Leith woke up and immediately wished he hadn’t. Pain was blossoming from his ribs, a dull, throbbing ache that refused to dissipate. Nonetheless, Leith forced himself to stand, powering through the pain. There was something he had to do.

Alcide, the man who had saved the town yesterday, was known as the Sword Saint, a fearsome figure from the Surge War. He was apparently so significant that the mayor had visibly paled upon meeting him and hastily offered to host a celebration in his name. Alcide had just as quickly rejected the offer, instead suggesting that he stay with Leith’s family and speak to the mayor privately tomorrow. Leith and his family were quite surprised that the man would want to stay with them in their rather humble abode.

Hani, however, was very excited to have someone he’d read countless stories about staying with them. The boy was usually quite shy, much like Leith, but he had somehow overcome that shyness and badgered Alcide with questions for hours until their mother had put a stop to his antics. Alcide, to his credit, entertained every question and actually seemed to enjoy conversing with them.

Despite his rather ostentatious title, Leith quickly realized that Alcide was a good man. He didn’t treat them like dirt, a vast improvement over how the rich usually acted.

Leith tiptoed out his room and into the kitchen, grabbing some bread from the pantry and filling a canteen with water. He snuck past Alcide, who was now lying on the floor in the main room of their house. Leith remembered with some amusement the lengthy argument his mother and Alcide had last night, with his mother attempting to kill him with hospitality, trying to force him to take one of the bedrooms.

Alcide refused ardently enough that he had threatened going outside to sleep instead and not participating in dinner, which was enough to mollify Leith’s mother, even if she grumbled about not treating her guest properly afterwards.

Munching on bread, Leith headed into the apothecary and reapplied an antibiotic salve to his wounds and rebandaged his side. He went into the clinic and grabbed a set of riftcore-powered surgical tools. He then left his home, intending to do some breaking and entering.

He breathed in deeply as a cool breeze gently lapped at his face. The morning air was delicious, the air refreshingly crisp and morning dew clean and sweet upon his lips. It felt nice, but it didn’t do much to clear the grogginess that had been plaguing Leith since he woke up. Maybe it was due to blood loss or an accumulation of fatigue from the previous day, but Leith’s head was full of fog, and he was struggling to sort out his thoughts and emotions. Still, he was coherent enough to investigate a little.

Leith was suspicious of a lot of things due to everything that had just happened. He could wait for Alcide and the town’s law enforcement, sure, but he had a personal stake in this situation.

There was a vague possibility that last night’s attack was related to the hunters his father was accompanying not returning, even though they were due to come back a few days ago.

It was early enough that a cacophony of birds and crickets masked Leith’s footsteps– not that a single person would be out to oust Leith anyway, especially not after the fiasco the night before. Every sane person would certainly be getting some extra sleep. The cobblestone, worn and uneven from years of neglect, actively hurt Leith’s ribs as he walked, every step sending pain shooting through his body. Still, noticing dried streaks of blood in the streets, he knew he couldn’t just rest.

Leith strolled up to Mikel’s house. He tried the door, though it was locked, of course. He walked around to a window, also finding it locked. Peering through the gap between the window and its frame, Leith could see that the window was tied to the frame with some sort of wire. He pulled out a scalpel from his satchel. He wiggled the blade out a little bit, extending it forward to make it a bit longer. Then, Leith pulled out a riftcore superheater from his pocket, a tool meant to heat blades for cauterization. It consisted of a metal body covered in heat-resistant leather, two nodes jutting out of one side, the other side open to expose the riftcore.

Leith placed the scalpel’s blade between the nodes and pressed his finger against the riftcore, willing heat to transfer from the core, through the node, and into the blade. Within seconds, the scalpel was red hot. He then shoved the scalpel in between the window and the frame, sawing through the wood where the wire attached to the frame. He had to reheat the blade a few times, but after that, entering the house was a piece of cake.

There was no one home, so Leith took his time searching through the building as thoroughly as he could.

Ultimately, he found nothing. As in, there was nothing of value left in the house. Just like Gamal’s home, Mikel’s residence was stripped clean of luxuries. No silverware left behind, and not a single article of clothing in the drawers. There was still furniture, sure, but Leith assumed that these hunters– no, traitors– simply didn’t have the time to move their furniture too. At least not without arousing suspicion.

Repeating the process with Roger’s house, he found, again, absolutely nothing.

Leith was now certain that the attack had to have been planned. But why? And where is my dad? The attacks were orchestrated by someone, Leith decided, though he was not sure who. He was certain that someone must have lured a majority of the town’s hunters out into the Rift and paid off the three that were left behind, all to ensure that Karya would fall. Not really a hard task since there were only nine hunters in town anyway, including Leith’s father. They must not have expected Alcide’s timely intervention.

Though why the hell anyone would do that was far beyond Leith. Karya was a little town in the middle of nowhere. What would anyone get out of destroying it?

He soon left Roger’s home, exiting through the backdoor, looking around surreptitiously before hurrying on to the road and out of the town.

The walk to the Rift was extremely arduous. Walking nearly five miles with a fresh injury was difficult and undoubtedly stupid. Still, he needed to know for himself. He needed to know if his father was okay.

He had noticed Alcide had asked the mayor for the hunting expedition’s route. It was common practice to leave a copy of these plans in the town the expedition launched from. Someone had to go recover the bodies and valuables if something went wrong.

Oftentimes, the town would make quite a windfall when a particularly wealthy expedition went awry. A bit of a morbid way to earn money, but gold was gold, even if it came stained with blood.

