"On me," Evan said, adjusting the line with two fingers like a conductor telling cellos to breathe. "Left pocket. We bait it."
The fog bulged.
Two wakes braided under the pale dirt - a paired approach pushing one idea through two mouths. The soft patch waited left center, two inches of loam over rock like a lie that expected to be believed.
"Hold center. Make it choose," Evan said. "Shield seam low. Blades ready to count to three."
The first elite surfaced with the sound a knife would make if it could inhale. Plates met light; the head threw a wedge toward the gap. Shields kissed and dropped. The wedge found rock instead of groove and skated, showing that proud seam. Two blades bit. The third blade hovered for the partner that always comes when a hunter says alone.
"Second will curl right," Evan said. "See the wake."
It curled left to prove him wrong. The corpses he had dragged an hour felt like a week ago had learned a new job and did it - the body wall turned the curl into a slow climb. Slow made angles honest. The third blade finally had a promise worth keeping.
The first elite thrashed and tried to bite down through iron. Iron did not care. The second rose, nostrils tasting the shield buzz, then slumped when it met weight and plan.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][BLACK IRON INGOT × 5][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1][RANK STONE: BLACK IRON - LOWER × 1]
[LOOT ACQUIRED][BLACK IRON INGOT × 4][DESERT MIST LIZARD LEATHER × 6]
"Repair first," Evan said. "Sword two has a curl taken out. One ingot. Quick."
He slid through the membrane, the Territory Shield brushing his skin like a static warning. Inside, the Hut smelled of resin and a standing decision. He touched the Workbench.
[WORKBENCH: ONLINE][REPAIR - SHORT SWORD EDGE][REQUIRED: BLACK IRON INGOT × 1][STATUS: AVAILABLE]
Metal grew honest again with a soft line of heat. He put it back into the soldier's hand and felt the rhythm get its breath.
Fog thickened, then thinned. Regular lizards resumed, insulted to be arithmetic after the pair. Evan let them be fences for his lesson. He did not chase. He made angles. He made them choose.
Three more bodies added to the wall. Leather went into straps. Two ingots became a brace for a shield rim. He kept the last cores in his pocket like quiet options.
World Channel poked at him.
[UNKNOWN RACE / ID: 19,043]: The human line sings.][HUMAN - EARTH / ID: 9,201,772]: Gate gives civilians today. Why do you have soldiers already -][UNKNOWN RACE / ID: 2,881]: The smell of certainty is closer.]
"Mute," he said, steady. He was not a rumor. He was a field.
The Pulse pushed hard once more as if to make a point. Three variants slid on a stagger. "Late first," Evan said. Shields obeyed the sentence, not the lure. Two beats, then one. Chime, chime. The third tried to learn and failed like a student who confuses applause with understanding.
[LOOT ACQUIRED][BLACK IRON INGOT × 3][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 1]
Leather stacked like the start of a ledger. Ingots found uses faster than greed could count them. He let the Workbench drink a few and still kept a shape in his head that the Gate would accept when he wanted another shield.
"How long?" one soldier asked without turning his head.
"Until it stops trying to impress us," Evan said. "Or until it thinks it has impressed us."
The air grew colder - not weather, but attention deciding whether to stay. The fog's sound loosened. Lizards came single again, not in chorus, and died like arithmetic, not like a plan. The body wall hummed with flies that hadn't learned their job yet.
He looked down at his hands and discovered they were steady. He had found the pocket in the machine and sat there like a coin that refused to pass. The Gate's hum behind his spine kept time.
The panel slid down with the restrained pride of a clerk who enjoys a well-filled form.
[SYSTEM NOTICE][LOCAL EVENT: INITIAL PULSE - COMPLETED][REWARD ISSUED: BLUEPRINT - PALISADE WALL (FRAGMENT) × 1]
"Good," Evan said. "We bank it. No build while the fog is paying attention."
He did not click through to admire the fragment. He tucked it where future could find it and present could ignore it. A regular lizard tried a short rush, changed its mind when it met a shield, and learned regret.
"Field check," Evan said. "Say it back to me."
"Pocket just outside the shield," said the first soldier. "Bodies for terrain. We kill on angles. We do not chase."
"Repair between waves," said the second. "Spend little, spend on edges."
"Make the soft patch where you want the boast to trip," said the third. "Then teach it what stone feels like."
"Good. Again."
They did it again. The line became boring - the most dangerous and necessary thing. Chime did the bookkeeping. He trained himself to hear it as inventory, not applause.
The Pulse was over, but the fog did not leave. It changed its question. The paired-approach did not return. Instead a single body bigger than any lizard so far pressed the gray like a knee under a blanket.
"Size," Evan said. "But not our size yet." He felt for the idea of panic and did not find it. It was busy elsewhere.
The thing stopped at the far edge of sight and scraped earth the way a man would clear his throat before lying. Then it went away like someone who had learned your door but not your schedule.
"Count inventory," Evan said. "Quietly."
Inside the Hut, the Workbench smelled like decisions again. He let the panel render the shape of what they had.
