Erik didn't sleep well that night. He gave Maya the bed and took a position near the iron door, his back against the cold cobblestone wall, his sword across his knees. It wasn't that he didn't trust her. It was that he didn't know her, and in this world, there was a significant difference between the two. She had said the right things, arrived at the right time, and presented herself as exactly the kind of person he needed. That was either very good luck or something else entirely.

  Maya slept soundly, or at least she appeared to. Erik watched the torchlight flicker across her face, her leather armor still on, her inventory presumably organized and ready. She had mentioned traveling many servers. That meant she had survived. Survival across multiple servers required either exceptional skill, exceptional caution, or a willingness to do whatever it took. Erik didn't know which category Maya fell into yet.

  When morning came, the square sun flooding the plateau with harsh, bright light, they got to work. Erik laid out the situation plainly. "There are three players on this server now," he said, standing by the partially built watchtower. "Me, you, and a man named Blade. He showed up on my second day, took the bread and sword from the welcome chest, and then attacked me with the sword. I disarmed him, but he ran into the forest before I could do anything about it. That was three days ago. He was fast and aggressive, knew what he was doing in a fight. I'd assume he knows how to mine and craft too, which means he's probably armed and armored by now."

  Maya took that in, her arms folded, her expression serious. "Three days is more than enough time to get iron," she said. "And if he's been camped in that forest, he's had a clear line of sight to your base. He knows the layout, he knows your routines, and now he knows I'm here."

  Erik nodded. That was the same conclusion he had reached. "He might see two defenders and back off, or he might see two targets and get more aggressive."

  "Either way, we can't ignore him," Maya said. She looked at the half-built walls, the incomplete watchtower. "What's your iron supply like?"

  Erik checked his inventory. He had enough ingots left to craft a second set of basic armor. He placed an iron chestplate and an iron helmet on the crafting table. "Put these on," he said. "If we're going to defend this place together, you need better protection than leather."

  Maya picked up the armor, turning it over in her hands. She looked at Erik for a moment, something unreadable in her expression. "You're giving me your iron," she said. It wasn't a question.

  "I'm investing it," Erik said. "A dead ally is worse than no ally at all. I can mine more."

  She put the armor on without further comment. The iron chestplate fit over her leather tunic, and the helmet sat snug on her head. She looked more formidable immediately. Erik crafted her an iron sword as well, leaving himself with enough iron for a spare pickaxe and not much else. It was a calculated risk. He was arming someone he had known for less than a day.

  They divided the work. Erik would continue mining and expanding the underground tunnels beneath the plateau, stockpiling resources. Maya would finish the watchtower and extend the outer wall to cover the southern approach, which was currently the most vulnerable access point. They worked through the morning in efficient silence, the rhythmic sounds of pickaxe and placed blocks filling the air.

  Around midday, Maya called down from the watchtower. "Erik. Come look at this."

  He climbed the ladder and stood beside her on the top platform. She pointed toward the forest to the east, near the river. Erik squinted. At first, he saw nothing unusual. Then he noticed it: a thin column of smoke rising from the tree line, barely visible against the bright sky.

  "That's not the Pillager Outpost," Erik said. The outpost was to the northwest. This smoke was coming from the opposite direction.

  "That's a campfire," Maya said. "Someone's set up a camp in those trees."

  Blade. It had to be. He had built a camp in the forest, close enough to watch Haven but hidden enough under the tree canopy that Erik would never have spotted it from the ground. The only reason they could see the smoke now was because the watchtower stood high enough to look over the treetops. Erik stared at the thin column, his jaw tight. Blade wasn't gone. He hadn't wandered off to some other part of the server. He had settled in right on Haven's doorstep and was staying put.

  "We can't go after him right now," Erik said. "If we leave the base undefended, the Pillagers could move in. And fighting Blade in dense forest where he knows his own ground is a bad trade."

  Maya glanced at him but said nothing. Erik could tell she had her own thoughts on the matter, but she didn't push it.

  In the early afternoon, Erik made the decision to check on the village. The smoke he had seen the previous evening, rising from the direction of the settlement, had been nagging at him since he first spotted it. Fletcher Finn, Farmer Giles, the rest of them—they were villagers, bound by code, unable to break blocks or craft weapons. If the Pillagers had hit them, there was nothing they could have done to stop it.

  "I need to go to the village," Erik told Maya. "I saw smoke from that direction last night. Those villagers can't fight back."

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  "I'll come with you," Maya said. "Blade could be anywhere between here and there."

  They left together, moving quickly across the plains. Erik kept his shield on his left arm and his sword in his right hand. Maya moved beside him, matching his pace, her eyes sweeping the tree line in steady intervals. She covered ground like someone who had spent a long time moving through hostile territory.

  "How many servers have you been on?" Erik asked as they walked.

  "Eleven," Maya said without hesitation. "Twelve, counting this one."

  "Why so many?"

  She was quiet for a few steps. "Because none of them lasted," she said. "Some fell to griefers. Some fell to raids. A couple just fell apart because people couldn't agree on anything." She paused, and something shifted in her voice. "The worst one had thirty players at its peak. Two factions formed and started fighting over a diamond mine. It escalated. People picked sides. Then someone found lava and used it to burn the other faction's base while they slept. Eleven people died that night. Permanently. A month after the server started, it was empty. Everyone had either died or left."

