The serpent's massive body lay still, a continent of cooling scale and flesh.
The silence it left behind was a physical weight, broken only by the ragged gasps of the eleven survivors.
The air stank of ozone, cooked meat, and the coppery tang of fresh blood.
Tarrin stood, his chest heaving, the battle-dread receding to leave a hollow, trembling exhaustion.
His eyes, gritty with ash, swept over the cost. Noah was on one knee, cradling his shattered shield arm, his face a mask of pain.
A few meters away, Lena was already on the ground, her hands glowing with a soft, greenish-gold light as she pressed them to the blackened wound on Celith's leg.
The rest were coated in soot and disbelief, their armor scarred and smoldering.
Nicolas recalled his swords, the flaming chains retracting into his Cerevault with a final, metallic sigh.
The fire died, and for the first time, they all saw the true cost etched on his face—a deep, soul-weary exhaustion that no amount of strength could mask.
His gaze moved from Noah's broken form to where Lena worked, then finally to Tarrin. He didn't speak. He just gave a single, slow nod.
It was an acknowledgment. They had faced the impossible and had not broken.
The moment of respite lasted ten seconds.
It started as a vibration underfoot, a skittering tremor that was utterly alien to the serpent's earth-shaking impacts.
Then came the sound—a chittering, clicking tide of noise, swelling from the hazy gloom on all sides.
It was the sound of countless legs and gnashing mandibles, the sound of the Basin's cleanup crew, drawn by the scent of a feast.
"What now?" Nick spat, his voice cracking as he spun, daggers appearing in his hands. The arrogance was gone, replaced by raw, frayed nerves.
Tarrin's head snapped up, his analytical mind clawing through the fatigue. "Scavengers," he said, his voice flat and cold.
His eyes, sharper than the others', picked out the first shapes—low-slung, carapaced creatures the size of hounds, moving with unsettling speed through the ash.
"Dozens of them. Fast. They're already encircling us."
The squad tightened their formation instinctively, a battered ring of steel and defiance facing outwards. But the defiance was brittle. They had nothing left.
"There are too many," Sabrina whispered, her knuckles white on her rapier. "We can't… we can't fight them all."
Nicolas's eyes scanned the group, the calculation happening in an instant. His gaze locked onto Tarrin's.
In that look was no request, only a grim transfer of command. He saw the only path.
"We can't outrun them. Not with our wounded," Nicolas stated, his voice a low rumble of finality.
"So we split their attention." He pointed a gauntleted finger toward a jagged outcrop of black rock two hundred meters to the east—the only defensible terrain in sight.
"Tarrin, get them to high ground. Form a perimeter. Hold that position."
He then turned to the few who were still combat-ready. "Riko, Jayden. You're with me. We're the diversion."
It was a death sentence. A simple, brutal one. Three fighters against a swarm, to give the rest a chance.
Riko, his stone fists still hardened, pounded them together with a grimace that was more snarl than smile. "About time."
Jayden said nothing, his shadow-spear already coalescing in his hand, his face pale but resolute.
"No," Lena pleaded, looking up from Celith's leg, her healing glow flickering. "You can't—"
"We can," Nicolas interrupted, his tone leaving no room for argument. He looked at Tarrin one last time. "Go."
Then he turned. With a roar that seemed to draw the very heat from the air, Nicolas reignited one sword, its flame a defiant beacon in the gloom.
He, Riko, and Jayden didn't run from the swarm. They charged directly into its flank.
The effect was instantaneous and brutal. The chittering swarm, a single-minded entity a moment before, convulsed.
A huge portion of it turned inward, engulfing the three figures in a whirlwind of claws and chitin. The sounds of combat were swallowed by the screeching tide.
The path to the outcrop wasn't clear, but it was clearer.
"You heard him!" Tarrin's voice was a whip-crack, shattering the horrified paralysis that had gripped them.
"Nick, Sabrina—point! Watch for ambushes. Klein, Olivia, cover the flanks! Lena, help Celith move. I've got Noah. MOVE!"
