Midday does not arrive gently.
It builds.
Heat presses down through the layered ceiling above the ruins, thickening the air beneath the fused roof of canopy and broken composite. Light finds every gap and turns it into a blade. Fungal skins clinging to old metal sweat moisture back into the clearing until the shade feels wet and heavy.
The ruins hold the warmth. The jungle holds it too.
I rouse fully and stretch my wings. The finned members along the edges shift in small, involuntary separations, testing the air the way my tongue tests taste.
When the motion settles, I sit back on my haunches and let sensation arrange itself.
There is only one way out of the facility that does not choke shut within meters.
The southeast exit.
I move toward it, following the old service tunnel as it rises away from the clearing. The ceiling lowers, ruin ribs closing in where corridors once guided maintenance traffic. The ground slopes upward, metal emerging from rot where roots learned not to pry too deep, as if the jungle still respects certain bones.
Water runs here.
A thin stream slides down the center of the tunnel, pulled by gravity back toward the clearing behind me. It sheets over dark plating, gathering sound as it goes, carrying it downslope into the ruins where I was born.
I stop near the upper lip, where the structure breaks and the jungle presses close. The air changes here. The tunnel holds stale warmth, held and trapped. Beyond it, the forest breathes.
I lower my head and drink.
When I lift my head, the clearing remains behind me, enclosed and hot. The stream continues past my feet and slips away downhill into shadow.
Ahead, the forest waits.
I step fully beyond the facility's edge and begin my patrol.
Not in widening rings this time. The initial loops were designed to help me learn where the ground was stable and where it was unreliable, where rot was superficial, and where composite materials still remained like stone. This time I choose a line and keep it.
I move with the facility to my right, following exposed ribs where human metal still shapes the ground beneath roots. Here, soil packs harder where vegetation learned to brace instead of consume. Away from the structure, the jungle thickens and sound disperses.
Heat carries scent differently. It does not sink. It rises. It lifts from rotten leaves and damp earth and slides along the ruin's outer slopes until it finds an opening and spills.
I taste it before I see it.
Meat.
Old meat.
Warmth makes it loud.
I stop, head angled, letting the air write direction across my tongue and throat. The scent is not coming from the west, where grazing signals drift low and steady. It is not coming from the north's sharp edge either, where the air feels stripped.
It comes from further north than the northern edge of the main ruins, from where geometry breaks into collapse and shadow.
I follow.
The distance is short, but the ground changes. Composite gives way to root lattice. Soil thickens, pressed into the shape of metal and then forgotten. Fungal shelves broaden along anything that holds still long enough, layered like pale ribs of their own.
My paired queues flex, guarded close to my neck. They extend in small motions, brushing a root bridge before I commit my weight. The vibration that returns is immediate and fine.
Live. It will hold.
I step onto it.
The smell becomes layered. Carrion and movement. The air is busy in a way the ruins are not.
A shallow pocket opens where the ruin has sunk, and the jungle has filled the depression with rotting leaves and pale fungus. Vines hang in loose nets from a crossbeam that once braced a corridor. A broken panel lies half-buried like a dark stone. Water beads on it and runs off in thin lines.
Under it, the carcass sits.
Half-eaten. Not fresh.
Hide torn open. Ribs exposed. Flesh darkened where air and moisture have worked it, edges swollen and glossy with congealed fluid. A forelimb is gone entirely, the joint ripped free rather than cut, and connective strands snapped and left to dry in uneven curls. Whatever fed here did not take time to be careful.
The carcass swarms.
Teylu gather where the meat is wettest, pale bodies pulsing with constant motion. They are small, but they are many. They make the carcass look alive in a way that is wrong.
My first response is refusal.
The smell is ruinously sweet and sour. A thing that has been in the world long enough for the world to begin taking it back.
I hold still and watch.
The Teylu do not notice me at first. Their movement is not random. It is not panicked. It is patterned. They spread, feed, retreat, then feed again, making space without conflict. When two collide, one yields without a fight, not because it is weak, but because waste is costly.
They behave like water.
They gather where the resource is richest. They thin where it is drying. They pulse in and out of torn tissue, and the carcass's surface rises and falls with them, as if it still breathes.
