While Eris's group was trapped in the Black Brier, Haven was completely quiet.
Leo sat on a low boulder near the playground, watching two wolf cubs wrestle in the sandbox. The cubs tumbled over each other in the sunlight that penetrated the high ventilation shafts.
Nearby, Myrah suddenly pressed her hand against her tunic. Beneath the cloth, the small brass trinket burned hot against her skin.
Kaylah.
"Something is wrong with Kaylah," Myrah blurted.
She pressed her palm tightly over the hidden medallion, focusing her mind the way her mother had taught her. She immediately felt Kaylah's breathing stop. She felt her sister's feet dragging in a dark tunnel, and a burning sensation at the back of Kaylah's neck.
Myrah dropped to her knees in the dirt, her own lungs tightening. The feeling of her sister losing her breath hit her all at once. In her mind, she saw an unseen force holding Kaylah's throat, pulling her down into the dark. However, Kaylah's hidden mark continued to resist.
"Myrah?" Leo jumped down from the boulder, his face turning pale as he ran over. "What is it?"
Myrah gasped for air, squeezing the hot metal in her fist. "It's Kaylah. Something really bad is happening to her!"
Leo stopped beside her, his shoulders instantly stiffening as he looked down at her hand. "What do you mean?"
"Look at the medallion!" she whispered, her voice shaking as she pulled the small chain out to show him. The metal had turned completely black and was burning hot. She quickly shifted it to her other hand to avoid the burn. "It only does this when they're in trouble!"
Her brother did not hesitate. He took a quick step toward the corridor, his eyes fixed on the heavy door ahead. "We have to go find the elders right now."
---
At the same moment, the two elders sat in the War Room with Luna. The chamber was quiet except for the crackling fire and the rustling parchment on the central table. Ruvio leaned over the map of the Needle's Eye, looking directly at the mountain pass. He tapped his finger against the parchment twice before speaking.
"They were here," Ruvio said, pointing to the section marked Black Brier. He looked up at Faren, waiting for his agreement.
Faren traced the movements of the Order's forces with his finger. "The Crescent followed Barik's group into the Eye." He paused, looking down at the map as he calculated the Order's next move. "If Ful survived the pass, he will regroup in the lower valleys. If he failed, the Empire will send another detachment."
Luna spoke from across the room, changing the subject. "What about Eris and Kaylah?"
Faren stopped his finger on the map and looked across the room at her. He took a slow breath before answering. "Barik is leading them. Dara is also there." He paused for a moment, tightening his jaw. "She will know what to do if the others fail."
Luna became quiet. She had been connected to Eris ever since he absorbed the silver mist into his veins at the Great Oak. She sat away from the table, pulling her dark cloak tighter around her shoulders despite the warm room. She had slept very little because she was constantly monitoring the small changes in Eris's silver energy signature. She closed her eyes, focusing entirely on that distant feeling.
Ruvio noticed her stillness. "You have been quiet."
"I am listening," Luna said.
"To what?"
Before she could answer, the lantern flames flickered. Luna gasped. Her head snapped back. Liquid silver flooded her pupils, completely hiding her irises.
The voices of Ruvio and Faren faded. The stone room disappeared from her senses. She smelled rotting leaves and damp earth instead.
"...a forest of thorns," she whispered. "The Black Brier."
She paused, straining to see. "Something hidden beneath the forest..."
Her voice did not sound like her own. It was layered and deep, carrying the weight of a great distance. Her hands gripped the edges of her chair until the wood creaked.
"Luna?" Faren stopped talking, his quill hovering above the parchment.
Ruvio reached for his staff, recognizing the change in her. "The Order?"
Luna looked deeply into the vision.
She saw the cart, the children, and the wolves pressing against the wooden wheels. Eris stood at the front of the line. Before them stood an archway carved from old, hardened forest wood.
"The Gate," she whispered. Her face twisted with pain. "...feeding them illusions. Eris..."
"Luna, pull back!" Ruvio commanded, stepping toward her as the stone floor vibrated. "Cut your connection before the backlash hits."
Luna ignored him. Gathering her silver current into a sharp point, she aimed at Eris's energy signature across the mountain rift. At first, she murmured in silence, trying to establish a soft link with him.
Eris…
But the dark voice of the Gate felt her presence. The entity inside the archway turned its focus, tracking her thread backward toward Haven. Sensing the counter-attack, Luna forced her entire energy into a single call.
"Eris!"
The name tore from her lips. The sudden impact broke the connection with brutal speed, cutting the line before the Gate could lock onto her.
The immediate backlash hit Luna. Her body convulsed, and blood burst from her nose as a white glare flooded her vision.
Before she collapsed backward onto the floor, she murmured, "Eris is back. Kaylah… her mark… burning."
Faren caught her shoulders before she hit the stone table, his face grim as a dark trickle of blood escaped Luna's eyes.
