The barn doors groaned open the next morning into a gray world that hadn’t decided whether it wanted to snow or rain. Cold rain came in fits, half-formed into sleet. It soaked through quickly and turned the ground to muck. Prairiehold’s outer yard was quiet, save for the slow, steady crunch of boots on gravel and the faint hiss of rain off the barn’s tin roof.

  Xander stepped out first, his spear slung across his back, cloak pulled tight against the cold. Behind him came Jo, Zoey, Kane, and Ford. The guard Xander had talked to the previous evening stood waiting near the fence line with one of the gate guards, shoulders squared as if bracing against more than just the weather. Xander recalled someone had called him Blake at some point.

  The sun stayed hidden behind a thick ceiling of clouds. The light that made it through was flat and gray, just enough to show the shape of the palisade towers. Guards rotated along the perimeter, more than Xander remembered from last night. Lanterns swayed in the wind. No one spoke above a whisper, as they didn't want to attract any more attention than they had to. They wanted to slip away early and quietly.

  As they approached, Blake gave a brief wave. "I’m coming with you."

  "You sure the Bishop will be okay with that?" Jo asked.

  Blake’s mouth twitched. "He won’t be told."

  Xander glanced once at the guard standing beside Blake. No reaction. Just a tired set to the eyes and the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth that could have been approval or resignation.

  "You don’t have to do this," Xander said.

  Blake looked him dead on. "I think I do."

  That was all Xander felt he was going to get out of Blake on the subject. Having someone from Prairiehold could end up being a good thing, depending on what they found during their search. So Xander wasn't willing to push back on the idea of Blake coming along. He looked much more competent than the two men the team had escorted to Prairiehold initially.

  He didn’t have actual evidence for the idea, just a vague itch behind the eyes and a shorter fuse than usual. No soda for two days. Caffeine crash was hitting hard.

  The Grain Road Vanishing

  |Quest Notification! A Prairiehold scavenging team failed to return from a routine supply run. Their disappearance has stirred division, with some calling for outside help and others insisting on handling things quietly. You’ve decided to act before the rift widens further. After all, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

  Completion Conditions: Investigate the last known location of the missing scavengers

  Difficulty: Easy

  Rewards: Gold, Experience, Standing with Prairiehold

  Accept: Yes/No?

  He read it twice before accepting the quest. Then frowned. Typically, if there were survivors the quest would base the reward and difficult on the number rescued in the end. This quest mentioned nothing of the sort.

  "The fact there isn't a survivor count is concerning," he whispered to Jo.

  Jo leaned closer, keeping her voice low. "You think that means they’re gone?"

  "I think if they were, the quest would say so."

  Across the courtyard, the Deacon stood on the palisade walkway, watching from behind the railing. He didn’t call out or acknowledge them, just lingered long enough for Xander to notice before turning away. Not quite approval, but also not disapproval either.

  Xander turned west.

  [Crusader's Righteousness] You gain a general sense that a goal is in the western direction.

  Blake kept glancing west between conversations, his pace steady with the team as they walked on. After a few moments, he asked, "You seem awful sure which way to go. That in the quest details for you? Mine didn't say."

  "I’ve got a class ability that gives me a general sense of where to head." Xander said.

  Blake nodded. "Like a divine nudge."

  "Something like that."

  They moved quickly once clear of the compound, boots muffled by wet earth and the flattened husks of last season’s crops. Beyond the main trail, the land opened into low fields broken by patchy woodlines and rail fencing. A half-collapsed barn leaned like a monument to entropy in the distance, and just ahead, the treeline where the figure had stood the night before.

  Xander slowed as they reached the edge. Jo flanked him silently, one hand resting near her hilt. The others spread into a loose arc, eyes sweeping the tree trunks and undergrowth.

  The branches still bore the marks of a long night’s wind, leaves scattered and dripping. But halfway up one of the larger trunks, Xander spotted it.

  "Here," he said.

  Claw marks. Parallel gouges scored into the bark. Too high for a mundane animal, too ragged to be the work of a blade. The edges were fresh, not yet darkened by rain.

  Blake stepped beside him, face unreadable. "No patrols reported anything strange."

  "Then they weren’t looking in the right place," Jo said.

  No one disagreed.

  They pushed onward without another word, veering northwest across an old field until they met an abandoned rail line. The rusted tracks cut a straight path through the wilds, weaving between pockets of trees and overgrown brush. Xander signaled a halt, checked both directions, and led them west.

  "I want to stay off the main roads," he said.

  "No point attracting questions," Jo added.

  Ford kept pace just behind them, hood pulled tight against the wet. "You think someone from Prairiehold is going to come after us?"

  "Probably not," Zoey said. "But if they ask what we’re doing, we’d either have to lie or tell them we’re doing their job for them."

  "And if the cult’s watching the roads," Xander added, "we don’t tip our hand."

  They stayed low when crossing open ground, followed treelines wherever possible, and ignored the highway that would’ve made for faster travel. Once, not long after leaving Prairiehold’s reach, they spotted a patrol in the distance. It was Prairiehold group of three figures walking slowly down a nearby road.

