The golem advanced with mechanical certainty, its next step hammering into the concrete with enough force to send a ripple through the ground. The greatsword it wielded lit in a violent pulse of sputtering electricity, arcs crawling along the blade in twitching, chaotic patterns. Heat and static shimmered in the surrounding air, and for a moment, the sheer presence of the thing seemed to press inward from all sides.

  For a moment, Xander was afraid that the golem was going to collapse the floor, sending them all into the storage room below. It was unlikely that would happen, as the hidden storage room was much deeper underground. The second thought that came to Xander's mind was that his crusade was going to come to a premature end against the cult.

  Then something changed.

  A glow, soft at first, built around Xander. Pale gold with a white-hot center, it shimmered at the edges like oil catching sunlight.

  [Aura of the Crusade] Allies who stand with the Crusade strike with sharpened resolve, their blows landing harder and truer as the will to protect humanity fuels their attacks.

  Xander felt it ripple outward from his chest like a second heartbeat.

  Jo caught it first. Her step shifted into alignment with his without conscious thought, the set of her shoulders narrowing as if her sword had just grown lighter. Kane, a heartbeat behind her having regained his footing, grinned without looking back.

  Xander didn’t have time to think about it. The pain in his ribs dulled to something he could use. The haze in his limbs cleared. He shifted forward, spear at the ready, and the others moved with him like pieces of a puzzle snapping into place.

  Zoey struck first. Her bow fired twice in quick succession, the frost-tipped arrows slamming into the golem’s upper chest with enough force to crack its armored plate. The first shaft pierced beneath the collar, burying deep. The second hit slightly higher, anchoring into the damage and blooming with cold. Ice spread in sharp veins, threading through exposed cabling and into the core.

  Jo didn’t wait to see the effect. Her blade came in fast, lightning trailing the edge as she drove it into the weakened joint behind the golem’s left knee. The metal flared as her strike connected, power surging into the actuator. The joint twisted, faltered, and then buckled. As its mechanical balance faltered, the golem swayed to the side, nearly falling under its own considerable weight.

  That moment of confusion was all the construct needed to launch its own surprise attack.

  Like a hydraulic press, the construct's off-hand lashed out, catching Xander mid-step and closing around his torso. The world narrowed instantly. The crush forced the air from his lungs before he could shout. His aegis shield spell flared white, shimmered, and then cracked under pressure. The glow snapped in two sharp pulses before the shield burst completely, leaving him exposed.

  His ribs felt as if they had folded inward. Pressure built behind his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. Nor could swing his spear with any leverage.

  So he didn’t reach. He drove.

  His spear twisted in his hand and punched downward at a brutal angle, the motion rough and ragged, but it found mark. The weapon slammed into the golem’s damaged shoulder, where one of Zoey’s arrows still quivered among torn cabling and warped plating. It didn’t matter how deep the spear sank. What mattered was that it struck something important.

  The construct convulsed.

  Its grip released instantly, and Xander dropped with it, hitting the ground in a tangle of limbs and armor, lungs clawing at the air. The floor didn’t give. His body barely did. But breath came back in hard gasps, and with it came the sound of steel meeting steel.

  Kane stepped in without hesitation, shield raised just in time to catch the golem’s sword as it came down in a killing arc. The impact thundered against his defense, knees buckling under the force, but he held the line long enough for Jo to leap back into the fray as Xander crawled out of the immediate fight.

  Her sword flashed blue as she slammed it straight into the split across the golem’s chest. Sparks burst outward, showering metal and magic into the air as the construct reeled again, the chest plate fracturing further under the assault.

  The golem’s next strike came not from the sword, but from its bad arm as a blunt, full-body swing that caught Kane center-mass. The hit sent him flying twenty-feet backward across the barn, shield torn from his arm, armor screeching against the floor as he tumbled to a stop.

  The sword came next.

  Jo barely slipped back from the wide arc, boots skidding across concrete, her body twisting into the narrow pocket of space that remained between her and the blade. The golem adjusted, recalibrating for a finishing return strike.

  But Xander was already back on his feet.

  He called the light again, a pulse of golden warmth snapping into his chest as his injuries sealed just enough to move. Aegis flared once more, brighter this time, the shield forming in clean lines along his form. His spear rose with it.

  The golem stepped forward. Jo couldn’t move in time.

  Xander slammed his spear into the path of the electrified blade, catching the edge as it descended and dragging it off course. The impact knocked him back a step as his body screamed in pain, but the weapon didn’t break. The sword bit into the floor instead of Jo’s chest, carving a trench of scorched stone beneath their feet.

  Jo surged forward into the opening, her blade coming down in a controlled, precise strike that landed dead center on the golem’s exposed chest. Sparks flared again, brighter this time, licking outward as the internal systems faltered under the assault.

  Two more arrows hit the same spot.

