The upper stairs were not built for panic.
They had been built for tired workers, ration carts, menders with bad knees, and children sneaking where they were not supposed to go. They were absolutely not built for half of Rooknest trying to climb them at once while the lower hollow unfolded into white hunger behind us.
Someone shoved me from the left. Someone else grabbed my coat from behind. A child screamed near my knees. Veyrun cursed, pulled me sideways, and nearly took both of us over the railing. The stair rail bent under too many hands, groaning like it was deciding whether seven thousand years of suffering had been enough.
“Move!” Veyrun shouted.
No one listened.
Everyone was shouting move. That was the problem with good advice during a disaster. It became useless the moment everyone had it.
Below us, the central hollow pulsed white. Saint Rook’s roots thrashed against Avaruun’s veils, and the whole settlement shook with the argument between them. Not words. Not sound, exactly. Purpose. Shelter pulling open. Mercy closing shut. Run pushing through the floor. Rest pressing down from the walls. Live striking through bone. Stop settling softly over the lungs.
Every time Saint Rook’s pulse hit, people surged upward, gasping like they had remembered their own names. Every time Avaruun’s warmth followed, some slowed. Some stopped. Some turned their faces toward the pale light below with expressions so peaceful I wanted to hit them.
One woman sat down on the stairs.
Just sat.
Her child pulled at her sleeve, sobbing. “Ma. Ma, get up.”
The woman smiled down at him. “It’s all right,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt if we stop.”
People stepped around them because panic made cowards of us all.
I stopped.
Veyrun snapped, “Khern, no.”
I was already moving. I grabbed the woman under one arm and pulled. She was heavier than she looked, or maybe surrender made bodies stubborn. Her soft face turned toward me, eyes warm and empty in a way that made my stomach twist.
“Khern,” she said.
I did not know her.
That made it worse.
“It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Her smile trembled. For one second, anger flashed beneath it. Real anger. Old Rooknest anger.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Good,” I said, and pulled harder. “Be mad while climbing.”
The boy grabbed her other arm. Together, we got her up. She stumbled, and the warmth pulsed again from below. Her knees bent.
I slapped her.
Not hard.
Hard enough.
Her head snapped sideways. Veyrun stared. The boy stared. The woman stared.
Then her face twisted. “You little tunnel rat.”
Relief hit me so strongly I almost laughed. “There you are.”
She blinked, looked down at the white light rising through the stair gaps, and broke into proper fear. She grabbed her son and ran upward, shoving two workers aside with a curse that would have made Old Jim proud.
Veyrun caught my sleeve and yanked me forward. “Good news,” he said breathlessly. “Violence works.”
“Don’t sound happy.”
“I am adapting.”
We climbed.
The upper stack was already chaos. People had flooded into the loft levels, storage bridges, drying racks, old shrine pockets, and every dead-end chamber they could force themselves into. The warm walls had driven them upward, but up was not safety. Up was just a place where fear arrived later.
White threads crawled along the lower edges of the stairwell, thin at first, hairlike, slipping through cracks and repair seams. When someone stepped too close, the threads lifted toward body heat. A miner froze as one rose near his boot, staring at it as if politeness might save him.
“Move!” Veyrun yelled.
The miner did not move.
I swung my shovel. The blade cut through the strand, and the thread snapped with a sweet burst of smoke.
The miner woke up.
“Still want to stare?” I shouted.
He ran.
My arms shook. The shovel felt wrong in my hands now. Not useless. Worse.
Useful.
I hated that.
We reached the moss-drying level, where the air grew colder. The warmth weakened, like Avaruun’s reach had to climb through old stone and bad vents before finding us. People crammed along the walkway, praying, arguing, dragging sacks of food, tools, bedding, family charms, and things that had mattered yesterday.
One man had a chair over his head.
Not a good chair. A cracked one.
Veyrun stared as we squeezed past. “Why the chair?”
The man shouted back, “My mother died in this chair!”
Veyrun opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded. “Fair.”
The loft was ahead. Our little storage chamber above the dried moss racks. The crates were still pushed aside from when we left. The door curtain hung open.
My heart stopped.
“Mara!”
I shoved past Veyrun and ducked inside.
The loft was empty.
For one second, the whole world narrowed to the crate where my mother had been sitting. Her shawl was gone. The knife was gone. The old cloth bundle was gone. She was gone. No blood. No white thread. No sign of struggle.
That did not help.
“Mara!”