  Xander led the group into the brush until the patrol passed. No one spotted them.

  After that, the wild reclaimed everything, and the miles passed in steady rhythm.

  When the group paused for a breather near an overturned freight car half-swallowed by ivy, Blake finally spoke.

  "We were lucky early on," he said. "Losing technology didn't change anything for us. We were already off-grid. Water, food, shelter. We didn’t need outside help, so we didn’t ask for it."

  Xander listened, crouched beside the rusted frame.

  "But we weren’t prepared for this Simulation thing. Took us too long to understand what it was. Some folks still don’t."

  "The Data Forge helps," Jo said. "We’ve used it to group source class research, information about dungeons, general theory craft... pretty much everything."

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Blake looked pained. "Our elders call that forbidden knowledge. Too close to old-world tech. Some think it’s a temptation test. Others say it's outright sin."

  "That’s not sustainable," Ford said.

  "No. It’s not."

  They moved again, more somber now.

  A few minutes later, Blake added, "Some women in Prairiehold, when the classes started appearing, got combat-focused ones. Fighters. Rangers. Even a Rogue."

  Kane raised an eyebrow. "Bet that went over well."

  "Depends on who you ask. Some say it’s the Simulation testing our traditions. Others say it’s proof the old ways were too rigid. We’re fracturing around it."

  "Sounds like the Simulation doesn’t care about your traditions," Zoey said. "Just what you’re willing to do."

  Blake didn’t answer.

  The group walked in silence for a time, the only sound being the rhythmic squish of boots in damp earth and the faint hiss of a cold rain off cloak hoods and armor. The rails stretched ahead into the fog, westward.

  The rails led west into a sprawl of low scrub and wind-cut fields, the landscape flattening into long stretches of nothing broken only by old power poles and the twisted skeletons of outbuildings. Rain came in steady sheets now, seeping into every seam. The rain wasn’t dangerous, just mean. Soaked deep, clung longer than it should, and made every step feel miserable.

  They saw the facility long before they reached it. A distant wall of gray metal and concrete rising from the horizon like the bones of some industrial beast. Rows of silos punched up into the sky in clustered formations, some intact, some buckled, most rusted where the paint had peeled. Conveyor belts hung limp between towers, their joints locked with age. Rail tracks split toward the yards like veins, ending in a sprawl of tipped grain cars and half-buried trucks. From this distance, it looked empty.

  "Hell of a place," Kane said. "How much grain do you think this handled back in the day?"

  "Most of this would have gone to feedlots or ethanol plants," Jo answered. She pointed at the massive fabric arches farther back, their plastic skins stretched tight over rusted steel ribs. "Overflow barns. They’re not small."

  Xander stopped at the edge of the embankment where the main rail line split off and led toward the complex. Rain pattered off his shoulders, ran down the shaft of his spear. From this vantage, he could see where grain cars had jumped the track, their bellies torn open and spilling rot across the gravel. Muck pooled around the debris, thick with old mold and tangled with animal prints.

  He studied the tracks a beat too long. Some were familiar. Deer. Wolves. The usual loop. Prey came for the grain, predators came for the prey.

  But mixed in were prints he didn’t recognize. The claw spacing was wrong and the stride too long. It reminded him of a giant flightless bird with talons. If they were in the Southwest, he might’ve said oversized roadrunner. Here, it didn’t fit anything local.

  For the hundredth time, he wished they’d stopped at Starlight and pulled JT aside, just to ask if they could send a train out this far. They could’ve done the entire run under support cover and cut the time down to a quarter.

  Wouldn’t have known where to send it, he reminded himself. Prairiehold hadn’t exactly been broadcasting that it was there and had a problem.

  "No human tracks on the road," Zoey said behind him. "The rain would have washed out anything more than a day out though."

  Jo knelt by one of the abandoned cars and pointed toward the admin building near the front of the yard. "Well, someone is here. There is a lantern burning in the window."

  Xander followed her gesture. One main office front windows glowed with a dull, golden light. A survival lamp, the type with a deep oil reserve. It might’ve been burning for hours. Or it might’ve been lit five minutes ago.

  Blake exhaled slowly through his nose. "This place feels wrong."

  They approached in a tight formation, watching for any sign of the cult, scouting team, or monsters. The rain dulled sound, but not enough to hide the constant creak of old metal and the distant flap of torn tarp from one of the hoop barns. The closer they got, the worse the smell. Mold, mildew, animal musk, and the overpowering scent of decay.

  The office building was squat and mostly intact. Steel-frame glass doors had been left propped open with a rusted folding chair. Inside, the lobby had the sterile layout of a pre-event corporate space with plastic chairs, faded floor maps, a shattered vending machine still holding a few stale snacks behind cracked glass. The lantern Zoey had seen sat squarely in the middle of the receptionist’s desk. Judging by the oil level, it hadn’t been burning more than a day.

  Xander nudged the folding chair aside with his boot. The door swung shut behind them with a heavy metallic clank, the sound echoing across the yard. He paused and listened. It was the sort of noise that could carry farther than they wanted and attract unwanted attention. When nothing moved outside, he stepped farther into the reception area.

