Chapter 16: The First Fang
Silence fell crooked, the kind that comes after a shout, after a fight, after the world holds its breath to see who's still standing. The mist sagged back into the trees, and the Thornveil's hum lowered from a scream to a bruise. Dead beasts smoked on damp earth, blue light guttering under their hides like embers dying in wet wood.
Hale planted his spear, shoulders squared against the pain he wasn't talking about. His breath rasped hard between clenched teeth, and the way his hand hovered over his ribs said there'd be blooming purple under the cuirass by nightfall.
Elvi rolled her shoulder twice, checking that nothing clicked wrong, then crouched by the nearest corpse and cut cleanly, quick as a butcher, prying free a cooling core the size of a walnut.
Lysera reloaded in the quiet, methodical, eyes always lifting back to the fog like a hunter who didn't trust the lull.
Thorek leaned on his hammer with a grin that hadn't learned prudence, soot streaked across his cheek where blood had splashed and smoked.
Noll stood with his ward still flickering around his forearm, thin and shaky but real, eyes wide, face pale, hands trembling with the kind of exhaustion that comes when the fear finally slips its fingers off your spine. He stared at the shield like he'd grown a second heart.
Rook paced, ribs heaving, silver eyes bright as coin in moonlight. Blood darkened his muzzle, clung to his throat in a tacky necklace. Twice he sank back on his haunches as if a weight pressed from inside, a tremor passing through him that raised his hackles, then he shook it off, snorted, and kept pacing, tail low but steady.
Elias lowered his spear only when his pulse stopped trying to climb through his teeth. The blue veins Thorek had etched into the shaft faded to a dim thread, his hands still buzzing with leftover resonance like he'd been holding a live wire that finally let go. He wasn't steady, not really, but he was upright, and every breath didn't taste like metal, that counted as a win.
"Report," Hale said, flat as stone.
"Elvi," Lysera said, eyes still on the fog, "two arrows down, one retrieved, no break."
"Fine," Elvi said, and if there was satisfaction under it, she let it be dry, "four shots, four kills, and I almost got eaten once, so call it even."
Thorek slapped his hammer's head twice, content as a drum. "Two skulls cracked and a shoulder turned to porridge, pity the big one had bones like ironwood."
Noll swallowed, lifted his arm like it weighed a mile. "I, held," he said, as if admitting it might break it, "for a bit, then it felt like it was going to come apart, then it didn't, then it did again, then"
"It held when it had to," Hale cut in, not unkind, then jerked his chin at Elias, "you."
Elias looked at the alpha's body, the large heap of fur and muscle slumped in a dark crescent against the roots, the throat torn where Rook had taken what the fight demanded. He rubbed a knuckle along his jaw, beard rough under his skin, and forced the words out honest.
"I felt them before I saw them," he said, "like drum hits in the chest, one at two o'clock, one behind, two low left, then five, then the big one, each step like someone pounding the Loom with a mallet, I called angles because they were already in my bones." He lifted the spear a hair. "And when the howl hit, when everything shook, I… pushed. Not into the weapon. Into you."
Lysera finally took her gaze off the trees. "Into us," she repeated, cool and precise, as if tasting each syllable for poison, "describe it."
"Like," Elias groped, then found it, "like you were all candles, and the wind hit, and I cupped a hand around the flame, not the prettiest metaphor, but it's what I've got."
Noll blinked hard. "It felt like that," he whispered, wonder creeping around the edges of his voice, "it was going to go out, and then something… steadied it."
Lysera's jaw tightened. "You steadied my weavel too," she said, and there was no accusation in it, only a ledger's need for accuracy, "no one does that."
Thorek snorted. "Shortstack's a walking forge bellows," he declared with cheerful certainty, "blows the right way, the fire holds, blows the wrong way, your eyebrows vanish, ask me how I know."
Elvi cut him a side eye. "How do you know," she deadpanned.
Thorek grinned wider. "Eyebrows grew back crooked, that's how."
Hale's attention never left Elias. "Can you do it again," he asked, not like a demand, but like a man testing the weight of a bridge before marching across.
"I don't know," Elias said, because he wasn't going to put steel on hopes he hadn't tempered, "it wasn't a button I pushed, it was more like being the center of a rope, everything pulling, and I pulled back, kept the rope from snapping, that's all I've got, and if I try to force it, I'll probably break something I don't mean to."
Lysera's mouth flattened, thought moving fast behind her eyes. "Then we treat it like a blade that cuts two ways," she said, "use it when we must, not when we want."
"Story of my life," Elias muttered, rolling his shoulder until it popped. He frowned at Elvi carving into the beast's chest. "What the hell are you doing? Why cut it open if it's already dead?"
Elvi didn't look up. "Taking the core. Every beast's got one. Better in our hands than rotting in theirs."
Elias blinked. "Core?"