  Zoey’s timing was exact. Her first shot buried itself in the fracture Jo had just widened. The second landed beside it, and the ice that followed spread instantly through the compromised core. Cables froze. Armor warped inward. The golem’s stance faltered.

  Then it stopped attacking.

  It stepped back instead, positioning itself directly between the breach in the barn wall and the rest of the team. Its movements were slower now. It wasn’t trying to overpower them anymore. It was controlling space.

  Its next attack came low, a sweeping arc of its sword that skated just above the ground. No one was close enough to be hit directly by the attack, so it was clear to Xander that it was an area denial attack. This was confirmed as electricity discharged across the floor like a storm surge, jagged and bright. Everyone scattered. Zoey rolled behind a broken beam. Jo vaulted across the fallen debris. Ford pulled Blake clear of the worst of it with a quick, desperate tug.

  A different support beam than the one Zoey had sought refuge behind caught the edge of the discharge. The wood blackened, then cracked with a deep groan. The barn’s ceiling above shifted with the noise, and a thin line of dust poured down in sheets. As the beam fractured, the structure groaned louder, and something about the ceiling caught Xander’s eye.

  It was segmented and hinged. Something was meant to enter and exit via the roof.

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  "Heads up!" Zoey said, already sighting down the shaft of her next arrow.

  She loosed one shot, then another and another. All aimed directly at the weakened support above the golem. The first exploded in frost, coating the already splintering beam in a layer of brittle ice. The second and third shots cracked the last support pin.

  The beam came down.

  The golem saw it too late. It tried to move its position and raise its sword to catch the collapse with its good arm, but the damage was already too severe. The beam slammed into its upper body, driving it to the ground in a crash of metal and dust. Sparks burst from its core as its systems overloaded, limbs twitching violently beneath the wreckage. One last arc of electricity flared from its blade, snapping wildly into the air, then went dark.

  Dust settled in a slow drift across the wreckage, the air thick with the scent of scorched wiring and fractured stone.

  The path to the door was gone, and so were the cultists.

  Jo stood at Xander’s side as he cast another healing spell on himself, her sword still humming faintly with residual charge. She didn’t speak at first. Just looked toward the exit that wasn’t an exit anymore.

  "Dammit, they escaped," she said.

  Kane nudged the fallen blade with his boot. "Next time we see one of those, we run."

  Zoey stepped in a second later, her bow hanging loose, her eyes still locked on the fallen golem as if expecting it to move again.

  "Yeah," she said. "But we know for sure something is going on inside Prairehold."

  The golem’s wreckage had left quite a mess at the entrance the cultists had used to escape.. With the entrance blocked by collapsed support beams and a ruined half-ton machine still twitching beneath splintered wood and metal, they were forced to circle wide through the empty grain barn’s rear, pushing through a side door warped in its frame. The exit opened into a narrow access corridor that ran the length of the building and out into the dried grass beyond, far from where the cult had escaped.

  By the time they looped back around to the original clearing, the fog had burned away, leaving only silence, grit, and heat. The sunlight had broken through the clouds and cut across the barn’s open maw like a blade, flattening shadows along the dirt and concrete.

  The battle was over. But the cost hadn’t finished adding up.

  Ford reached the clearing first, his staff raised cautiously. Nothing awaited them. The same wide space where the cult had made their escape, now stripped clean, empty. The only things that remained were the hulks of abandoned semi-trucks and the bodies of the last two missing scouts.

  Jo scanned the lot, sword still in hand. "They cleaned up. Fast."

  "No signs of the others?" Kane asked, stepping up behind her. His shield arm hung low, fingers flexing to keep circulation moving. His knuckles were still marked from the blow that had launched him across the barn.

  Zoey moved past them, careful and quiet, boots crunching lightly over spilled grain that had been ground into the floor during the fight. She crouched beside a blood trail near one of the support beams, touched the edge, and wiped her fingertips clean on her pants.

  "They left bodies," she said. "But only the ones that weren’t theirs."

  Xander followed them in last, slower than he wanted, his left side still protesting with every step. He didn’t bother with the spear now. It hung from the strap across his back, forgotten in the tension that had bled off too quickly. His eyes went straight to the middle of the parking lot where the bodies lay.

  "They cleaned up the evidence of their escape. Like they planned the exit," Ford said, stepping up beside him. "This wasn’t a panic retreat. It's almost as if they planned how they were going to get away."

  "Because it was," Xander replied.

  He crossed the lot, gaze moving across the space as if it might still offer a clue. But there were no hints of how the cultists had left. The lot was still wet from the rain and snow that had fallen, but there were no tracks. They just stopped.

  "They were never here to win," he said. "That fight, and the golem, were all a delay."

  Jo sheathed her sword. "You think it was bait?"

  "I think it was bait. And we took it."

  "So my friends were just bait?" Blake said, kneeling beside the bodies of the last two scouts.

  Blake’s hands trembled slightly as he searched their pockets.