I turned in a circle, as if she might be hiding in a room too small to hide in. Veyrun appeared at the entrance, breathing hard. His face changed when he saw mine.
“No,” I said.
He did not ask. Good.
He looked around quickly, then crouched near the floor. “She left.”
“How do you know?”
He pointed.
Dust marks. One crate dragged aside from the inside. A smear near the entrance where her boot had turned. A knife mark on the doorframe, small and deliberate.
“She cut the frame,” Veyrun said.
I stared.
My mother had left a mark.
Not decoration. Not accident. A line angled upward, then another beside it.
A direction.
“She went higher,” I said.
“Or wanted us to.”
“Why would she leave?”
A low groan rolled through the upper stack. The floor tilted. Dried moss racks swung from their cords, scattering gray flakes into the air. People screamed outside.
The answer came with the tremor.
Because nowhere stayed safe.
Veyrun grabbed the doorframe. “Higher. Good. We like higher. Higher is currently winning.”
We followed the marks. My mother had carved them into doorframes, rail posts, and old support beams. Tiny angled cuts, easy to miss if you were not looking, clear if you knew Mara had stitched patterns her whole life and trusted details more than voices.
Up. Across the drying bridge. Through a storage alcove. Past the old dead vent. The farther we climbed, the colder the air became. Real cold. The kind that hurt my teeth and made my lungs remember they were built for suffering.
Good.
Pain meant Avaruun’s warmth had not reached everything.
Yet.
Halfway across the upper bridge, a section of wall behind us split softly. A pale seam opened like an eye, and white threads spilled out.
People screamed and surged forward. The bridge swayed under the sudden weight.
“Slow!” someone shouted. “Slow, or it breaks!”
Nobody slowed.
The bridge began to crack. Old rope supports snapped one by one, each sound small and final. Veyrun grabbed the railing and looked at me with wide eyes.
“Khern.”
I looked ahead. Too many people. Behind us, threads crawled along the bridge ropes. Ahead, the passage narrowed. If the bridge broke, everyone on it would fall into the hollow.
I saw a little girl clutching a basket of prayer charms. An old man with one leg. Two moss-pickers dragging a coughing child. A worker still carrying that stupid dead mother’s chair.
Too many. Too slow.
The threads reached the first rope knot.
I did not think.
Thinking would have ruined it.
I ran toward the knot and swung the shovel down. The blade struck the thread where it wrapped around the rope. The strand snapped, and smoke burst up into my face. I coughed, eyes burning.
Another thread reached from the wall.
Then another.
They turned toward me.
Apparently, cutting them made me interesting.
Bad.
Useful, but bad.
I swung again and missed. A strand wrapped around the shovel handle and pulled. I pulled back. It was stronger, of course it was stronger, because I was an underfed tunnel worker fighting haunted string on a bridge that wanted to become history.
Veyrun slammed into my side and drove his scraper through the strand. It snapped.
“You keep choosing educational death,” he gasped.
“You followed.”
“I am learning nothing.”
The bridge tilted again. The crowd ahead finally began moving through the narrow passage. A cold pulse shot through the floor.
Saint Rook.
The threads recoiled from the bridge ropes. Not far. Enough.
Run.
The command hit every Kharuun on the bridge. This time, no one argued.
We ran.
The bridge snapped behind the last moss-picker. Half its length dropped into the central hollow, taking white threads with it. The falling section vanished into pale light below.
No scream came from it.
That was worse than if it had screamed.
We stumbled into the upper vent passage. The marks continued. Mara had gone into the old bell shaft.
I stopped at the entrance. “No.”
Veyrun looked inside.
The bell shaft was a vertical crawl passage used to reach the warning bells near the top of Rooknest. Narrow. Cold. Mostly unused because the bells had not worked properly for years, and because climbing it required faith in old metal rungs installed by people with no respect for future hands.
Veyrun swallowed. “Your mother climbed that?”
The answer came from above.
“Khern?”
Her voice. Thin. Strained. Alive.
My knees almost gave out.
“Mara!”
“Stop yelling and climb.”
I laughed. Then almost cried. Then climbed.
The bell shaft smelled like rust, dust, and old bird droppings from creatures that had no business living underground but did anyway. The metal rungs were cold enough to sting. My injured palm slipped twice. Veyrun climbed below me, muttering prayers to every force he did not believe in.
Above, my mother waited on a narrow maintenance platform near the dead bells. She had wrapped her shawl around her mouth. One hand held the small knife. The other gripped a bell rope.