"She broke the trance," Ruvio muttered, checking Luna's rapid pulse as she lay unconscious, breathing heavily. "Leave her here. She only needs rest. We must reach the black forest before the Brier closes the exit."
Faren and Ruvio hurried out of the War Room's corridor, heading directly toward the rock opening near the playground. They arrived just as Leo and Myrah reached the entrance to the lower-level corridor, the two wolf cubs following anxiously behind them.
"Elder Faren! Elder Ruvio!" Leo called out, stopping them before they could reach the rock face.
Faren slowed his pace, his brow wrinkling as he looked down at the trembling siblings. "What are you two doing down here? You shouldn't be here."
Myrah did not answer. She stood breathing heavily, her fists clenched.
"Something is wrong with Kaylah," Leo spoke up for her. "We felt it."
Faren looked between them. "Felt it? How?"
Myrah shook her head and looked down at the ground. She instinctively clutched the pendant beneath her tunic, keeping the metal hidden as she exchanged a guarded glance with her brother.
"We just felt it," Leo said in a low voice.
"Like she's hurting," Myrah added, her voice shaking. "Her neck is burning. We just know. Please, let us find her."
Faren and Ruvio exchanged a glance. The children had used the exact words Luna had spoken before collapsing: neck, burning.
"We're coming with you," Leo said, stepping directly into Faren's path as he looked toward the rock opening. "If you don't take us, we'll go ourselves."
"Don't leave us here," Myrah pleaded, holding tightly to the hem of Leo's shirt. "I want to see my sister."
"And Eris," Leo added.
Faren frowned, but Ruvio leaned in closer. "Time is short," the elder murmured. "Luna is down. If they are already out there on the path, these two will see their sister before we can explain the danger."
Faren gave a short, firm nod. "Fine. You come. But you stay behind me. If I say run, you run back to the bunkers and do not look back. Clear?"
The siblings nodded.
They stepped toward the rock opening, which was half-concealed by thick brambles. The gap formed a passageway to the utility infrastructure. Heavy, rusted steel bars were anchored across the stone gap to keep out mountain beasts while allowing fresh air to the settlement.
Faren pulled out an iron key, unlocked the central grate, and swung the heavy barred door open.
"I knew there was an exit up this way," Leo admitted as they stepped into the passage. "I would have explored it, but I felt something terrifying inside."
"You were smart not to wander," Faren said, taking the lead with his sword drawn. "Those unmapped shafts lead into unknowns."
"So this whole place was built for moving heavy gears?" Leo asked, his eyes wide as he looked up at the massive steel cable trays mounted near the ceiling.
"Logistics, water, and air," Ruvio explained, his staff tapping against the wide concrete floor as they moved. "The old world used these primary arteries without cluttering the other areas."
"Other areas… so there is something like that," Leo murmured.
"We don't have access to them yet," Faren warned, keeping his torch low. "Don't go astray trying to find them. It's dangerous in the dark."
The two wolf cubs whined and barked at the barred entrance. They scrambled against the stone, determined to follow the children into the passageway. Myrah looked back at them; her crying made the young beasts even more intent on following.
"Stay here," Leo commanded, pointing a firm finger back toward the playground.
The siblings slipped through the opening behind Faren, while Ruvio followed at the rear. Once they were clear, Faren hauled the heavy barred door shut, cutting off the cubs' anxious barking. He turned the iron key and locked the grate securely behind them.
"Watch your steps," Ruvio muttered from behind, his robes rustling. "This passageway has not been checked for structural stability since the last freeze."
Faren lit a handheld torch. The flame flared to life, casting a yellow glow over the damp stone. The passage opened into a wider corridor that cut across it at a right angle.
The path to the left ended at a line of heavy iron bars. Beyond them, the tunnel disappeared into darkness.
The air was stale, carrying the sour smell of damp stone and long-decayed things. Thick rust coated the bars, yet several had been bent outward. Deep gouges scarred the iron, a mark that something powerful had tried to force its way through from the other side.
Nothing moved. Yet, every so often, a faint scraping sound drifted out of the darkness beyond the bars before fading into silence.
Leo slowed down without realizing it.
Faren rested a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Don't look that way," he said quietly. "No one from Haven has ever found where that path ends."
They turned right, following the only passage where the cold draft blew. Faren lit the torches on the wall as they passed, lighting the tunnel section.
The cool breeze from the outside ridge guided them forward. Leo's fingers brushed against the utility pipes lining the walls, his mind tracing their path, while the cable trays overhead cast long shadows as they moved deeper into the tunnel.
"Keep yourselves in the middle of the path," Faren reminded him, his eyes scanning the rafters. "Strays hide behind the pipelines and the overhead trays."
Leo flinched, tightening his grip on his sister's arm as they passed the dark overhead spaces. They stepped closer to Ruvio's steady presence.
