The earth groaned.
Kaelen stumbled back into his workshop. The tang of smoke and ozone thickened in the air. Looking out the window, Kaelen saw something that made him freeze. Overhead, the sky cracked not with lightning, but with something that looked like...code? Blue-gold veins of rune-like characters stitched across the clouds like circuitry, pulsing in some unheard rhythm.
Then came the quake.
It wasn't an earthquake exactly. It was a shift. It was like the world was being pulled inward, twisted from the inside out. Buildings in the distance could be heard rumbling. Streetlights sparked and died. The road outslide split open as jagged obsidian spires erupted from the ground like spears driven from beneath.
Kaelen hit the ground as his workshop's glass windows exploded inward. He rolled, covered his head, and crawled behind the heavy workbench as part of the roof caved in behind him.
[System Notification:]
Global Integration Phase - Stage One: Terraforming. Reality anchors removed. Terren Mythic Templates Uploading.
"What the hell…" Kaelen whispered, coughing through the dust and plaster.
At first, Kaelen kept flinching every time one of the floating notifications blinked into existence. They didn't just appear, they unfolded like paper in the air, sudden and luminous, the kind of thing he'd seen in video games and read in novels but never expected to witness in reality.
The first few made his stomach twist; they were too real, hovering in his vision no matter how he turned his head, with crisp lettering and perfect clarity like thoughts written by someone else. After the third or fourth pop-up, his panic dulled into a stunned sort of curiosity. He remembered books he'd read during quiet nights in the forge, escapist stories full of leveling systems, stats, skills, and sudden powers. Honestly, he used to joke that he'd be dead in the first hour if one of those worlds ever became real.
He dragged himself up from the floor, eyes wide. The temperature dropped sharply, and the hairs on his arms rose. The wind had stopped, and tremors had stopped.
Kaelen's breath came shallow. Not panic, not yet, but close. His brain scrambled for logic. Maybe a government experiment. A mass hallucination. A freak electromagnetic event. Something, anything to explain what he was seeing.
But none of those theories explained why the sky felt like it was watching him through the hole in the roof. Kaelen stepped back, his mind racing.
This wasn't a hallucination.. The air tasted different—sharper, charged. The lines in the pavement near the road shimmered like heat mirages. Across the lot, the foundation of an old factory cracked wide open as jagged black crystal pushed through the earth like buried spears awakening.
"Oh God," he muttered. "This is happening."
His stomach twisted. It was like watching the world dissolve and re-form at the same time. Shapes he couldn't name twisted in the shadows between buildings. Trees cracked through asphalt like some twisted time-lapse video. Nearby, a lamppost warped midair, reshaping into a curved spire etched with glowing lines.
Another notification popped up.
[System Integration: 22% Complete.]Warning: Stability threshold failure. Unexpected Lifeform Convergence imminent.
Prepare Yourself.
Kaelen stared at the message, a cold sweat breaking across his brow.
"Lifeform convergence?" he said aloud. "What the hell does that mean?"
And then, movement. Fast. Wrong. Low to the ground.
Something small was moving between the wrecked cars outside the garage. Something quick.
His heart thundered. Panic surged through him, but there was nowhere to hide. No time to gather his thoughts. He needed something- anything - to make him feel less powerless.
His eyes darted to the floor. There, half-hidden beneath a scorched towel and a fallen pair of tongs, lay his hammer. He snatched it up without thinking.
It wasn't a weapon. Not really. Just a worn, broad-faced blacksmith's hammer with a stained hickory handle and a steel head marred by years of heat and repetition. Dull gray now, but still solid.
The weight of it in his hand comforted him. He gave it a slow test swing. The motion was automatic. Muscle memory.
Not much, but better than bare hands. If something comes through that door, he thought, gripping the handle tighter, I'm not dying without swinging first.
He took a slow breath, grounding himself in the one thing he still understood: the weight of steel in his hand. Kaelen inched toward the broken window. A figure darted into view—green skin, twisted limbs, long ears, sharp teeth. It was barely four feet tall and carried a jagged scrap of rebar like a spear.