The jungle tolerates them. Insects drift close, then veer away. A thin-winged flier hovers above the open cavity and refuses to land. Even the fungus seems shaped by their presence, thicker where they move, as if it feeds on what they leave behind.
No waste.
I draw in the air again. The carcass stinks of surrender, of rot, of time. The Teylu smell different. They smell sharp, like cut plants, like clean oil, like something concentrated enough to be useful.
Hunger is not sharp, but it is present. Pressure that always returns. It is not a request. It is a rule.
I lower my head.
I do not bite the carcass. Not yet.
I take a careful test from the edge where flesh meets fungus, where the Teylu are thickest. The meat yields slowly, worked by time, but my teeth still tear a strip free.
With it comes the Teylu.
They crunch under my teeth. Thin shells collapse instantly, bursting into dense paste. The sound is sharp and brief, followed by a clean, vegetal brightness that cuts through the rot.
The taste is not like the carcass.
It is clean. Sharp. Bright enough to cut through sourness.
My throat tightens once in reflex, then releases. I swallow.
Heat answers inside me, but differently than before. Not just warmth spreading through digestion.
Something adjusts.
The refusal does not vanish like a switch. It recedes like an animal backing into shadow. The smell remains wrong, but it is no longer a boundary. Saliva thins in my mouth. Heat shifts lower in my core. What repelled me becomes information.
I take another bite. More Teylu. More of that sharp, clean taste. I chew slower, letting sensation register. Their bodies collapse into paste with almost no resistance. Their shells are thin. Their interiors are dense. They are not built to endure. They are built to be consumed by something, by anyone, or by the system.
They are not carrion. They are Carrion's conversion.
I pause and watch them again, now with a different edge.
They are not merely feeding. They are processing. They scrape, they burrow, and they excrete. The torn cavity is wet where they are thickest and drier where they have already worked. The surface changes under them. Rot becomes clean edges. Exposed tissue becomes stripped strands. Bone emerges, pale and slick, then dries as air reaches it.
They accelerate decay, then harvest it.
A cycle with no sentiment.
My wing-talon lifts and knocks the carcass's flank.
Thok.
Teylu scatters in a pale wave. Some spill into rot. Some cling tighter. Many break toward the edge, where I can take them without burying my teeth in the oldest flesh.
I feed.
Bite. Chew. Swallow.
Each swallow sends that thin, rapid heat through my core. It does not sit heavy the way shell did. It does not roll slow the way fresh meat does. It moves quickly, as if designed to be used now.
My stomach tightens and releases in patterns that were not there before. My mouth tastes different. Saliva feels slicker, thinner, as if it carries a solvent meant for this.
I take a deeper bite, this time including the meat itself. The interior gives more easily than the surface, collapsing and working hollow. Air escapes in a wet sigh as tissue ruptures, and the taste deepens, heavier but no longer resisted. The smell is worse at the center, but the bite does not trigger recoil. The meat breaks down easier than it should. The swallow does not resist.
Heat spreads efficiently.
I stop only when the immediate pressure dulls and the Teylu thin to scattered, frantic clusters that retreat deeper into the cavity. The carcass looks less alive now. The wrong movement has quieted.
The world returns.
Insects drift through shafts of light. Something small skitters along a vine and freezes when my head turns. Above, movement swings between branches.
A Prolemuris pauses, its blue-green body light and quick. It stares down, and its head cocks, as if deciding whether I am a predator or simply unusual terrain. Then it tosses a rind away.
Plop.
The sound irritates something in my chest. Not anger. Recognition.
Noise draws attention. Waste draws attention too. Waste is a scent left for someone else.
The Prolemuris vanishes.
I return to the carcass. Beneath everything, the scent of marrow sits quiet and dense. Mineral. Structure. Not fuel, but building.
I move to where bone is exposed cleanly. I bite a rib.
It resists, flexing once under pressure.
Then it fractures with a dry crack, splintering unevenly. Shards scrape my gums and tongue before the marrow releases, warm and dense beneath the mineral.
Crack.
The break is satisfying, firm, and clean. I crush splinters between my teeth and swallow shards and dust and the faint richness trapped inside.
Heat answers again.
