The cave was not a sanctuary; it was a tomb they hadn't finished digging. A mere fissure in a wall of black rock, barely deep enough to hold them all, it stank of damp stone and their own fear.
The only light was the faint, sickly green glow of bioluminescent moss, painting their faces in ghastly shades.
Outside, the sounds of the Basin's cleanup were underway. Wet, tearing sounds. The crack of bone. Low, guttural calls that were nothing like the serpent's roar or the scavengers' chitter.
These were the sounds of something older, and far more certain of its place at the top of the food chain.
Tarrin sat closest to the entrance, his side a knot of throbbing pain Lena had staunched but lacked the energy to fully heal. He kept his branded hand curled in a loose fist.
"They're just… picking the place clean," Lena whispered, her voice hollow.
She hugged her knees to her chest, staring into the dark. "Like vultures. How… how could we just sit here? How could we let them go out there to die for us?"
The question hung in the air, thick and unanswerable.
"They didn't 'let' us do anything," Celith bit out from the shadows, her voice tight with pain and fury.
She was propped against the wall, her wounded leg stretched out. "Nicolas gave an order. It was a good one. The only one. Would you rather we were all out there, being ripped apart?"
"Maybe!" Lena shot back, her composure cracking. "Maybe that would be better than listening to it! Than knowing they're being torn to pieces so we can hide in a hole!"
"Shut up," Nick snarled from the other side of the cave. He hadn't stopped pacing the limited space since they'd crammed inside.
"Just shut up. Your whining is going to draw them right to us." He shot a venomous look at Tarrin.
"And you. The great strategist. Just sitting there. He gave you the squad and you've got us hiding. What's the brilliant plan now? Wait until they leave and then skip merrily west?"
Tarrin didn't look at him. His eyes were fixed on the cave entrance, on the shifting shadows of the horrors outside.
"The plan," Tarrin said, his voice low and devoid of emotion, "is to not get us killed."
"A fantastic plan," Nick sneered.
"Really top-tier. He should have burned that into your hand instead. 'Hide.'"
He took a step closer. "You were so quick to give orders before. What happened? Used up all your cleverness?"
That got Tarrin to turn his head.
The green light hollowed out his eyes, and the Dread Aura, which had been a faint pressure, suddenly swelled, making the air in the cave feel thin and cold. Nick actually took a half-step back.
"My cleverness kept you alive when that swarm hit us," Tarrin said, each word precise and cold as a shard of ice.
"If you have a better idea than letting the things that can dismember the serpent finish their meal and move on, I'm listening. Or are you only good for complaining and getting in the way?"
The tension snapped taut. Nick's hands curled into fists, his mystery Gift a palpable, unspoken threat in the confined space.
"Stop it," Sabrina said, her voice weary. "Fighting each other is what gets people killed out here."
Before Nick could retort, a new sound from outside silenced them all. A deep, resonant
thump… thump… thump, like a massive heartbeat, accompanied by the sound of dragging weight.
Tarrin shifted silently, risking a glance through the narrow opening. His blood went cold.
There were two of them, moving through the graveyard of scavengers and the remains of the serpent.
The first was a hulking, bipedal horror he mentally dubbed a Corpse-Gorger.
Its skin was a pale, rubbery grey, stretched taut over a distended belly. Its arms were long and ended in crude, cleaver-like bone blades, perfect for butchering carcasses.
But its head was the worst—a featureless, fleshy bulb with a single, vertical slit that pulsed open and closed, sucking in chunks of meat and bone from the ground with a wet, tearing sound.
It was methodical, brutish, and strong enough to crack the serpent's ribs with a single stomp.
The second was worse. Sleeker, it moved on four insectoid legs, its body a glossy black carapace.
An Ash-Stalker. It didn't feed on the corpses; it seemed to be patrolling, its movements unnervingly precise.
From its shoulders emerged two long, whip-like appendages that ended in glowing, red tips. As Tarrin watched, one of the whips lashed out faster than his eye could follow, spearing the corpse of a scavenger that twitched.
