The bark wolf snapped at her heels.
Mira spun, slammed her foot against a half-rotted root, and vaulted over a patch of bramble. The thorns tore at her legs, but she didn't slow. Behind her, the wolf crashed through, growling, its barkhide catching and dragging through the tangle.
"Come on," she muttered. "Still hungry, aren't you?"
She didn't look back. She didn't need to.
Every movement was measured, every breath disciplined. She led it deeper, away from the others. Not to safety, just away. Just "not here."
She ducked low under a hanging vine, rolled beneath a fallen log, then hooked sharply left around a tree hollowed by rot. The wolf followed, just close enough to hear the wet slap of its limbs against moss and mud. Too close.
Her shoulder slammed into the side of a boulder as she twisted past. Pain flared, but she didn't falter. She grabbed a loose chunk of stone, roughly sharpened at the edge , maybe something Kael had left behind days ago , and hurled it over her shoulder.
A grunt. Impact. Then rage.
She dipped between two narrow trunks and dropped low, sliding under a curtain of vines. The wolf crashed straight into them, snarling as it fought free. That bought her seconds.
"Not enough."
She tore through undergrowth, letting instinct guide her where memory couldn't. This was jungle she hadn't mapped. But she knew how to move. Where the ground rose. Where the barkweed grew thick. Where the rot wasn't yet soft enough to collapse.
"Raif. Kael. Rix."
They'd headed the other way. She'd followed the order. Played her part.
But she should've done more.
She should've stayed closer.
Should've seen the Sporeback sooner. Should've warned them.
"Failed them." Again.
Not this time.
Her lungs burned now. She veered sharply, letting the terrain do the work. A slick patch of lichen took her weight and slung her forward. She fell into a crouch near a gnarled root and pressed flat to the ground.
The wolf burst through the brush behind her, but she was gone from its sightline. It slowed. Sniffed the air. Turned toward where her footprints trailed into a low dip of ferns.
She waited, barely breathing.
Seconds passed. Then more.
A rustle. Heavy footfalls fading. It was moving off.
She counted to twenty. Then thirty more. Still silence.
Only then did she rise.
Her legs trembled. Her hands ached from the fall. She wiped mud across her palms and tried not to think about the tremble in her gut.
"Naera."
The name hit harder now, like a bruise she'd forgotten to cover.
She wasn't just watching anymore. She'd seen Naera fight. "Really" fight. Bleeding and furious and alive. The same girl she'd buried, once.
And now she was walking back into danger.
Mira set her jaw and turned east, orienting by the dying light. She kept her steps low, deliberate, weaving through the tight trees. A curl of bark on a branch caught her eye, her own mark, left days ago. She veered toward it.
The air changed.
Not with sound. With pressure.
Something was wrong.
She slowed as she reached the edge of the rise overlooking the clearing.
Through the canopy gaps, she saw the barkwood wall.
And beyond it, movement.
Too still. Too quiet.
Dusk had settled. The clearing glowed in dull orange, firelight licking at the bark walls while the canopy above swallowed the last of the sun. Inside, the group worked with quiet efficiency,Naera checking the cookfire, Eloin packing mud into a seam in the wall, Syl dragging a half-woven basket toward the storage pit. No one spoke much. Just low mutters, small nods.
The orb hadn't pulsed.
Goss sat sharpening a stick into a crude spear. Lira walked the wall without her crutch, hand trailing along the bark. Hennick was setting a snare line by the edge of camp when he paused.
A creak.
Then a crack. Soft. Subtle. Like bark splitting under slow pressure.
Naera stood. "Did you hear that?"
Everyone froze.
Then came the crash.
The northern wall buckled inward, a sudden, violent rupture of bark and rot. A shape slammed through,massive, snapping, snarling.
A bark wolf.
"Wall breach!" Eloin shouted, voice cracking.
"Move! Weapons!" Goss bellowed, already scrambling to his feet.
Naera dropped her bowl and ran for the firewood pile, yanking a half-charred stave free. Syl backed away from the beast, stumbling into the storage crates.
"South side!" Hennick roared. "Something's watching!"
Another deep groan of wood splitting came from the opposite end of the clearing. Something heavy shifted in the dark beyond the walls.
Then came the air,thick, foul, wrong.
"The spores!" Eloin shouted again. "It's here! Whatever that is!"
A grey fog poured in, not rushing, just arriving, coiling through the clearing like it belonged there. Breathing grew harder. Naera choked and fell to her knees.