  Xander stopped near the southern retaining wall where scorch marks from the golem's sword’s electrical discharge marred the surface in looping arcs. The golem had come from the opposite direction to the administration building. Grit and dirt that had been washed away had settled into the gouges left by its blade.

  Zoey came to stand beside him, bow slung and resting against one shoulder. "Are things too convoluted? No one really knew we'd be here. I find it hard to believe all of this was planned."

  "You're right," Xander said. "I think the scouts stumbled upon the cult in the middle of something. Then we happened along, and they were convenient leverage."

  He looked toward the empty barn. If there had been anything of value in the barn, it was gone. The grain bins were empty, scraped clean to the slats. Any caches, weapon crates, or hidden stockpiles that might have been stored here were nowhere to be found.

  "They stalled us," he said. "They took something. Something we didn’t even know was here."

  Jo frowned. "What makes you think that?"

  He turned back to her, jaw tight. "Because the scouts were already dead before the fight started. Because something had fought the mechanical constructs before the cult unleased them on us. And because there’s no other reason to set this up unless the prize was something in the barn."

  "We don’t even know what was stored here," Ford said. "This isn’t a public depot."

  "It was designated as overflow," Kane added. "Could have been anything. Gear. Supplies. Magitech maybe."

  Xander nodded slowly. "Exactly. Something that didn’t belong in plain view. Something the government didn’t want to risk losing. Plus, if I don't miss my guess, something that flies."

  "But if that’s true…" Zoey let the rest trail off as she turned to look back at the main doors. "Then we're back to this whole mess not being about us."

  Jo raised an eyebrow. "If they have spies inside Prairiehold, they had to have known we were coming."

  "Yes, but I still think that was just a happy opportunity for them." Xander said. "They knew the town’s hurting. They knew supplies were thin. They planned this to get in, grab what they needed, and leave a message while they did it."

  "How do you know whatever they wanted flies?" Blake asked as he slipped the last of the scout's personal items into his backpack.

  "The roof was made to open. Grain storage doesn't do that."

  Xander stepped further out into the clearing again, boots dragging a little now.

  "There are tons of questions about what the cult was doing here, and we can speculate all day without coming to a conclusion. But we know for sure something is going on inside Prairiehold."

  Zoey straightened from the blood trail she’d been inspecting and glanced toward the nearest of the bodies. "Not to poke the Simulation in the eye, but shouldn’t the quest have popped by now? We found the scouts."

  Ford looked toward her, then at Blake, who was quietly closing the eyelids of one of the fallen. "Probably wants us to report in. Wouldn’t be the first time an objective required confirmation from leadership."

  "Could’ve given us a breadcrumb at least," Zoey said, her voice tight beneath the usual lightness. "Something like, ‘Congratulations, you’ve located the bodies of your murdered friends. Now please hike three miles to turn in your grief.’"

  No one laughed.

  Xander paused mid-step as his field of vision shifted, text sliding into place just beyond the edge of focus.

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

  His jaw tightened. That pointed straight back toward Prairiehold.

  Of course it did.

  No Sanctuary for the Wicked

  Quest Update! You arrived too late. The Cult achieved its objective and withdrew with the asset intact. This failure will have consequences.

  Rewards: None

  He closed the notification and scanned the clearing one last time. The broken barn, scorched concrete, and dead left behind. None of it had been meant for them, but they’d walked straight into it anyway. The cult got what they came for, and somehow, they were still chasing the admin key. Which meant there was a bigger game in motion.

  And Xander might hold the piece that flips the board.

  He needed to get back to Thalindra.

  But first, they had to figure out what the hell was rotting inside Prairiehold.

  As he turned to rejoin the others, Kane stepped in close.

  "Hey," he said under his breath, voice pitched for privacy. "We need to talk about that aura."

  Xander didn’t answer immediately.

  Kane continued, keeping the tone light but the meaning serious. "I’m not trying to pry, but me and Ford... we’re starting to feel like there are pieces of this puzzle you’ve already got in your pocket. Thought we were all in this together."

  "You’re not wrong," Xander said. "And we are."

  Kane studied him for a second longer, then nodded slowly. "Okay. But it’s feeling like the cult’s already writing the final chapter... and we’re stuck looking for the damn table of contents."

  Xander almost smiled. It wasn’t wrong.

  "I’ll fill you in," he said. "But not here."

  He tipped his head toward Blake, who was still kneeling beside the scouts, murmuring quiet prayers as he placed a hand on each of the fallen men’s shoulders.

  "Fair," Kane said. "But don’t let this turn into secrets within secrets. We’ve seen what that does to a place."

  Xander gave a quick nod and turned southeast. The Crusader’s pull still whispered at the edge of his thoughts. Prairiehold waited, along with the answers they didn’t yet know the question for.

  They’d come looking for missing men and walked straight into the prologue of someone else’s story.

  And now the cult was halfway through the book.

  While they were still figuring out which shelf it came from.

  Somewhere inside the walls of Prairiehold, the next chapter had already started.