A goblin?
The word formed in his mind without prompting. But before he could fully process the sight, something else appeared - suspended above the creature's head.
[New Threat Identified: Lesser Goblin (Tier 0)]
Classification: Feral
Behavior: Aggressive. Scavenger. Opportunistic.
Recommended Response: Kill on sight.
The goblin's eyes swept across the street. Its eyes somehow spotted Kaeln through the dust and rubble.
With a shriek, it lunged from the wreckage like a spring-loaded nightmare, rebar clutched in its small, gnarled fists. Kaelen barely had time to raise his hammer before the creature was on him.
They crashed into each other among the shattered remains of the workshop, splintered bits of wood and scattered glass bits into Kaelen's back as they slammed against the workshop floor, knocking the wind out of him.
The goblin clawed and snapped, its breath hot and foul, its small frame wiry and fast. Kaelen shoved it off with a desperate grunt, stumbling over the remains of a sawhorse, almost dropping his sword.
He scrambled backward, almost tripping over his own feet, panic boiling just beneath the surface. This isn't a dream, his mind screamed. This thing wants you dead.
The goblin came again, low and fast. Kaelen raised his hammer in a clumsy arc and swung. The hammer's head punched through the air and missed by inches, crushing into a chunk of broken masonry instead.
The goblin twisted, rebar flashing toward Kaelen's ribs.
Move, dammit!
He ducked too late. The metal clipped his shoulder with a jolt of pain, and he staggered sideways into a pile of crushed wood and forge scrap. He almost dropped his hammer again. Hand slick with sweat and grime.
And then a voice echoed in his head -not the mechanical voice of the system from before, but from memory. His grandfather's, rough and gravel-thick from smoke and age.
"Doesn't matter how clean you fight - just that you're still standing when it ends. Keep your feet. Get in close. Make it hurt worse for them than for you."
Kaelen swung low.
The hammer caught the goblin in the hip with a sickening crack, and the creature howled, tumbling sideways into the debris. Kaelen didn't stop. He closed the distance with a shout, swinging again - this time overhand. The goblin rolled, just fast enough for the hammerhead to crash into the floor where its skull had been a second earlier. Splinters and sparks flew.
It slashed at him with its improvised weapon, opening a gash in Kaelen's thigh. He grunted, pain blinding, and reeled back. The goblin scrambled to its feet, breathing raggedly, snarling through broken teeth.
Kaelen's thoughts were chaotic. Why is this little green shit trying to so hard to kill me!
Kaelen's grip tightened around the hammer's leather-wrapped haft.
The goblin feinted left, then darted in from the right. Too fast. Too low.
Kaelen didn't think. He dropped low with it, a guttural yell escaping his throat, and swung.
The hammer smashed into the goblin's side with a brutal thud. Bones cracked. The creature squealed and collapsed, but Kaelen wasn't done. He stepped forward and brought the hammer down again, this time on its chest. Once. Twice.
The third hit stilled it.
Silence fell, broken only by Kaelen's harsh breathing.
He stared at the thing as it started to crumble apart in front of him - its body turning to ash and smoke as the System chimed yet again. Damn that's getting fucking annoying he thought.
As the goblin's body disappeared, a strange warmth surged through Kaelen's limbs, hot and electric, like fire stoking a forge from within. His breath steadied, and the pain in his leg dulled.
[Enemy Defeated: +15 EXP]
Loot: Goblin Fang (Common), 7 Coppers
The glowing text hovered in the air. Kaelen blinked at it through a haze of adrenaline and disbelief.
"I just…" he murmured, looking down at the hammer in his hand, blood and ash clinging to the head. "I just killed something."
It hadn't been graceful, but it had worked.
His leg throbbed. His lungs burned. His hands shook. But somewhere beneath it all, Kaelen felt that faint flicker of something else.
Satisfaction?
The old man's word echoed once again.
Keep your feet. Make it hurt worse for them than for you.