Mira reached the shelter first. She dropped to her knees beside Syl and barked out, "Hold her down!" before anyone else could catch up. Syl was writhing on the ground, her entire body seizing in spasms that made her limbs thrash violently against the bedding of barkleaf and dry moss.
Naera ducked inside right behind her, rushing to Syl's other side. She grabbed her legs and pinned them down, teeth grit against the effort. "She's burning up."
Raif shoved past the entrance, eyes scanning the chaotic tangle of limbs and bedding. "Eloin! Goss!" he shouted. "Get in here!"
Lira lingered at the threshold for just a moment too long, frozen by the sound of Syl's hoarse, choking breaths. Then Mira's voice cut across the room again, sharp and commanding. "Lira! Water, now! Use the covered pot!"
That snapped her out of it. She turned and sprinted.
Eloin and Goss entered together, Hennick just behind them, leaning on his walking stick but still moving fast. Goss dropped to his knees, reaching out before pausing in horror. "Her arm,"
The wounded arm was twice its normal size, flushed dark and swollen, the veins spiderwebbing outward in a sickly green-grey. Moisture beaded across her skin, but not sweat. It glistened like sap.
"She's infected," Mira said, grabbing a dampened moss pad and pressing it to Syl's forehead. "Spore corruption. Rapid onset."
Eloin crouched beside her and gently peeled back a bark binding around the wound. "This wasn't like this before. I checked it myself. She was fine."
"She wasn't fine," Mira snapped. "She was incubating."
Syl suddenly convulsed, arching upward in a violent spasm that nearly threw Mira off her. A sound tore out of her throat, part scream, part gasp, and her eyes rolled white.
"Hold her!" Mira shouted again. "Naera, brace her head! Goss, give me something , anything, to put between her teeth!"
Goss looked around wildly and grabbed a short piece of bark. He hesitated, then slipped it carefully into Syl's mouth. She bit down with a force that made the bark creak.
"Raif!" Mira barked. "Get more bindings. Hennick, rope, or vine, whatever you can find."
Outside, the camp had gone quiet. The rest of the group was gathering, drawn by the shouting.
Inside the shelter, the air was heavy with heat, the smell of damp wood, and something else, a faint, fungal sweetness clinging to the back of their throats.
Syl's body stopped convulsing after another long moment. Her breathing turned ragged, shallow, gasping. Her eyes fluttered but failed to focus.
Then, her mouth moved.
Mira leaned closer, her fingers on Syl's pulse. "She's trying to speak."
A rasp escaped Syl's lips, barely more than a whisper. "Rina... Rina, don't leave them... too many... too loud..."
Naera shifted closer, brow furrowed. "What did she say?"
Lira froze.
"Rina," Syl murmured again, her voice trembling. The name drifted not from hallucination, but memory, deep and buried, a tether to something lost and real. "The gate was wrong... they said three... but there were four..."
Goss leaned over. "Who's Rina?"
Lira's mouth opened slightly, then closed. Her voice was barely audible. "My sister."
Everyone looked at her.
"I never said it," she continued. "Because I thought she died. Syl knew her."
Syl's head rolled slightly. "Lira... don't go... don't let them in..."
Mira looked up. "She's delirious, but these aren't random. These are memories."
Raif spoke quietly, kneeling beside her. "She might be reliving something. Something tied to this infection."
Lira didn't speak. She stared at Syl, pale, shaken.
Syl's voice dropped to a rasp again. "Behind the veil... not done... Rina..."
Her breathing slowed again. Mira pressed a fresh moss pad to her forehead. "That's it. She's slipping back under."
The silence that followed wasn't just exhaustion. It was something else. Something bigger.
Mira leaned back, panting. The moss pad was soaked. She tossed it aside and grabbed another, pressing it to Syl's neck. "We've slowed it," she said. "But not stopped it."
Rix stood just inside the entrance, his face pale but jaw locked. "This is it. This is what I was talking about."
No one responded.
He stepped further in, voice lower but no less firm. "It learns. It punishes. And now it's inside us."
Raif knelt beside her. "What do we do now?"
Mira didn't answer. Not yet.
They moved Syl to the edge of the shelter, where the air flowed better. She lay still, unconscious now, her breaths shallow but steady. The others gathered around the fire just outside, a ring of uneasy silence settling over them.
Lira stared into the flames, arms wrapped tightly around her chest. Her face was pale, eyes flickering with something sharp beneath the surface. The name 'Rina' echoed in her mind, stirring something old and unresolved. "She was walking this morning," she murmured. "She joked about Eloin's snoring."
No one spoke.
