Chapter 417 Woken in Someone Else's Nightmare

She turned away from the hatchlings, their soft squeals and sloppy munching fading behind her like the last echoes of a bad dream she didn’t want to remember. The air was thick with the smell of old wood, sour stew, and something else—something she couldn’t name, but that stuck to her skin like soot.

She sat down near the doorframe, her legs drawing up close, arms around her knees. The wood behind her was splintered and cold, pressing into her spine through the thin layers of her coat. Snow clawed at the cracks in the walls, and every gust outside felt like a scream trying to get in.

She exhaled slowly. This wasn't what she signed up for. This wasn’t war or conquest or anything noble. This was filth. This was rot. And here she was—sharing a room with stunted things gnawing on scraps like worms in a carcass, while a crippled old goblin was spoon-fed by his son in the corner.

She pressed the back of her head against the wall and closed her eyes.

The sounds didn’t stop. The soft rustling. The tiny feet tapping. The wet, careless chewing. But she tried to shut it out, to drift away. To find a part of herself untouched by the stink and the sadness.

It was night now. The kind of mountain night that swallowed everything—light, warmth, thought. The storm outside beat against the shed like it was trying to crush the last scrap of life inside it.

She didn’t know when sleep came. Only that her body gave in before her thoughts did.

Her eyes peeled open with the slow resistance of someone who’d slept too little and too cold. Her neck ached from the wall pressing crookedly against it all night. 

The storm had calmed. Snow lay thick and motionless outside the shed, the world smothered in white silence. Inside, it was not silent.

Her eyes adjusted to the dim gray light filtering through a broken slat, and what she saw made her wish she’d kept them shut just a little longer.

The hatchlings were still there.

But the food wasn't.

All around the center of the shed were tiny green bodies collapsed in the most pitiful, boneless positions imaginable. One lay face-down in a crust of hardened stew. Another had passed out mid-bite, its mouth still open, a crumb stuck to its cheek like a forgotten insult. Two had fallen asleep sitting upright, leaning against each other like drunkards who had given up halfway through a fight. One had somehow gotten stuck inside the empty stew pot and was now softly snoring, metal making a faint, hollow clink with each breath.

Suzuka blinked. Her stomach tightened with something between a gag and a laugh.

“Oh, for gods’ sake...”

She stood slowly, stretching her arms with a series of stiff cracks. Her gaze drifted to Hermit, who had curled up beside Kaka in the far corner. The older goblin’s chest rose and fell in slow, shallow breaths, his lips parted slightly, flecks of broth dried in the furrows of his cracked skin. Hermit had one hand still holding the spoon—now dry—and his other hand tucked under his chin like a child pretending not to be cold.

Suzuka stepped over a sleeping hatchling who had burrowed into a boot she had kicked off last night. It let out a tiny hiccup in its sleep and farted so softly it sounded like a sigh. She stopped. Looked down.

There were tears in her eyes. She wasn’t sure why.

Maybe it was the sight of them all bloated with food that was barely food. Maybe it was the ones curled around a single crust as if guarding treasure. Maybe it was just that it was morning, and she was still here, surrounded by filthy goblins.

She stepped over another pile of hatchlings—three of them sprawled belly-up, legs in the air like upturned beetles—then knelt near the cold stew pot. She prodded it with the toe of her boot. Empty, only a bloated hatchling sleeping inside.

"Figures," she muttered.

One hatchling stirred near her foot, blinking awake with two huge, goopy eyes. It looked up at her. Then, with the groggy instinct of the tragically stupid, it crawled forward and bit the toe of her boot.

Gently. Stupidly. Hopefully.

She stared at it. It stared back.

"...I will set you on fire," she said.

The hatchling made a confused squeak and scurried off, tripping over its own feet before tumbling into a pile of its siblings like a poorly thrown sock.

Snow was still falling, silent and slow.

The hatchlings shifted in their sleep, twitching and smacking their tiny lips, dreaming maybe of more crumbs, or maybe of nothing at all. Hermit coughed in his sleep, murmuring something to his father.

And Suzuka stood there, staring down at Hermit, surrounded by sleeping green bundles of desperate innocence, feeling like she had woken in someone else's nightmare.

Then, with the suddenness of a whip crack, it ended.

THUD.