  Jo nodded toward the back hallway. "Let's clear the building before we do anything else."

  They moved fast, sweeping room by room. Kane took point. Zoey covered the rear.

  The break room was empty. So was the manager’s office. Nothing but scattered papers, broken equipment, and a stack of old salvage left by someone too rushed to be neat.

  It wasn’t until they hit the locker room that things got interesting.

  Two bodies lay inside.

  Slumped against the far row of lockers, both men were dressed in patchwork gear similar to what Blake wore. They hadn’t been dead long. There was no rot or decomposition. It was almost as if they'd sat down and decided not to get back up.

  Blake stepped forward, then stopped. His jaw tensed. Xander saw the recognition in his posture.

  "I knew them," Blake whispered. "Levi and Jonah."

  Zoey hovered near the door, watching back down the hallway. "Where’s the rest of the team?"

  "Six went out," Blake said. "There are only two here."

  Ford crouched near the bodies to examine their wounds. "This looks like weapon wounds, not teeth or claws. Look at the clean cuts."

  "Doesn't mean that other people did this," Kane asked.

  "Certainly doesn't narrow things down too much," Jo said.

  The Grain Road Vanishing

  Quest Update! You have discovered two of the missing scouts from the salvage team, but there are still four missing. Weapons have caused their deaths. However, that doesn't narrow down what happened enough to determine what has taken place. Continue the investigation and discover what is missing.

  Ford stood and wiped his hands clean on a nearby abandoned towel in the locker room.

  "It doesn't look like they have much in the way of gear," he said. "I would have expected weapons and maybe even some armor. Also, for a team of scouts doing salvage runs, I would have expected a notebook, a map, or something."

  Jo stepped in closer, crouching briefly to check one of the body’s side pouches. "They were stripped?"

  "Not completely," Ford replied. "Just... cleaned up."

  Blake crouched beside Levi. He moved slower than Ford had, as if the act of searching a friend’s corpse required a different kind of care. He checked the vest, the coat, then paused at an inside pocket. A small photo slid free, sealed in a thin plastic sleeve, the corners worn soft. Blake said nothing, just looked at it for a breath, then tucked it into his pack.

  "They were both married," he said. "Levi had kids."

  Nobody responded. Everyone had lost someone over the course of the cataclysm, and it never got any easier. Xander did briefly wonder what had happened to some of his cousins. Did they make it? None of them were close by, so traveling to check on them was out of the question. Still, he made a mental note to check the Data Forge when they got back to a safe zone to see if there were any known settlements close to areas where his cousins should have been.

  Jo stepped back. "That’s the entire building. Nobody else is here."

  "And zero clues to finding the others." Xander said.

  "No maps or notes," Jo added. "Nothing that says where they went or why."

  "No blood trail," Kane said. "No broken gear."

  "We keep saying this was weapon damage, but Xander don't forget that giant ass spider way back at Starlight. Giant ass spider that had taken some of its victims off somewhere else. If a giant spider jumps out, I’m blaming you two," Zoey said, pointing at Xander and Jo.

  "Remember how Alex ended up covered in webbing at the bottom of that oil change pit?" She asked, laughing for a moment.

  Xander almost smiled. "He spent an hour screaming about how he couldn’t move his legs while we cut him out."

  "He was covered in silk," Zoey said. "Didn’t even know us yet."

  "He got over it," Xander said.

  "Eventually."

  Blake zipped his pack shut without looking up. "We’re not going to find the rest of them in here."

  "No," Jo said. "Next stop is the grain elevators. After that, check the semis. If they were here, then those would be the next most logical places to look."

  Ford nodded. "If that doesn't pan out, we're going to have to check the small-town ruins nearby."

  [Crusader's Righteousness] You gain a general sense that a goal is in the western direction.

  "No, there is something here for sure," Xander said.

  Then the hum started.

  It was a deep thrumming sound. Not so much loud as it was the type of sound you felt more than heard. It was certainly mechanical and growing in volume. The sound was coming from the direction of the reception area.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing the moment the noise started.

  Zoey was the first to move, slipping out into the hallway before Xander could call her back. Her bow wasn’t drawn, but her hand drifted toward her hip quiver as she moved out of the room. A moment passed. Then another. Then her voice, louder than before, cut clean through the air.

  "Xander. Get out here. Now."

  He didn’t wait.

  Jo beat him to the punch at Zoey's call, and he followed tight behind, boots thudding down the short hall as the pitch of the hum grew sharper. It vibrated in the walls now, humming against the glass, pressing through the floor like pressure in a pipe about to rupture.

  They hit the corner and turned in tandem.

  The reception area was lit with flickering gold from the still-burning lantern, and beyond it, just past the entry doors, the rain had increased outside and limited visibility. The humming rose again, and the steel-frame doors exploded inward with a blast of hot steam and shrieking metal.

  Glass shattered across the floor in wide arcs. The chair that had held the door open was gone. The front desk slammed against the wall with a hollow crack.

  Through the sheets of rain, something moved, and it appeared to be pissed.