"Fall back!" Goss yelled. "Away from the wall!"
The wolf inside was circling now, slow and deliberate, head low.
"Don't let it pin us!" Lira barked. She limped forward, gripping a pointed stick with both hands.
The wolf lunged.
Goss intercepted with his makeshift spear, jabbing toward its eye. The tip glanced off. Syl screamed as she was knocked off her feet.
Eloin flanked from the left, swinging a stone. "Naera! Get up!"
"I've got it!" she gasped, coughing through the spores. She rose and dove sideways, scraping past the wolf's flank.
The creature turned.
Then,Mira.
She came from the treeline at a sprint, no hesitation, a heavy chunk of barkstone raised in both hands. She brought it down across the wolf's skull with a crack.
It snarled and staggered.
"Now!" Goss roared.
Naera struck low, slamming her stave into the wolf's exposed ribs. Hennick followed up with a two-handed thrust beneath its jaw. Blood,not red, but dark sap,spattered across the ground.
The wolf collapsed, legs twitching.
But the fog only deepened.
From the north, something moved. Slow. Dragging.
The Sporeback Lurker.
It emerged partway from the treeline, its bulk glistening with decay, tendrils brushing over stone and root alike. The wood beneath it curled and browned.
"Don't engage!" Lira said, choking. "Not with that."
Everyone stood still. Not by choice. Their limbs felt heavier. Slower.
The Lurker watched.
Its form was partially shrouded by mist and shadow, but what they could see twisted the gut. A bloated mass of pulsing rot, its flesh half-melded with bark and lichen, moved with obscene grace. It didn't step so much as glide, tendrils slithering across soil and root like veins spreading through a wound. One dragged across a log and left it hollowed out behind it, the bark curling back from the touch like burned skin. Each pulse from its swollen centre sent a ripple through the grey air, and with it, a feeling,an ache, deep in the chest, like breath catching before it's even drawn.
Eloin tried to speak but coughed instead, dropping to a knee.
Naera turned away, pressing her arm to her mouth. Her eyes watered, not just from the spores. From something older. Raw.
Lira's hands gripped the fence beside her. "It's marking us," she said, barely audible. "It sees us."
Goss shifted beside Mira. "What is that thing?"
Mira didn't respond. She couldn't. Her whole body was locked in place,not by fear, exactly, but by something colder. Recognition. The same weight she'd felt when Naera died. That same wrongness in the air. Like the world itself had split and something was leaking through.
The Lurker held there, tendrils undulating in slow, rhythmic waves. Its body flexed, and one burst of spores lifted into the sky,finer now, almost invisible. They didn't burn. They didn't choke. But they settled. On skin. On bark. On the dirt beneath their feet.
They would find it again, Mira realised. Or it would find them.
Then, as slowly as it had come, the Lurker turned. Its mass folded inward, limbs retracting with unnatural softness. It slid back into the trees without a sound, vanishing like rot into darkness.
No one moved for several heartbeats. Not even to breathe.
Silence stretched.
Naera dropped to one knee, eyes still fixed on the edge of the clearing. Her chest rose and fell in shallow gasps, one hand braced on the ground like she might fall further if she let go. She didn't blink.
She had seen death before. She had seen monsters. But never like this. This hadn't been a fight. It had been a warning.
Goss turned to Mira. "You came back."
His voice wasn't angry. It wasn't surprised. Just low. Grateful.
She didn't answer. Her throat was tight, her muscles still tensed like she hadn't left the fight. She looked at Naera,really looked,and for a moment forgot how to breathe.
Their eyes met. And held.
The wall was torn. Spores clung to the air. Every breath tasted of mould.
Mira stood there, barely aware of her aching arms, the scratches on her legs, or the ragged sound of her own breath. All she saw was Naera. Kneeling in the dirt. Alive, but shaken in a way Mira hadn't seen before.
She took a slow step forward. Not to speak. Just to be closer. Just to see the rise and fall of Naera's shoulders and know it was real.
Naera looked up at her. Her lips parted, but she said nothing.
That was enough.
Behind them, Goss leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. Lira was coughing softly, one hand still gripping her spear. Syl helped Eloin to his feet, and Hennick knelt beside the dead wolf, inspecting it with a grimace.
They all knew it wasn't over.
Above, the sky was dark now. Not black, but a deep, heavy green threaded with grey. The fire crackled weakly. Spores danced in the light, barely visible.
The jungle hadn't attacked them tonight.
It had tested them.
And somewhere out there, it was waiting to see what they would do next.