Lysera finally glanced his way. "Threadbeasts aren't just flesh and claw. They're resonance made bone. When they die, it condenses—like this." She held up a shard she'd just pried free, faintly glowing blue in the dusk. "A Thread core. Useful to those who know how."
Thorek grinned, wiping soot and blood from his beard. "And dangerous to those who don't. Handle 'em wrong, shortstack, and they'll hum you inside out."
Elvi had already filled a small pouch with the cooler flickers from lesser beasts. "We take what we can carry," she said, "no use letting them burn out on rot."
Rook stopped pacing and stared at the alpha again. That tremor moved through him a second time, subtler, like a ripple under fur. He lowered his head as if to go back in for a second bite at whatever power had been in that throat.
"Hey," Elias said, low and firm, "enough." The cub's ears flicked, and he lifted his head, eyes on Elias, the command landing like a tug at a line between them. He whined once, not quite protest, not quite apology, and stepped back, pressing his shoulder against Elias's calf as if to remind the world whose side he'd chosen.
Lysera took that in with the same quiet attention she used on traps. "He hears you better," she said, "more than he did yesterday."
"Feels," Elias corrected without thinking, fingers drifting to the fur between Rook's ears, "like he feels me a second sooner."
Hale shifted, a small wince escaping despite his training. "And if he stops feeling you," he said, the question honest, not hostile, "if he turns."
Elias's spine went cold, then hot. "Then I'll be the one to end it," he said, flat as a blade laid on a table, "but he's not turning, he's ours."
Rook made a small chuff at the word ours, as if in agreement, tail giving one small thump against Elias's boot.
Thorek blew out a breath through his mustache. "He fought like a good lad," the dwarf said, a rare softness threading under the gravel, "kept his teeth on the right throats."
Elvi's gaze flicked between wolf and man. "I've trusted worse men with less reason," she said, and left it there.
"Enough talk," Hale said at last, authority settling back over the squad like a cloak put on out of habit, "we move before the fog decides it wants us again, Elvi, lead on the quieter path, Lysera, trim the Loom behind us, Thorek, take the heavy carcass if you must drag something, Noll, if you're going to fall over, do it when we're under a roof,"
"I'm fine," Noll lied, then swayed, then caught himself, cheeks hot, "mostly."
"Foot in front of foot," Elias said, nudging the boy's shoulder with the butt of his spear, "you did good, now don't celebrate yourself into a tree."
They moved, not fast, but with that survivor's efficiency that wastes neither breath nor blade. Lysera skimmed threads as they went, trimming resonant snag lines with delicate gestures so no hungry pattern could follow the taste of their fight.
Elvi ghosted point, picking a path that didn't snap twigs or clang boot on stone. Thorek grumbled cheerfully to the hammer about glorious skulls and how next time he wanted something bigger to insult, Hale kept pace like pain was a stranger he'd nod to but not invite in.
Noll set his jaw and walked where Elias walked, watching how the man placed his feet when the ground went slick or the roots twisted mean.
Rook trotted tight to Elias's side, ears pricked, gaze cutting the gloom like knives. Twice he stopped, turned his head toward nothing any of them could see, and twice Elias felt the faintest itch of resonance in that same direction, like a mosquito he couldn't swat, and twice the itch faded before becoming teeth.
They reached the temple's shadow by bruised dusk. The ruin's broken archways loomed out of the fog, familiar now, almost kind, if a ruin could be kind. They slipped through the veil quiet threshold and into the wide nave where their firepit's scorched stones waited, black in the half light.
The air inside hummed steadier, the old place's presence pressing down the Thornveil's wild song the way a father's hand settles a child's tantrum. The Roman bones of it, the long lines, the carved friezes dust dulled and stubborn, made something in Elias's chest ease a fraction.
They lit flame, small and tight, and the smell of smoke and old ash did what it always did, pulled the world into a smaller circle where breathing made sense. Elvi portioned dried meat and a bit of boiled grain, Thorek pretended not to notice he'd taken the largest share until Elvi smacked his wrist with a spoon and he made a wounded sound that fooled no one.
Hale eased down against a pillar with a grunt made of iron and denial. Lysera sat with her back to stone and her eyes to the door, as if she'd stitched a hinge to her spine that would yank her upright if anything changed. Noll nearly fell onto a bedroll and still tried to look like he'd meant to.
Elias sank cross legged and Rook climbed into the pocket made by his knees, heavier than last week, warmer, the heartbeat against Elias's palm strong and quick. The cub's silver eyes weren't as bright as they'd been an hour ago, but they held that new deepness, like peering down a well and knowing the water glinted farther than you could see.
Hale waited until hands were occupied and mouths were full. "Say it plain," he told Elias, low, the command stripped of sharp edges by fatigue, "what you did out there, you'll do it again if it keeps us breathing, but I need to know when it fails."
