The fire had died down to a bed of glowing embers, casting long, dancing shadows that made the rock spires around us look like the bars of a cage. Shi's words hung in the cold air, heavier than the stones themselves. A queen.
"What does that mean?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. I was no longer shivering from the cold, but from a deep, primal fear that had nothing to do with temperature or hunger. It was the fear of being truly, utterly hunted by something that was not just mindless, but intelligent.
"It means the game has changed," Shi said, his gaze fixed on the dark valley below. "The Jin'cha are not a simple swarm. They are a hive, a collective consciousness. The ones we fought were like… fingers. The queen is the brain that moves them. She felt what you did. She felt the raw, untamed power of a celestial core. She won't send fingers to pluck a prize like that. She'll come herself."
