After the chaos of illness, the camp settled into a heavy quiet. Not rest, but a stillness sharp enough to feel. Thomund called it a "hunter's quiet." Naera just stared at the trees.
Raif woke with less pain in his gut, though it still twisted there, like a slow-burning knot that tightened more each day. His back ached from the hard-packed ground, his mouth dry, cracked. The sour taste of yesterday's mushrooms clung to his tongue. He stayed still for a moment, blinking up at the canopy. The light that filtered through the trees bent and shifted strangely, casting the world in a murky green. The faint drip of water and the buzz of insects filled the air, but it all felt distant, like a warning he couldn't quite place.
The ache in his head pressed harder, and the hunger that had been a gnawing pain had turned to a numbness that spread through his bones. He didn't feel rested, just less broken than before. For a moment, he let himself pretend this was all a bad dream.
Then, he sat up.
Pain shot along his spine as his body protested. Sweat clung to his skin, and the thick, humid air made it harder to breathe. The air felt heavier than yesterday, suffocating. He tried to stretch, but every bruise from the ground, every stiff joint reminded him that this place was taking a toll on them. His mouth was dry, his tongue thick. Another day with little to no food, and only water from the basin to keep him going. He sat, wincing as his spine popped, and scanned the camp.
Naera was already awake, carefully adjusting the cloth over the water basin. Her movements were precise, controlled, as if she feared the basin might shatter with the wrong touch. Her brow furrowed, and the tension hadn't left her face since the night before. She was still, but her eyes darted around, watching the jungle like it was watching her. The air seemed to hold its breath as she adjusted the funnel, her fingers tracing the edges with deliberate slowness. There was no hurry, no softness to her movements, only caution.
She didn't trust the silence. It was too aware, too pointed. The others leaned on Raif for direction, some of them grudgingly, others without even realising they were doing it. But Naera didn't lean. She observed. The trees. The orb. Him. Everything around them seemed to shift, even if no one could see it yet. The jungle wasn't just dangerous, it was listening.
A bead of water dropped into the basin, and Naera watched it fall like she was marking it. She stood up with a soft exhale, brushing a leaf from her arm. Her shoulders remained tense, her gaze lingering on the trees before turning away.
Nearby, Eloin sat crouched over a pile of smooth sticks, his fingers nimbly tying them into rough frames. His hands trembled slightly as he worked, but he didn't flinch when a splinter drew blood. He just shifted his grip and kept going.
Goss sat at the treeline, staring into the thick green, his leg bouncing nervously. His hands rubbed his face constantly, muttering under his breath, fragmented thoughts he couldn't hold in. Lira returned from the eastern edge of the clearing, dragging a cluster of roots behind her. She didn't look like she had slept, none of them had. But her posture was stubborn, the set of her shoulders hard with purpose.
It was a fragile calm. Nothing had healed. Only quiet.
Raif waited until they had eaten the meagre meal of boiled stalks and mushrooms before he spoke.
"We need roles," he said, breaking the silence.
Lira raised an eyebrow. "Do we?"
"We've been reacting. We need structure. If we're building something, it starts now."
He looked at each of them in turn. "Eloin, construction. Naera, medicine and herbs. Thomund, defences, traps. Goss, scouting. Lira, foraging."
Silence hung for a moment.
Goss broke it with a bitter laugh. "Didn't realise we had a king."
"I'm not giving orders," Raif replied. "I'm trying to give us a chance."
"Sounds like orders to me," Lira muttered under her breath.
Naera said nothing, her eyes still trained on the trees. Thomund gave a small nod, his jaw clenched tight. Eloin stared into the fire, his expression unreadable.
"Better than wandering around like lost dogs," Eloin finally spoke up. "He's not wrong."
"But who made him leader?" Goss snapped, his voice low and challenging.
"No one did," Raif said, his tone even. "I stepped forward. You want to take it? Say so."
Goss looked at him, then looked away.
"We can rotate," Raif added, his voice softening a bit. "But we need something stable first. One wrong call out here, and someone dies."
Lira's voice was quiet now, but sharp. "You're making assumptions. You think you're the only one who's been in charge before?"
