Chapter 5: Strangers
The fire had almost burned down by the time anyone spoke again.
Lucas sat with his legs folded, the makeshift bandage on his forearm itching where the blood had dried stiff against the cloth, and let the warmth do what it could for the cold still sitting in his chest.
’I haven’t really had time to check my stats’ he thought to himself. Might as well do that now...
He summoned his system.
[Name: Lucas Kane]
[Position: Player]
[Acquired skill: Regressor, Ignition]
He focused on the [Regressor] skill
[Description: The user may return to a previously recorded point in time upon death, carrying memories, combat experience, and selected skills into the new timeline. Reality itself rewinds, but the burden of past failures remains. Every regression strengthens the user’s understanding of fate, allowing them to rewrite outcomes that once led to despair.]
[Skill Limitations: Return points are randomized, therefore player is unable to predict the point of reset.
Return Points can only be created through specific System conditions.
Player is not allowed to tell anyone of this ability.
Violation of this will result in instant death.]
He sighed. Of course he wasn’t allowed to speak of this. And why does the ability have so many conditions anyway, isn’t this a skill that’s supposed to help him?
He exhaled in frustration and looked ahead.
Across the flames, the older man who’d nearly drawn steel on him minutes earlier had introduced himself simply as Bertram, the fact that he was able to share that much with him in the first place was already more than necessary.
"So." Bertram poked at the fire with a stick, not looking up. "You said you got separated from your group."
"Yeah. During the drop." Lucas didn’t elaborate on the how. Like how it was his system’s fault...
"Two friends. We were supposed to land together."
"Nobody lands together," the boy with the wrapped hand muttered from the far side of the fire. He looked younger than the rest, maybe still finishing his last year of high school, and he cradled his injured hand like it still hadn’t stopped hurting.
"The Edge doesn’t work like that. Scatters everyone."
"You’d know," the girl with the bow said, not unkindly, "because you scattered into a ravine."
"That was ONE time—"
"You’re still limping."
Lucas felt something in his chest loosen, just slightly, at the easy rhythm of their bickering — the kind that only happened between people who’d survived something together. It reminded him enough of Mark and Eleanor that it hurt a little.
"I’m Iris," the girl said, finally turning her attention fully on him. Up close, the firelight caught details he’d missed from the treeline — a thin scar along her jaw, half-healed, and eyes that tracked him with the kind of assessment that felt less like suspicion now and more like habit.
"That’s Callum." A nod toward the boy with the wrapped hand. "And you’ve met Bertram."
"Lucas."
"You said that already." But she said it with a thin smile.
Something Lucas had expected...
"Fair’s fair, then." Bertram set the stick down, finally looking up. "Since we’re all being friendly. What’d you get? Ability-wise."
The question sat there, heavier than it should have for something so simple. Lucas glanced around the fire — sets of eyes waiting, none of them hostile exactly, but none of them fully trusting either.
He understood the game being played. Nobody handed over the shape of their own power for free, not in a world that had started killing people for entertainment roughly a day ago.
But trust had to start somewhere, and he was one man alone in a forest that had already killed him once.
"Ignition," he said finally. "Can use fire on my hands... It helps to increase damage." He spoke raising his arm and showing the sparks on his knuckles.
Iris stared at him for a moment. "That’s it? Is that the only ability you awakened?"
Lucas was silent for a moment. "Yes."
Iris didn’t say anything. She just stared. Long and hard as if trying to read him.
Bertram cleared his throat. "Since we’re sharing." He held up one broad hand, and for a second nothing happened — then his palm split open with a low grinding sound, stone knitting itself across his skin in overlapping plates, gray and rough and clearly built for taking a hit rather than giving one. "Stoneskin. Not flashy but keeps me alive."
After a pause, he spoke again. "And I’m pretty good with a machete." He emphasized this by swinging it a few times.
"Bow’s self-explanatory," Iris said, tapping the weapon slung across her back. "Enhanced accuracy, and it never runs out of arrows so long as I’ve got stamina. Nothing dramatic."
Callum mumbled something about a minor healing skill that made his ears go red when Bertram jabbed at him for underselling it, and for a while the conversation drifted easy and loose to stories of the drop, half-formed theories about how long they’d be here , someone’s dark joke about the state of the world’s dating apps now that half the population apparently had fire hands or claws.
Lucas found himself laughing at some point, actually laughing, and it felt strange. Not that he hates it anyway... he literally had to die before getting here.
Eventually Bertram and Callum drifted off toward the far side of the camp to take first watch, leaving the fire and its remaining warmth to Lucas and Iris.
"You’re not from around here," she said after a while, meaning nothing about geography.
"Nope. College actually. Last day. Was supposed to be graduating."
"Guess the universe had other plans."
"The universe is a sick bitch." He glanced at her, at the scar along her jaw catching firelight. "What about you? Before all of this."
She was quiet long enough that he thought she wouldn’t answer. "Doesn’t matter anymore. Before doesn’t exist out here. Just what you can do and who you trust." A pause. "I don’t trust easily."
"Noted."
She looked at him properly then, something in her expression softening by a fraction most people probably never got to see.
"When you said that you only awakened one ability, a part of me didn’t quite believe it."
Lucas raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
She nodded. "But then I realized that having just one ability wasn’t uncommon. People did actually awaken one ability. But it was rare to meet them since most of them die the moment they get here."
She looked at him again. "And you fought something. So I was expecting you to tell us about another ability aside from your [Ignition] skill."
"Nope. That’s all I got."
"Well, we can never know whether you lied or not. But your story checks out. To a degree."
Lucas just watched her silently.
’She’s smarter than she looks,’ he thought.
They talked longer than either of them probably meant to — nothing that mattered in the grand scheme, small things, the kind of conversation that filled space rather than answered questions, but Lucas found himself grateful for it in a way he couldn’t explain.
When Iris finally stood to take her turn at watch, she paused.
"Get some sleep, Lucas. You’ll need all the strength you can get."
"Yeah." He managed a smile. "Thanks. For not shooting me on sight."
"Don’t tempt me." But she was almost smiling too as she walked off toward the treeline.
Sleep came harder than he expected, his body tired from the fight, the walking and everything in-between. But eventually sleep finally came upon him.
.
.
.
.
.
[You have died.]
The world went white.
Then it went cold, wet, then wrong all over again.
Lucas’ lungs slammed full of air as he doubled over where he stood, back at a checkpoint that smelled like woodsmoke and pine and the ghost of a fire that hadn’t been lit yet.
[Regression Activated.]
[Player has returned to designated checkpoint.]
He didn’t feel it happen.
There was no growl building in the dark, no warning shape crawling out of the bushes, no system window blaring before the blow landed.
One moment there was nothing and the next there was cold spreading fast through his chest, and by the time some distant part of his mind registered wrongness, it was already far, far too late to do anything about it.
"Hey! Who’s there? Come out where we can see you!"
Again..
He was back here again.
He was standing at the treeline. Alone. Staring at the camp ahead of him.
Lucas’s hand went to his chest — no wound, nothing, just his own heart hammering too fast against his ribs.
"What was that??" he said, his hand on his mouth...
"I didn’t even see it,"
[Checkpoint has been restored to the last stable moment prior to death.]
Somewhere out there, in a future that hadn’t happened yet, something had reached him in his sleep, past whatever watch Bertram, Callum or Iris had been keeping, and it had done it clean enough that he died without even waking up.
"This is bad..."
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