The fever hadn't broken.
Syl lay beneath a woven bark mat, her body shivering despite the heat of the clearing. The green lines had crept further up her arm overnight, threading like moss through the veins beneath her skin. They pulsed faintly, almost imperceptibly, as though the spores inside her were moving with a rhythm of their own.
She twitched in her sleep. Her lips moved. Then came a whisper, broken and half-formed: "They're still there... waiting."
Eloin, crouched beside her with a mortar of crushed herbs, paused mid-motion. "She's dreaming again."
Raif stood a short distance away, arms folded, teeth clenched. He hadn't spoken for several minutes. His gaze was fixed not on Syl's arm or the spreading infection, but on her face. Waiting for something he couldn't name. Dreading it all the same.
"Keep her hydrated," Eloin said. He didn't look up. "If her pulse slips again, we'll try another mix. But it's not just fever. It's... something deeper."
Raif stepped forward. "Is it like the spore rot?"
Eloin shook his head. "Different. The roots twist through the ground. This feels like it's curling inward. Turning her own body against itself."
Syl stirred again. Her eyes opened, but they weren't fully awake. She stared at the sky, unblinking.
"They're inside," she whispered.
Raif knelt. "Syl. Can you hear me?"
Her eyes flicked toward him, but her focus didn't return. "One of them had your face," she muttered. "It wasn't you, though."
Hennick, nearby, sat up straighter. "That's... not good."
"She's hallucinating," Eloin said gently. "Delirium can twist things. Don't read too far into it."
But no one moved.
Lira stepped forward, her steps slow, deliberate. She knelt beside Syl and reached for her hand. The fingers were clammy, the skin beneath them hot.
"You're not going anywhere," Lira murmured. "You promised me we'd argue again tomorrow."
Syl's lips twitched. A ghost of her usual smirk, barely there.
"I didn't say I'd lose," she breathed.
Raif looked at the others. "No patrols until we know she's stable."
Eloin dabbed the sweat from Syl's brow. "She's not worsening as fast now. That's something. The paste is holding for now. Although I can't tell if it was those beetles that caused this or the spores that's in the air. It could be both for all we know."
Hennick crouched beside Lira. "You think she's going to make it?"
Lira didn't answer right away. She tucked a strand of damp hair behind Syl's ear. "I think if anyone could come back from this, it's her."
"But if she doesn't?" Hennick asked quietly.
Raif answered instead. "Then we make sure it doesn't happen again."
There was silence. It stretched long.
Finally, Lira stood and stepped back. "She needs rest. And space. Let her fight it."
Raif didn't move. His eyes stayed fixed on Syl. He remembered a moment before the summoning, just before the core had changed everything. Syl had once berated him for his overly cautious plans. Called him a coward, then smiled and handed him a rope she'd tied better than any knot he'd ever made.
He hadn't known he'd missed her until he saw her again. And now she was fading like smoke.
He turned away.
"Form teams," he said, voice steady. "We still have roots to find."
Raif lingered near the fire after giving the order. The others hadn't moved yet. The weight of Syl's condition still clung to them like smoke.
Mira stepped forward first. "Pair me with Kael and Naera," she said quietly.
Raif nodded slowly. "You sure?"
"She's calmer with me. And Kael..." Mira paused, glancing toward the jungle where the tracker had vanished again, "...he won't say much, but he'll see what we can't."
Naera stood beside Mira, holding her onto a sharpened piece of bark. "I'm ready."
Across the clearing, Lira looked back at Syl once more before approaching. "I'll go with Rix," she said. "He's good at spotting trouble, and I know the fungal ridge he wanted to check. Been close but not all the way."
Rix raised an eyebrow. "Was that a compliment?"
"Don't let it go to your head."
Eloin stood and dusted bark shavings from his hands. "Goss, Hennick and I will stay with you. She shouldn't be left alone for long. Plus, we should also rebuild the walls, lest we want more guests. "
Raif nodded. "Good. While you're all out there, I want Eloin, Goss, and Hennick to handle the second root we found yesterday."