Raif shook his head, his gaze steady. "No. I'm just the only one trying."
Lira crossed her arms tighter, her gaze hardening. She'd followed orders before, bled for someone who had a plan. That had ended with fire, screams, and crawling through glass. She didn't owe Raif belief just because he was trying.
They didn't nod in agreement. But they didn't walk away either.
By afternoon, Raif and Thomund were scouting the southern ridge.
The path was cruel. The ground shifted constantly underfoot, an ever-changing maze of moss-covered stone and damp soil that threatened to swallow their boots. Vines coiled along the forest floor, waiting like traps, and thorned underbrush forced them to move single-file. Raif led cautiously, testing every step before committing his weight.
Thomund stayed just behind, his silence sharp as a blade. The two men didn't speak much, not out here. But when they did, it was always brief, to the point.
Raif glanced back. "Still think we're not being watched?"
Thomund's eyes narrowed, scanning the treeline. "Don't need to think. I can feel it."
The air was thick, like syrup, sticky and heavy. Ferns rustled without wind. Pale fungi glowed dimly at the base of trees, pulsing softly, almost like breathing. Some vines twitched when brushed, as though they were alive, responding. The jungle wasn't just growing; it was waiting.
They passed under a broken canopy where light bent unnaturally, casting strange, shifting shadows. Small insects buzzed in swarms but stayed away from the darker areas. Thomund had called them nature's warning signs earlier. Raif wasn't sure he believed in instinct anymore, but something about these quiet pockets of silence made his skin crawl.
Raif muttered, "We keep going like this, we'll run into something meaner than we are."
Thomund didn't smile. "That's why I watch your back."
There was trust in those words, but it wasn't deep. It was a bond forged by necessity, not friendship.
They descended into a basin, choked with mildew and ferns. Dead leaves carpeted the ground in rust-red layers, masking shallow dips and soft patches. Raif nearly tripped over what he first thought was a rock, but it wasn't. It was bone. A curved femur, stripped clean.
He crouched down, brushing the debris aside. The rest of the skeleton was scattered around, avianoid in shape, small. Possibly a flightless bird. The spine had been chewed clean in one swipe.
Thomund knelt beside him, examining a tree trunk. "Scratch marks. Parallel. Close together. Whatever made this had claws, and reach."
Raif stood, scanning the horizon. "Tracks?"
"Faint. But something passed through here. Heavy. The underbrush is too still. And the birds don't come near this place."
Raif felt his gut twist, not from pain, but from recognition. This place was wrong. The air wasn't just thick, it pressed against him, suffocating.
"We need to mark this place. Circle around, get eyes from the other side."
Thomund nodded. "And if we're not alone?"
Raif studied the ridge ahead, where gnarled roots cast long shadows. "Then we find out what else hunts here."
The deeper they went, the more unnatural it felt. The underbrush grew sparse, like something had cleared it in wide arcs. The trees twisted toward each other like hands reaching out to trap them. They found dung tangled with hair, seeds, and a dark blue slime.
Thomund sniffed. "That's a night predator. Not a scavenger."
Neither of them spoke again until they reached camp.
That night, Raif lay wide awake, staring up at the canopy, counting the sounds. One chitter. Two wing flaps. A creaking branch. Then silence.
Then... snap.
A dry crack, too sharp to be a falling branch.
Then a wet, dragging sound, like something slithering across bark.
Raif was on his feet in an instant, adrenaline surging through him. He hissed, "Up."
The others stirred, confused. Thomund grabbed a piece of wood, setting it alight. Goss swore under his breath, clutching a broken stake. Lira grabbed a makeshift spear. Naera slipped behind the basin, breathing shallow.
Crack!
A noise trap burst with a shriek of snapping pods.
A blur shot through the clearing, something low, too fast to track. It moved like liquid, a coil of muscle and motion that stretched longer the more one stared. It had a strange bioluminescent sheen, like wet moss catching moonlight, pulsing faintly. The air shifted with it, thick with decay and metal, as though it disturbed something ancient from the earth.
It didn't growl or screech. It hummed, vibrating like teeth chattering against stone. Each step was wet, slapping, followed by a faint crackle of broken twigs and the hiss of disturbed undergrowth.
