The fire crackled low, casting soft shadows across the wounded clearing. Spores still drifted in the air like mist, glowing faintly in the firelight. Mira stood near the broken wall, watching the trees. Naera sat nearby, her hands still trembling faintly, though she gripped her stave like it anchored her to the world. Goss was helping Lira sit down; Syl had her back against the crate wall, breathing shallow. No one had spoken in minutes.
Then the rustle of branches.
Mira turned first.
Three figures stepped through the treeline.
Raif. Rix. Kael.
Raif's gaze swept the clearing once,and froze. His eyes caught on the collapsed wall, then lingered on the corpse, then on Mira, standing like stone at the edge. He inhaled through his nose, slow and quiet, then let it out without a word. His shoulders squared.
"Naera. Goss. Anyone bleeding? Anyone hurt bad?" he asked, voice low but urgent. He crossed the clearing in long strides, not waiting for answers.
Naera pushed herself to her feet, slower than usual, like each motion needed permission. Her voice was low, almost toneless. "We're all breathing. Some worse than others."
She didn't look at Raif as she spoke. Her eyes were on the broken wall.
Goss stepped in, voice gruff but not unkind. "The wall's breached. Wolf got in. Spore thing came after. Didn't attack. Just... watched. Watched us like it was studying the cracks in our bones."
Raif gave a slow nod, jaw clenched. He turned to Eloin. "You seen anything since? Movement, sounds, even wind?"
Eloin coughed and shook his head. "Not since it left."
Rix stepped forward, eyes narrowed at the rot along the broken fence. "We're gone for a few hours, and this happens? The air smells like a swamp funeral."
Raif didn't answer. He moved to the corpse, his steps careful. He crouched beside Hennick, eyeing the ragged wounds in the barkwolf's hide. "How bad did it get?"
"Eventually," Hennick muttered. "Cost us."
Kael hadn't spoken. He stood at the edge of the clearing, near the place where the bark had blackened and peeled. His eyes scanned the rot, the trail curling away into the jungle.
He crouched.
Touched the earth.
Mira watched him closely. So did Raif.
Kael stood.
And without a word, he turned and walked into the trees.
"Kael!" Naera called, stepping forward.
He didn't pause.
"What is he doing?" Syl said. "He just,he's going after it?"
Raif took a step, then stopped himself. His hands were fists.
"Let him go," Goss said quietly. "He's not running. He's tracking."
The clearing fell silent again.
Rix spat. "Sure. Let's pretend we understand what that one's thinking."
Naera stood beside Mira now, though she leaned slightly as if unsure whether her legs would hold. Her breathing had steadied, but her eyes looked hollow,focused outward, fixed on the dark.
Mira didn't move. But her stance had changed,shoulders not just tense but ready, as if bracing for something worse still to come. Her eyes didn't leave the treeline.
In the quiet, Naera whispered, almost too soft to hear. "He's chasing it."
Mira blinked once, but said nothing.
Together, they stared at the gap in the trees where Kael had vanished.
Spores still drifted, soft and quiet. The group moved to sit or lean. No one felt like speaking.
Raif glanced at Mira, then at Naera. The two of them had changed since the last time he'd seen them,more than tired, more than hurt. Mira looked like a blade waiting to be drawn. Naera looked like she was somewhere far away.
He almost said something. A question. A warning. An apology.
But it died before it reached his lips.
He looked back to the fire instead.
He looked at the fire, then at the sky. "If he's not back by dawn, I'll go."
No one argued.
The fire popped, sending a thin veil of sparks into the air. Spores still floated near the edges of the clearing, barely visible unless you looked straight into the firelight. The group shifted slowly,tired, aching, too alert to rest but too spent to speak.
Eloin sat back against the nearest post and coughed again, this time deeper. "I can feel it in my chest. Like breathing through wet cloth."
Syl rubbed her palms against her trousers. "My skin feels dry. Not just dry,flaky."
Lira held up her hand, squinting. The edge of her palm was peeling in thin strips. "I didn't even touch anything. Not directly."
Goss stirred the fire with a stick, watching the sparks scatter. "You think it's poison?"
Rix gave a humourless chuckle. "If it is, it's taking its time. I think it's something else."
"Like what?" Naera asked, her voice hoarse.
Rix tapped his temple. "A seed. A marker. A way to find us again."
Raif said nothing, but his gaze moved to the rotted patch of wall.
Hennick stood and dusted his hands off. "I checked one of the untouched logs by the south fence. It was clean before. Now it's brittle. Just crumbles when you squeeze it."
Mira knelt by her gear and pulled out one of the woven satchels. It had a dusting of grey across the strap. She scraped it with the edge of her nail and sniffed it. Her nose wrinkled. "Burn everything the spores touched."
Raif looked at her. "We don't have the materials to replace everything."
"Then burn what matters least," she replied. "But we don't keep it here. Not near us."