He turned to them specifically. "You know where it is. Take the tools we prepped and burn it clean. Don't leave until it's done."
Eloin gave a curt nod. "We'll see it through."
He turned toward the assembled group. "We've found two already, and we're going to find the third today. Maybe more. We don't know how fast they grow or how deep. But we know they're killing this land, killing us.
He pointed to the crude bark map scratched into the dirt. "Each team goes a different route. East and south. You see anything spiral-shaped, or pulsing, or wrong, mark it, don't touch it. Use the shaved bark tags. Clear?"
Naera, Mira, and Lira all nodded. Kael, from the treeline, gave a subtle hand signal.
Rix glanced at Mira. "If anything comes crawling at you, scream twice. We'll know that's you."
"Appreciate the faith," Mira said.
Raif allowed himself a faint exhale through the nose. Not quite amusement. Not quite calm.
"And one more thing," he added. "If it moves like it's thinking... you run. You run fast."
The silence that followed was long and heavy.
Then Kael vanished into the trees, quiet as fog.
The patrols moved out soon after, each team heading into a different arm of the jungle. Behind them, Syl's fevered murmurs faded beneath the rustle of leaves and the hum of unseen life.
The path was quieter than usual. Lira led with a steady pace, bark-wrapped stone in hand. Rix trailed slightly behind, his eyes constantly scanning the edges of the trail. The silence between them wasn't tense, just measured, two people thinking through too many things at once. Rix carried a bundle of shaved bark tags and a split branch he'd sharpened at both ends.
Syl had stayed behind, though her protests had lingered in the air as they'd left.
"She should be here," Rix muttered. His thoughts align with using everyone and everything to solve the problems ahead. It didn't matter if someone was injuried. They could still help.
Lira gave him a sidelong glance. "She'd be dead by midday."
"Still-"
"She wasn't infected. She wasn't hallucinating either."
They moved east, toward a low rise where fungal clusters had recently bloomed. The air smelled of damp soil and decay, and the soil was uneven, clotted with roots and dark puddles that hissed softly when stepped in. Steam drifted lazily from vents in the cracked ground.
"You sure this is where you saw the spiral bloom?" Lira asked.
"Close. Maybe fifty steps past it. Kael was here previously with me, wasn't looking like this, though."
They crested the ridge. At the base of a rotted stump, Rix stopped. "Here."
Lira approached. The moss at the stump's base was too dark, too moist, as if mould had been soaking there for days. She bent down, using the flat of her weapon to peel it back. The movement revealed a knotted root, pale, slick, pulsing faintly beneath the surface.
"Third one," she said.
Rix planted a marker, then circled the stump, eyes catching something odd in the dirt. He nudged it with his foot, then crouched and dug with both hands. A shard of hard clay came loose, its edge scored with fine etchings.
"What do we have here..."
He wiped it off. The surface held lines, no language, but clearly designed. Half of a circular symbol. One clean edge. The other broken.
"Looks like another fragment. One was found a while ago, but this..." Taking it from him, Lira turned it over in her hands. "This wasn't buried deep."
"Maybe it wanted us to find it."
She arched a brow. "The jungle?"
"You said it yourself, it's copying what it sees. What if it's not just mimicking shapes? What if it's leaving us pieces on purpose?"
"That's not comforting."
"No," Rix said. "It's not."
They stood in silence for a beat longer, the pulsing of the spore root behind them like a second heartbeat in the soil.
"We'll show Raif," Lira said.
Rix slipped the fragment into his belt wrap, casting one last glance back at the root. "Yeah. Before the dirt tries to swallow it again. But let's deal with this first."
"I thought we were going to tag it?" Lira asked.
"You think that's the correct decision? Like the jungle will wait for us to be ready."
