The ambush came at dusk.

  They were following the canyon floor, spines rising on either side like the ribs of a buried titan, when the first arrows whistled from the ridges. One cracked into the stone by Ren’s head. The second buried itself in the pack of the man behind him, spinning him around before he dropped without a sound.

  “Cover!” Sinclair roared. He yanked Ren toward a jut of stone, just as another volley clattered against the canyon walls.

  Shapes moved above. Not beasts this time—men. Dozens of them, their ragged forms silhouetted against the bruised sky. They chanted as they came, voices raw and fervent. Spiral brands painted their arms and faces, their weapons little more than scavenged steel bound with resin.

  The warband descended in a wave. Some leapt down the ridges, heedless of broken legs. Others scrambled like animals, their movements jerky and wrong. They didn’t cry battle-songs or curses—they cried prayers.

  “To the Mother!”

  “To the Song!”

  “To the Feast!”

  Ren’s gut twisted. This wasn’t just madness. It was devotion.

  The first impact shook the canyon floor. A knot of cultists slammed into Sinclair’s shield, hacking at him with blades dulled by rust but swung with frightening strength. He grunted, shoving them back with a roar, his sword cleaving two down at once.

  Raven’s staff flared, mage-lights bursting outward like flares providing light in the dusk shade. Spears of lightning followed, scorching the ridges. Leo’s hands blurred through sigils, a wall of force rippling up to block the next volley of arrows.

  Ren threw himself into the fight. Threads snapped outward, golden and sharp, slicing through the haft of a spear before it could pierce Leo’s side. Another filament lashed around a cultist’s throat, jerking him backward.

  But they kept coming. The warband was endless, a tide of flesh. For every one that fell, three more surged forward, screaming devotion to something unseen.

  Ren’s pulse hammered. His Threads whipped faster, but the noise, the press, the sheer chaos made it impossible to track them all. Something slammed into his back—an axe glancing off the plates of his mechanical arm. He spun, panic spiking, only to feel his Threads flare with unnatural heat.

  The world shifted.

  It was as though the canyon itself had turned into a drum, and every movement was a vibration on its skin. Ren felt them ripple through the ground, the air, the very stone—each step, each strike, each voice a thread of resonance.

  The cultist before him was suddenly more than a blur of flesh. He was weight, balance, intent. Ren knew where his blade would swing before it left the man’s hand. He moved first, driving his fist into the cultist’s gut and following with a kick that snapped bone.

  Another charged from behind. Ren didn’t turn. His Threads hummed with the man’s footfall, his ragged breath. Ren pivoted, golden filaments lashing outward to seize the attacker’s wrist and wrench the knife free.

  It was overwhelming at first—too much, too loud, every enemy a note in a deafening chorus. But slowly, instinct cut through. His Threads narrowed, filtered, sorted. Vibrations became patterns, patterns became meaning.

  And for the first time, Ren fought not in reaction but in anticipation.

  “Ren!” Sinclair’s voice bellowed from somewhere ahead.

  Ren surged forward, cutting a path through the chaos. He ducked beneath a wild swing, already knowing the strike would miss by inches. His blade flashed, severing tendons before the cultist even realized he’d overextended.

  He reached Sinclair just as a massive brute of a man barreled into him. The cultist was bigger than the rest, body twitching unnaturally as though something inside pushed his muscles beyond human limits. He bore down with a cleaver, froth at his lips.

  Ren’s Threads screamed warning. He darted in, golden strands weaving around the man’s ankles. With a wrench, he pulled—and the brute toppled. Sinclair didn’t waste the chance. His sword came down like an executioner’s stroke, splitting skull from collarbone.

  “Good timing,” Sinclair panted. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, but his eyes gleamed with something like approval. “Keep doing that.”

  Ren only nodded, his breath ragged.

  The warband broke at last.

  Not because they feared death—they didn’t—but because they had given enough of themselves to buy time. The survivors fell back toward the ridges, chanting even as they bled. Their voices echoed between the spines, not like retreat but offering.

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  When the last of them vanished into the canyon shadows, silence fell heavy. The ground was slick with blood. The air stank of sweat and resin and ozone.

  Ren sank to one knee, his chest heaving. His Threads still thrummed with vibrations, the canyon alive with echoes even in stillness. It was disorienting, dizzying—but he could already sense how useful it would be. He could feel every shift of movement around him, every living weight pressing against the ground.

  Not just sight. Not just sound. Something deeper.

  “Bloody lunatics,” Sinclair muttered, dragging his blade through the dirt to clean it. “Throwing themselves at us like kindling. They don’t care if they win—they just care if we burn.”

  Raven lowered her staff, her voice quieter but no less sharp. “And they’re learning. Every sacrifice is another lesson. Another gift to the swarm.”

  Ren looked past them, toward the spines. Movement flickered there—not insects, but something larger, quadrupedal, its outline wrong in the mage-light. A wolf, perhaps. Or something that had been a wolf, once. Its limbs bent wrong, its body crawling with patches of chitin.

  It vanished into the spines before Ren could draw breath.

  His Threads still thrummed. He knew they weren’t alone.

  ___________________________

  They made camp against the canyon wall, half-sheltered beneath a jut of stone that narrowed the spines’ view. It wasn’t safety—there was no such thing here—but it gave them a defensible angle.