Slower. Deeper. It spreads into my limbs, my neck, and the base of my wings, where muscle bundles sit thick and underused. Not pain. Demand.
Calories are not enough. Structure matters.
I remain in the northern reach for a time after that, moving through pockets where scent gathers. I find bones left behind, small ones, then larger. Some half-buried in rot. Some wedged against root bridges where damp collects. Some are hanging in vine nets where something dragged them and abandoned them.
I eat what breaks. I leave what does not.
Not because I cannot crush it.
This is due to the risk of lingering and the fact that heat allows scents to travel far.
The air here carries absence. Too many cleaned bones. Too many half-eaten bodies. Grazing signals are thin where they should be strong. Tracks in mud that do not cross back. Quiet corridors in the undergrowth where something heavy passes often enough to keep vegetation from rising.
Something feeds in the dark.
The conclusion forms without words.
Nocturnal. Cautious. Efficient.
I do not see it.
That does not make it less real.
When fullness settles heavy, I move away from the carrion pocket and find a stretch where the ruin ceiling opens wider. Air moves more freely here. Light spills in broader panes, and the world feels less enclosed.
My wings respond without intent. Membranes sense pressure. Finned members part slightly, measuring current and angle.
I face into the wind.
Not open sky.
But enough gap.
I run, rear legs pushing, wing-talons striking and lifting in rhythm. The mid-wing talons touch down like brief legs when balance shifts. The smaller stabs correct roll when the wind changes.
Then I jump.
Not flight.
A hop that becomes a glide for a heartbeat.
Air catches the membrane. Weight becomes less. Control answers.
I land hard but intact. Wing-talons take the first load. Rear feet catch second. Impact jars joints, but nothing breaks.
I do it again. A longer run. A stronger push. A longer heartbeat of glide before gravity reclaims me.
Each attempt teaches something. The angle that holds lift. The angle that dumps it. The way finned members should separate in sequence, not all at once, to keep pressure smooth. The way the stabs can catch unstable air and prevent a fall from becoming a tumble.
I do not leave the ground for long.
But I leave it.
That is enough.
When light dulls and shadows lengthen, the northern absence grows clearer. What hides in heat does not hide as well when the day cools.
I return to the ruins.
The clearing holds its familiar geometry. My broken shell remains where it fell, a landmark that does not move. The stream's thin sheet provides a constant sound below, guiding me without sight.
I settle beneath the collapsed wall and fold my wings tight.
Sleep does not arrive as surrender.
It comes as a partial closing.
'The world is wider than the clearing.'
In that half-rest, the day's changes continue to turn inside me.
Rot no longer repels. Old meat no longer resists. The taste of Teylu remains like a sharp mark, and beneath it my core feels prepared, as if something inside has widened its tolerance for what the world offers.
Somewhere north, something moves with a weight that is not small. I do not hear it clearly, but absence changes. The air tightens, then releases.
A predator moving without panic.
I remain still.
Tomorrow, west.
* * *
Dark folds deeper than the ruin's shade.
The clearing's familiar geometry dissolves, not into nothing, but into an arrangement that is not a place. Sound becomes distance without direction. Scent becomes color. The stream's constant thread becomes a pulse beneath everything.
I am not asleep the way I was before.
I am held.
Roots do not touch me, but I feel them anyway. Not in the ground. In the air. In the space between leaves. In the thin places where heat rises and coolness sinks. A pressure surrounds me, gentle in force, absolute in presence.
A field.
A network.
The jungle is not separate from it. The ruin is not separate from it. Even the bones I swallowed feel threaded, as if they were never truly mine.
A shape forms, not seen, not heard, but recognized.
Not a voice.
An intention.
Images surface without warning. A rush of water, not in a stream, but in a river so wide its current moves like thought. A canopy seen from above, endless, layered, living. A storm of wings, not hunting, but turning together as if one body.
Then the carrion pocket returns.
The carcass, the Teylu, the fungus, the rot. The wrong smell. The sharp taste.
The scene shifts as if something adjusts the angle.
The Teylu are no longer insects. They are a mechanism. They are made small by motion, and through them the carcass becomes clean. Through them, waste becomes a resource. Through them, the forest closes the loop.
The understanding lands without words.
Not all food is fresh. Not all death is loss.
