Nate ran toward the screaming.

  His legs carried him without thought, the same instinct that had driven him through the tower. Danger meant movement. Threat meant response. His body knew what to do before his mind caught up.

  But his mind was catching up now, and it was struggling.

  People. Attacking people. In the middle of an apocalypse, with monsters pouring out of towers and the sky cracked open like a broken window, humans were fighting humans over food and water.

  He shouldn't have been surprised. He knew that. Resources were scarce. Society had collapsed. Of course some people would turn predator.

  But he'd spent a week fighting things that weren't human. Things he could kill without hesitation, without guilt, without anything but the pure focus of survival.

  This was different.

  The barricade came apart just as he reached it.

  Raiders poured through the gap—dozens of them, armed with bats, pipes, machetes, anything they could swing. They weren't soldiers. They weren't organized. They were desperate people with desperate eyes, and some of them had the cold look of men who'd already decided that other people's lives meant less than their own.

  Frank was at the front, swinging his baseball bat, screaming for people to get back. A younger man stood beside him with a kitchen knife. Two women with metal pipes. A handful of others, armed with whatever they'd grabbed.

  It wasn't enough.

  A raider with a crowbar caught Frank across the temple. He went down hard, blood spraying, and didn't get up. The man with the kitchen knife took a machete to the arm and crumpled, screaming. The line collapsed.

  Raiders flooded into the camp.

  Nate stepped into their path.

  The first one came at him fast—a wiry guy with a length of rebar, swinging for his head. Nate slipped the blow without thinking, his body moving on instinct. His fist came up, ready to strike—

  And he hesitated.

  This wasn't a monster. This was a person. A human being with a name, a history, maybe a family somewhere. If Nate hit him the way he'd been hitting things in the tower, with [Pressure] behind it, he'd kill him. Cave in his skull, shatter his ribs, end his life in a single blow.

  He'd never killed a person before.

  The hesitation cost him. The raider recovered, swung again. Nate dodged, but barely—the rebar clipped his shoulder, sent pain shooting down his arm.

  More raiders were coming. Three, four, converging on him. They'd seen him step up. They thought he was a threat.

  He was a threat. He was Level 10, Grade E, an Enforcer with skills that could tear through monsters twice his size. Against regular humans, he was a nightmare.

  But he couldn't make himself swing.

  A bat caught him across the back. He stumbled. Someone grabbed his arm. A knife flashed toward his face and he twisted away, felt it slice his cheek.

  They were going to kill him. These people, these humans, were going to beat him to death because he couldn't bring himself to fight back.

  Move, he told himself. Do something.

  He couldn't hit them. Couldn't bring himself to unleash [Pressure] on human flesh, to feel bones break under his fists, to watch the life leave someone's eyes.

  But he had another option.

  Nate stopped fighting. Stopped dodging. Stood still in the middle of the chaos and let go of the restraint he hadn't known he was holding.

  [Killing Intent].

  The effect was immediate.

  It started with the raiders closest to him. The man with the rebar had been mid-swing—his arm stopped like it had hit an invisible wall. His face went slack. Then white. Then something worse, a grayish pallor that made him look like he was about to be sick.

  The rebar clattered to the ground. His hands were shaking too badly to hold it.

  "What—" he started, but the word came out as a croak. He stumbled backward, tripped over his own feet, fell hard on his ass and kept scrambling away, unable to look away from Nate.

  The ones behind him felt it a second later. Nate watched it spread like a ripple—faces changing, bodies stiffening, the aggression draining out of them and being replaced by something primal.

  A woman with a pipe dropped her weapon and grabbed her own arms, hugging herself like she was trying to hold something in. "No," she whispered. "No, no, no—"

  A big man, easily twice Nate's size, made a sound that wasn't quite human. A whine. High and thin, like a dog that had been kicked. He turned and ran, shoving past his own people, not looking back.

  That broke something. Three more raiders followed him, then five more, then a dozen. They scattered in every direction, some running, some crawling, one man curling into a ball on the ground with his hands over his head, rocking back and forth.

  But it wasn't just the raiders.

  Behind Nate, in the camp, people were feeling it too. He heard gasps. Cries. A child started screaming. He couldn't control it—couldn't aim it—couldn't do anything but let it pour out of him in a wave that touched everyone nearby.