Beside her was Brakka.
I stared. “Brakka?”
She looked down at me. “Climb faster.”
I did.
When I reached the platform, my mother grabbed my coat and pulled me in with strength she absolutely did not have.
Then she slapped the back of my head.
“Ow.”
“You left.”
“You left too!”
“I left upward.”
“That does not make it better.”
“It does if one survives.”
Veyrun dragged himself onto the platform and collapsed on his back. “I am alive,” he said. “Do not ask me to improve on that.”
Brakka crouched near the shaft entrance with a hooked Skitter tool in one hand. Her face was streaked with dust and sweat, and her eyes looked sharp enough to cut.
“How did you find her?” I asked.
“She found me,” Mara said.
Brakka nodded toward the bell rope. “Vekk sent me up to check the old bells. Found her cutting marks into walls like a proper suspicious person.”
My mother looked almost pleased.
“Where is Vekk?” I asked.
Brakka’s expression darkened. “Below.”
“Alive?”
“When I left.”
That answer was not enough.
It was all we had.
The platform shook. Far below, something cracked across the central hollow. A roar followed. People screamed. Then cold pulsed through the shaft, so strong the bells above us trembled.
Saint Rook again.
Brakka looked down.
“He’s holding something.”
“What?”
“Everything.”
No one spoke after that.
The bell shaft opened above to a small warning chamber near the highest inner wall of Rooknest. Slits overlooked the central hollow and the outer scar routes. The old bells hung from iron hooks, green-black with age, their tongues cracked or missing.
Useless bells.
Almost.
My mother tugged the rope.
One bell gave a dull, wounded clang.
Everyone froze.
The sound rolled through the shaft. Not pretty. Not strong. But real.
Brakka’s eyes widened. “It still rings?”
“Badly,” Mara said.
Badly was enough.
She pulled again.
Clang.
Again.
Clang.
Again.
The old warning bell sounded over Rooknest for the first time in years.
Below, people looked up.
I saw them through the wall slit: tiny figures packed along bridges, stairs, and ledges. White threads rose from the lower hollow. Saint Rook’s Domain blazed at the center, split open and fighting itself. Avaruun’s veils stretched through the air like pale wings over a nest.
The bell rang again. More people looked up.
Brakka grabbed another rope. Veyrun stumbled upright and grabbed a third. I joined them.
The bells screamed badly.
Beautifully.
Ugly iron voices cut through warm mercy. For a moment, Avaruun’s voice vanished beneath them. The soft warmth broke, and people moved. Not calmly. Not correctly. But upward. Toward the bells. Toward sound. Toward warning.
Mara pulled until her hands bled. I saw blood on the rope.
“Mara—”
“Ring.”
So I rang.
Below, a white veil lifted from the central hollow and turned toward us.
Not Avaruun’s face. Not his body. A veil.
It moved like something that could see.
Veyrun noticed. “I think the beautiful horror-cloth is looking at us.”
Brakka cut him a look. “Then stop being interesting.”
“Historically difficult.”
The veil rose higher. Threads trailed behind it, catching on bridges and roots as it climbed. The bells kept ringing.
Then a voice filled the shaft.
Warm. Gentle. Patient.
“Khern.”
My hands froze on the rope.
Avaruun’s voice did not echo.
It arrived, as if he stood beside me.
“You are frightened.”
Veyrun whispered, “Do not answer the wall.”
Avaruun continued, “You have done well. You brought warning. You saved many. Now rest.”
The word slid over my shoulders.
Rest.
My arms felt heavy. The rope became rough and pointless in my hands. Below, people were climbing now. The bells had done enough. Maybe I could stop. Maybe stopping was not surrender. Maybe rest was not death.
My mother’s hand struck my cheek.
Hard.
For the second time in one day, I was slapped by someone I respected.
It helped.
“Ow!”
“Ring,” she said.
I rang.
The warmth cracked.
Avaruun’s voice softened. “Mara. You are tired.”
She spat blood onto the platform. “Correct.”
“You have suffered long enough.”
“Also correct.”
“Let me ease you.”
My mother pulled the rope again. The bell screamed.
“No.”
The white veil reached the bell shaft wall below. Pale strands slipped into cracks and climbed through old stone. Brakka moved to the upper passage, testing a narrow hatch half-hidden behind rusted hooks.
“We need to leave,” she said.
“Where?” Veyrun asked.