Naturally, Leith had taken the time to steal the map, copy it, and return it before Alcide could wake up. Sure, he could’ve asked Alcide to take Leith with him, but realistically, Leith was a liability and would probably be left behind. No hunter in his right mind would take an injured boy with him to the Rift. Besides, by that time Leith’s mother would most definitely be awake and would likely murder him if he dared to leave with his injury.

Going to the Rift was forbidden unless you were trained due to the dangers it posed. Regardless, Leith had come here a few times before when he was younger, sneaking away to see what everyone feared so much. No matter how many times he’d seen it, Leith was awed every single time he gazed down into the Rift.

Contrary to its reputation as a progenitor of death, the Rift was full of life.

There were trees and plants of every type and color Leith could possibly imagine lining the opening alone. Small birds and insects flitted in the air, and small animals ran from bush to bush, feasting on colorful berries.

Leith’s breath caught in his chest as he inched closer to the Rift. Looking down into the depths, he forgot about his pain and his reasons for coming here. For a while, he simply allowed himself to appreciate the Rift and its beauty.

Karya lay near the ‘end’ of this Rift opening, as the massive ravine tapered to a close in this area, meaning this part was supposed to be thin. Apparently ‘thin’ was still hundreds of feet across, with massive rock walls that gradually closed off far to Leith’s right.

Rock branches jutted from the walls, facing in towards the Rift, like hundreds of spikes aiming to skewer anyone who dared to climb down. From the branches grew crystals, pointing in every direction, but most of them hanging downwards. The crystals were vibrant and diverse in color, morning sunlight refracting at strange angles down into the Rift. The light bathed the rough, uneven, rock walls with multicolored rays. The walls, illuminated brightly, lead so far down that it seemed they would never end, instead outrunning the light downwards into an impenetrable abyss.

A hand on Leith’s shoulder knocked him out of his reverie. He flinched and pulled away, turning quickly with his hands up to guard his face.

“Relax, I’m not going to hurt you,” Alcide said, grinning. “Good reflexes,” he quipped, the taller man looking down loftily at him. “So… tell me, what are you doing here?”

“I… um, I was just out for a walk?” Leith tried, smiling disarmingly.

Alcide snorted. “Yeah, sure, a light morning stroll of, what, five miles? You could have taken a horse, you know?”

“I don’t own a horse though, and I didn’t want to take one without permission,” Leith said.

“It's not okay to steal, but it's okay to sneak into two homes at the break of dawn?” Alcide asked, dubiously lifting his brows.

Leith winced. “I thought you were asleep… but why are you following me anyway?”

“You clomping around woke me up, but beyond that, I was planning on waking early to investigate this town anyway. I can see that you had the same idea. Well then, why don’t you tell me what you’ve discovered?” Alcide asked.

Leith hesitated. While he felt that he could trust Alcide, one thing made no sense to him. “I will, but could you explain why you’re here? I appreciate all your help, of course, but I was wondering why someone as important as you decided to visit a little town like Karya in the first place?”

“Because I knew this would happen,” Alcide replied simply.

“Wh-what do you mean you knew?” Leith asked, perplexed. How could he possibly know? If he knew this would happen, why wasn’t he here earlier?

“Well, “knew” might have been the wrong word. It’s more accurate to say that I suspected this. Leith, Karya is not the first to have an attack like this. Many towns and villages near the Rift have been attacked recently.”

Leith quietly thought for a moment before speaking up. “So you mean that this is intentional? I was thinking that the fiend attack was on purpose, that those deer-things–”

“Bloodstags,” Alcide corrected.

“Right, those bloodstags must have been lured here. I say that because the few hunters that didn’t go on that expedition left town without telling anyone. Also, now that I’ve been thinking about it, the expedition itself was kind of… strange. The amount of money they were offering was insane, maybe three or four times more than the standard rate in this town. I was thinking that the hunters in our town were either lured out or paid off,” Leith told him in a rush, breathless as he finished. It felt good to lay all of his suspicions out for confirmation.

Alcide stared at him for a moment before chuckling. “I’m surprised you managed to glean that much from just your observations. But yes, unfortunately you’re correct.” Alcide’s face grew grimmer. “I don’t know why this is happening, but this is the twelfth attack so far. The perpetrators have a way of luring fiends out of the Rift. They, however, aren’t very good at covering their tracks. The towns they’ve been targeting create a fairly straight line, so we suspected that Karya was next.”

“From the way you’re saying ‘we’, do you have people working with you?” Leith asked.

Alcide nodded affirmation. “Yes. I work with a group of like-minded individuals who work to neutralize threats to the peace of Maksar. Don’t ask me anything else– I won’t give you any names or anything.”

Leith shrugged. It wasn’t that weird for a legendary war hero to also be a part of some secret organization. Checked out in his head. He peered down into the depths of the Rift for a long time before posing his next question.

“Do you… do you think the hunters are okay? The ones that were lured out?” Leith asked, a slight edge to his voice.

“In the other attacks, the hunters were okay,” Alcide said with a gentle smile. “I know your father is on the expedition, so please, don’t worry too much. However, I’m a little concerned that they’re taking so long to return. That’s why I’m out here right now, I plan on entering the Rift and following their path, just to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

“Do you think I can come with you? I’m not hurt too bad, I can barely feel it now! I won’t hold you back if you take me, also I–”

Alcide held up a hand, signaling him to stop. “I was planning on taking you anyway,” he said with a grin. He proffered his hand for a handshake.

Leith grinned, ignoring the throbbing in his side as he shook Alcide’s hand and followed him down into the Rift.