They settled in as the light bled out of the sky.
Furniture was dragged, doors braced, windows covered just enough to leave firing slits that no longer expected gunfire. Spears leaned against walls. Axes rested within arm's reach. The leather armour—still smelling faintly of clean hide despite its origins—was laid out on the dining table like tools before a long job.
No one argued when the decision was made.
"The ones who stand in front get first pick," Mark said. "No sense pretending otherwise."
Carl Henley nodded immediately. "Same rule in the Corps. Gear goes to whoever's taking the hit."
Luke and Ethan stepped forward without being asked. Carl joined them, broad shoulders rolling as he tested the weight of a leather vest. The armour shifted as it touched him, seams tightening, plates settling until it fit like it had been broken in for years.
Luke noticed. "It likes you."
Carl snorted. "Then it's got good taste."
Thomas chose lighter pieces—bracers, a fitted vest that didn't restrict his draw. He tested a short spear, then shook his head and picked up a balanced hand axe instead, rolling it once in his palm.
"Feels right," he said.
Mark took the last of the heavier gear, pairing it with a spear. He didn't smile, but his stance eased the moment his hands closed around the haft.
Sarah watched all of it with a medic's eye and a soldier's memory. She didn't take armour.
"I'm not the one they should be hitting," she said flatly.
No one disagreed.
---
They ate quietly.
Cold food. Water poured from bottles instead of taps. The house creaked as the temperature dropped, every sound sharper in the absence of electricity. Outside, the dogs lay alert but silent, ears twitching at noises too distant to name.
Jethro Henley broke the quiet.
"This is going to sound stupid," he said, pushing his glasses up his nose, "but… this is kind of like a game."
Luke glanced at him. "You're right. That does sound stupid."
Jethro flushed but pressed on. "I don't mean fun. I mean structure. Roles. You've got people who can take hits—" he nodded toward Carl and Luke "—and people who move fast and hit hard. That's tanks and damage dealers."
Thomas blinked. "Did you just call me damage per second?"
"Ranged DPS," Jethro said automatically. Then winced. "Sorry."
Mark watched him carefully. "Keep going."
Jethro swallowed. "If that's true, then people like me and Emily…" He hesitated. "We're something else. Support. Control. Magic. Whatever you want to call it."
Silence settled again, heavier this time.
Emily hadn't looked up once.
"That doesn't mean it's fake," she said quietly. "Games copy reality. Not the other way around."
Jethro looked at her, eyes lighting despite himself. "You feel it too, don't you?"
She nodded. "The energy. It's not random. It behaves. Like rules without numbers."
Carl leaned back in his chair. "I don't care what you call it, as long as it keeps my boys alive."
Emily met his gaze. "That's the part I'm trying to understand."
________________________________________
They set watches after that.
Mark and Luke took the first shift.
They sat near the front windows, lantern light low, eyes on the treeline. The night sounds were wrong—too sparse, too deliberate. Luke rolled his shoulders, adjusting to the weight of the armour.
"Dad," he said quietly. "If that core from earlier… if it's meant for me—"
"We don't rush it," Mark said immediately.
Luke nodded, jaw tight. "Just saying. It felt like it knew."
Mark didn't like that sentence at all.
________________________________________
When the second shift came, Carl and Thomas relieved them without ceremony.
Mark slept lightly. Luke didn't really sleep at all.
In the back room, Emily and Jethro sat cross-legged on the floor, a lantern between them turned down low.
"I think magic isn't spells," Emily said. "Not yet. It's perception first. Understanding pressure. Flow."
Jethro's fingers twitched, almost unconsciously. "I keep thinking if I could just… picture it right. Like visualizing an outcome."
Emily watched him closely. "Careful. That's how people overreach."
He nodded, chastened but excited. "Still. If the others are changing on the outside… we're changing on the inside."
Outside, something small scuttled along the fence line and moved on.
The night passed without an attack.
That didn't mean it was safe.