  Erik felt a chill run through him. Eleven people. Gone. In a world where death was permanent, that wasn't a server conflict. It was a massacre.

  "Is that why you came here?" he asked.

  "I came because you created it with no mods and labeled it as peaceful," Maya said. "I've seen what happens when servers get complicated. Mods create imbalances. Imbalances create conflict. I wanted something simple." She looked at him. "But simple doesn't mean safe. You already know that."

  They reached the village twenty minutes later. The damage was immediately visible. Two houses on the western edge had been partially destroyed, their wooden walls broken apart, their contents scattered on the ground. A few crops had been trampled, wheat blocks crushed into the dirt. But the village was still standing. The stone buildings, the church, the well—they were all intact. It had been a scouting party, not a full raid.

  The villagers were shaken but alive. Fletcher Finn was pacing outside his workshop, his long nose twitching rapidly. "Traveler!" he called out when he saw Erik. "You've returned! Those grey-skinned monsters came through yesterday! Four of them, with those horrible crossbow things! They broke down Shepherd Bob's door and stole his wool! They shot at Farmer Giles! He's been hiding in the church since and won't come out!"

  "Which direction did they leave?" Erik asked.

  Finn pointed northwest. Toward the Pillager Outpost. A scouting party, just as Erik had suspected. They were mapping the area, identifying targets. The village, with its defenseless inhabitants and stockpiles of food, was an obvious mark for a future full-scale raid.

  Erik and Maya spent the next two hours helping repair the damage. Erik replaced the broken wall blocks on the damaged houses, using cobblestone from his inventory instead of the original wood. Cobblestone was harder to break and would resist future attacks better. Maya helped Farmer Giles replant his wheat field and coaxed him out of the church with calm, patient words. Erik watched her interact with the villager, noting how she spoke to Giles as if he were a frightened person rather than a coded NPC. It was a small thing, but it told him something about her.

  He reinforced the village perimeter as best he could, placing torches along the borders and blocking off the widest access points with simple cobblestone walls. It wasn't much, but it would slow down any future raiding party and give the villagers time to retreat to the church, which was the sturdiest building in the settlement. He also placed cobblestone blocks on either side of the church entrance, narrowing it down to a single block wide. The villagers could still walk through, but it would be much harder for a group of Pillagers to force their way in.

  While Maya finished the perimeter work, Erik chopped down several oak trees near the edge of the village. He needed wood. His stick supply was gone, and sticks were essential for tool handles and for trading with Finn. The trees near the village were plentiful, and he worked quickly, collecting a good haul of oak logs and converting the extras into planks and then sticks. He traded forty of the sticks to Fletcher Finn for two more emeralds. He now had three emeralds total. Finn seemed calmer after the trade, his hands busy at his fletching table, producing arrows at a steady pace.

  "We'll come back," Erik told Finn. "Stay safe."

  Finn nodded rapidly. "Thank you, traveler. You are a good person. This world needs more like you."

  The walk back to Haven was quieter. The sun was beginning to descend, and Erik was acutely aware of the passing time. He had been on this server for five days now. In that time, he had gone from punching his first tree to managing a fortified base, an uneasy alliance with a player he barely knew, a hostile player lurking in his forest, a Pillager Outpost within striking distance, and a vulnerable village that had no one else to turn to. It was more responsibility than he had anticipated when he had stood in the Main Menu and typed the name Haven.

  "You're quiet," Maya said as they climbed the plateau.

  "I'm thinking about how I built this server for peace and quiet," Erik said, "and I've had neither."

  Maya said nothing to that. There wasn't much to say.

  They ate dinner in the house, bread and some cooked porkchops that Maya had brought with her from a previous server. The food was filling and restored their hunger bars completely. Erik added a few more torches to the courtyard and checked the walls one final time before the sun set.

  As full dark settled over Haven, Maya took the first watch from the watchtower. Erik lay in his bed, exhaustion pulling at him. He was almost asleep when Maya's voice cut through the quiet.

  "Erik. Get up here. Now."

  He was on his feet in an instant, sword in hand. He climbed the watchtower ladder in seconds and crouched beside Maya on the platform. She pointed toward the southern tree line, the one closest to the plateau.

  A figure stood at the edge of the forest, just barely visible in the moonlight. It wasn't a mob. The silhouette was too still, too deliberate. It was Blade. He was standing motionless, staring up at the plateau, at the watchtower, at the two of them. He held something in his right hand that glinted faintly in the dim light. It was longer than a wooden sword. It looked like iron, or possibly stone.

  He stood there for a long moment, watching them. Then he turned and walked back into the trees, disappearing into the darkness without a sound.

  Erik and Maya stayed on the watchtower for another hour, but Blade did not reappear. The message was clear. He knew there were two of them now. And he had been busy. He was no longer the disarmed, desperate man Erik had sent running three days ago. He was preparing for something.

  Erik finally spoke, his voice low. "We need to deal with Blade before the Pillagers make their move. If we're fighting on two fronts, we lose."

  Maya nodded in the dark. "How?"

  Erik stared at the spot where Blade had stood. "I don't know yet," he said. "But we can't wait for him to decide for us."