A pulse moves through the network. It does not command. It does not explain. It aligns.
A sensation of being permitted, not chosen, not blessed, simply allowed to exist inside a system that will not break itself to remove me.
Then a second image, distant and heavy.
A shape moving through undergrowth with practiced weight. The north predator. Its presence is not shown in detail. It is shown as the effect it leaves behind, a corridor of quiet, a line of emptied ground.
A warning, not emotional, simply informational.
Cost.
Then the west.
Hoofbeats like a soft drum. A basin of slick earth. A body that slips when panic comes too late.
The pulse tightens once, like a muscle bracing, then releases.
Hold.
When I surface, the ruins return in slow layers. Drips. Wet air. The sound of the stream fills the air. I can hear the sound of my own breath.
I am awake.
But the feeling remains, thin as a thread.
Not a message.
A presence that touched, then withdrew.
* * *
I wake without light.
The darkness above the ruins is thicker, layered. Moisture beads along the underside of the broken composite and drips at uneven intervals.
Tap.
Tap.
Something has passed.
Not something that moves.
Something that falls.
The air is cooler. Washed. The ground beneath me is darker where it was dry before. The stream carries more sound than it did yesterday, a fuller sheet of water sliding over metal.
I uncurl slowly. My wings unfold partway, membranes stretching with a faint pull that is not pain. Mid-wing talons release their brace against the ground and reset as I shift my weight. Rear legs extend, talons scraping lightly as I find balance.
Skrrt.
Droplets strike my crest and run along the paired queues that lie close to my neck. The sensation is brief and cool. Not unpleasant.
I do not know rain as a named thing, but I know cause and effect. The drops did not fall from one leaf or one seam. They fell from everywhere at once, as if the roof of green had been struck and answered in a thousand small impacts. The air smells like it has been washed.
I stretch fully.
My wings feel heavier.
Not burdened.
Dense.
I shift my weight, and the floor answers differently. Composite compresses more under me. My limbs extend farther before meeting the same angles. When I brace with wing-talons, the points bite deeper into rot and metal alike.
I am larger.
I'm not large enough to see without memory, but I'm large enough to feel. Yesterday I consumed shell, flesh, bone, and Teylu. Yesterday something inside me adjusted.
This is not sudden length. It is consolidation. What was taken has been sorted and kept.
'This is worth watching.'
Before leaving, I patrol the ruins.
Slow. Deliberate.
The clearing is a bowl of broken geometry. The central rise holds the cracked mass of my shell. Three corridor mouths remain visible where the facility once continued, but the jungle has claimed them. From the clearing they pretend to be paths. Up close they are always the same lie. Five meters in, the green closes into a living wall.
I stop at each mouth anyway.
I listen. I scent. I feel vibration through the floor where old metal still lies under rot.
Nothing intrudes.
Quiet means uncontested.
Quiet means someone will test it.
The stream is next. It slips out of the clearing down the service path like a memory that learned to move. I follow the sound to the lip where the water narrows and drink again, less for thirst than to taste the day.
Clean. Metallic thread. Diluted.
When I lift my head, I stay still long enough to hear what drinking usually hides.
No footfalls. No scraping. No weight shifting in the canopy that belongs to anything large.
Only the slow life of the ruins. Dripping. The faint creak of vines under their own wet weight. The sound of an insect analog scraping a path along a composite is heard.
Tk. Tk. Tk.
The facility is mine.
When I turn west, I do so with intention.
West is closest. Even now, after the wash, the west signal reaches the ruins without effort. Hoofbeats arrive in light packets, then fade, then return. Many bodies moving together in repetition.
Hexapedes.
I do not move directly toward them.
I circle downwind, keeping the ruin's outer wall close to my side, using its broken angles as cover. The wall is hill and metal fused, root-laced, and skinned by fungus, but it holds a line. A boundary I can follow without exposing myself.
My body lowers without decision. Wings fold tight. Head angles forward. The paired queues rest along my neck, aware of air movement and vibration through the ground.
The forest opens in stages. First into a thinning where light reaches the ground in wider panes. Then into a shallow basin where grasslike growth spreads between roots and broken stone. The basin is not a plain. It is a pocket cut into the forest, a place the herd uses because the ground is soft and the growth is easy.