It just meant the world was still watching.
________________________________________
Dawn came thin and pale, like it wasn't entirely sure it belonged anymore.
Mark woke before the light reached the windows. Habit. He lay still for a moment, listening. No hum of appliances. No distant traffic. Just wood settling, the faint creak of leather as someone shifted in their sleep, and the soft breath of people who had made it through the night.
The house felt old in a way it never had before.
Not aged—frontier.
Like a settler's home at the edge of a map, surrounded by land that didn't answer to the same rules. Mark had the unshakable impression of being watched from beyond the tree line, of occupying space that someone else believed was temporary.
Enemy country.
He rose quietly and stepped onto the porch.
The air was cold and clean. Too clean. The sky was brightening fast, stars fading as if chased away. No smoke rose anywhere. No power lines hummed back to life. The world hadn't reset overnight.
Luke joined him a minute later, rubbing his eyes.
"Still quiet," Luke said.
"Quiet doesn't mean clear," Mark replied.
Luke nodded. He was learning that faster than Mark liked.
________________________________________
Water came from the hand pump.
The old iron handle squealed in protest when Mark worked it, then settled into a steady rhythm. Clear water spilled into the bucket, cold enough to sting the skin.
Sarah tested it without hesitation. Taste. Smell. Visual clarity.
"Clean," she said. "Same well. Same depth."
That, at least, felt like mercy.
Inside, she checked Jethro's arm again.
The bandage came away clean.
The wound beneath was barely a wound at all—pink skin, faint scarring where muscle had been exposed less than twelve hours earlier. No heat. No swelling. Full range of motion.
Sarah stared at it longer than necessary.
"This should have taken weeks," she said quietly. "Minimum."
Jethro flexed his fingers. "It doesn't even hurt."
Emily watched from the doorway. "Did it feel different when it healed?"
Jethro thought about it. "Like pressure easing. Like something decided it was done."
Sarah wrapped the arm lightly anyway, more out of habit than need.
"We don't assume it's finished just because it looks finished," she said. "Bodies don't like shortcuts."
Emily nodded, but her eyes lingered on the almost-healed skin.
_______________________________________
They brought the old woodstove back to life before breakfast.
It sat against the far wall of the kitchen, black iron and solid, kept more out of tradition than necessity. Sarah swept out the ash while Emily cleaned the stovetop and flue with careful, methodical movements.
Jethro fetched wood, stacking it neatly without being asked.
"This thing's older than the house," he said.
"And it works," Sarah replied. "Which makes it valuable now."
They had a fire going within minutes. The heat felt different from electric warmth—localized, real, something you could measure by how close you stood. The kettle went on, water brought to a boil the old way.
Emily watched the flames dance, eyes unfocused.
"I can feel something here," she said.
Sarah glanced at her. "From the fire?"
Emily nodded slowly. "Not heat. Movement. Like… permission. It's allowed to do what it's doing."
Sarah didn't pretend to understand that, but she didn't dismiss it either.
________________________________________
Carl and Thomas left shortly after sunrise.
They took spears and axes despite the distance, moving cautiously down the gravel road toward their own farm. The land looked unchanged in daylight, which somehow made it worse. Fence posts still stood. Fields still rolled. Trees still swayed.
But Mark watched until they vanished anyway.
They returned an hour later with Thomas's bow wrapped in cloth and a bundle of arrows held like something fragile.
The bow was simple. Recurve. Wood and string. No cams. No sights. It looked as new as the leather armour had when it dropped.
Thomas unwrapped it carefully.
"Feels better than before," he said. "Balanced."
Carl set down a crate of tools. Knives. Files. Feathers. Shafts. Everything needed to make arrows the slow way.
"Figured we shouldn't rely on what breaks," he said.
Mark nodded approval. "Good call."
Thomas tested the string, drawing once, twice. The motion was smooth, instinctive.
"I don't think it's going to wear out," he said quietly. "At least… not the same way."