It wasn't a sprint; it was a desperate, lurching stagger. Noah grunted in agony as Tarrin slung the man's good arm over his shoulder, half-carrying, half-dragging him.
Lena supported a limping Celith, whose face was tight with pain. They were a wounded animal, bleeding distance across the scorched plain.
They weren't fast enough.
A pack of a dozen scavengers, smarter or more opportunistic than the rest, broke from the main swarm and shot toward them, cutting them off from the rocks.
Tarrin's heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. The plan had failed. They were trapped in the open.
"Schiltron! Now!" he yelled, shoving Noah down into a crouch. "Around them! Now!"
It was a pathetic defensive circle. Noah, kneeling, used his one good arm to hold his cracked shield.
Celith leaned against him, her fists glowing with weak kinetic energy.
Klein and Olivia stood back-to-back, an arrow nocked and sparks dancing over Klein's knuckles.
Sabrina faced outward, her rapier tip steady, her telekinesis ready to shove. Nick and Tarrin filled the gaps, daggers and a sword their only shields.
The scavengers hit them.
It was chaos. A shrieking, scratching, biting melee. Klein punched a creature in the face, electricity making its carapace sizzle.
Olivia's arrow took one in the throat at point-blank range. Sabrina grunted, shoving two more back with a wave of invisible force.
Nick was a whirlwind, his blades a silver flash, but a line of red appeared on his arm.
Tarrin fought not with skill, but with desperation. He parried a claw with his sword, the impact numbing his arm.
The Dread Aura poured out of him, a cloud of palpable terror.
It didn't stop the creatures, but it made them hesitate for a fatal half-second before striking, giving Nick or Sabrina the opening to kill them.
A scavenger lunged past Nick's defense, jaws wide for Lena's back.
There was no time to think.
Tarrin moved on instinct, stepping into the thing's path. He didn't have a clean strike. He simply slammed his shoulder into its side, driving it away from the healer.
Claws raked across his ribs, searing pain tearing through him. He cried out, stumbling, but he'd saved her.
Nick finished the creature with a vicious stab to its underside.
As quickly as it started, it was over. The dozen scavengers lay dead around their tight circle. The rest of the swarm was still fully occupied by the roaring diversion in the distance.
Panting, bleeding, Tarrin looked at his group. They were all looking back at him. Noah, with grim respect. Nick, with a grudging nod. Lena, with sheer gratitude.
"The outcrop," Tarrin gasped, pressing a hand to his bleeding side. "We're not safe yet."
This time, when they moved, they moved as a unit. They reached the rocks two minutes later, scrambling up the jagged slope to a small, defensible ledge.
As they finally stopped, catching their breath, Tarrin looked back across the basin.
The swarm was still a seething mass. In its center, a single point of orange fire flared, then faded, then flared again—a dying star refusing to be extinguished.
They had reached safety. But the cost was still being paid out there in the ash.
The group sat still for a few minutes more, their breaths barely recovering from the onslaught of scavengers.
Tarrin looked at the disappearing swarm, the chittering tide now a distant, seizing blotch on the horizon. There was no sign of the diversion group.
No flash of fire, no roar of defiance. Just the swarm, and the silence it left behind.
'He knew. Nicolas knew it was a suicide mission.'
The thought was a cold stone in his gut. The Sergeant had looked at the same impossible math and made the only call a commander could.
The weight of that choice settled on Tarrin now, not as guilt, but as a terrifying inheritance.
His side throbbed, a hot, insistent pulse of pain. He looked down, his fingers gingerly probing the torn fabric of his uniform.
The scavenger's claws had sunk deep. His hand came away slick and dark with blood.
And that's when he saw it.
There, seared into the palm of the hand he had just used to staunch his wound, was a sentence.
The skin was blistered and angry, the flesh beneath still holding a phantom, smoldering heat.
It must have happened in that final, desperate moment when Nicolas summoned his flames again. He'd been too adrenalized to even notice.
Now, in the grim quiet, it was all he could see.
CONTINUE WEST.