  Sinclair barked orders as he stripped his bloodied shield and slammed it into the dirt for cleaning. “Raven, put those lights on a leash. Last thing we need is every freak in this valley seeing our fire.”

  Raven’s lips pressed thin, but she obeyed. Her mage-lights dimmed until they were pale spheres clinging close to the ground, casting long, skeletal shadows of the chitin towers. The sudden half-darkness made Ren’s skin crawl.

  Leo sat cross-legged, his hands still trembling from the fight, as he pulled chalk from his satchel and began sketching sigils onto the rock. Wards—thin, fragile, but something. Sweat dripped down his temples as he worked, his usually steady script shaking.

  Ren lowered himself onto a chunk of broken spine, breathing hard. The fight still throbbed in his limbs, every heartbeat sending echoes into his Threads. He felt the rhythm of Sinclair’s bootfalls as the man paced, the scrape of Raven’s staff as she planted it in the dirt, the tiny twitch of Leo’s chalk dragging against stone.

  And beyond that—fainter, but there.

  Movement. In the spines. Heavy steps circling, careful and deliberate, as though predators were waiting just out of reach.

  He clenched his fists until the sensation dulled. Too much. Too many vibrations at once. It was like trying to listen to a dozen conversations while drowning in a river.

  “You’re pale.” Raven’s voice came quiet, almost clinical, as she crouched near him. “Are you wounded?”

  Ren shook his head. “Not wounded. Just… everything feels loud. Like I can hear them moving. Out there.” He jerked his chin toward the spines.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Your Threads again?”

  Ren hesitated, then nodded. He didn’t know how to explain the new sense without sounding mad. He didn’t just hear movement. He knew it, like it was woven into him.

  Raven studied him for a long moment, her face unreadable in the dim mage-light. Then she stood. “Useful. Dangerous. Same as the rest of you.”

  Sinclair barked a laugh. “Useful? Maybe. Or maybe it makes him freeze up when he should swing.” He dropped onto a boulder opposite, resting his massive blade across his knees. His armor was dented, his jaw smeared with blood—none of it his own. His eyes burned like coals. “Don’t start thinking fancy tricks will keep you alive, Ren. Steel and skill. That’s what carries.”

  Ren met his gaze, then looked away. He wanted to argue, but the memory of Sinclair splitting the brute cultist’s skull still rang too fresh.

  Leo exhaled shakily, finishing the last ward. The sigils glowed faintly before sinking into the stone. He leaned back, exhausted, and muttered, “Weapons and grit only get you so far when the enemy is feeding itself to monsters.”

  Sinclair’s eyes cut to him. “Then grit harder.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Leo snapped, surprising them all. “Some of us don’t have shoulders like tree trunks!”

  A silence fell. Raven’s brow arched. Ren almost laughed despite himself. Even Sinclair’s scowl twitched like he was fighting not to grin.

  The moment passed, and Leo slumped again, running a hand through his tangled hair. “Sorry. I just—today was too close.”

  Ren glanced at him. “Yeah. It was.” His Threads pulsed with every shift of his companions—Raven’s steady, disciplined stillness; Leo’s jittery, restless movements; Sinclair’s raw solidity, as unyielding as stone. For the first time, Ren could feel their presences, anchored against the dark. It steadied him.

  When they finally ate, it was little more than dried rations softened with water. Ren chewed mechanically, though part of him itched to improvise, to make something warmer. But the valley stank of resin and blood, and he couldn’t bring himself to unpack the pot.

  Instead, he found himself staring toward the spines again. The shapes flickered there, sometimes near, sometimes far—creatures dragging limbs that bent wrong, eyes gleaming with unnatural hunger.

  His Threads confirmed it: the constant ripple of movement, the vibrations of claws against chitin, the low growl of something too deep to be a wolf. It was like sitting in the center of a beating heart, every pulse a reminder that the valley itself was alive.

  Later, as the others settled into their rotations of rest and watch, Ren stayed awake. Not because it was his turn, but because he couldn’t stop listening.

  Every shift of the spines carried through his Threads. He tracked the circling creatures, the distant crunch of chitin, the occasional snap of something feeding. Each sound sent a chill down his spine, but he couldn’t look away from it. It was overwhelming, terrifying—and yet intoxicating.

  Because for once, he wasn’t blind. He wasn’t waiting to be surprised. He knew they were out there. He knew they were being hunted.

  And when the time came, he would know the very moment they struck.

  Ren’s head tilted, unbidden, toward the ridges.

  Something massive shifted out there. Larger than a wolf, heavier than a bear. Its footfalls made the earth groan, its chitin scraping against the spines. He felt it pause, as though it knew it was being felt in return.

  The vibration lingered, like a challenge.

  Ren’s pulse quickened. He pressed a hand to the dirt, Threads thrumming outward. The presence was gone—withdrawn, as though it had simply melted into the valley itself.

  But Ren knew better.

  It hadn’t left.

  It was waiting.

  The mage-lights dimmed further as Raven pulled them close, her face pale but composed. “Rest,” she said softly, her tone more command than suggestion. “Tomorrow we keep moving. If we stay still, we’ll be buried.”

  Ren lay back against the stone, eyes open, Threads still alive with the hidden chorus of the valley.

  He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to sleep here.

  But he knew one thing for certain: this valley wasn’t just a battlefield.

  It was a test. And something in the dark was watching to see who failed first.