I stop at the edge.
The herd is ahead.
Not all of it.
A portion.
Six bodies graze within view, hides banded with darker patterning. Their movements are quick but not panicked. They graze with heads low, fans lifting and settling with each breath. Hooves churn the wet ground into a map of recent passage.
The wash has slicked the basin. Their turns are wider than they would be on dry ground. Their starts are slower.
This matters.
Slick ground steals speed. Slick ground makes mistakes expensive.
One lags.
Owing to the red coloration, it is an adolescent male, heavier through the shoulders than the others but not yet dense with adult mass. His steps lack precision. He pauses longer between mouthfuls. His head lifts often.
Alert.
But young.
Alert does not mean ready. It means he knows danger exists. It does not mean he knows where it comes from.
I study the basin as much as the bodies.
A low rise angles upward toward a fallen trunk, its surface slick with moss but firm beneath. Beyond it, the ground slopes gently down into the basin. A collapsed wall section breaks the line of sight in two places. Not tall enough to hide me if I stand. Tall enough to hide me if I keep low.
A path.
Usable.
The wind is the final piece.
It carries my scent away from them, drawn by the cooler air sliding along the ruin's edge. The wash has helped. The world is loud with wet leaves, fungus, and soil. My presence sits under it, muted.
I wait.
Waiting is not indecision.
It is cost control.
A rushed strike spends energy. A clean strike spends less. If I am to hold territory, I cannot bleed for every meal.
The herd drifts. The lagging male moves farther away from the rest of the herd, attracted to a patch of growth closer to the center of the basin. The distance between him and the nearest adult widens by a few body lengths.
Enough.
I move.
Not fast.
Not yet.
I step onto the rise, keeping my body behind the broken line of the collapsed wall until the last moment. Wing-talons set and release in a controlled rhythm. Rear feet push without slipping. The slickness is real, but my points bite.
When I break cover, I do not charge.
I drop.
Gravity takes me down the slope faster than muscle alone could. My wings open just enough for the membranes to catch and guide. Finned members separate in sequence. The stabs correct a slight roll as my weight shifts.
I am not flying.
I am falling with intent.
The adolescent hears the shift in air. His head snaps up.
Too late.
I drop through the last span of space and land on him. Wet ground bursts outward. Hide tears under my wing-talons as weight drives down through muscle and spine, forcing breath from his chest in a harsh, broken exhale.
Thud.
The impact shudders through my frame and into his. The slick earth offers him nothing. His hooves scrape for purchase, find only slide, and his body tilts wrong under my mass.
Panic comes, but panic needs traction.
He tries to lurch sideways. I ride the movement and press harder, using my weight as restraint instead of chasing balance.
Only then do I bring my head down, crest angled in, not to break bone, but to pin him tighter and deny the last clean turn.
He stumbles and falls sideways, legs scrabbling, mud spraying. He tries to rise. His rear legs find nothing but slick ground. His front legs push and slip. His fan flares wide, a reflex meant to intimidate, but it is too late for display.
The herd reacts instantly.
They scatter.
Not toward me.
Away.
Hoofbeats thunder and fade as bodies vanish between trunks, fans flaring and retracting in panic. The ground shakes with their departure, then stills. Leaves tremble where bodies pass. A last glimpse of them before they disappear into vine curtains.
My jaws close around the base of his neck, where muscle bunches and blood runs close. He kicks once, hard, a blind strike. The blow glances off my side and leaves no damage. He twists, trying to bring weight to bear, but his body is half in mud, half on slick grass.
He cannot find leverage.
I bite down.
Resistance holds for a heartbeat as cartilage compresses.
Then it gives. Heat floods my mouth under pressure as blood vents and the structure collapses.
Crk.
Warmth floods my mouth. The taste is immediate and rich. My grip tightens as his body jerks once more, then slackens. Breath leaves him in a wet rush. His legs spasm, then fall still.
I hold until motion stops.
Then I lift my head slowly and scan the tree line.
The herd does not circle back. The forest absorbs their panic and gives nothing in exchange.
I drag the body toward cover at the basin's edge, teeth locked in hiding. Weight pulls at my neck. The ground gives under hooves and ribs and my own talons, but I keep purchase. I wedge the carcass against a root buttress where vine curtains hang low and sight lines break.
