The orb pulsed faintly, its light a steady throb beneath the shell. Raif stood watching, arms folded, the silence around him broken only by soft birdsong overhead.
A flicker passed across the orb's surface.
[Passive Structure Functioning: Shrine for the Dead]
[Daily Yield: +2 KE]
[Current Total: 59 KE]
Raif exhaled. Not much, but it meant something. A sign that even here, death could still feed the living.
A rustle to his left, light, careful. Kael emerged from the trees and approached without a sound. He carried his bark map, newly marked, and unrolled it the moment he reached Raif.
Raif stepped in close. The markings were sharper now, denser. Not just routes. Patterns. Vines that twisted, doubled back. Arrows that looped and faded near the same central curve.
Kael tapped a spot northeast of their current location, just past a split in the ridgeline. Then he dragged his finger in a spiral, slow and deliberate.
"The swirl," Raif muttered. "This is where you saw it?"
Kael nodded. His hand stayed there, hovering over the centre. He tapped once, then again, then made a small gesture, fingers curling inward like something drawing in breath.
Alive. That was the meaning.
Raif looked him in the eye. "Still there?"
Kael's nod was sharp. Then he pointed to Raif.
"You want me to come."
Kael didn't confirm. Just folded the map and turned slightly, waiting.
Raif scanned the treeline. "Alright. But not alone."
He raised a hand and signalled to two others already nearby: Mira, adjusting the lashings on a shelter beam, and Rix, who stood at the edge of camp tapping bark dust from his palm.
"Come with me," Raif called. "We've got something to see."
Mira fell into step beside Raif, her brow creased. "What's going on?"
Raif didn't answer immediately. He kept his eyes on Kael, who waited just at the tree line with his map folded under one arm.
"There's a place in the jungle Kael's been watching," Raif said finally. "Something about it isn't right. The growth patterns, the movement, he saw it the night Thomund died. I think it's connected."
Mira hesitated, her gaze flicking back toward the clearing. "Naera..."
"She'll be fine," Raif said gently. "This won't take long."
Mira's jaw tightened, but after a breath, she nodded. "Right. Change doesn't happen sitting still."
Rix approached at an angle, brushing dust from his sleeves. He didn't bother with questions. His eyes were already on Kael.
"Ah," he said. "It's him. That explains the secrecy."
"You coming?" Raif asked.
Rix gave a small smirk. "Wouldn't miss it. Besides, if Kael thinks it's worth a look, I'm curious what else he isn't telling us."
Kael offered no comment. He just turned and began moving.
Raif followed, motioning for the others. "Stay sharp. We don't know what we're walking into."
Kael moved first.
Not fast, but purposeful, each step careful, deliberate. The kind of pace that came from walking the same path more than once and remembering everything that changed.
Kael's awareness of the jungle was uncanny. He paused more often than most scouts would. Not because he was unsure, but because he noticed the faintest tilt of a branch or the absence of insect buzz in one direction. His head would turn slightly, eyes narrowing, and Raif began to realise Kael wasn't just following signs, he was interpreting them. Predicting them. He shifted his gait when the ground dampened. He flanked around exposed roots before they came into view. Every move spoke a language none of them fully understood.
Once, Kael raised his hand and crouched, motioning to a curl of bark that had split naturally from a fallen trunk. He pointed at the white mould growing beneath it. A sharp shake of the head. Raif wasn't sure if it meant danger or decay, but he adjusted course without question.
And still Kael didn't speak. But Raif felt the words in the rhythm of his steps. A warning here. A path there. Trust this. Avoid that. He spoke so clearly without a word. Amazement fills Raif's thoughts; it was something that he had never seen before, never experienced. He knew how much Naera trusted Kael, to the point where whatever Kael 'said' was automatically the truth, but now that he was seeing it in first person, he couldn't help but wonder what Kael did before this?
Raif watched, then whispered to himself, "How much have you seen, Kael?"
Behind them, Mira shifted her weight with every step, eyes flicking back now and then toward the way they'd come. Her jaw was set. She didn't complain, but she didn't relax either. She kept her pace steady, her silence firmer. A step forward, not away.
Rix kept his distance from Kael, but his eyes never left the man's back. Watching. Measuring. Every so often, he glanced at Raif, not for reassurance, but to confirm that someone else saw what he was seeing. He knew about Kael's skills since they had gone on a few scouting missions before, but this was different. Instead of searching and investigating, Kael was finding a path. One that only he saw.
The jungle pressed in close, as the group ventured deeper.
It wasn't loud, but it wasn't silent either. A constant buzz of insect wings. Distant rustle. Once, the shriek of a bird too high to see. But beneath that... something slower. Like a breath being held just out of earshot.
They crossed a narrow gully where water trickled between stones that hadn't been dry in months. Raif noted how Kael stepped along a slick ridge without slipping, as though the jungle itself bent slightly for him. He also started to figure out that they were further off the map than the orb had shown him. Kael was already reaching further than what was given.
After a while, the trees thinned, not in number, but in strength. Bark peeled too easily. Leaves curled inward, not from light, but from some unseen reaction. Even the vines hung oddly, as if reaching in the wrong direction.