Hermit jolted upright as Suzuka’s boot connected squarely with his ribs, sending him skidding half a foot across the cold floor, arms flailing, mouth already open in panic before his brain caught up.

"AAAGHK—M-M-MY BONES! THE SKY’S FALLING! THE HATCHLINGS ATE KAKA!"

He scrambled to his knees, blinking wildly, limbs jerking like a freshly electrocuted spider. His eyes locked onto Suzuka’s towering figure, shadowed by the morning light bleeding through the cracked wood. His face was a portrait of pure confusion.

She stood over him, arms crossed, her boot still hovering like she was considering a follow-up kick. Her expression was somewhere between murder and disgust.

“Get. Up. Now!” 

Hermit looked around in terror, his sleep-mushed brain piecing together reality one second at a time. He reached for Kaka, who remained blissfully asleep, snoring softly with one eye half-open like a broken doll.

“W-What happened?! Is it bandits?! Ice wraiths?! Did the stew come back to life?!”

Suzuka narrowed her eyes. 

“We're leaving.”

“We’re what?”

“Leaving,” she repeated, louder, leaning in. 

“You heard me, Hermit. Get your filthy spawn, scrape your father into something mobile, and prepare to leave this rotting snowhole before I turn it into kindling.”

Hermit looked at the hatchlings. Then at Kaka. Then at Suzuka. Then back at the hatchlings—one of whom was now chewing on another’s ear while humming.

“But... we just got cozy…”

Suzuka’s boot shifted half an inch forward.

Hermit yelped and scrambled up, tripping over his own feet.

 “Y-Yep! Nope! Leaving sounds great! I’ll just—uh—wake the babies, pack them up, find something to put Dada in—maybe a bucket? Do you think we have a bucket?”

“You have five minutes.”

Hermit’s face paled.

 “O-Of course. Five. Just... just five... hundred seconds. That’s plenty of time.”

As Suzuka stepped back toward the door, muttering curses under her breath, Hermit darted toward the pile of hatchlings, flapping his arms like a man trying to herd fog.

“Wake up! Wake up, you greedy dirt-warts! It’s migration day! Everybody up, we’re relocating like forest cockroaches!”

The hatchlings stirred slowly, blinking, stretching, a few of them letting out sleepy little burps. One rolled over and farted directly into Hermit’s face.

In the corner, Kaka snored louder, still entirely unaware that he’d soon be transported like a sack of potatoes through snow and mountain trails.

Outside, the sky was darkening, revealing a cold, dark day. The kind of day that didn’t care what kind of misery was crawling through its shadow.

Hermit stood among the snoring wreckage of his hatchlings, his bony hands wringing together, eyes flitting nervously between Suzuka’s face and the pile of barely conscious goblin infants.

He cleared his throat—softly at first. Then again, a bit louder. The sound came out like a wet mouse trying to announce dinner.

Suzuka turned her head, slowly, eyebrows arched like a guillotine.

Hermit gave a sheepish little smile and gestured vaguely toward the heap of hatchlings with a jerky nod.

 “Er... Mistress Helen, noble human of tremendous strength and indifference... I was just wondering... would you, um... possibly be helping carry the... you know... the cargo?”

 “No.”

Hermit froze. His smile drooped like a wilted cabbage.

“You’ll carry them. All of them.”

 Hermit looked at the hatchlings again, then at Kaka—still unconscious and flopped over like a wet rag on the cold floor.

He let out a whimper. Not a cry, not even a protest. Just a soft, damp little sound of someone who knew they had no say in their own suffering.

“Right... of course. My job. My burden... my cross to bear...” he mumbled, voice cracking like dry bark.

He waddled over to the corner and grabbed a small wooden crate. With exaggerated grunts and winces, Hermit began stuffing hatchlings into the box one by one, muttering like a street preacher losing his grip.

“Alright, in you go, yes, yes, squeeze—no biting your brother! —hey, that’s my finger! No licking, no licking, stop licking me!”

One hatchling squirmed and popped out like a cork. Hermit yelped and fell backward, the box flipping, hatchlings tumbling out again in a squirmy green pile. One landed upside-down in his mouth.

He sat up, spitting and wheezing. 

“Gck—ack—ptoo! I taste moss!”

After wrangling them again with trembling hands, he finally got them all in—crammed together like pickles in a jar. One was chewing on hay. Another was picking its nose with another one’s toe.

Then came Kaka's turn.