I do not eat immediately.
I wait.
Breathing steady. Scent sorting. Listening.
Minutes pass.
No approach.
Only the slow settling of wet leaves and the distant hush of the herd withdrawing deeper into the west.
Only then do I feed.
I work methodically. I start with the neck, followed by the shoulder. Tendons part with steady pulls. Muscle fibers separate cleanly under pressure. Blood pools rather than sprays, dark and warm, soaking into earth and fur as the body cools beneath my weight. I tear clean sections free and swallow. Between bites, I lift my head to check the air and ground. Feeding makes noise. Blood carries scent.
The meat is clean. Dense. Muscle fibers part easily beneath my teeth. Heat spreads through my core, heavier and slower than the Teylu's sharp burn. This warmth anchors. It sits and builds.
I hollow the body, then crack the long bones. The first fracture takes force, jaws tightening until the structure fails unevenly. The second breaks faster. Marrow releases with a faint sweetness beneath grit and dust that clings between my teeth. The marrow tastes faintly sweet beneath the mineral. I swallow fragments and dust until nothing remains but pressed fibers, broken splinters, and impressions in wet ground.
Time passes.
I do not rush.
When I finish, the pressure in my body settles into a dense, satisfied weight. Blood dries along my jaw. Breath slows. Muscle holds heat longer; it is heavier now with what has been taken and kept. My limbs feel more solid, my neck heavier, and my wings fuller at their base.
I lift my head and breathe.
No pursuit comes.
The first hunt is complete.
But the hunt is not the reason the day continues.
The hunt is proof.
Proof that the west is usable. Proof that prey exists close enough to feed me without long travel. Proof that the ruins can remain my anchor without starving me.
Proof also invites challenge.
I turn back toward the facility.
The return is shorter than the outward path. West is close. The basin is not far.
As the ruin's broken angles reappear through vines, I slow.
Not because I fear the ruins.
Because I need to learn what the ruins do when I am gone.
I stop before the clearing opens.
I listen. I scent. I feel a vibration through the root lattice fused into the old floor.
Nothing.
Still quiet.
The facility remains uncontested.
I enter the clearing and move to the central rise. The shell sits like a split monument. The stream's sound continues.
I settle under the collapsed wall where shade holds. The metal beneath is cool.
My body works on what I consumed.
Digestion is not passive. Heat spreads through my core. Nutrients break down and distribute. Marrow's mineral density becomes structural support. Meat becomes a concentrated calorie. The sharpness of yesterday's Teylu feels like an echo in my blood, as if the earlier adjustment made today's feeding more efficient.
As heat builds, it does not stay contained to the gut.
It moves on a limb. The heat then travels to the neck. Into the bases of my wings, where muscle bundles sit thick.
A pressure builds there.
Not pain.
Demand.
The wings are heavy because they are unused. Unused mass is a liability. A creature that cannot use its own structure will be outlasted by something that can.
The pressure in my wings does not ask. It insists.
If I own territory, I will have to move through it efficiently. Walking works for now. Walking will not always.
The ruins are a cover, but they are also a cage if I cannot rise above them. The forest is thick. It steals sight lines. It hides threats. It hides prey.
Height solves this.
Height is not a luxury.
Height is an advantage. A territory that cannot be overseen cannot be held.
I leave the shade and step onto the central rise where the ground is firmer, packed hard by old weight and buried structure.
I face into the moving air.
The wash has cleaned the air enough that currents are easier to read. Wind slides along the broken roof and spills into the clearing in irregular pulses. Each pulse touches the membrane differently.
This is information.
I flex my main wings.
Not fully open.
A controlled unfurl, enough for finned members to separate and feel pressure between them. The stabs mirror the motion beneath, smaller membranes catching secondary currents, correcting imbalance before it becomes a stumble.
The fins respond.
They do not flap.
They adjust.
A slotted airfoil made of living segments.
Pressure gathers under the wing when the angle is right. Drag bites at the edge when it is wrong. A subtle lift appears, not enough to carry me, but enough to matter.
My wing-talons take the load as I lean forward. Mid-wing points dig into rot and composite, stabilizing as my rear legs push.