She looked up slowly, her gaze drifting from the fire to the shelter where Syl lay. "I don't get it. I've fixed walls. Repaired the damn fence three times. Stitched bark tight with cord, hammered slats into place until my hands bled."
Her voice grew louder, sharper. "But what the hell do I do when someone I know is dying right in front of me?" She threw her arms out. "What do I even offer her?"
Mira opened her mouth but Lira kept going.
"I don't have herbs. I don't have a past full of battlefield triage or jungle surgery. I've got calluses and sarcasm and a half-healed leg. That's it. And now she's..." she gestured vaguely, "...burning up from the inside, and I can't lift a finger."
Goss shifted beside her, voice low. "You're here. That counts for something."
Lira scoffed. "So is the dirt. Doesn't mean it helps."
Raif stepped closer. "You matter. We all do. That's the only reason this hurts."
Lira didn't respond. She just stared back into the fire, jaw clenched tight enough to ache.
Goss sat on a log with his hands on his knees, staring at the dirt. "I should've seen it. Her balance was off. She coughed earlier. Thought it was the smoke."
"You can't blame yourself," Raif said.
"Can't I?" Goss muttered.
Eloin crouched near the fire, stirring a small pot just to keep his hands busy. "It could've happened to any of us. Might still."
"Rix was right," Naera said quietly. "The jungle is watching us. This isn't random."
Rix said nothing at first. He stood slightly apart from the others, arms crossed. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured. "It's testing. Learning. Sending signals and watching what we do next."
Mira emerged from the shelter, wiping her hands on a piece of moss. "We've slowed the fever. That's all. The corruption's still moving."
Everyone looked at her.
"How long?" Raif asked.
She shook her head. "Hours. A day. No more."
The orb pulsed.
A faint green shimmer danced across the clearing, too soft to cast shadows but enough to still every breath.
[New Threat Identified – Spore Corruption]
[ Symptom Onset: Unpredictable. Pathogenic. Fungal integration.]
[Status: Irreversible without direct removal.]
[Suggested Response: Purify infected biomass. Risk: High.]
Silence followed. Even the insects fell quiet.
"What the hell does that mean?" Goss asked, his voice hoarse.
"Direct removal," Mira said. "It means amputation."
Lira stood abruptly, her eyes wide. "You can't be serious."
"She'll die if we don't," Mira said. "The spread is accelerating. If it reaches her lungs-"
"There has to be another way," Goss cut in. "An antidote, a method, something."
"We haven't found one," Eloin said. "And we've been here long enough to know how rare answers are."
Naera knelt beside the fire, her voice quiet. "If this is what the jungle leaves behind... how do we fight it?"
Rix's jaw was tight. "We don't. Not like this. We change the way we fight."
Raif looked between them all. The circle felt smaller, tighter. Like the trees were leaning in.
"We're not doing anything yet," he said. "No choices. Not until we have to."
Later, after the group had quieted and the fire had burned low, Mira stood just outside the shelter. Her arms were crossed, her face unreadable, eyes fixed on the jungle's edge.
Raif approached slowly, stopping a few paces behind her. "You staying up?"
She didn't look at him. "Someone has to."
He hesitated. "You did good in there."
"She's still dying," Mira replied. "That's not good."
Raif stepped up beside her. "You've done this before."
"One other time," she said. "Didn't save them either."
Raif glanced at her. "What happened?"
Mira didn't answer right away. Her voice was quieter when she spoke again. "We were holed up near the edge of a saltflat. Four of us, two wounded. I tried to cut early, thought I'd caught the rot in time."
She looked down at her hands. "Her name was Cinna. Too young. Too stubborn. She screamed the whole time. Died anyway, before sunrise."
Raif said nothing. Just stood there with her, the silence stretching between them like thread.
Mira's voice turned harder. "You make the call, Raif, and you carry it. Doesn't matter if it was right. Doesn't matter if they asked you to. You carry it."
They stood in silence for a few breaths.
"I'm supposed to decide what to do," Raif said. "And I don't even know if there's a right choice here."
"There isn't," Mira said. "There's just the one you can live with."
He nodded slowly, then looked at her. "You trust me to make that call?"
Mira finally turned to him. Her expression was hard to read, not cold, but distant. "You haven't gotten us killed yet."
A faint flicker from the orb danced across the camp.
[Warning – Spore Spread Progressing]
Mira's eyes drifted back toward the shelter. Raif followed her gaze. He didn't speak again.
He didn't know if he was strong enough to make the wrong choice, not again. Not with everyone watching, hoping he would carry them through the impossible.
He only turned to Eloin and said quietly, "Prepare everything. Just in case."