Julia had strange dreams. In some, she was running for her life from a screaming monster that she couldn’t see. It was always just behind enough to be cloaked in shadows, but she could hear the snarling and screaming from just inside those writhing shadows.

  In others, she wandered through a dark forest alone. For some reason, she was barefoot, and the grass she walked over was wet. It squelched with every step. She would pass by bodies as she walked. Some were torn and mutilated. Others had skin charred black and cracked.

  There were a few times she almost woke up. Once, she thought she could hear voices. However, the light filtering through her eyelids was too bright. It sent a stabbing pain directly into her skull. She let herself fall back into…well, not peaceful oblivion—thanks to her dreams—but a less painful one.

  She had no sense of time as she wandered from one horrible landscape to the next, but she felt like she spent multiple lifetimes in her wandering. Maybe it was just a few minutes—knowing the nature of dreams. Regardless, she finally felt herself slowly rising above the groggy worlds of darkness and death.

  The first thing that she noticed was the quiet. She’d been in a world of screams and bestial growls for what felt like her whole life now, so the sudden quiet was almost more unnerving. She quickly realized it wasn’t total silence, though. She could hear the sounds of a light bustle. Muted conversations, dishware clinking, and footsteps were present around her.

  She opened her eyes—and immediately closed them again. It was so bright! She had become so accustomed to the world of darkness—though she was already beginning to forget it—that the light felt blinding.

  She squinted her eyes open just a tiny bit this time to let them adjust. She noticed that, although it was bright, she wasn’t staring directly at the sun like she’d expected. She was instead looking at a bright, wooden ceiling. It looked polished and pristine, which she thought was odd. Who polished ceilings?

  Opening her eyes more and glancing around, she saw the window that was the source of the blinding light. It was overlooking a bustling street—although she could only see the far side of it. She seemed to be one level above the street. People ambled by, oblivious to her gaze.

  “Well, look who’s returned from her beauty sleep!”

  Julia started at the voice—not loud, but unexpected. Especially so close to her. She looked to the side opposite the window to find Braden there, smiling at her. She also noticed that he was holding her hand that was sticking out of the covers. Now that she was thinking about it, she began to feel her body as well as see it.

  She was lying in a bed that was a bit large for her. She had a blanket to the side, but the only thing covering her was a thin sheet. She had been changed into a white gown that both clung to her and billowed off of her in exactly the right way to be maximally uncomfortable.

  “How do you feel? I’m guessing that your head is better, since you’ve awakened? Ratia and I both suspected you were unconscious largely because your body wanted to protect you from the pain of your first mana exhaustion migraine. And, anyone that’s had even a regular migraine before would likely confirm that your body made the right call.”

  Julia thought about his words for a second. She was starting to recall things. She knew she had dumped all her remaining mana into a single spell. She knew she had felt her nose bleed. She remembered leaning back to avoid falling off the horse…but why had she been on a horse in the first place?

  “My he—” Julia’s attempt at words immediately devolved into a coughing fit. Only after attempting to speak did she realize her mouth and throat felt drier than a desert.

  Braden handed her a cup of water that was on the bedside table next to her. She drank greedily before sucking it down the wrong pipe and having another, slightly different coughing fit.

  “Sorry. Probably should have warned you not to drink it so fast,” Braden apologized.

  When she’d collected herself and finished the water, she looked over at him.

  “My head feels fine. I feel fine in general. Although, my memory is a little hazy. I remember dumping all my mana into a spell, but not why I was doing it. I also remember my nose bleeding a lot, but then I felt like my head broke open and I passed out.”

  “Ah, well. First of all, your nose did bleed a great deal. I almost had a heart attack when I saw you with that much blood on you. Before Lothier could even explain what happened, I yanked you out of his arms and rushed you up to Ratia’s clinic to take a look at you.

  “Turns out you were fine. Just a bout of mana exhaustion…and I wasted both hers and Lothier’s time, apparently,” Braden mimed as though mocking the person that told him that.

  “Between you and I, Ratia was happy to finally meet you, so don’t let her get away with any of that crotchety old lady routine when she comes to check on you later,” Braden whispered conspiratorially.

  Julia was only half-listening by that point. Lothier’s name had triggered a cascade of memories for her. She remembered the axe on the front door, the crazed woman punching through brick like it wasn’t there, Lothier shooting their pursuers while she tried to keep Apple on the road, and—finally—her desperate spell.

  As she remembered everything, she finally took notice of the blinking in the lower-left corner of her vision. There was a System notification that she had either subconsciously minimized, or it had done so automatically when she lost consciousness.

  “Before you look at any notifications, here,” Braden set an empty bucket down on the bed beside her. “You’re probably going to need this. And you’re definitely going to need this. Bite down on it.”