The air grew noticeably colder, but the scent was mixed with a rancid stench. Faren's torchlight caught another series of tunnels splitting off from the main track. Though the scouts had barred and boarded them, the sight of the blocked grates made the children shudder.
No one could guarantee what lurked in the deeper reaches of those unmapped tunnels, but walking beside Ruvio, the siblings felt secure enough to step forward into the gloom.
They arrived at the utility station—the only one known to Haven. If there were more in the logistics shaft, the settlers had not found them yet. Faren stopped, raising his handheld flame to light the big torch on the wall to secure their retreat path.
The moment the fire caught the oil-soaked cloth, a loud burst of sound erupted overhead. The sudden burst of light disturbed a massive colony of cave bats nesting inside the overhead cable trays. Thousands of leathery wings tore through the air, plunging toward the group.
Myrah screamed, burying her face in Leo's shirt. Leo ducked, swinging his short blade blindly into the dark, but the swarm was too thick to fight with steel.
"Get down!" Faren barked, dropping low and throwing his arm over both children to shield them with his body, his torch pointing at the incoming bats.
In the torchlight, their bellies showed red and swollen. As one darted near the flame, its fangs and blood-crusted snout became visible. In a swarm this size, mountain blood-drinkers could drain a full-grown man within minutes.
Before they could descend on the children, Ruvio lifted his wooden staff and channeled a sharp current of silver power into the tip. A blinding burst of pure silver light erupted from his weapon, illuminating every corner of the vast tunnel and blinding the swarm.
The bats shrieked, retreating in panic toward the barred shafts. They hit the iron bars, turned, and split around the light, disappearing deeper into the dark rock openings.
As the bright light faded back into torchlight, silence returned, but it was short-lived. In the darkness past the iron bars, dozens of small, red eyes opened low to the ground.
"Rats…" Leo muttered, his hand tightening on his weapon hilt.
The hairless cave rodents stared at the group with glowing eyes, their yellow teeth clicking against the stone floor. They shuddered in the gloom, watching the group from the edges of the pipeline, waiting for someone to stumble behind.
"Bigger things lose their way in here, too," Ruvio said, looking down at the children tucked under Faren's arm. Their faces were pale. "That is why the gate is locked. Understand?"
The children nodded, clinging to the elder.
"Keep moving," Ruvio warned in a low voice, his eyes scanning the high overhead cable trays.
A heavy impact struck a stone in one of the unlit passages. Faren halted.
Leo lowered his voice. "That was too big to be a rat."
Ruvio took the torch and illuminated the first few steps of the dark passage. Nothing stood there, only darkness. The two men stared at each other as the torchlight wavered, casting long, shifting shadows on the masonry. Somewhere in the dark corridor, something made a slow, scraping sound against the stone.
Ruvio's expression hardened. "Everyone, behind me."
The torchlight moved across the opening. Something shifted beyond the light, catching a pale shape before it disappeared. Every scratch of a claw against stone made Myrah's breath catch in her throat.
Suddenly, a loud, explosive noise ripped directly beside Leo's head.
Hiss-s-s-s!
The sound was loud, long, and sharp, echoing off the stone walls. Leo ducked, his heart pounding as he embraced Myrah behind him.
"Steam," Faren muttered, pointing toward a large cylindrical junction on the wall. "The system vents excess pressure."
As he spoke, a thick plume of white steam burst from a relief valve on an insulated pipe, spraying into the cold air before dissolving somewhere above the ceiling. Faren let out a slow, controlled breath and raised his torch, his other hand drawing his heavy iron dagger as he scanned the rafters.
Leo stared at the venting valve, his breathing fast as he wiped cold sweat from his forehead. Even through the terror, his mind noted the mechanism—the force required to create a sound exactly like a monster in the dark.
They stepped past the venting valve, their boots clicking against the concrete floor.
Hiss.
The noise came again, piercing and sudden from a different angle. Myrah screamed, and Leo flinched hard. Ruvio stopped, and the rest of the group froze in the darkness.
"Don't be afraid, Myrah. It's just steam," Leo said, forcing his voice to stay steady as he copied the elder's tone to comfort his sister.
Faren remained silent, listening to the sounds ahead. He neither confirmed nor denied Leo's observation. One hand rested on the hilt of his dagger while his gaze swept the darkness.
Then a familiar scent drifted through the cold draft.
Wet fur.
Faren's expression hardened.
Ruvio lowered the torch slightly. "Keep moving," he said, his voice low and firm. "Do not stop."
Without another word, Faren scooped Myrah into his arms.
Leo took quick, hurried steps to keep pace with the two elders.
The torchlight swayed as they disappeared deeper into the maintenance shaft.
Steam hissed somewhere overhead.
No one spoke.
Then another sound answered.
Softer.
Closer.
Not from the pipes.
Behind them, something kept pace with the torchlight...
...but never entered it.
***