Raif glimpsed its eyes, twin orbs, reflective and yellow, not in a face, but beneath its translucent skin, unanchored, watching from within.
The creature darted through the firelight and was gone, but the smell lingered, dank and sour, like blood left in a copper pan too long in the sun.
No one moved for three seconds.
Then Thomund moved, slow and deliberate, whispering, "It wasn't hunting food. It was testing us."
They barely had time to process that before the underbrush behind Lira exploded.
She screamed, brief and sharp, as a barkwolf lunged from the darkness, claws slashing into her calf. Its hide shimmered with green-blue lichen and bark plates, its eyes glowing yellow beneath sinew. It clamped onto her leg and dragged her halfway into the brush.
Lira stabbed with her spear, once, twice, catching it under a plate of bark. It howled, a vibrating screech, and twisted.
Thomund's snare triggered, vine-loop catching the creature's back leg, jerking it off balance. At the same time, Naera hurled a smoldering branch from the fire, hitting it square across the face. Flame met fur.
The barkwolf shrieked and bolted, leaving a trail of scorched hair and blood.
Goss dragged Lira back toward the fire. She was shaking, her ankle bleeding.
"Just a scratch," she muttered through clenched teeth. "Just a bloody scratch."
Thomund knelt beside her, inspecting the wound. "Deep. Clean cut. We got lucky."
Raif turned to the orb, breath ragged. "We need defences. Now."
He reached for the surface, thinking of walls, stakes, fences.
Blueprint Not Available
Defensive structures require Core Level 2 or higher.
Raif's mouth went dry. The orb pulsed once, indifferent.
"Nothing?" Eloin asked.
Raif shook his head. "It won't let me. Says we're not ready."
Goss kicked a rock. "Then what's the bloody point of it?"
Raif stepped back, his voice hoarse. "No more waiting. We build it ourselves."
They worked until dawn.
Thomund took vines and seedpods, layering them thicker, tensioning them like snares. Eloin dragged long sticks into wedges, planting them at kneecap height along the clearing's edge. Lira, limping but unbroken, wove thornmats, muttering curses between each knot. Even Goss, though still sarcastic, moved with purpose, padding shelters with dried leaves and bark to mask scent.
Naera remained quiet, arranging crushed herbs in lines near their sleeping rolls. Scent barriers. Repellents. Every few minutes, she paused to look at the treeline, her expression unreadable.
Raif worked alone.
The jungle whispered behind him, soft rustles, distant creaks, the occasional thrum of some unseen insect pulsing like a war drum far beneath the roots. But Raif ignored it. He gripped the rough stick in his blistered hand and dragged it through the soil, again and again, carving a path that circled the camp.
With each scrape, his arms burned. His spine throbbed from two nights of cold ground and tension. Yet he didn't stop. He couldn't. Every line he drew was a barrier, not just for the jungle, but for the doubt clawing its way into his chest. His mind buzzed with questions: Was he leading them somewhere better, or just delaying the inevitable? Would the orb ever help them or only watch?
He paused, sucking in a ragged breath. Sweat dripped from his brow into the earth. The trench wasn't deep, not really. But it was visible. Real. Unlike the systems that refused to trigger, unlike the world he still didn't understand.
As he moved, he thought of Naera's quiet gaze, of Goss's sarcasm that barely hid his fear. Of Lira's resistance, Thomund's stoicism, Eloin's quiet labour. All of them, thrown together by a light none of them asked for. All of them waiting for someone to crack first.
Raif wouldn't be that someone. Not yet.
By the time he completed the loop, his arms trembled. His palms were raw and cracked, the stick worn nearly to a nub. He looked at what he'd made, not much. But enough to say this is ours. Enough to say we will not run.
He took a smooth stick and dragged it through the soil, carving a circle around the clearing. Step by step. His hands blistered, palms raw. Sweat soaked his shirt, but he didn't stop. Not until he had circled their fragile camp with a shallow trench, a visible boundary. A line.
Each metre etched felt like an oath. He didn't whisper it aloud, but it echoed in him just the same: Not one step closer. Not without a fight.
When he reached the centre again, he dropped to his knees.