The morning after the summoning broke with pale grey light.
The rain had stopped, but the air felt heavier in its absence. Water clung to everything, reeds bowed under droplets, the cistern trench held a muddy sheen, and boots sank deeper into the half-set paths between shelters. Smoke from the fire pit drifted low across the ground, and someone had begun sorting rations again, slowly, methodically, like the act itself might stave off the silence.
Tessa was awake early. She sat cross-legged beside Syl, not speaking, not crying. Just sitting there, her back straight, eyes distant. Mira kept close, occasionally casting a look her way but not pushing. The girl hadn't spoken all morning, but she hadn't run either.
Goss was sharpening a hooked chitin knife under the awning. From time to time, he glanced toward the shelters where Fara worked alone, reinforcing a corner wall with makeshift bindings. She didn't acknowledge him. Raif caught the moment as he passed, the subtle pause in Goss's sharpening when their eyes met, and the way Goss just nodded once, as if to say, I'm watching. I'm trying.
Raif moved on. He didn't stop at the orb, though he looked at it in passing. It was dormant again, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat gone quiet. The summoning was done, but its echo remained in everything, how people moved, how they spoke, or didn't.
At the perimeter, he caught Kael's shape slipping between tree shadows. Kael gave no sign of having seen him, but Raif had no doubt he was being watched. Beside the wall, Lira stood with a bundle of scavenged cloth, quietly securing it between posts. She turned as Raif approached.
"Fara hasn't said much," Lira murmured. "But she's working. That's something."
Raif nodded. "And Tessa?"
"Mira's keeping her close. I think the quiet's part of how she processes things. But she hasn't broken."
Raif gave a short breath through his nose, not quite a laugh. "No. Not yet."
He moved on toward Rix. The jungle mist hung thick between the trees, clinging to bark and root like old breath. Raif stood at the edge of the clearing, watching the orb.
He hadn't slept much. Not because of nightmares, those had dulled into a hum by now, but because his mind refused to stop cataloguing what came next.
Five new people. One of them a child.
He exhaled slowly, then turned back toward the camp.
The clearing was already stirring. Mira was the first up, tending to the fire pit and checking on Syl, who still hadn't regained full consciousness. Naera moved quietly near the shelters, doing what she always did, cleaning, checking, moving forward.
Raif found Rix near the perimeter wall, eyes still and watchful.
"Thoughts?" Raif asked.
Rix didn't look away from the trees. "Bren's sharp. Dangerous, but sharp. The kind of person who'll do what needs doing, but maybe not how you'd like."
Raif nodded. "And the others?"
"Still watching. Daly's already picked apart the northern shelter. Loudly. Fara's not talking to anyone. Luan's like a wall."
Raif rubbed at the back of his neck. "I'll speak with Eloin and Mira. We need a read before we make mistakes."
He left Rix there and crossed toward the centre of camp. As he walked, he passed Fara sitting with her back to the logs, sharpening a bark slat into a point with a scavenged tool. She didn't look up. Tessa lingered by the fire pit, arms around her knees, watching Mira work. Bren passed Raif going the other way, already returning from a short patrol, eyes flicking once toward the tree line, then down to the mud. No wasted motion. No words.
Naera moved between them all like a thread, checking bindings, repacking baskets, brushing rain from half-dried bark sheets. She gave Raif a nod in passing.
He slowed for a moment, watching the camp breathe. It was alive, barely. Holding. But every person here carried a fracture now, lines running deep, held in place by work and proximity. It couldn't hold like this forever.
He found Eloin near the old kiln trench, now re-dug and marked with stones for the cistern. The older man was already laying out timber and bark panels. Daly was nearby, crouched by the trench and muttering about gradient and drainage.
"He's got hands," Eloin said without looking up. "But he builds like he's still in a tower."
Raif crouched beside him. "You knew him?"
Eloin's jaw tightened. "For a time."
Raif waited, but the man said nothing else. So he stood, nodding once. "Assign him where you need him. Just keep it workable."
Mira was easier to read. When Raif found her, she was cleaning bowls with Tessa hovering silently at her side.
"She trusts Syl," Mira said. "That's the only thing keeping her steady."