Lira scoffs and starts to cut away at the spore root.
On the other side of the jungle, Mira tracked Kael's path, noting where moss had curled upward from his steps, as if the ground rejected contact. It was eerily quiet, no insects, no birdsong. Even the air felt denser here, thick with the smell of fungus and something sweetly rotting beneath it.
Naera adjusted her grip on her stave, eyes scanning the canopy. "I don't like this place."
Kael raised a hand, stopping. Then two fingers forward. Mira nodded. They crept through the brush, feet silent on soft leaf rot. They passed a tree where the bark twisted into perfect spiral ridges, its trunk hollowed into a wide knot like an eye. Moss clung to it in tufts, but the space around it was bare, like even the ground had learned to avoid it.
Something shifted.
Not a sound exactly. More like a disturbance in the stillness.
A breeze that should not have come.
Mira felt it before she saw it, a pressure behind her eyes. She spun.
A shadow dropped from the canopy.
The creature landed hard, its mass bending a sapling sideways with the weight. Limbs unfolded, a ripple of iridescent chitin and snapping joints. It was huge, much bigger than an average human, its long legs clicking across bark and stone with delicate precision. Its eyes, dozens of tiny glints set across its face, reflected spirals of bioluminescent light from its shifting back.
It moved like it had already mapped them.
Kael dove aside as one leg slashed down, cutting into the earth where he'd stood.
Another figure dropped.
A second creature, smaller but no less terrifying, landed to their flank, its head twitching side to side. It hissed, not to scare them, but to signal. Coordination.
"They're hunting together," Mira whispered.
The larger creature lunged.
Mira tackled Naera to the ground just as a hooked forelimb sliced the air where her neck had been. The wind it carried stank of wet decay.
Kael flanked left, stone blade flashing. He struck the hind leg of the larger beast but had to retreat immediately, the second creature closing in from behind.
Naera pushed up, swinging her stave in a wide arc. It struck the smaller creature's leg, driving it back, barely.
The larger one pounced, mandibles gnashing.
Mira rammed her shoulder into its abdomen, forcing it back. She ducked a swipe and drove her stone blade upward into one of the glowing sacs along its back. It burst, spraying thick liquid that hissed against the soil.
"Kael!" she called.
He didn't answer, but he moved, ducking beneath the second creature and driving his blade into its thorax. It shrieked, flailing. Then it turned and leapt back into the trees, vanishing.
The larger one screamed.
Naera smashed its leg with her stave. It staggered. Mira leapt onto its back, stabbing again and again.
This time, it stayed down.
Naera stood over the creature's body, breathing hard. The chitin along its side still twitched in reflex. She crouched, inspecting the glowing sacs, the mandibles, the folded limbs. Whatever this thing was, it had come too close to killing them.
"We're not leaving empty-handed," she said quietly.
Mira looked over, still watching the trees. "You sure?"
"We need materials. We don't know how many more of these are out here."
Naera took one of her sharpened stone fragments and began carving through the softer plating beneath the creature's back. She cut free two long segments of its chitin shell, each curved and ridged with iridescent spirals. She found a bone-like claw at the rear leg joint and pried it loose, thick and pointed like a natural spearhead.
Kael moved beside her and offered a twisted vine to bind the pieces. Naera nodded and wrapped them quickly, then tucked them into a fold of bark cloth she'd been using as a sling.
"Let's go," Mira said. "We don't want to be out here when more arrive."
Naera gave the body one final glance. "If these can be shaped into tools... we might have just found our first proper weapons."
Kael stood, one hand pressed to his side. Blood flowed through his fingers.
Naera dropped to her knees beside him. "Hold still."
He didn't flinch. Mira watched the trees, breath heaving, weapon still gripped.
"We need to get back," Naera said, quieter now.
Kael gave a slight nod.
Together, they left the clearing. Behind them, the broken shape twitched once, then lay still among the ruined spirals.