Mark didn't answer.
Because he was watching the tree line again.
The sun was fully up now, light spilling across fields that no longer felt like home—but like territory.
Claimed, contested, and waiting.
________________________________________
They gathered at the kitchen table once the morning tasks were done.
Steam curled from chipped mugs. The woodstove popped softly behind them, heat radiating in a steady, reassuring way. Outside, the fields lay quiet under the rising sun—but no one mistook that for safety.
Mark leaned both hands on the table, eyes moving from face to face before settling on Carl.
"We can't sit," Mark said. "Not and pretend this will pass."
Carl nodded slowly. "Was thinking the same thing."
He glanced toward the window, toward the treeline that marked the edge of both their properties.
"If we're staying," Carl continued, "then this land has to become ours again. Not on paper. In practice."
Luke shifted in his chair. "You mean patrols."
"Hunting," Carl said bluntly. "Goblins aren't brave. They test, they probe, they come back if they think they've got space."
Thomas frowned. "So we take that space away."
Carl met his son's eyes. "We make it expensive for them to be here. Enough kills, enough pressure, and they move on."
Mark considered it. Not emotionally—strategically.
"That's how it worked in every bad place I've ever been," he said finally. "You don't wait for raids. You push them out until they decide somewhere else is easier."
"And then?" Ethan asked.
"Then," Mark said, "we hunt game instead of goblins. We put meat in freezers that don't run and smoke it the old way. We live."
Silence followed, but it wasn't hesitation.
It was acceptance.
Emily broke it, her voice distant. "They're already reacting to us."
Mark turned. "How do you know?"
She gestured vaguely, not to the windows but to the house itself. "The pressure feels… thinner this morning. Like they pulled back after last night."
Carl let out a slow breath. "Good. Then we don't stop."
---
It happened while Sarah was tending the stove again.
She'd added another log, adjusting the damper when Emily stepped closer, eyes fixed on the flames.
They weren't large—just enough to heat the room—but Emily stared like she was listening to something just beneath the crackle.
"Emily?" Sarah said. "Don't get too close."
"I'm not," Emily replied absently.
She raised one hand—not toward the fire, but beside it.
The flame leaned.
Not flickered.
Leaned.
Sarah froze.
Emily's fingers twitched slightly, almost like she was balancing something delicate.
The fire shifted again, drawing inward, tightening, burning brighter without growing taller.
"Emily," Sarah said carefully. "What are you doing?"
Emily swallowed. "I think… it listens."
The flame flared once, sharp and clean, then settled back into a controlled, steady burn. The wood didn't pop. Didn't smoke. It burned efficiently, almost eagerly.
Jethro, standing near the doorway, stared.
"You didn't touch it," he said.
Emily lowered her hand slowly. The fire returned to normal, but the room felt warmer than it should have.
Her heart was pounding.
"I didn't feel heat," she said. "I felt… alignment. Like the fire wanted to be a certain way, and I just helped it get there."
Sarah stepped back from the stove, eyes wide but steady.
"That wasn't imagination," she said. "I've stared into fires my whole life. They don't do that."
Jethro's voice was almost reverent. "Fire-affinity," he said. Then winced. "Sorry. I mean—control. Resonance."
Emily looked at her hands like they belonged to someone else.
"I didn't force it," she said softly. "I don't think I could. But I can guide it."
Mark appeared in the doorway, having heard just enough.
He took in the stove, the fire, his daughter's expression.
"No showing that outside," he said immediately.
Emily looked up. "Dad—"
"Not yet," he said firmly. "That's an edge we don't advertise."
Carl stepped in behind him, gaze lingering on the stove.
"Looks like the board just got bigger," he said.
Mark nodded.
They had a plan now.
Claim the land.
Drive out the weak.
Learn what they were becoming—carefully.
Outside, the treeline stirred.
And somewhere in the woods, goblins began to understand that this place was no longer undefended.