Chapter 5 – The Wolves Outside
It was raining the next morning.
Not a soft drizzle, but a cold, needling rain that crept down collars and made bones ache. Ironvale always seemed darker under clouds, as if the sun had forgotten it existed. The gutters overflowed with soot and runoff. The orphanage's chimneys coughed out thin, gray smoke.
Arin stood at the second-floor window, watching the street. His breath misted the glass. He didn't wipe it away.
He wasn't watching the children playing. He was watching the rhythm of footsteps in the mud—watching who lingered by the fence, who turned their head a little too slowly, who kept their hands hidden in sleeves.
He was watching for wolves.
Because they were out there.
[Side Quest: Hunt the Intruder – Progress 1/5]
[Villain Insight: Evil thrives where light is thin. You are the shadow that watches back.]
The System's message had come again during the night, a gentle, malevolent nudge that tickled the back of his mind.
Arin had marked a map on the underside of his desk. Five red crosses—each one representing a possible location the intruder might have fled to.
Four were false leads. Distracting.
The fifth?
The old lodge in the woods east of Ironvale. Half-burned. Long abandoned. Supposedly haunted. But Arin remembered. He had seen men go there in his first life. Men who worked for Orlen. Men with bloodied boots and full purses.
It wasn't a place for ghosts.
It was a place for secrets.
That night, he left the orphanage.
He wore a dark cloak, padded boots. The rain had slowed to a mist, the trees heavy with water. No one saw him slip through the back gate—except Kall, who nodded once and returned to polishing a spoon by the kitchen hearth.
The path to the woods was overgrown, but Arin moved with purpose.
He was no longer the boy who had died in the street. He was something else now—sharper, harder, colder. His thoughts cut through the dark like a blade.
He reached the lodge just before midnight.
It loomed in the trees like a wound. Half the roof was gone. Ivy curled over the broken beams. One window flickered with light.
Not firelight.
Lantern.
Someone was inside.
[Alert: Entering Unclaimed Domain – "Lair of the Forgotten"]
[Mini-Boss Encounter Possible. Proceed with caution.]
Arin felt no fear.
He crouched low, circling toward the broken back wall. Years ago, there had been a coal chute for winter supplies. It was still open—rusted, but wide enough for him to slide through.
Inside, the lodge smelled of old wine, damp wood, and rot.
He waited in the shadows, letting his eyes adjust. Then he moved.
The main room was empty, but scattered with signs: stained blankets, half-empty bottles, muddy boots. Whoever lived here was careful—but not careful enough.
He heard voices in the cellar.
"…he said the next shipment's in two nights. Some girl, barely ten."
A chuckle.
"Think she'll scream?"
A sigh.
"I hope not. Gets annoying."
Arin's hand tightened around the rusted pipe he'd found near the hearth.
He could wait.
He could plan.
But some things…
Some things didn't need planning.
[Villain Action: Premeditated Violence Against Known Criminals]
[You may now access: "Blood Ledger (F)" – Activated.]
[Tracking Enabled: Current Targets – 2]
Arin stepped forward.
The stairs creaked.
Voices paused.
A head appeared at the base of the stairs. Greasy, rat-like, wearing a stained leather jerkin.
"What the—?"
The pipe slammed into his skull before the sentence finished.
Arin didn't stop to watch him fall. He moved down the stairs with the momentum, using the narrow space to his advantage.
The second man—a larger brute—had just risen from a stool when Arin drove the pipe into his kneecap. The man howled, reaching for a blade.
Too late.
Arin struck his temple, then his throat.
He kept hitting until the man stopped moving.
Until the blood pooled and the System chimed.
[Mini-Boss Defeated: Trafficker's Hand]
[Reward: Trait – "No Hesitation" (F) – Gain bonus speed in first strike scenarios.]
[Side Quest Progress: Hunt the Intruder – 3/5]
[New Item: Iron Key – Inscribed with the Orphanage Crest.]
He stood in the dark, breathing hard.
His hands were slick with blood. His arms trembled—not with fear, but with adrenaline. With the knowledge that this—this—was justice. Not the soft-handed mercy of nobles, but the real kind.
The useful kind.
And the key?
That meant Orlen's reach went deeper than he'd feared.
Arin turned and walked back up the stairs.
He was already thinking about how to use this.
By the time he returned to the orphanage, the sky was lightening.
Sera was waiting on the steps.
She didn't speak, just looked at him.
Her gaze drifted to the blood on his sleeve.
"You found something," she said quietly.
"I did."
She didn't ask what.
Instead, she handed him a cloth.
"You'll catch a fever if you leave that on too long."
He accepted it.
Wiped the worst away.
"Thank you," he said.
Sera nodded. Then she said something strange.
"I had a dream," she murmured, looking at the misty horizon. "There was a wolf in the courtyard. But it wasn't hunting us. It was watching. Guarding. And everyone thought it was a monster."
She turned to him.
"But I knew it was you."
[Recruitment Opportunity: Sera Linwood – Loyalty Thread Available.]
[Thread Formed: Strength – 22%. Status: Unspoken Bond.]
[Villain Insight: Fear is a prison. But fear wielded correctly becomes a crown.]
Later that day, Arin placed the iron key beneath a floorboard in his secret room.
He now had leverage.
Proof.
And soon, he'd have names.
But he also knew the System wanted more.
The next steps wouldn't be clean.
They wouldn't be simple.
Because to truly break Orlen, he'd need to break the illusion of safety in this place. And to do that, he would have to set something in motion that couldn't be undone.
A false monster.
A planted story.
A moment of fear so sharp it would echo through the halls for weeks.
He stared at the cracked floorboard and saw it clearly:
He wasn't just going to save the orphans.
He was going to remake the orphanage.
Into what?
He didn't know yet.
But the wolves had arrived.
And they were hungry.