  He handed her a block of wood. There was pretty much only one reason he would suggest she bite on a block of wood…she was suddenly not as curious about the notifications. It wasn’t something she could put off forever, though, so she put the wood in her mouth and bit down on it as she shifted her attention to the notification.

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

  “Uh oh,” Julia whispered around the wood, suddenly realizing exactly what she was in for. An excruciating pain overtook her. It felt like liquid fire was being poured into her veins. The burning started in her core and radiated out towards her extremities.

  She felt like her bones were grinding against each other, and her head. She imagined it must be the level of pain that her body had rendered her unconscious to avoid before, but there was no escaping this one.

  After a couple seconds, the pain faded. A few more seconds and it was gone completely. She felt fine. Actually, she felt better than fine. She felt better than she ever had in her life, as though the horrendous pain she’d just experienced hadn’t happened. It was like a phantom had passed through her and left no trace once it was gone.

  “F-f-fourteen levels!?” Julia exclaimed to no one so much as herself. She looked over toward Braden for an explanation. He looked back at her with a complicated mixture of emotions on his face. Pride and happiness at her growth, undoubtedly, but there was also trepidation and…sadness?

  “Look at the logs, Jules. You’ll see why,” he said quietly.

  Suddenly nervous, Julia focused on seeing the details of her level-ups.

  Julia swiped the log away with sweaty, shaking hands. She didn’t know what the weird distortions in the window were, but she knew without a doubt that she had killed people. “Defeated” didn’t necessarily mean killed, so there was a chance the 7 notifications about defeating people meant just disabling them or something…but Julia knew in her heart. There was no way every single one of them survived that lightning bolt.

  She had stripped the bark off trees and even knocked them down accidentally when practicing with the spell. That was with 10% of her mana invested, max. This Bolt…she had thrown over 50% of her total mana into it. Granted it struck the ground before transferring to their bodies, but there was just no way that didn’t kill at least one person.

  Julia suddenly realized she was breathing heavily and shaking, but those sensations were sent to the back of her mind as she grabbed the empty bucket beside her and heaved. Her stomach seemed to be empty, so she just dry heaved for a few minutes before leaning back down onto her pillow—oh. It was Braden she was leaning against, not the pillow. He had sat down in the bed behind her at some point.

  She had been vaguely aware of him holding her hair out of her face as she heaved, but her thoughts were disordered and chaotic. The only thing she could think about was the face of the people she had likely killed.

  She held her hands up in front of her and saw them shaking uncontrollably. She didn’t really know what to do with them at the moment, but she felt like she couldn’t put them down for some reason. Braden wrapped his arms around her and pulled her hands into her chest as he squeezed her in a hug. He rested his head atop hers and held her while her tears fell.

  This was a strange moment for Julia. She knew she should—and did—feel horrible about killing other human beings. Her body seemed to recognize it as well, but her mind was…distant. It was like she—the part of her that she would consider her above everything else—was deep inside her head, watching what her body was doing on its own.

  It was as if the conscious part of her was a passive observer, watching her body being wracked by sobs while replaying the scenes of the flight from Rockyknoll—and her spell—over and over.

  She quickly ran out of energy to have such a fit. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until whatever energy she had mustered from waking up ran out. She was lying back against Braden while he wiped her face with a rag. Her stomach made its needs known, which made Braden chuckle. He put down the rag and fished some bread and jerky out from his bag.

  “Here. Start with the bread. See how your stomach handles it. Then move on to the jerky if you can keep the bread down. We can get better food once your stomach has settled. I’m not surprised you’re so hungry. You were out for about a day and a half.”

  “A day and a half? So, this is the day after our escape?” Julia asked while nibbling on the bread. She wanted to scarf it down but remembered her debacle with the water earlier.

  “Correct. The trip to Striton usually takes about two full days of walking. It’s about a single day, maybe a little more, on horseback—assuming a leisurely ride. The way Lothier drove Apple, though, you guys made it to the gate even quicker. He pushed through the entire night and the next day and made it to the city maybe an hour or two before midnight.

  “He brought you straight to the Guild and reported the situation to the Guild Master. It was a pretty chaotic ordeal. The Guild keeps a skeleton crew on the night shift for Adventurers who make it back to the city very late and for emergencies. They had to call the Guild Master in for the report, which is how I was notified. I also dragged Ratia in,” he said with a chuckle.

  “The Guild employs skeletons?” Julia asked with a shudder, only half-joking.

  “Huh? Oh, no. It’s an expression. A skeleton crew means just the ‘bare bones’ of what’s necessary to run the place. So, one receptionist—who likely spends most of the night shift organizing the disaster left by the day crew—someone to man the bar, and a cleaning crew.”

  Julia finished her bread during the explanation and moved on to the jerky. It wasn’t the greatest meal, but it did the job. She finished the jerky in silence, and Braden stayed quiet as well—content to let her contemplate.

  And she did have a lot to think about.

  Just as she was beginning her questions, she heard a gentle knock on the door.