Kaelric's voice broke the quiet.
"We stay here till dawn. Moving you now would be asking to freeze or get lost."
He pressed a hand to the still-aching wound on his skull and winced. The throb was duller than before, but it had settled deep, like something lodged rather than healing.
"And I'm not at full strength."
Daren rubbed his face, groaning. "If my mother finds out I spent the night outside because I followed you into a wyrm nest, she'll kill me herself."
"Then we should not tell her."
That earned a quiet snort.
He reached into the tattoo at his neck. Light pulsed, drew inward, and then the toad mouth spat out a folded tentbed.
Then he stopped.
There was only one.
He stared at the single bundle for several long seconds, expression empty as the realization caught up. "…Right," he said at last. "I brought it for one."
Daren snorted. "Didn't think your grand schemes would fall apart over bedding."
Kaelric spread the blanket anyway. Every bend tugged at something that hadn't fully settled inside him yet. "Sleep is sleep," he said. "We will make do."
"You mean I will make do?" Daren mused. "Or are you planning to freeze like a noble hero?"
Kaelric shot him a tired glance. "You are the one who cannot walk."
That ended it. The silence that followed wasn't hostile. Just spent. The kind that came when there was nothing left to argue over.
Daren shifted on the bedding, then hissed as his leg protested. The tent floor dipped unevenly beneath him, the ground sloping just enough to keep his weight from settling right. He dragged the blanket tighter around himself, shoulders hunched.
"I blame you for this," he muttered, nudging the thin fabric wall with his elbow. "Setting up on a slope, right next to that cave. Brilliant." The canvas stirred faintly as wind slipped past outside. Moonlight bled through the fabric in a dull, silver wash. "I don't think big predators wait around for a queen to hide before deciding to get closer," Daren added, voice quieter now. "But you just had to pick this spot."
Kaelric didn't answer immediately. Fingers resting lightly against the ground through the thin layer beneath them, feeling the faint, wrong pulse still leaking from the cave. "It wasn't hiding," he said at last. "It was asleep."
Daren let out a thin breath that didn't quite become a laugh. "That's worse."
"It's becoming a queen," Kaelric continued. "Growth forces hibernation. The old one dies, the next takes its place. There's a window where it can't move properly."
Daren swallowed, glancing back again, as if expecting the mountain to remember them. "We walked into that window."
Kaelric's gaze didn't shift. "I walked us into the weakest flow."
A pause.
Daren frowned. "Weakest?"
"The outer threads," Kaelric said. "The ones that barely held together. I mapped them." His fingers tapped lightly against his temple. "Had to. The tunnels don't repeat."
Daren let out a quiet whistle. "So all that… was the safe route?"
"For there." Kaelric's tone flattened. "Not for what was behind it."
Silence stretched. Wind slipped through the rocks, thin and cold.
Daren pulled the blanket higher, voice quieter now. "Those things didn't feel like… scouts. Or rejects or younglings. Just…" He trailed off, jaw tightening. "Weak."
Kaelric finally looked at him.
"They were," he said.
The words settled without weight, like they didn't need one.
Daren's grip on the blanket tightened, fabric pulling taut between his fingers. For a moment, he didn't move at all. Then he shifted, dragging his leg in a fraction closer without seeming to notice, and let out a short breath through his nose.
"Great," he muttered. "Next time we pick a cave where things don't die for being weak, yeah?"
Kaelric's gaze drifted toward the cave mouth. The sky beyond had bruised into violet and black, stars faint behind thin cloud.
He eased himself down beside the blanket, body stiff. Something beneath his ribs answered with a muted pulse, a reminder of how much he had drawn, how close he'd come to hollowing himself out completely.
The weight at his chest tugged at his attention.
Not pain. Mass.
Grimthorn's payment was still sealed inside his storage space, untouched since after the deer hunt. Vitalis stones, earned the slow, ugly way. scraped from antlers. Bone pried loose while the corpse was still warm. The heart wrapped, preserved to refine the Vitalis Amplifier Relic.
The exchange replayed itself with unwelcome clarity.
The weight at his chest tugged again
Not the stones,
The letter.
Grimthorn's handwriting hadn't mattered. The seal had.
Morvus had never registered the assassin. No witnesses. No ledger. Just a 'guest' waved through the gates and a job that was supposed to end quietly. Too quietly.
Kaelric could almost see the shape of it now. A plan built on silence and the expectation of return.
Grimthorn hadn't returned.
He'd stolen proof instead.
Not out of defiance. Out of necessity. The contract wasn't leverage against Morvus. It was a shield against Kaelric. Something solid enough to trade for breathing room.
And Grimthorn had been right about one thing.
Kaelric didn't care about the clan.