Brakka shoved the hatch with her shoulder. “Old roof path.”
I stared. “There’s a roof?”
“Not a roof. Upper shell ledge. Maintenance path to the outer scar vents.”
“That sounds worse than a roof.”
“It is.”
“Then why call it a path?”
“Because ‘falling opportunity’ worries people.”
Mara released the rope. Her palms were torn. I grabbed them. She pulled away.
“Later.”
The bells kept swinging from their last strikes, each clang weaker than the one before. Below, the veil entered the shaft.
Brakka forced the hatch open.
Cold air struck us.
Real cold.
The kind that did not comfort, did not forgive, did not ask if we wanted to rest. It slammed into my face and burned my lungs.
I loved it.
We crawled out one by one onto the upper shell ledge. It was not a path. Brakka had lied with the confidence of someone who wanted us moving before we understood what we were doing. The ledge curved along the inner wall of Rooknest, narrow and crusted with frost, with a drop on one side and a stone face on the other. Above, the old outer shell cracked into scar vents and dead maintenance slits. Below, Rooknest split open.
I looked down once.
Only once.
The central hollow was becoming white. Threads crawled over bridges, through broken railings, into stacks and vents. Saint Rook’s Domain had opened like a wound. Avaruun’s veils moved through it, beautiful and patient, while roots snapped and flared beneath them. Every time Saint Rook pulsed, pockets of people broke free and ran. Every time Avaruun answered, others slowed or turned back.
The bells had helped.
Not enough.
But enough for some.
That had to matter.
A scream rose from the lower hollow. Then Vekk’s voice followed, distant but unmistakable.
“UP, YOU USELESS DUST-CHEWING WORMS!”
Veyrun’s eyes widened. “He’s alive.”
“Unfortunately for everyone,” Brakka said.
Her voice shook.
The ledge trembled. A section behind us cracked, and pale threads burst through the bell hatch we had just left. The first strand reached for the platform, found blood on the rope, and curled around it.
My mother’s blood.
My stomach turned.
“Move,” Mara said.
We moved along the ledge, crouched low, one hand on the wall. Brakka led. Mara followed. I stayed behind her. Veyrun came after me, muttering that he had always disliked heights and now disliked sideways heights more.
The ledge ended at a scar vent: a narrow crack in the upper shell wall, black with cold. Several people had already gathered there. Workers, children, a mender with a bleeding scalp, two Skitter handlers, and the tall Calling guard from Saint Rook’s Domain, the one with silver thread tied around her brace-tail. Her spear was broken in half. Pale burns crossed her arm.
She looked at me. “Khern, son of Mara.”
Veyrun, despite everything, leaned close. “Everyone knowing your full name has become stressful.”
The guard looked at him. “Veyrun, son of too much mouth.”
He blinked, then placed a hand over his chest. “My reputation survives catastrophe.”
The guard almost smiled.
Almost.
That mattered.
Brakka counted quickly. “Where’s Vekk?”
A crash answered from behind us.
Foreman Vekk came limping along the ledge with a cluster of survivors behind him and a Skitter calf tied awkwardly with black cord. His left leg dragged. Blood soaked one side of his coat. He looked furious enough to hold himself together by spite alone.
Veyrun stared. “Why is there a Skitter?”
Vekk leaned against the wall, breathing hard. “Because it moved faster than some workers.”
The calf clicked miserably.
Veyrun nodded. “Fair.”
Brakka went to the calf immediately.
Vekk looked at the scar vent, then at the people, then at Brakka. “How many?”
“Not enough.”
“That is not a number.”
“It is the one we have.”
He grunted and turned to the scar vent. “This leads to the old grazing shelf. Narrow, cold, likely hostile, still better than staying inside the Prophet’s mouth.”
Veyrun lifted one hand. “I would like to object to the route described as likely hostile.”
“Objection recorded and ignored.”
“That is the fastest bureaucracy I have ever suffered.”
Avaruun’s voice rose behind us, carried through cracks, threads, walls, and whatever part of the world he had already made listen.
“Khern.”
Everyone heard it this time.
Vekk’s eyes moved to me. “Do not answer.”
I did not.
“You have warned them,” Avaruun said softly. “You have done enough. Do not drag the sick into cold. Do not carry children into darkness. Do not turn fear into cruelty.”
A woman near the scar vent began sobbing. “He sounds right.”
