They didn't make it off the field.
The thing under the yard had spent the whole fight learning the shape of the ground, and when Soren turned everyone toward the gate it took the ground out from under them.
The east half of the yard dropped in a slow sink that opened a seam across the frost and folded the gate-side path down into a slope of broken dirt nobody could climb fast.
Dust.
Then the sun came through it wrong, dimmed.
Then Dani's moth lit pale on her shoulder and gave the sunk pit enough edge to see by.
Soren did a head count by Pack Sense before his eyes adjusted.
Six bond-points.
Then he felt the seventh thing wrong with the picture, which was that his own bond-noise had gone quiet in a way it shouldn't have.
He looked down and the dirt where the sink had thrown him had a seam across it that was leaking the same dead pull he'd felt under the yard all morning.
The entity wasn't just below them now.
