The stream kicked on at dawn.
Emma barely flinched this time, just a tightening of her jaw, a quick breath through her nose, and the familiar flood of usernames scrolling past her vision.
“Can I get a purr in the chat?” Dom said flatly.
The chat erupted.
BussyBlaster9000: PURRRRRRRRRRRRRR xXDungeonDaddyXx: PURRRRRRRRR 😻😻😻
GoblinSlayer69: PURR PURR PURR PURR
MomsCreditCard: 🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
PixelSlvt: PURR IN THE CHAT FOR DAY TWO
OhNoRatio: PURRRRRRR
SaltySupp0rt: meow meow motherfuckers
F2P_And_Proud: @SaltySupp0rt that’s still not a purr
SaltySupp0rt: @F2P_And_Proud it’s the SPIRIT of the purr
KravenMoHead34: Day two purr.
Let’s go.
CertifiedFloorTank: the ritual continues
StinkyRiftDiver: nya~ 🐱
ActuallyADruid: the consistency of this opening bit is genuinely impressive
Dom watched the cascade with the expression of a man who had created a monster and was now being devoured by it.
“Good purrs. Excellent enthusiasm. Now let’s work.”
BussyBlaster9000: @Emma how are you holding up
“Functional,” Emma said.
“Barely.”
PixelSlvt: “functional barely” is a mood
MomsCreditCard: @Emma you’re doing great, sweetie
“I’ll never get used to the purrs,” Emma muttered.
“That’s the secret,” Dom said.
“Neither have I.”
“Moving on,” Dom continued.
He drew his blades and started walking.
“Six hours of daylight. Scavengers spike at midday. We’re keeping chat interactions to a minimum—focus is the mission, not the commentary. You’ll get your content when something tries to kill us.”
CertifiedFloorTank: Fair.
Stay alive first, entertain second.
OhNoRatio: @CertifiedFloorTank the catboy runs a tight ship
“I don’t think we’re going to meet scavengers that quickly,” Emma said.
They met scavengers twenty minutes later.
Eight of them.
Smaller pack than yesterday.
Dom killed four in the first thirty seconds.
Emma kept him warded.
Lume blinded a flanker.
The rest scattered.
Dom turned to Emma with a faint, deliberate smile, the kind that didn’t reach his eyes but definitely reached his point.
“You were saying?”
Emma’s face went crimson.
“I didn’t—that wasn’t—I wasn’t trying to—” She pressed her hands together in front of her face.
“I’m so sorry. I jinxed us.”
SaltySupp0rt: THE JINX
F2P_And_Proud: She manifested the scavengers with her hubris
KravenMoHead34: @F2P_And_Proud the catboy’s smile when he said: “you were saying” 😂😂
MomsCreditCard: she’s apologizing to the universe now
BussyBlaster9000: @MomsCreditCard the universe accepts.
reluctantly.
“Stop apologizing,” Dom said.
“It was a small pack. We handled it.”
“But I jinxed us.”
“You made a prediction that just happened to be wrong. The scavengers didn’t hear you.”
“How do you know? What if they have excellent hearing?”
Dom stared at her.
“You think the scavengers attacked us because they overheard you saying we wouldn’t meet them?”
Emma opened her mouth.
Closed it.
“When you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”
“Because it is stupid.”
“I’m going to stop talking now.”
PixelSlvt: the catboy is a SAVAGE today
OhNoRatio: @PixelSlvt he’s got a point though.
The scavengers do not speak English.
The morning blurred into a rhythm.
Walk.
Kill.
Harvest.
Repeat.
Three more packs hit them before noon, none as large as the first.
The scavengers in this sector were thinner, weaker, picked over by something bigger.
Dom harvested teeth and claws from each kill.
Emma stopped commenting on it.
The chat started a counter for “corpses looted.” It hit twenty-seven by midday.
SaltySupp0rt: the catboy is running a small business in the middle of a death zone
F2P_And_Proud: @SaltySupp0rt respect the grind
They paused for water in the shell of an old bank.
Emma checked her wrist display.
“We’re making good time. Should reach the target by mid-afternoon if we keep this pace.”
“Nice. We’ll keep this pace then.”
Lume, who had been scouting ahead, suddenly reversed course and pressed herself against Emma’s shoulder.
Her glow dimmed.
“What is it?” Dom asked.
“She senses something. Something big.” Emma’s voice dropped.
“We’re entering Railweaver territory.”
The shift was immediate.
The air grew thick and still, muffling their footsteps.
The distant screeches of scavengers faded into absolute silence.
The bioluminescent vegetation that had pulsed with sickly light through the ruins dimmed here, as if the plants themselves were afraid to draw attention.
The shadows stretched longer than they should, pooling in corners like spilled oil.
Then the webs appeared.
They weren’t the scattered strands of a drone’s hunting ground.
These were structural, thick as mooring lines, old and undisturbed, anchored to the bones of skyscrapers and woven into the architecture itself.
They shimmered in the haze, catching light that didn’t seem to come from anywhere.
The air hummed with a low, subsonic vibration that Dom felt in his chest before he heard it.
The webs were singing.
ActuallyADruid: That’s not just any territory.
That’s a nest.
A mature nest.