"And you?"
Mira gave him a tired smile. "I'm still standing. Naera is still here. What else is there?"
Raif smiled faintly. Then the air shifted, voices rising from the worksite. Not loud. But sharp.
He turned. Eloin and Daly were arguing.
Eloin stood with one boot braced against a stone slab, jaw tight, while Daly pointed sharply at a stretch of bark-lined trench.
"You can't run water across an incline this shallow without collapse," Daly said. "It'll flood. Pool. Back up. It's the wrong angle for anything you'd call efficient."
Eloin didn't flinch. "It's not meant to be efficient. It's meant to be finished. Before the next storm tears half the camp into the trees."
"So we should just throw together whatever works? Hope the jungle feels generous?"
"It's worked so far."
"It barely held!" Daly snapped. "You've built everything here like it's a village bakehouse, not a siege camp. This isn't craftwork anymore, it's survival."
"And what would you know of survival?" Eloin's voice was low now, dangerous. "You walked away from this. From me."
That made Daly pause, but only for a heartbeat.
"I walked because I wanted to build something that lasted," he said. "You were content with crude huts and half-joined corners. I outgrew that."
"You outgrew a roof over your head. That much is clear."
Lira appeared, arms full of bundled reeds, and stepped between them with barely veiled irritation. "Enough. We're not doing this here."
Neither man spoke, but neither backed down. Daly shook his head and turned away, grabbing a few pieces of barkwood and storming off toward the supply shelter.
Eloin stood a moment longer, shoulders rigid, before returning to the trench in silence.
Raif arrived just as Daly vanished from sight. Lira glanced his way, brow furrowed.
"I tried," she muttered.
"I saw."
Raif approached the trench. "You alright?"
Eloin didn't look up. "He's still the same. Just louder."
Raif sighed. "I'll speak to him. Give him some time first."
A few paces away, the wooden walls echoed faintly with each distant footfall. The fire crackled, and somewhere beyond it, Tessa's quiet humming drifted back across the mist. No one else approached, but several had noticed, Naera had paused mid-step. Mira's hands had stopped moving. Even Goss had looked up from his place under the half-covered tarp.
Lira crouched beside the trench and ran her hand through the wet soil, not speaking. Her fingers moved methodically, but her eyes were distant, locked on nothing. She didn't sigh or scoff, just quietly began sorting reeds, staying close to Eloin without asking permission.
Raif stood for a moment longer. He remembered once, long ago, Eloin mentioning an apprentice who had gone on to design skybridges in the southern isles. He hadn't used a name. Just a note of regret that the boy hadn't stayed long enough to understand the value of small things.
He turned slowly toward the path Daly had taken, eyes narrowing. The jungle mist was heavier there. Rain clung to every branch, a thousand quiet reminders of everything not yet built.
They didn't have time for fractures. But they were here, all the same.
Raif followed the soft scuff-marks in the mud toward the shelter Daly had vanished into. The bark-thatch door was partially open, swaying on its bindings. Inside, Daly sat on a low bench, stripping the bark from a slat with short, jerking strokes. He didn't look up when Raif entered.
"You here to tell me to apologise?" Daly muttered, eyes fixed on the sharp stone in his hands.
Raif stepped in slowly, arms loose at his sides. "No. Just want to know if you're staying."
Daly's hands paused. "Depends. Are we surviving, or pretending?"
Raif didn't answer right away. Instead, he looked around the shelter, half-finished, water pooled in one corner, tools stacked with care but no system. Order trying to form out of chaos.
"We're surviving," he said. "And trying not to lose each other while doing it."
Daly gave a short breath, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. "Eloin never changed. Still patching things with spit and prayer."
"He's still here," Raif said. "That counts for something."
Finally, Daly looked up. His eyes were tired, not angry now, but bitter. "I left to build something real. I thought maybe that meant something."
"It might," Raif said. "But you're here now. And what we're building here, it matters to the ones who've survived it."
Silence lingered.
Then Daly set the sharp stone aside and stood. "I'll finish building whatever it is that you want me to. Just don't expect me to pretend his way is the only one."
Raif nodded once. "Good enough."