Mara’s breathing rasped beside me. Blood stained the cloth at her mouth. The cold had stripped away Avaruun’s ease. She looked like herself again, which meant she looked tired enough to break and stubborn enough to resent breaking.
Avaruun continued, gentle as a hand over the eyes. “Return. Rest. Let Rooknest hold you.”
The pale threads crept along the ledge behind Vekk.
Slow.
Certain.
Saint Rook’s Domain roared below.
Not a scream this time.
A command.
Cold struck through the ledge beneath our feet, up our legs, into our ribs. It carried no words, but I understood it anyway.
Out.
Vekk pointed at the scar vent. “Children first.”
No one argued.
That was how I knew we were truly afraid.
The first child crawled into the vent, followed by another, then a moss-picker, then the mender with the bleeding scalp. Brakka pushed the Skitter calf toward the crack. It resisted until she hissed something low and handler-sharp into its ear. The calf clicked, offended, and squeezed through.
My mother came next.
I stepped behind her.
She looked back. “No.”
“Yes.”
“You go first.”
“No.”
Her eyes hardened. “Khern.”
“No.”
Behind us, the wall split open. White light poured through the cracks.
Mara grabbed my collar with surprising strength and pulled my forehead close to hers. “You promised as my son.”
“I know.”
“Then live like one. Not like a sacrifice.”
That hit harder than the cold.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then Veyrun, may he suffer mild inconvenience forever, grabbed me by the back of my coat and shoved me halfway into the vent.
“Sorry,” he said. “Your mother frightens me more than you.”
I tried to twist back.
Mara pushed my shoulder. “Crawl.”
“I hate both of you.”
“Later,” she said.
I crawled.
The vent scraped my shoulders immediately. It smelled of old Skitter bedding, dust, shell mold, and fear. Children shuffled ahead in the dark. Someone sobbed quietly. The calf clicked somewhere farther in, blocking half the path because it was shaped by idiots.
Behind me, Mara crawled. Behind her, Veyrun. Behind him, Brakka. Behind her, Vekk.
Last.
Of course.
The vent shook as the root wall outside gave a deep cracking groan. White light filled the entrance behind us. Avaruun’s warmth slid into the passage like breath.
“Khern,” he called.
The cramped dark softened around the edges. My arms felt tired. My knees hurt. I had done enough.
A hand grabbed my ankle.
Veyrun.
He pinched the old bruise on my calf so hard I nearly kicked him in the face.
“Ow!”
“Pain check,” he hissed.
“Warn me!”
“I feared you would politely surrender.”
“I was not—”
“You slowed.”
I crawled faster.
The vent dipped. The ceiling lowered. My back scraped stone. My shovel caught twice, and I had to drag it under me with one hand while crawling with the other. Ahead, a child cried, “Stuck!”
The line stopped.
No.
Behind us, warmth deepened. White light touched Vekk’s boots. Mara coughed behind me, sharp and painful. Veyrun cursed.
Brakka shouted from the back, “Who is stuck?”
A small voice sobbed, “Me.”
“Where?”
“Shoulders.”
Vekk’s voice came from farther back, tight with pain. “Everyone stop panicking in my tunnel.”
“It is not your tunnel,” Veyrun snapped.
“I am improving it with authority.”
The child sobbed harder.
I pressed my palm to the vent floor.
Old bedding. Scrape marks. Skitter plates. A shallow side hollow.
Left.
“There’s space left of him,” I shouted. “Make him turn left.”
“How do you know?” someone yelled.
“I don’t have time to be confused!”
Hands moved ahead. The child twisted. The line lurched forward.
We crawled.
The warmth followed.
Then the passage behind Vekk began to collapse.
Not from Avaruun.
From Saint Rook.
I felt it: a cold decision moving through old stone. The root wall outside was failing, so he broke the path behind us instead.
Shelter by sealing.
Saving by closing.
I heard Vekk shout, then Brakka, then stone crashed. The vent filled with dust. The warmth vanished. So did the white light.
Everything went black.
“Mara!” I shouted.
“I am here,” she coughed behind me.
“Veyrun!”
“Unhappy but present.”
“Brakka!”
A pause. Then, “Here.”
“Vekk!”
No answer.
My stomach dropped.
“Vekk!”
A muffled curse came through the collapsed dark behind Brakka. “Stop yelling like I died politely.”
Relief made me dizzy. “You’re trapped?”
“I am delayed.”
“That sounds like trapped.”
“Delayed with rocks.”
Brakka crawled backward.