I begin to run.
Not fast.
Measured acceleration across the clearing's span. The clearing is not large, but it is enough for strides to stack and for air pressure to build against the membrane even without full extension.
At the far edge, I stop before vine curtains and corridor mouths.
The green wall begins five meters in.
A limit.
Not permanent.
For now, it keeps the clearing predictable.
I turn and run back.
This time I open the wings more.
Finned members separate wider. Stabs angle outward, catching unstable air that would otherwise roll me. My feet leave the ground for a moment.
Not flight.
A brief loss of weight. A longer stride.
The wings do not carry me.
They steal some of Gravity's claim.
I land.
Wing-talons hit first. Rear feet catch.
The impact is controlled.
Not graceful.
But not dangerous.
I do it again.
And again.
Each pass refines the angle. Each pass teaches where the broken roof channels wind and where currents collapse into dead pockets. Each pass shortens the distance between intention and result.
My body learns faster than I thought.
After several runs, heat builds thick in my chest. Exertion layers over digestion. I slow down and breathe.
The clearing is quiet except for the sound of the stream and drip.
The wind that slides into the clearing carries scents from outside.
West is still close. The herd's trail is fading, but the basin's grazed earth still sends a low signal.
North is present as absence. Bone-clean and recent, but not pressing close.
East is distant. A faint cool mineral note when wind shifts, not enough to matter today.
South remains the far vibration, heavy and slow, like a memory of a larger world.
The map holds.
Now I make the next choice.
Not north.
Not today.
North carries the predator's mark, and I am full. Fullness means slow movement. Slow movement means vulnerability. It is not fear. It is a cost assessment.
Not east.
Not today.
East costs time, and time away from the ruins costs certainty.
So I stay close.
I leave the clearing, keeping the outer wall near, letting the ruin's angles guide me. I do not go all the way back to the basin. I stop short in a pocket where the forest thins and the ground rises into a low ridge.
From here, the herd's corridor reaches me without sight.
I climb the ridge and hold still.
The world beyond is layered. Trunks and vine curtains. Leaf clusters that hide movement until it is close. Light breaking in fractured panes, green-shifted and restless.
Then motion.
A body passes between two trunks.
Then another.
The herd has not fled far.
They have relocated.
Their spacing tightens. Heads lift more often. They move through the pocket as if the ground itself learned to bite.
Memory is not a concept to them.
It is the sensation that made the basin dangerous.
I watch them for a long time.
Not with hunger.
With study.
If I hunt again soon, they will run sooner. They will break the pattern. They will change the corridor.
If I want territory, I cannot empty it.
I must allow prey to persist.
That is not mercy.
It is a function.
A territory without prey is a territory that starves its owner.
I draw in air again. The wash softened scent edges, but the ground holds history. Trampled patches. Broken stems. Pressed lines where hooves pass repeatedly.
Paths.
I map them without words.
When I turn back toward the ruins, I do it slowly.
Not because I am tired.
Because I am listening.
The ruin's presence returns before I see it. Air changes where metal holds different temperatures. I hear the faint echo of water flowing over the composite material. Ground becomes harder as roots brace against buried structure.
I enter the clearing and pause at its edge.
The corridor mouths sit where they always sit. Vines hang like draped cables. Fungal shelves glow faintly in dimness.
Nothing has moved.
The broken shell remains. The stream remains. The roof drips.
I return to shade and settle.
Rest does not take me immediately.
My body holds heat. Digestive warmth and exertion warmth layered together. My wings itch where membranes stretched and cooled again. The finned members settle, but they remember pressure.
Outside the collapsed wall's shadow, the jungle darkens.
Somewhere to the south, very far, deep trumpeting returns once, muffled by canopy and distance, arriving as a slow vibration through air and root.
It does not pull me.
Not yet.
Somewhere to the north, closer than the south but still not close, absence tightens for a moment, as if something moved through undergrowth with practiced weight.
Then releases.
I remain still.
I do not challenge what hunts the dark yet.
I close my eyes.
Not deep sleep.
Partial closing.
A semi-fugue.
Sound remains a thin thread.
Scent remains map.
Vibration remains a warning.
Inside, territory holds.
And I hold with it.