt, easily accessible. His lightning was a thought away.
"I'm here," he said. "What do you want?"
The man smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "Like I said, just checking. It's dangerous out here alone. Figured we could pool resources, share information, maybe trade a little."
"Trade what?"
"News, mostly. About what's happening in the wider world. About the dungeons that are starting to appear. About the rankings and the System and all that." The man spread his hands. "We've been traveling for weeks, talking to survivors. Figured we'd pass along what we've learned."
Rynn studied them. The woman's hand rested on a weapon at her belt—a hatchet, well-maintained. The second man's eyes kept scanning, watching the forest, watching the cabin, watching Rynn. Hunters. Definitely hunters.
"What's your name?" Rynn asked.
"Call me Garrett. This is Sara and Mike." The man's smile widened. "And you?"
"Rynn."
"Good to meet you, Rynn. So... can we come closer? Share that fire? It's getting cold at night, and we've been sleeping rough for a while."
Every instinct Rynn had screamed no. These weren't survivors looking for help. They were predators looking for prey. But if he refused, they'd know he was onto them. They'd attack anyway, probably, but on their terms instead of his.
He made a decision.
"Come ahead. Slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them."
Garrett's smile flickered—surprise, maybe, that Rynn had agreed—then settled back into place. The three walked forward, maintaining their careful spacing, their weapons still easily accessible.
Ten meters. Eight. Five.
Rynn's Chaos Sight flickered, showing him probabilities. Most of them ended with violence. A few ended with him dead. But one—just one—showed something else. A moment of hesitation. A flicker of doubt in Garrett's eyes. An opportunity.
"Stop there," Rynn said.
They stopped. Three meters. Close enough to attack, close enough to be attacked.
"So," Garrett said, "about that fire—"
Rynn moved.
Not toward them—that would be suicide. Instead, he raised his hand and released a bolt of grey lightning into the sky. It shot upward, crackling and bright, visible for miles.
The three flinched. Garrett's hand went for his weapon.
"What the hell—"
"That's a signal," Rynn said calmly. "There are seven people in these woods who work with me. They just saw that. They're coming now. If anything happens to me, they'll find you. They'll kill you. Slowly."
Bluff. Complete bluff. But Garrett didn't know that.
The man's eyes narrowed, calculating. His companions shifted nervously, glancing at the forest, at the fading lightning, at each other.
"You're lying," Garrett said. But his voice wavered.
"Am I?" Rynn let lightning flicker across his palms—controlled, threatening, undeniable. "I'm Tier 0, same as you. But I've got something you don't. I've got power. I've got people. I've got a place to defend." He met Garrett's eyes. "You've got nothing. You came here looking for easy prey, and you found something else. So here's your choice: walk away now, and we forget this happened. Or stay, and find out just how wrong you were about who's hunting who."
The silence stretched.
Garrett's hand stayed on his weapon. His eyes stayed on Rynn. Behind him, Sara and Mike waited for a signal that didn't come.
Finally, Garrett laughed.
It was a strange sound—not genuine, but not entirely false either. "Kid's got balls. I'll give him that." He took his hand off his weapon. "Fine. We'll go. But this isn't over. The woods are getting smaller every day. More people coming. More monsters. More dungeons. Eventually, you'll need allies. When that day comes, remember we offered peace first."
He turned and walked away. Sara and Mike followed, casting glances back at Rynn, at the cabin, at the lightning that still flickered at his fingertips.
They vanished into the trees.
Rynn stood motionless until his Chaos Sight confirmed they were gone—really gone, moving away instead of circling back. Then he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Maya appeared beside him. "Was that true? About the seven people?"
"No."
"Then what—"
"Bluff. Misdirection. Make them think I'm more dangerous than I am." He looked at the forest where the hunters had disappeared. "It worked. This time."
"But next time?"
Rynn had no answer.
---
That night, he trained harder than ever.
Lightning danced across his skin, shaped and controlled and his. He pushed past his limits, past the fatigue, past the warnings from the System about overexertion. 16% control became 17%. 17% became 18%. By dawn, when he finally collapsed into exhausted sleep, his control sat at 19.3%.
One more percent to the next threshold.
One more percent to whatever came next.
And beyond that, the knowledge that the world was getting smaller. More people were coming. More monsters. More dungeons.
He needed to be ready.
---
Done with the Mass Release Streak: 10.