  "Nate!" Tyler's voice, somewhere behind him. Strained. Terrified. "What are you—I can't—"

  Nate gritted his teeth and tried to pull it back, to contain it somehow. The pressure eased slightly, but it was like trying to hold water in his fists. It kept leaking out.

  The raiders who hadn't run were frozen in place. Maybe twenty of them, scattered across the broken barricade and the edge of the camp. They stared at him with wide eyes, bodies locked, breath coming in short gasps.

  Then one of them moved.

  A man pushed through the crowd. Older, maybe fifty, with a scar across his jaw and eyes that had seen worse than this. He walked toward Nate like he was fighting a current, each step slow and deliberate, his face twisted in a grimace of effort.

  He was feeling it. Nate could tell. The intent was hitting him just like the others.

  But he wasn't breaking.

  "Stop," the man said. His voice was strained, but steady. "Whatever you're doing. Stop."

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  Nate didn't answer. He wasn't sure he could stop—wasn't sure what would happen if he let go of this thing he'd unleashed.

  The scarred man took another step. Then another. He was ten feet away now. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, knuckles white.

  "You're from the tower," he said. "One of the climbers."

  Nate still didn't speak. He just let the intent bleed off him, let them all feel what he was.

  The scarred man studied him for a long moment. His eyes flicked to the raiders behind him—the ones still frozen, the ones on the ground, the ones who'd fled—and something shifted in his expression. Calculation.

  "High level," he said. "Has to be. I've seen climbers before. None of them felt like this." He paused, tilting his head. "What are you, ten? Twelve?"

  "Leave," Nate said.

  The word came out flat. Hard. It carried weight, somehow—more than just sound. One of the frozen raiders flinched like he'd been struck.

  The scarred man didn't flinch. But he didn't step closer either.

  "We need food," he said. "Water. Medicine. People are dying out there. We've got children, elderly, wounded. This camp has supplies. We came to take them."

  "You came to kill."

  "Only the ones who fought back."

  As if that made it better. As if that justified anything.

  The scarred man must have seen something in Nate's expression, because he raised his hands slowly. A gesture of... not surrender. Negotiation.

  "We'll go," he said. "For now. You've made your point." He glanced at his people again. The man on the ground was still rocking, still whimpering. "But we'll be back. With everyone. Fifty, sixty people. More, if we can find them."

  "And then what?"

  "Then we'll see if you can do this to sixty people at once." The scarred man smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "You're strong. I can see that. But you're one man. You can't protect this place forever."

  He turned his back on Nate—slowly, deliberately, like he was proving he wasn't afraid—and walked toward his people.

  "Get up," he said, his voice hard. "All of you. We're leaving."

  Some of them obeyed. Others had to be dragged. The man on the ground didn't move until two others hauled him to his feet and carried him between them.

  In less than two minutes, they were gone.

  Nate stood alone in the broken barricade, the [Killing Intent] still bleeding off him in waves. He didn't know how to stop it. Didn't know how to pull it back inside.

  "Nate."

  He turned. Tyler was standing twenty feet away, pale as a sheet, Mira beside him with her arm around a sobbing child.

  "Is it—" Tyler swallowed hard. "Is it over?"

  Nate closed his eyes. Focused. Tried to find the thing inside him that was pouring out and push it back down.

  Slowly, the pressure faded. The air lightened. The shadows receded.

  When he opened his eyes, Tyler was still staring at him. But the fear in his face had shifted into something else.

  "What was that?" Tyler whispered.

  "I don't know," Nate said. It wasn't entirely a lie. "A skill. From the tower."

  "A skill." Tyler laughed, a broken sound. "I thought I was going to die. Not from them—from you. I thought you were going to kill everyone."

  "I wasn't—"

  "I know. I know you weren't. But it felt like it. Like something was telling me to run or die." He shook his head. "How is that a skill? How is that something a person can do?"

  Nate didn't have an answer.

  The aftermath was worse than the fight.

  Frank was alive, but barely. Someone had dragged him away from the barricade and was pressing a bloody cloth to his temple. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow. Every few seconds, he'd twitch, and the people around him would hold their breath until he settled.

  The man with the kitchen knife wasn't as lucky. He'd bled out while the raiders were there, his arm nearly severed by the machete. Someone had tried to apply a tourniquet, but it had been too late. Too much blood on the ground. Too little time.