The letter wasn't justice. It wasn't vengeance. It was inventory. Proof that could be revealed, withheld, or sold at the correct moment.
Blackmail didn't require loyalty. Only timing.
The Brinehook Inn reeked of salt and old fish oil, beams dark with years of damp air. No praise. No questions that mattered. Only a brief pause when Grimthorn saw the body, and a longer one when Kaelric mentioned how long it had been since the beast was last sighted.
Grimthorn lifted his sleeve. The scorpion tattoo along his forearm stirred, ink shifting like living chitin. The four-antlered deer collapsed inward, pulled into the mark until only black lines remained against his skin.
Payment had followed. Clean. Heavy.
Not wealth. But enough.
Enough stones to matter at rank one. Enough to be dangerous if wasted. Enough to make an attempt at something he had no right attempting yet.
The amplifier.
Kaelric closed his eyes for a moment, already tallying losses that hadn't happened yet. He had no foundation in refinement. No margin for error. Every failed attempt would grind stones and the materials into nothing, and nothing was the one resource he could not replace quickly.
Daren lowered himself onto the blanket with a groan, shifting until he found a position that hurt less. He smirked despite himself.
"If anyone finds us like this, I'm telling them you insisted."
The fire sank lower, embers breathing red beneath ash.
Wind threaded through the trees outside, whispering through thawing branches that had survived winter by bending, not resisting.
Two figures lay beneath the cold canopy. One wounded. One worn thin by forces neither the forest nor the clan would ever understand.
Dawn was still hours away.
And neither of them slept easily.
Sleep came in pieces.
Kaelric surfaced once to feel the fire dying, embers breathing faint warmth into the cold. He surfaced again to the sound of wind in the branches, then not at all.
When he woke, light had crept through the canopy, pale and colorless. Morning, thin and cold.
His body answered before his mind did. Every muscle felt packed with sand. His skull throbbed dully where stone had kissed bone. Whatever hours had passed, they had been claimed by exhaustion, not thought.
He pushed himself upright slowly.
Daren was already awake, sitting stiffly, one leg stretched out, watching the light as if it might move again if he looked away.
They took the narrow side path through the forest to avoid the salt gatherers below. Morning mist clung low to the ground, dampening sound, softening edges. Every step dragged at sore muscles; Daren's limp worsened on uneven roots, Kaelric's head throbbing dully with each heartbeat.
Daren pushed aside a branch and froze.
Kaelric halted at once. "What."
Daren didn't turn. His lips barely moved. "Honey Hornets."
A low hum rolled through the trees ahead. Not sharp. Not frantic. Heavy. Patient.
Kaelric's gaze flicked upward. Golden bodies clung to bark and leaves, half-hidden, wings vibrating slowly as if the forest itself breathed through them. Honey hornets. Close.
The air thickened with a sharp, cloying sweetness.
The hum deepened.
"Run," Kaelric snapped.
He slammed the Absorb Blow Boulder into the trunk of a leaning tree. Wood cracked, branches collapsing into the swarm as he shoved Daren hard onto the path. The hornets scattered, shrieking, but regrouped almost instantly, darting through gaps too small to seal.
They ran.
Roots tore at their boots. Daren stumbled, caught himself, grit grinding into his teeth as pain flared through his leg. Kaelric stayed half a step behind, dragging the boulder through branches and brush, smashing obstacles into the air between them and the swarm. It was crude. Inefficient. Enough.
Wings battered at their backs. One scraped past Daren's shoulder, close enough to feel the heat of it.
"Move," Kaelric barked, voice raw.
Sunlight broke through the canopy ahead. The trees thinned abruptly, forest giving way to open ground and a dirt road cutting clean through the brush.
The hornets halted at the treeline, buzzing angrily but refusing the open light.
Kaelric didn't slow until they were well clear. He let the boulder drop, chest heaving, sweat slicking his hands. Daren collapsed onto a root, breathing hard, jaw clenched against pain.
"That," Daren rasped, "was unnecessary."
Kaelric wiped blood and sweat from his temple. "Agreed."
Only then did he look up, and curse silently.
They had come out south.
The wrong side.
No cover. No paths to slip away. Open road, facing outward toward Hollowpine and the minor settlements beyond. A place meant to be seen.
Footsteps approached.
A guard stepped forward from the roadside, helm worn, eyes sharp as they swept over Kaelric "Kaelric Luthar." He let the name hang, then added, "Clan leader Thalen ordered you brought directly to Heartspire. Anyone with you comes as well."
Kaelric straightened, expression smoothing despite the pounding in his skull. He glanced once at Daren, who nodded, trusting him to speak.
"So," Kaelric said mildly, "it seems I can't claim I was merely wandering anymore."