[INVENTORY - SUMMARY][BLACK IRON INGOT × 22][DESERT MIST LIZARD LEATHER × 38][MONSTER CORE (BLACK IRON - LOWER) × 6][RANK STONE: BLACK IRON - LOWER × 4][BLUEPRINT FRAGMENT: BASIC WORKBENCH × 2][BLUEPRINT: PALISADE WALL (FRAGMENT) × 1]
Enough for comfort, not for arrogance. Enough to be a target if he acted like one.
He looked at the Gate. The last token shape he held in his head sat there like a coin waiting to be spent. Four shields held a line well. Five would let him bend the line and keep it bent. But every soldier was also a bell rung in the fog.
He thought of Earth and the line between representing and painting a target on a map. The thought left a clean taste in his mouth. Not sweet. Not bitter. Useful.
"Decision," he said to himself and then out loud so the field would hear it too. "We fortify. Then we expand."
"Orders, My Lord?" asked the first soldier.
"We pull the wall in," Evan said. "We clean the ground. We build when the fog is most bored. That is not now."
They dragged the bodies further out, making a messy crescent at the far limit of the kill pocket. It would draw scavengers to a place that wasn't his door. Leather went into a thicker sling. He set a small cross of stones at the exact place where he'd had to say now earlier - a private marker, not a ritual. The fog pretended not to notice and failed.
World Channel peppered again, smelling like someone else's kitchen.
[HUMAN - EARTH / ID: 9,331,710]: If your shield is flickering, layer bodies on the outside. It steals angles.][UNKNOWN RACE / ID: 12,880]: The human with the certainty is still singing.][HUMAN - EARTH / ID: 9,118,003]: Confirm - drops real. Build slow. Do not perform.]
He left the advice there like a nail in a wall. He didn't need to argue with it.
He set the Palisade Wall fragment on the Workbench only long enough for his eyes to memorize its edge count and join pattern. The thing wanted wood and sand and men who could measure. He had wood. Sand would come if you looked at a desert long enough. Men who could measure would come through the Gate if he asked the right way.
"Token," he said softly. Not now. Soon.
The Gate pulsed at the edge of hearing, a dog at heel. He kept it there.
"Food," he said abruptly, and the word surprised him by sounding like strategy. He ate standing in the doorway with the panel open and the shield hum in his gums like a tooth you can't ignore.
The sun - if that was a sun - shrugged at the fog and made the clearing a coin flip between light and gray. The corpse crescent drew flies that were learning their first day on this continent. He considered naming them and didn't. Names were for tools and debts.
A ripple in the fog said small, not elite, and he let the men take it without a command to see what the line had remembered. The line remembered well. He gave one correction and a quiet approval he didn't spend aloud. The chime paid them anyway.
"Workbench," he said, when the air was flat again. "Open."
[WORKBENCH: ONLINE][BLUEPRINT: PALISADE WALL - FRAGMENT][REQUIREMENTS (PER SEGMENT): WOOD ×50 · FINE SAND ×50 · STONE ×50 · FOG HEART (BLACK IRON) ×1][STATUS: PARTIAL - ADDITIONAL FRAGMENTS REQUIRED TO ASSEMBLE FULL BLUEPRINT.]
So not building yet. Good. The fog would have read urgency as permission to interrupt. He closed the pane with a thought that felt like tucking a letter into a desk and locking it.
A thin voice at the edge of the clearing tried to be large.
[UNKNOWN RACE / ID: 2,991]: Smell ended. Taste begins.]
The line of his back did not change. He set the cross of stones another inch to the left so the soft patch would grow in the wrong place for smart things.
"Soldiers," he said. "We clean the close ground to the left and right. Twenty paces. Shields touching. We do not break the pocket. If the fog decides to be proud, we teach it bored again."
They went. Not a parade. A method. Evan took the inside angle so the shield hum would keep touching his knuckles. It made the difference between edge and mistake.
A single lizard tried an opinion. The shield made it polite. The blade made it agree. He let the men handle the rest of the sentence.
The ground learned to look like a place that had survived something and wanted to stay that way.
Back at the Hut he let himself stand still in the doorway long enough to admit that stillness could be work too. He touched the Gate frame and counted the cores he could spend without telling the fog a story he couldn't finish.
"Not yet," he said to the Gate. "Soon."
The fog carried the word like a rumor and did nothing useful with it.
He set his palm on wood.
[SAVE STATE - TERRITORY SNAPSHOT CREATED.]
"Good clerk," he said to the panel without smiling. "Now we can afford to be clever later."
The horizon of gray wrinkled to the north - not a weight, not a glide. A different wrong. The kind that had more hands than a lizard and fewer than a crowd.
Evan weighed the last token shape in his head against the quiet blueprint in his pocket and the hum at his back.
"We take a look," he said, already stepping to the edge of the pocket where the shield brushed his knuckles. "Slow. If it is bored, we let it stay bored. If it is proud, we choose the door it hates most."
He set the stones one more inch where they would later matter and pointed his men at the north.
"Left pocket," he said. "Again."