The red tip flared, and the scavenger's body instantly desiccated, crumbling to dust in seconds. It wasn't just a killer; it was a harvester, draining something essential from its prey.
Tarrin sank back into the gloom, his mind, despite the fear and the pain, already beginning its terrible work. The Corpse-Gorger was the brute, the anvil. The Ash-Stalker was the precise, lethal hammer.
He looked around the cave, at the exhausted, terrified faces of his squad. He looked at his branded palm.
They couldn't hide forever. They had to go west. And to go west, they would have to fight.
The silence in the cave was a physical presence, thick with despair and the scent of blood. Tarrin's gaze swept over them, not as a leader, but as a fellow survivor staring into the same abyss. The brand on his palm felt like it was burning a hole through his flesh.
"We can't fight them," he stated, his voice low but cutting through the heavy air. "Not head-on. But we might be able to make them fight each other."
Nick let out a derisive snort. "Oh, great. And how do you propose we do that? Ask nicely?"
Tarrin ignored him, his focus absolute. "First, we need to know our enemies better than they know themselves. We need patterns. Habits. Weaknesses." He looked directly at Nick. "You're fast. You take the sleek one, the Ash-Stalker. Follow it. See where it goes, what it does. Don't be seen."
Nick's arrogant mask slipped for a second, replaced by a flicker of unease at the sheer danger of the task, but he covered it with a sharp nod. "Fine."
"And you?" Celith asked from the shadows, her voice a rasp of pain.
Tarrin met her gaze. "I'll take the Corpse-Gorger. It's slower. Dumber." He didn't say the rest: that with his wounded side, it was the only one he had a chance of tracking without getting killed.
Without another word, the two of them moved to the cave mouth. They shared a final, wordless look—not of camaraderie, but of shared necessity—and then slipped out into the oppressive heat, splitting into the gloom in opposite directions.
The hours that followed were a special kind of hell for Tarrin. Every footfall sent a jolt of pain through his ribs.
The Dread Aura he exuded was the only thing that kept smaller scavengers at bay, a low-grade terror that seeped into the landscape around him.
He watched the Corpse-Gorger from behind a spine of black rock. It was a creature of pure, stupid instinct.
It stomped, it fed, it stomped again. It had no discernible pattern, just a mindless, grinding consumption.
But he noted its reaction speed, the way it turned towards loud sounds, its blind reliance on vibration.
When he finally slipped back into the cave, he was drenched in cold sweat, his side screaming.
Nick was already there, looking more alive than he had in hours, the thrill of the hunt glittering in his eyes.
"The Stalker," Nick reported, his voice quick and efficient.
"It's a creature of habit. After it's full, it always returns to the same crater on the eastern side of the ridge. It settles in, becomes dormant. It's its nest."
Tarrin nodded, leaning heavily against the wall as he relayed his own findings. "The Gorger is a blunt instrument. It follows noise. It's drawn to movement. It doesn't think, it just reacts."
He pushed off the wall, standing in the center of their grim council. The green light painted his face in sharp, determined angles. "Here's the plan. We don't attack. We deliver."
He laid it out with cold precision.
Nick, using his speed, would bait the Corpse-Gorger.
He wouldn't just run; he would lead it on a carefully orchestrated path, a noisy, clumsy parade designed to infuriate the brute and guide it directly to the rim of the Ash-Stalker's crater.
"Once it's there, on the edge," Tarrin continued, his eyes finding Olivia and Klein,
"you're the trigger. You don't shoot to kill. You shoot to enrage. A single, sharp arrow into the Gorger's back. It will roar, stumble, and fall right into the Stalker's lap."
Sabrina voiced the fear they all felt. "And if the Stalker is slow to wake? If the Gorger just turns around?"
"Then Nick dies, and we lose our best chance," Tarrin said, his voice devoid of sugar-coating.
"The timing is everything. We get one shot at this. The moment they clash, we run. West." He held up his branded hand, the word a silent, final argument. "It's the only path left."
The cave fell silent, the weight of the gambit settling over them. It was insane. It was desperate.
And it was all they had.