Rix nodded. "She's right. We don't know what this is, but it's still spreading. I say we make a pile and torch it by the latrine."
No one objected.
The group moved slowly, sorting tools and baskets, laying aside anything that looked affected. Goss tore strips from a cloak to use as makeshift masks.
Raif stood at the edge of the fire, his arms folded, gaze locked on the blackened trail left by the Lurker.
"We're guessing," Rix said quietly beside him. "Poking holes in fog and calling it strategy."
Raif didn't look at him. His eyes stayed on the jungle.
"We're bleeding. We're tired. But we're still watching. That might be the only thing it didn't expect.
Not still,never still,but quieter. The kind of silence that pressed against the ribs, that made every breath feel like trespass. Kael moved through it like smoke, not out of stealth, but because anything louder felt wrong. The rot trail was easy to follow. It wept down bark and soaked into roots, turning even the moss brittle beneath his feet.
He crouched. Ran a hand along the blackened ground.
The spores pulsed faintly. He didn't touch them with his fingers,just watched them shift in air currents that didn't belong.
Further on, the trail split.
One path sank into waterlogged ferns, thick with decay. The other twisted up a rise, over stone. The Lurker had gone upward. He could feel it,not a sound, not a scent. Just a wrongness that stayed ahead, just beyond.
He followed.
Every step deeper reminded him of something old. Not memory. Something in the blood. The land here didn't push him back. It watched him. Not as enemy. Not as friend. As puzzle.
He found claw marks etched into soft bark. Spiral patterns scorched into root. Places where nothing grew. And in one shallow grove, a circle of dry leaves with no wind to explain them.
He stayed there a long time.
Long enough to know it was gone.
Not far. Just... waiting.
When he turned back, he left no signs.
Only the weight of what he'd seen.
By the time the fire burned low to coals, the clearing had quieted again. Not with rest,no one slept,but with exhaustion that dulled even fear. A thin grey mist clung to the ground where the spores had settled, curling around boots and bare bark like the jungle itself was breathing beside them.
The sky lightened to a pale violet, not yet sunrise, but enough to make the night retreat.
Mira sat beside Naera, both of them silent. Naera's head leaned back against the wall, eyes half-lidded but still open. Mira's hand was resting just inches from hers. Neither reached out, but neither moved away.
Footsteps broke the stillness.
Heads lifted. Hands went to weapons.
Kael stepped from the trees.
His face was streaked with sweat, his clothes damp from dew and something darker. He held one of his stone knives in his hand,drawn, but not raised. His other hand was smeared with what looked like black sap.
He said nothing.
He walked straight past the fire, past Rix and Raif, and crouched beside the decaying wolf corpse. He touched it once at the neck, then looked to the trail of rot the Sporeback had left behind.
Only then did he look at Raif.
Raif met his eyes. "What did you find?"
Kael said nothing. He stood, moved to a patch of ground just beyond the others, and began to sketch something into the dirt with the tip of his blade.
A line. A curve. A spiral.
Raif knelt beside him.
Rix hovered, arms crossed. "That's the same shape. The one we saw out there, around the roots."
Kael nodded once.
"What does it mean?" Raif asked quietly.
Kael looked toward Naera.
Then he drew another spiral beside the first,this one smaller. Inside it, a rough mark shaped like an eye.
Mira whispered, "It's watching us."
Kael didn't nod. He didn't need to.
Raif exhaled slowly. "Right. Then we start planning for that."
Naera let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. She leaned forward slightly, hands resting on her knees, her voice quiet. "It feels like it never left. Like it's still watching, even now."
Syl, sitting cross-legged nearby, glanced toward the rot line and nodded. "It's like the jungle's breathing on our necks."
Lira added, "Every sound out there makes me feel like it's waiting for one of us to step too far."
Raif looked to Mira. "Thoughts?"
Mira hesitated, eyes fixed on the crude spiral. "I think it's testing us. Learning how we move. How we panic."
Hennick crossed his arms, brow furrowed. "Then we don't give it what it wants."
There was a pause.
Goss, slow to speak, finally said, "We need to build something stronger. Not just a wall. A warning. A line it can't cross."
Raif gave a nod. "Then tomorrow, we reinforce. We clear the rot. We burn what we have to. And we prepare. We need stronger weapons. Not just spears, something with range. Bows, arrows, slingshots. What we have works against bark wolves, but those Sporelurkers? We can't afford to get close."
Kael stood from where he'd drawn in the dirt. His face remained unreadable. But he placed a single small stone on top of the spiral. Then he turned away from the fire.
No one followed him.
But Mira's gaze lingered on the stone. Naera's too. As if the weight Kael had placed there wasn't just physical, but something carried from wherever he'd gone.
"It's not finished," Naera said softly.
Raif didn't answer. He didn't need to.
Because they all knew the truth now, the jungle was watching. Listening. Learning.
They knew, but they forgot in a moment of peace. This was a warning. A calm before the storm.