Location:Outer Ring, Vel'thari Containment — Main Fort Perimeter
Date/Time:Cinderfall, 9942 AZI — Day 285, 80 days remaining
Realm:Lower Realm, Doha
The stone sang before the Scythlings arrived.
A vibration so low it lived below hearing — in the teeth, in the ribs, in the marrow of every bone pressed against the tunnel floor. First Company felt it come up through their boots. Some of them looked down. Some of them looked at each other. Nobody spoke. The vibration said everything that needed saying.
Something was coming. Something vast. And it was close.
Jayde sat the mantis at the junction behind the primary approach. The creature had gone rigid, every sensory pit locked south. The ganglion heat that normally warmed its chitin had drained inward — energy pulled to the core, coiled, the biological preparation of a predator that had already decided what the next few hours would cost.
