I glanced at the display again.

  Eight days, seven hours.

  It ticked down not by minutes, but by chunks—uneven, unnatural. I didn’t hide it this time. I turned the interface outward so everyone could see.

  “It’s getting closer,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “Not because time is passing. Because something changed.”

  Murmurs rippled through the room. A few people leaned forward instinctively, eyes locking onto the numbers as if staring hard enough might force them to behave.

  “What do you mean ‘changed’?” one of the newcomers asked.

  “I mean the timer isn’t counting down,” I replied. “It’s recalculating. Skipping. Adjusting itself based on what’s happening out there.”

  As if to punctuate the point, the display flickered again.

  Eight days, five hours.

  No one spoke for a moment, then Anna spoke up, “Are you sure that’s why?”

  “That’s not normal,” Glenn said quietly. “It didn’t do that after the last wave. It also matches with the information we received yesterday.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Because last time, we fought. We engaged with the system the way it expected us to.” We had always met the wave steadily, completed it and kept to ourselves. We had never pressed any mechanic, and the one time we had cost us Ryan and Bethany during a night raid.

  I looked back to Jessica. She was propped up against a pillow now, color slowly returning to her face, eyes sharp despite the fatigue.

  “You said you felt a presence,” I said. “Not a monster. Not a patrol. Something else.”

  She nodded. “It wasn’t physical. At least… not in the way demons are. There was no form to track. No sound. Just pressure. Like stepping too close to something that didn’t want to be seen.”

  Lucas shifted where he sat, fingers tapping his chin in contemplation. He hadn’t said a word yet, which meant he was already deep in thought.

  “Say it,” I prompted.

  He exhaled slowly. “I think the raid isn’t just content to be cleared,” he said. “It’s also a mechanism.”

  A few heads turned toward him.

  “Explain clearly,” Richard and Maria almost responded in unison.

  Lucas leaned forward. “We’ve been treating the raid like an optional objective. Something we could do for rewards, buffs, better gear.” He shook his head. “That’s wrong. It’s not optional. It’s structural.”

  “How so?” Rebekah asked.

  “Think of it like this,” Lucas continued. “The demon waves are pressure. A force pushing inward. The abode lets us resist that pressure for a time. But pressure doesn’t just disappear—it builds.”

  He gestured vaguely toward the walls, the sky beyond them.

  “The raid is a release. A way to redirect that pressure outward. To engage the system somewhere it actually wants us to engage.”

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  “And when we don’t?” Marcus asked.

  Lucas’s expression darkened. “It looks for other ways to force engagement.”

  The timer skipped again.

  Eight days, two hours hours.

  “That’s all good and fine but it’s merely speculation, no?” It was Nicole who asked.

  “The night raid was similar, no?” I asked again. There WAS some connection here.

  Jessica closed her eyes briefly. “When I crossed into that range… it felt like I’d stepped into something’s awareness. Not attention. Awareness.” Which were similar but too very distinct meanings. Attention would be focused, but the awareness, it could be vague. Had she stepped into the domain of some abhorrent creature?

  “An anchor,” Glenn murmured. As if his thoughts on the teleporter had given him the conclusion we might all have been missing.

  Lucas snapped his fingers. “Yes. Exactly. An anchor point. The raid zone isn’t just a location—it’s a connecting node. Something that ties the waves, the timer, the escalation together.” My mind wandered to the eye, that endlessly distant demonic city.

  I felt the pieces sliding into place, ugly and inevitable.

  “So by avoiding it,” I said, “we weren’t buying time.”

  “We were delaying it,” Lucas replied. “And the system doesn’t like that. Especially if we test the waters and retreat.”

  “Jessica’s fleeing?” Thomas asked what everyone was thinking.

  Silence settled heavy over the room and yet outside, distant thunder rolled—not loud, not close, but present enough to be felt through the stone beneath our feet. The world started to cry out.

  “The Australians said the same thing,” Glenn added. “Every major shift happened after a large-scale objective was completed, failed… or ignored.”

  Jessica opened her eyes. “I must have entered the proximity of the raid,” she said quietly. “close enough to be counted.”

  “That was enough,” I said. The display flickered again, eight days flat. No hours. No minutes. Just eight days.

  A few people swore under their breath.

  “That confirms it,” Lucas said. “We triggered a response condition. The system registered interaction without resolution.”

  “And now it’s accelerating the next wave to compensate,” Richard said.

  “Yes,” Lucas replied. “To force a decision.”

  I didn’t retort Lucas’ comment about forcing a decision. I felt more like we were being molded. Structured like clay, and those not malleable enough would break. It was forcing a resolution.

  I rubbed a hand over my face slowly. The ache in my arm pulsed in response, dull and insistent, as if my mind wouldn’t let me forget what I was, what I was becoming.

  “So let me say this plainly,” I said, looking around the room. “If this keeps up, we won’t have eight days. We won’t even have five.”

  Rebekah swallowed. “How fast could it go?”

  I didn’t answer immediately, but the timer dropped again. How much penalty could you incur for attempting the raid and then fleeing? We could only wait to find out.

  Seven days, twenty-two hours. The timer moved again.

  No one spoke after that.

  Lucas broke the silence eventually. “Then we stop pretending this is optional.”

  All eyes turned to him.

  “We do the raid,” he continued. “Not for loot. Not for buffs. But because it’s the only lever we’ve been given to slow the waves.” Or maybe there was no lever to slow them at all? But somehow or another the raid affected them.

  “And if we fail?” someone asked.

  Lucas met their gaze evenly. “Then the world tightens around us until there’s nothing left to give.”

  “Is it possible this could be the solution to our wave problem altogether?” Maria suggested. This was my thinking as well—my hope.

  It got a measured “Maybe,” but no one could know for sure.

  I looked back at Jessica, at the exhaustion etched into her face, at the bandage wrapped tight around her shoulder.

  “You found a place for the teleporter,” I said softly. It wasn’t a question. If she hadn’t she would have made it known to me instantly.

  She nodded. “Three miles towards the gnoll encampment. Off the main road. Defensible terrain. Far enough that if we get over-run, we’ll have at least a few minutes head-start to flee.

  “Good,” I said. “That gives us an out.”

  Lucas shook his head slightly. “An out, yes. But not a solution.”

  “No,” I agreed. “The raid is the solution. Or the closest thing we’re going to get to one.”

  The display flickered again. Seven days, eighteen hours. The temperature in the room dropped further, taking a more downcast turn.

  “Everyone listen,” I said. “What happened out there wasn’t a failure. It was information. We know now that the system responds to avoidance. We know the raid matters. And we know the wave is coming faster than expected.” I let my gaze linger on each face.

  “So we prepare. We rest tonight. We adjust our plans. And when the time comes, we don’t hesitate.” I didn’t say the scary part out loud: who knew how much time we would have come tomorrow morning? What if all doing all of this… changed nothing?

  The world outside felt closer that night somehow, constricting even.

  For the first time since the demon waves began, it felt like we were finally looking at the shape of the thing trying to kill us.

  And it was clearly looking back at us.