GoblinSlayer69: @ActuallyADruid how old are you thinking?
ActuallyADruid: @GoblinSlayer69 I’m guessing since the fracture.
The silk is weathered but intact.
Something has been maintaining this for a very long time.
The chat went quiet.
Not the usual lull between jokes, a genuine, collective silence.
Dom’s system buzzed at the edge of his awareness, a low, insistent vibration that had been building since they entered this sector.
“The target’s ahead,” Emma said, her voice slightly too high.
“Two hundred yards. East of the next building.”
“Then let’s move fast and as quietly as possible. No talking unless it’s critical.”
Emma nodded.
Lume pressed herself flatter against her neck, her glow barely a flicker.
They moved through the webs like ghosts.
Every step was deliberate, every breath measured.
The silk thickened as they went, strands draped across streets like funeral shrouds, woven through windows like cocoons, pulsing with that same low, resonant hum.
Dom’s ears twitched with every vibration, tracking the subtle shifts in the web-song.
Something was listening.
Something was aware.
The shadows moved when they weren’t looking.
The webs shivered when they passed.
The air pressed against them like a held breath.
Then something shifted in the dark.
Massive.
A displacement of air that Dom felt in his bones.
The webs vibrated in unison, a single chord that ran through the entire nest.
The ground hummed.
Emma grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into his sleeve, her breath caught in her throat.
Lume’s glow died completely.
They didn’t move.
They didn’t breathe.
The presence was everywhere.
Above them.
Around them.
Watching them through a hundred eyes they couldn’t see.
The shadows deepened.
The web-song rose in pitch.
And then, slowly, deliberately, the presence withdrew.
The webs stilled.
The ground went silent.
“Sorry—that was reflex.”
“You can hold my arm if we’re about to die. I don’t mind.”
“I’d rather die—no, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You’re not very good at lying, are you?”
BussyBlaster9000: THE ARM GRAB PART TWO xXDungeonDaddyXx: SHE SAID SHE’D RATHER DIE THEN IMMEDIATELY TOOK IT BACK
MomsCreditCard: She’s lying, and we all know it.
The target was a reinforced box that had punched through the roof of the collapsed office building and embedded itself in the sublevel floor, surrounded by shattered concrete and twisted rebar.
Whatever had brought it down had done so with force.
The box itself was intact, unmarked, secured with a simple latch, the tracker still blinking green.
Dom pried it free while Emma covered him.
The building groaned around them.
The webs were thicker here, lining the walls like insulation, pulsing with that same low hum.
They were close to something.
Too close.
“We’re near the center of the nest,” Emma whispered.
“This is the heart of the nest.”
“I thought as much.” Dom stored the box.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
They turned to retrace their path and stopped.
The corridor they’d entered through was gone.
A wall of silk, seamless and ancient, stretched across the exit like it had been there for decades.
Behind it, the shadows were moving again.
The web-song was rising.
“The Queen’s been watching us since we entered,” Emma said, her voice barely audible.
“She let us come this far.”
“Breathe, Emma, breathe; let’s get through together, alright?”
Emma nodded in response.
The corridor ahead opened into a vast chamber.
The ceiling soared upward into darkness, and the walls were lined with silk so thick it formed its own architecture, pillars of webbing, arches of spun light, a cathedral built by something that had been weaving for a long time.
The air was warm and thick, humming with the vibration of a thousand strands.
And at the center of the cathedral, suspended in a cradle of ancient silk, something was waiting.
Something the queen was protecting.
“Dom,” Emma breathed.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know. And we’re not staying to find out.”
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward a side passage, narrower, darker, but free of silk.
The webs around them began to vibrate.
Not the low hum of before.
Something sharper.
A warning.
Then the screech came.
It hit them like a physical wall.
Dom’s ears flattened against his skull.
Emma staggered, her hands flying to her head.
Lume’s glow sputtered and died completely.
The chat erupted in panic, messages flooding faster than Dom could read, but his vision was swimming, his legs locked in place, every muscle frozen by a sound that bypassed his ears and went straight to the primal core of his brain.
ActuallyADruid: THAT’S A QUEEN’S CALL
GoblinSlayer69: WHAT IS HAPPENING
BussyBlaster9000: WHY AREN’T THEY MOVING
MomsCreditCard: SOMETHING’S WRONG
[System Notice: Host affected by [Paralyzing Screech]]
Dom couldn’t move.
Couldn’t speak.
His body was locked in place, every nerve screaming, and the shadows at the edge of the cathedral were moving, massive, and closing in—
Then warmth flooded his veins—golden light.
Emma’s hands pressed against his back, pushing back the paralysis, and her voice was shaking but steady.
“I’ve got you. It’s a fear effect. I can counter it. Give me five seconds.”
She didn’t have five seconds.
The Queen was coming.
Dom felt his fingers twitch first.
Then his arms.
Then his legs unlocked all at once, and he was moving before his brain caught up.
The box came out of his inventory.
He turned and shoved it into Emma’s arms.
“Take it. Run.”
“Dom—”
“That’s an order. Go!”
Lume flared to life, her glow blinding, and Emma ran.
Dom drew his blades and turned to face the dark.
The web-song rose to a scream.