The air inside the Tree's chamber was dense, saturated with bitter sap and freshly turned earth.
Selvryn knelt, her hands pressed against one of the main roots. The pulse beneath her fingers was uneven.
Sick.
Silent tears traced her cheeks, catching the light for an instant with a faint shimmer of mana before vanishing into the dark soil.
"It hurts, Lusian," she whispered. "It's not just the damage. They've… thrown off its perception. It feels like the ground is no longer its home."
Lusian remained by the window, watching the dead strip of mountain.
He did not move.
"Thar'Kaal is strong, Selvryn," he said. "It is not in danger."
Selvryn rose abruptly. Her sorrow hardened into anger.
She crossed the space between them and struck his chest with clenched fists, again and again—not with real force, but without restraint.
"How can you be so calm?!" she snapped. "It's our—your son! They've bitten him, humiliated him… and you don't even react!"
Lusian caught her wrists.Cold. Unyielding. Without violence. Only certainty.
"Calm."
"Calm?" she repeated. "He's bleeding!"
"He has many roots," Lusian replied. "They only damaged one."
The silence that followed was not empty.
It was incomprehension.
Selvryn rested her forehead against his chest.
"You're horrible… cold… heartless… how can you say that while he suffers?"
Lusian did not answer.
He simply wrapped his arms around her. Held her. Nothing more.
Selvryn's trembling slowly subsided.
"We'll increase security," he said at last, voice low. "We'll send patrols."
Selvryn looked up. The anger was gone.
What remained was fear.
Because she understood: that calm was not indifference.
It was decision.
"The Lithaar do not yet know the full extent of our strength," Lusian continued. "They will learn."
He released her.
"Stay with the Tree. Heal it."A pause."I'll go."
He turned toward the exit.
"I'll return at dawn."
Lusian left before the light touched the mountain.
Mist lay over the wounded earth.
He left no footprints. Disturbed no air. The shadow did not hide him.
It accepted him.
When the sun began to rise…
the hunt was already over.
The first to notice were not the warriors.
They were the scavengers.
They descended upon the clearings where the battle had taken place the night before. They expected remains.
Blood.Flesh.
They found nothing.
The land still bore the marks:torn trees,fractured stone,earth split by claws…
But there were no bodies.
In the carnivore camps, unease surfaced with the dawn.
Hunters returned covered in чужая blood.They had eaten.They had rested.They had won.
And still… something was missing.
One.Then several.Then entire groups that simply did not wake.
There were no signs of struggle.No traces of intrusion.No visible wounds.
Some lay rigid, eyes open, frozen in something close to surprise.
Others… were simply gone.
Their dens intact.The fire still burning.The meat untouched.
Only they… absent.
The eldest among them scented the air—
and stepped back.
There was no enemy.No rival pack.No hostile presence.
There was only absence.
Beneath the earth, the Lithaar felt the first pulse of change.
Not an impact.Not an explosion.
An interruption.
The tunnels folded slowly, like lungs forgetting how to breathe.
Mana currents shifted—not violently, but precisely. Avoiding.
The Lithaar attempted to rebalance the system.
They failed.
The mana was not being drained.Nor destroyed.
Denied.
The first "statues" appeared soon after.
Isolated.Patternless.
Lithaar units hardened from within.Veins extinguished.Structures frozen at impossible angles.
They did not look dead.
They looked… interrupted.
On the surface, the Tree stopped bleeding.
The damaged roots sealed.
Sap flowed again.
Thicker. Darker.
Thar'Kaal's pulse stabilized…
and expanded.
Not in territory.
In authority.
By midday, the carnivores no longer roared.
Not out of fear.
Out of calculation.
To attack meant exposure.
To remain still… guaranteed nothing.
There was no enemy.No trail.No direction.
The night before, they had hunted the mountain.
By dawn…
something had hunted them.
When the sun reached its peak, Lusian returned.
No blood.No wounds.No sign of effort.
He walked toward the tower as the mountain adjusted its boundaries around him.
That day, no one attacked the Tree again.
And beneath the earth, for the first time in centuries…
the Lithaar did not calculate how to win the war.
They reformulated the problem.
Survival: uncertain.