  Two others were dead. An older woman who'd been hit in the head during the initial rush. A teenage boy—maybe fifteen, sixteen—who'd tried to fight with a broken bottle and taken a machete to the chest. He was lying where he'd fallen, eyes open, staring at the cracked sky.

  Someone had covered the woman's face with a jacket. No one had touched the boy yet.

  Nate stood over him for a long time.

  The kid had tried to fight. Grabbed the only weapon he could find and rushed into the chaos. Brave. Stupid. Human.

  And now he was dead.

  Three dead. Maybe four, if Frank didn't wake up. More wounded—a woman with a gash across her face, a man with broken ribs, a girl who'd been trampled and couldn't stop shaking.

  The camp was quiet. No one was crying anymore. No one was talking. They just moved through the aftermath like ghosts, doing what needed to be done because someone had to do it.

  Tyler found Nate sitting on the edge of the broken barricade as the sun began to set.

  "You okay?" Tyler asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Liar."

  Nate didn't argue.

  Tyler sat down beside him, wincing as his bad leg took his weight. For a while, neither of them spoke.

  "They're scared of you," Tyler said eventually. "The people here. After what you did."

  "I know."

  "They're grateful too. Most of them. But scared." He paused. "I'm scared. A little."

  Nate looked at him. "I wasn't going to hurt anyone."

  "I know. But knowing and feeling are different things." Tyler shrugged. "It'll pass. Probably. You saved us. That counts for more than one bad moment."

  One bad moment. Is that what it was?

  Nate thought about the raiders. The way they'd frozen, trembled, fled. The way some of them had broken completely—the man on the ground, rocking back and forth, whimpering like a child.

  He'd done that. With nothing but his will.

  What else could he do, if he pushed harder?

  That night, Nate didn't sleep.

  He lay on his cot in the dark tent, staring at the canvas ceiling, and thought about killing.

  He'd hesitated today. When the raider came at him, when his fist was ready to swing, he'd frozen. Because hitting a person wasn't like hitting a monster. Because taking a human life meant something different than taking a beast's.

  And because of that hesitation, people had died.

  Not by his hand. But because he hadn't acted fast enough. Hadn't stopped the raiders before they reached the line. Hadn't done what needed to be done.

  Frank might die because Nate couldn't bring himself to throw a punch.

  The thought sat in his chest like a stone.

  He'd used [Killing Intent] instead. Scared them off. It had worked—this time. But the scarred man had already figured out the limitation. One man couldn't project that kind of pressure forever. One man couldn't be everywhere at once.

  When they came back—and they would come back—[Killing Intent] might not be enough.

  Which meant he'd have to fight. Really fight. Hit them, hurt them, maybe kill them.

  Could he do that?

  He thought about the hounds in the tower. The crawlers. The broodmother. He'd killed them without hesitation because they were threats, because it was him or them, because that's what survival required.

  The raiders were threats too. They'd killed three people today. They'd kill more when they returned. They'd made the choice to become predators, to take what they wanted regardless of the cost to others.

  How different was that from a monster?

  The world had changed. The old rules didn't apply anymore. There were no police, no courts, no systems to handle people like the scarred man and his raiders. There was only strength and the willingness to use it.

  If Nate wanted to protect anyone—himself, the camp, Tyler and Mira—he'd have to be willing to do what needed to be done. Even when it meant crossing a line he'd never crossed before.

  Even when it meant becoming something he wasn't sure he wanted to be.

  He closed his eyes and thought about the tower. The floors still waiting. The power still to be gained.

  Level 10 wasn't enough. Grade E wasn't enough. The raiders would return with more people, more weapons, more desperation. And next time, [Killing Intent] might not stop them. Next time, he'd have to put his fists through human flesh and watch people die by his hand.

  Unless he was strong enough that it never came to that.

  Strong enough that his presence alone was a deterrent. Strong enough that no one—human or monster—would dare attack what he protected.

  The tower could give him that. Floor four, floor five, whatever was waiting at the top. Every level, every skill, every evolution would make him harder to kill and harder to ignore.

  Nate lay in the darkness and made a decision.

  Tomorrow, he'd go back. Climb higher. Get stronger.

  And when the raiders returned, he'd be ready.

  Not ready to scare them.

  Ready to stop them.

  Whatever that took.