“Don’t,” Vekk snapped. “The collapse is holding. If you dig, the white comes through.”
Nobody moved.
Dust drifted in the dark. Mara’s breathing sounded too loud. Veyrun whispered, “Foreman.”
Vekk did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was lower and less sharp.
That frightened me more than shouting.
“Brakka, you lead them through. Route should open under the lower grazing crack.”
“You don’t know that,” she said.
“I know enough.”
“Vekk—”
“Do not waste my final correct order by arguing with it.”
Silence.
Then Vekk coughed.
Wet.
Bad.
Mara closed her eyes. I could not see it, but I knew.
“Foreman,” she said.
“Mara.”
“You are not allowed to die because it would make you look noble.”
A rough sound came from behind the rocks. Almost laughter. “Terrifying accusation.”
“Live unattractively.”
“I have practiced.”
Something scraped on the other side of the collapse.
Not rocks.
Threads.
Avaruun’s voice came faintly through the sealed vent. “Vekk. You are tired.”
Vekk’s answer was immediate. “I have been tired since before you were beautiful.”
Veyrun whispered, “That was excellent.”
Avaruun spoke again. “You held them together. You can rest.”
Vekk breathed hard.
Then said, “Khern.”
My throat closed. “Yes?”
“You feel paths now.”
“I don’t know what I feel.”
“Good. People who know too quickly become priests or idiots.”
A pale thread slipped through a crack in the collapse.
Tiny.
Searching.
Vekk must have seen it from his side, because his voice sharpened one last time.
“Take them away from Rooknest.”
The thread vanished.
Something smashed against stone.
An ash jar breaking.
Bitter smoke seeped through the cracks.
Vekk screamed once.
Then the collapse shook.
Brakka lunged backward. Mara grabbed my shoulder.
“Move,” she said, voice breaking.
“I can’t just—”
“You can. That is the horror of it.”
Another crash sounded behind the rocks. Avaruun’s voice disappeared under bitter hissing. Vekk had broken ash jars on himself. On the threads. On the passage. On whatever reached him.
The collapse shifted. Rocks slid tighter. The last crack closed.
Darkness became complete.
No warmth.
No voice.
No Vekk.
For a few breaths, no one moved.
Then Brakka said, very quietly, “Forward.”
No one argued.
We crawled.
The passage seemed endless after that. No one cried loudly. That was worse. Children sniffled into sleeves. Adults breathed through teeth. The Skitter calf clicked once and was hushed by three people at the same time.
My palm dragged along the floor. Blood left a thin mark, or maybe it picked one up. I could feel old movements beneath me now, not clearly and not usefully enough, but there. The ground remembered bodies that passed through it. It remembered pressure. Fear. Weight. Direction.
I hated it.
I needed it.
Left. Down. Right. Avoid the soft patch. Follow the cold.
We crawled until the vent widened, until cold air touched my face again, until gray mineral light appeared ahead. One by one, we emerged from the ground onto the far side of the grazing shelf, beneath a slanted overhang of broken shell.
The Outer Crust opened beyond us.
Rooknest was no longer visible.
That should have felt like escape.
It felt like losing the body before mourning it.
Brakka came out last.
Without Vekk.
She stood for a moment, covered in dust, ash, and something dark on her sleeve. Then she tied the Skitter calf’s cord around her wrist and looked at the survivors.
“Count.”
Nobody wanted to.
Len counted anyway.
Thirty-four.
Plus the calf.
No one corrected him.
Mara sat heavily against the overhang. Veyrun dropped beside her, shaking. I stayed on my knees near the vent mouth, staring at the dark hole that had closed behind us.
A final cold pulse moved through the ground.
So faint I almost missed it.
Not from behind.
Underneath.
All around.
A last Shelter.
A last memory.
Live.
Then it was gone.
Not silent.
Not exactly.
Gone from reach.
I pressed my palm to the ground until the cut hurt.
Nothing answered.
The cold wind moved over the broken flats. Far away, a Stoneback groaned like a hill dreaming of hunger. Behind us, somewhere beyond rock and darkness, Rooknest glowed without us.
Veyrun touched my shoulder.
“Khern.”
I did not look up.
“He told you to take us away.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to?”
I laughed once.
It came out wrong.
“I don’t know where away is.”
Brakka crouched in front of me. Her sharp eyes were red around the edges.
She pointed toward the dark flats ahead.
“Then we start with not here.”
That sounded like a Vekk order.
So I stood.