Kael paused at the edge of a clearing, a shallow bowl in the earth ringed with toadstools the size of helmets.
Raif stepped up beside him and saw it.
The swirl.
Not in the air, but in the way the plants curved. In the lines of moss, the direction of growth. Everything bent toward the centre, toward something that wasn't visible, but undeniably there.
Kael tapped the bark map once and pointed again. His fingers curled in the same motion as before.
Drawing in.
Feeding.
They didn't speak.
Not out of fear, but reverence. The clearing felt like somewhere they weren't supposed to be. The kind of place nature built slowly, in secret, then forgot how to share.
Raif crouched beside the lowest ridge, eyes tracking the spiral of growth. At the centre, tangled in moss and lichen, a half-buried stone jutted from the earth. Not natural. Its corners were too clean. Its angles too certain. The same eerie geometry from the forge slab, only... older. Fainter. As if time had tried to erase it.
His breath caught. The stillness around him wasn't peace. It was weight. Like the jungle was waiting for something to happen, and had been waiting for years.
"What is this place?" he thought.
He could feel the pressure in his ribs. Not pain. Not quite. More like standing too close to something ancient and unblinking.
Kael knelt beside him and pressed his fingers into the dirt. A slow, circular motion. Then he tapped twice at the stone. His message was simple.
Here.
Raif nodded. He glanced back at the others.
Mira stood near a broad-rooted tree, posture wary. She didn't reach for a weapon, but her body tilted just enough to guard the others. Old instincts, half-buried. Her eyes swept the outer ring.
Rix moved slower, stepping between strange fungi with theatrical care. His gaze jumped between the grooves in the earth and the treetops overhead.
"This is..." he murmured, almost to himself. "It's a convergence. Everything's pulling inward. Not by accident."
He crouched and brushed his fingers across a patch of split moss.
"Even the ground's thinning," he muttered. "Water flow's wrong. Roots are curling upward, not down. Like they're hungry for something."
He looked sideways, frowning. "I've seen this kind of growth before, in controlled environments. Contained greenhouses, manipulated with stimuli. But this isn't controlled. This is raw. Unchecked. Magic? Or something else?"
He straightened, then turned slightly toward Kael. "Do you think this is central? A core of some kind?"
Kael didn't answer. But he tapped the stone again. Then made a slow arc with his hand.
Rix tilted his head. "Maybe... not a centre. A seed."
Raif opened his mouth to answer, then stopped.
Something shifted.
Not a noise. Not movement.
A weight.
The air thickened suddenly, like sap congealing between the trees. Even Kael stiffened, eyes narrowing toward the far edge of the grove.
From the left, a sharp crunch.
Silence.
Then-
A bark wolf burst from the thicket, gnarled limbs tearing free of the brambles. Smaller than the one that had killed Thomund, but leaner. Faster. Its wooden hide flexed like muscle, coated in dripping resin. It didn't hesitate. It saw movement. It lunged.
Raif barely shouted before Mira was already moving, shoulder-first, intercepting the charge. The wolf's weight slammed into her, but she held, feet skidding through moss. Her grunt was tight. Controlled. She didn't fall. Her arms locked and twisted, redirecting the wolf's momentum. She planted her foot and used its own charge to pivot it sideways.
Kael was beside her in a blink, stone knives drawn from nowhere, cutting low toward the hind leg. The bark split, sap spilling black.
Mira adjusted fast, shifting her stance and landing a solid elbow into the wolf's flank. Her movements were practiced. Efficient. She didn't waste strength, just used what wasn't hers.
Rix shouted, "We've got another-!"
From the opposite side, something slithered out of the earth.
It didn't walk. It spilled, a shifting coil of bark and rot and fronded limbs. Like a root system pulled free and given purpose. Where a head might've been, there was only a blooming puff of greenish spores. Beneath it, a gaping slit flexed and pulsed with slow breath.
Raif felt his skin go cold.
[New Threat Identified: Sporeback Lurker]
[Quest Progress: Sporeback Investigation – 90%]
The thing moved with no sound. No weight. But everything that passed began to wilt. Mushrooms curled inward. Vines turned black at the edges. A faint mist trailed in its wake, too thin to see clearly, but enough to choke the scent of moss and replace it with the sting of fermentation.
Sporeback Lurker.
The lurker surged forward, one frond slapping against a tree trunk and leaving a black smear in its wake. The tree began to sag almost instantly, its bark blistering.
Kael pivoted fast, knives flashing once before retreating behind a twisted root. Mira shoved Raif hard to the side as the bark wolf launched again. It clipped his shoulder, stone and bark scraping hard, but he stayed upright.
Rix ducked behind a cluster of fan-leaf ferns, muttering to himself.
"Two threats. No terrain advantage. One way in, one out..."
He narrowed his eyes, scanning the trees. "We're boxed. But the spores haven't spread uphill. The way we came."
Raif caught his breath. "Fall back."
Mira growled, "We can't lead them to the camp."
"Then split," Raif said. "Draw them. Lose them."
Rix gave a sharp nod. "We scatter. Regroup at the southern ridge."
Kael tapped twice. Confirmed.
The bark wolf lunged again.
They ran.