Elias chewed, swallowed, wiped a thumb over his bottom lip. "When I'm empty," he said, "same as any push, different tool, same cost, you've seen me burn out." He tapped his sternum, the memory of lantern like veins hot and wrong. "I'm not eager to hit that wall again, but if it's this or the grave, I'll take the hit."
Lysera's gaze cut between them, quick and cold as a blade. "We'll test," she said, and Elias didn't miss the small shift, from we as a squad to we as in the two who understood words like frequency and seam, "slowly, with rules, you are not a river we can just draw from because we like the shine."
Thorek swallowed a mouthful and declared, "He's a cask then, not a river, and I say we keep the tap for bad days and holy days,"
Elvi snorted into her cup. "Save the sermons for when the wine's worth it."
Noll looked from face to face, something fierce kindling behind the bone tired. "He saved us," the boy said, not to argue, just to stake the flag of a fact in the ground, "I felt it. Like he was holding a rope I was dangling from, and I, I don't care if that's not supposed to happen," his jaw hitched, "I like not dying."
"No one's saying otherwise," Hale said, and if there was a ghost of a smile, it didn't reach his eyes, "I want him alive enough to do it again."
Elias huffed a thin laugh. "Appreciated."
Rook huffed too, as if sharing the joke, then pressed his head under Elias's hand with the stubborn insistence of a creature who had decided a thing and would not be moved. The tremor that went through him this time was smaller, more like a shiver at the edge of sleep than that earlier ripple from the core. He settled, breathing evening, eyes half lidding as the fire threw small gold up the walls.
Lysera watched the cub for a long time, then looked at Elias. "He is not ordinary," she said, not softening the truth, "he never was, now he is less so." A beat. "We will need to teach him too. Boundaries. Signals. Words he can hold."
"He's already got a few," Elias said, rubbing between Rook's ears, "come, stay, heel, and a universal 'no' he pretends to misunderstand." He lifted a corner of his mouth. "Same as most recruits."
Thorek wagged a spoon. "Break him of chewing boots before he chews the wrong one and gets a mouthful of dwarf."
"Try me," Elias said without heat, "I'll teach him your boot first."
That pulled a tired chuckle from more than one throat, and for a minute the ruin felt like a place people lived instead of a hole where they hid. The kind of minute that patched a seam you didn't see had torn.
When the food was down to crumbs and the fire had settled into its own slow heartbeat, Hale pulled the strap of his cuirass loose with a hiss and leaned back until the pillar took his weight. "We hold here tonight," he said, "tomorrow we clean the floor where we bled, tomorrow we set drills again, tomorrow we see if the Loom's calmed enough to let Lysera teach without the walls listening."
"Damn," Elias muttered, not really complaining, "and here I was hoping for a day of doing nothing and liking it."
"You don't sit well," Elvi said, amused, "you'd carve circles into the floor with your pacing inside of an hour."
He shrugged. "Fine, I hate being useless."
Lysera turned a bit of charcoal between finger and thumb. "You are far from that," she said, matter of fact, then added, because she could not help but keep an edge, "which makes you dangerous in more ways than one."
"Add it to the list," he said, and let the quiet fold back over them.
Outside, the Thornveil breathed its slow, patient breath. Distant howls answered one another like questions passed between hills, but none pressed the temple's threshold. The old stone held. The carved friezes along the walls warriors, weavers, figures with spears lifted toward a sky cut in lines, caught firelight in shallow grooves, the stories half erased by time but not surrendered.
Elias leaned his head back against a fallen block and let himself feel tired. Not the hollow tired from bleeding out thread by thread, but the clean ache that followed work done and a fight won without losing someone to pay the bill. His eyes slid shut for a breath, for two, and he almost saw the street back home, late afternoon heat buckling over asphalt, the shape of a little girl's hand he never reached. He opened them before the picture could set, because he'd learned sometimes mercy was choosing not to look.
Rook's weight anchored his legs. The squad's breathing slowed into a rough chorus. Hale snored once like a man who would deny it to his grave. Thorek mumbled to his hammer about better grips and brighter sparks. Elvi turned an arrowhead between finger and thumb as if it were a coin and the future a bet. Lysera watched the door until the watching turned into sleep with her eyes half open, a trick born from too many nights in bad places. Noll's mouth opened just enough to make a whistling note on each exhale, a boy's body refusing to remember it had nearly died until morning.
Elias let himself sink until the stone took his weight, until the fire's crackle became the only measure of time he needed, until the hum in his chest stopped trying to be a war drum and settled for the steady beat of a heart that, for now, was allowed to keep doing its job.
"Good work," he murmured, not sure if he meant the squad, the cub, himself, or some hand he didn't believe in and still challenged out of habit, "we'll make a home out of this ruin yet."
Rook's tail thumped once, a soft drum on stone, as if to say, we already started.
Outside, the Thornveil listened, and,for one night, did not disagree.