Kestin did not follow.
So Evrin ran.
They plunged deeper into the dark, leaving the camp to explode into noise behind them. The Adaptic shrieked through its plates, a high scraping vibration that rattled the leaves. Metal rang, chitin cracked, and Marek screamed something about the prize. The Vyx Primal shouted an order, followed by the wet snap of another seed bursting open.
Then a heavier sound rolled over everything.
A distant impact, not from the camp, but farther away, toward the direction of the pulsing Location Seed. Evrin felt it through the ground, and Evris felt it too. She looked back, her face pale beneath the dark.
"What was that?"
Evrin did not answer.
He already knew what it had to be.
Dezcrin was almost here.
The thought drove them downhill. The land dropped into a field of pale stone and black grass. Far beyond it, the wilds opened into uneven ridges, ancient roots, and clusters of bone-white growths twisted from the earth like frozen hands.
Past all of that, barely visible beneath the night, something massive shimmered against the horizon.
The curve of Dome One.
Not the whole of it. Not even close. The main dome was too vast for the eye to comprehend. It did not resemble a ceiling. It resembled a strange edge of the sky, a faint barrier-glow so distant it seemed almost unreal.
Beyond that faint curve, where the Ark's walls fell away near the edge, space waited.
Cold, endless, and open.
Evris followed his gaze and went still.
"No," she breathed.
Evrin said nothing.
"No, Evrin. We cannot go toward the edge."
"They will not expect it," he said, "because it is insane."
She stared at him as though he had become someone else.
Maybe he had.
Maybe something inside him had snapped back at the camp, somewhere between Rist's blood and the Adaptic failing to become Primal yet refusing to die. Maybe the part of him that still believed survival required permission had finally rotted away.
He looked down at the chains dragging from their ankles. The iron ball was gone, left behind in the roots where Kestin had made his lie believable, but the shackles remained. Short, broken lengths of chain slapped against their legs with every step, and the iron had already cut deep enough to slick their skin with blood.
His blood.
Thin, worthless, slave blood.
That was what they would call it.
Evrin hated how badly he wanted to prove them wrong.
A tremor rolled through the ground behind them.
Both siblings turned.
Far back through the trees, red light flashed once, then vanished. A moment later, something struck the earth hard enough to send birds and stranger things screaming from the canopy.
Then came a voice.
Distant, low, and unmistakable.
It rolled across the wilds like thunder with teeth.
"Find them all!"
Evris went pale.
Evrin's stomach dropped, and for one heartbeat, all the strength went out of him. Then he grabbed her hand and forced himself forward.
"Move."
They ran downhill.
The broken chains dragged from their ankles, scraping over pale stone and snapping against roots. Evrin tried to lift his feet higher, but his legs were already trembling. Evris stumbled beside him, barely stronger than he was, yet she kept moving.
Together, they carried the remains of their captivity through the dark.
The farther they ran from the camp, the less the sounds of battle reached them. That should have been comforting, but it only made the quiet worse. Every unknown thing became louder.
A clicking noise echoed somewhere ahead.
Evris stopped so suddenly Evrin nearly pulled her off her feet.
"What was that?"
The clicking came again.
Three sharp taps.
Then silence.
Evrin searched the dark channel ahead, but saw nothing except pale stone, black grass, and the faint shimmer of moisture along the ground.
"Keep moving," he whispered.
"Something is there."
"Something is everywhere."
The words came out harsher than he meant.
Evris flinched, and guilt stabbed through him, quick and bitter.
"I am sorry," he whispered. "I am sorry. Just… please. We cannot stop."
She nodded, but her fear did not fade.
They moved slower now, dragging their broken chains through a narrow pass between two ridges. The iron scraped along the damp ground with a low, grinding sound.
Then the clicking came from behind them.
Evrin turned.
Nothing.
Evris's hand found his.
"Evrin…"
The ridge wall beside them shifted.
A creature peeled itself away from the stone.
It had been lying flat against the pale surface, its body so perfectly matched to the rock that Evrin's eyes had slid over it without understanding. Long limbs unfolded one by one. A narrow head turned toward them. Its mouth opened sideways, revealing rows of thin, glass-like teeth.
Evris screamed.
The thing lunged.
Evrin threw himself backward, yanking Evris with him. The creature's teeth snapped shut where her face had been. His chains tangled around his ankles, and he hit the ground hard enough to drive the breath from his chest.
The broken length of iron whipped across the dirt between them and the creature.
It paused.
Its head tilted.
The clicking began again, faster now.
Evrin grabbed the chain with both hands.
The creature sprang.
A blur struck it from the side.
Something dark and armored slammed into the pale creature with staggering force, driving it into the ridge wall. Stone cracked. The shadow released it, and the predator collapsed a heartbeat later, glass teeth shattering across the dirt.
Evrin dragged Evris backward, barely able to understand what had happened.
The new shape crouched over the broken predator.
Fresh chitin layered its body with a harder, cleaner geometry than before. Wet plates shifted over lean muscle, no longer chaotic growth but something sharper, stronger, and newly purposeful. Its frame was slightly larger now, though not enough to become the thing it had tried to reach.
Its blue crystal eye no longer looked crude. It burned with a sharper, hungrier awareness, as if the failed breach had left something behind inside it.
The Adaptic had not reached Primal, but it had taken something from the attempt. Its body was unfinished, its hunger sharpened, its instincts refined.
Evrin thought, for one terrible breath, that it had followed them.
Then he realized that was wrong.
It had found them.
The Adaptic tore once into the pale creature, not to feed fully, but to silence it. Then all of its eyes turned toward Evrin and Evris.
Evris could not breathe.
Evrin placed himself in front of her, though his knees shook so badly he could barely stand.
The Adaptic stared at them, then lowered its gaze to the shackles around their ankles before looking toward the distant camp, where Dezcrin's pressure still rolled through the world like an approaching storm.
For one impossible moment, Evrin thought it might attack.
Instead, the Adaptic turned away and looked toward the same path they had chosen: the edge, the wilds, and the impossible shape of escape waiting in the dark.
No warning. No mercy. No strange invitation.
It simply dismissed them.
Evris whispered, "What is it doing?"
Evrin did not know at first.
Then he saw the way the Adaptic angled toward the deeper dark, away from the camp, away from the Location Seed's growing pulse, away from everything hunting it.
It was not sparing them out of kindness.
It needed essence.
More than a breath of blood. More than scraps. More than two thin, frail bodies with barely enough meat on them to justify the sound of killing.
Behind them waited Marek, Rist, Kestin, the Primals, and Dezcrin.
Ahead, the half-evolved Adaptic vanished between the black trees, choosing distance over a meal too small to matter. It moved like something unfinished and starving, still driven by the thirst of a creature trying to become Primal.
Evrin swallowed and forced his legs to move, even as the shackles at his ankles pulled against every step.
Evris followed because there was nowhere else to go.
Beneath the faint, impossible curve of Dome One, they stumbled after the creature that had not saved them, had not spared them, and had not even cared enough to eat them.