Ash did not linger.

He slid the last carcass deeper into shadow and padded back toward Veyra, letting the cave's hush hold around his steps without answering it. He took the silence with him instead of stopping to weigh it, nose low, ears tracking the thin draft that ran along the ribs.

He could see from far away, the shadow-threads and link went slack—first the decoy, then Riven himself—as both shades unstitched and poured back through his pads and spine. Their borrowed senses returned in a cold rush: the high line's grit on claw, stale acid in the air, no heavy bodies moving.

Ash absorbed the fragments, adjusted his map, and kept going.

Lichen washed the stone in narrow blue veins as he neared the hollow and Veyra came back into view.

She had pushed herself into a half-sit; her palms hovered near her ribs, and the aether filaments of Murkfen Knit glimmered under her skin before dimming.

"How's the pain?" Ash asked without turning.

"Manageable," she said, "As long as I don't breathe too deeply or move too fast."

"Then don't."

A faint smirk tugged her mouth before she swallowed it back, "You sound like my old commander."

"Did he keep you alive?"

"Long enough to ignore his advice."

The reply earned a low rumble — the closest Ash came to a laugh.

He tipped his muzzle toward the side that the beetles had come from and began to report about the area, "The routes are clear for ten spans. Dust is thick, no fresh scrape, no acid in the air. There is what looks to be an old repair resin, a shallow overlook, nothing bigger than Workers. No danger in the direct vicinity from there either."

Veyra exhaled through her nose, some of the tightness leaving her shoulders. She nodded once, then flicked a glance toward the dark. "Good," she murmured, voice still rough,"I'll need some more time so I can only rely on you still."

"Take as long as you need," Ash replied as he shifted his weight, eyes on the dark, "I'll take the next bend alone, map it, and be back before—"

Suddenly, the cave answered first.

A low, buried concussion rolled through the ribs — not a sound so much as a shove. Dust leapt. Resin beads skittered and clicked. The lichen flared and guttered like a breath caught in a throat.

They froze, the silence collapsing tight around them.

It came again, closer — THRUM — a deep resonance that crawled up through paw and bone. Hairline seams ticked in the walls; a faint rain of grit whispered down. A puddled drip rang once, twice, coin‑bright, as ripples chased themselves to the edge.

Then another, heavier — thrum — slower, steadier, as if something vast had turned over in its sleep beneath the stone.

Veyra's eyes widened, "That's not wind."

Ash angled his head, listening harder. The force wasn't coming from a single direction; it patterned through the stone in measured beats, like coded knocks passed hand to hand.

Riven's thought cut cleanly across the hush: "Not footsteps. Not flow. Not a collapse."

"Then what?"

Veyra pushed herself upright and pressed her palm to the floor. She frowned, "I don't know. I've never heard the stone answer like this."

Ash crouched beside her, feeling the next tremor climb through his pads — three short, one long. He set his jaw, "Looks like there's only one way to know."

He tipped his muzzle toward the dark. "I'm going to go investigate. Better informed than to end up cornered and clueless."

Veyra's fingers suddenly reached and grabbed his paw, "Don't play hero. You better not die."

"I have no intention to," Ash replied with a light reassuring smile as he got up, Verya's hand letting go as she had no choice but to trust him.

The thrum faded, leaving only the drip of distant water.

Ash rose, pacing a few steps before glancing toward the tunnel, "Whatever's making that pattern, we need to know what it is. Any ideas?"

Riven's reply came slow and resolute, "Careful. If it ties into anything deeper, you could get the attention of the whole nest."

"True," Ash's voice stayed low, "But we can't just stay here the whole time."

He drew a slow breath, tested the draft, and slipped into the tunnel's shade.

Soon, Ash had moved past the area he last explored, now slipping even further in alone.

The cave throat narrowed, then opened into a corridor of slick, ribbed stone. Lichen thinned as he went; soon only the tired bioluminescence of old resin painted the walls — dull green, glassy black.

The air turned wet, each breath tasting of sap and rust.

Ash felt the rhythm under the floor again: slow contractions, a faint pulsing as if the cave itself breathed around him.

'It wasn't like this before...' Riven spoke, his voice carrying a tone of vigilance.

Ash didn't like that, 'The two Workers we killed… if the Nest felt that absence, this could be its answer. Or someone else's.'

The head could only explain what was happening now to the two workers that he had killed... How the beetle nest seemed to know that? He had no idea but that was his only thinking for now.

As he made it further inwards, the scent shifted.

Ash paused for a bit, trying to identify all the scents and new sensations that were entering his senses.

'Life…' he mumbled in his head, 'there seems to be a different environment ahead.'

It was less earth and stone, more organic: damp reed, a thread of acid, old life disturbed.

He skimmed a pad across the floor and lifted it, watching dust slough in a thin ribbon downslope. He fixed the bearing in his head‑map and pressed a resin bead low on the rib to catch his light on return.

Riven's voice came thin and dry, 'Walls are load‑bearing here. Hear that tick? Microseams. Don't lean.'

Ash brushed the wall anyway with a knuckle — the surface gave slightly, soft as old hide. Not stone.

'Interesting…' he thought as he peeled a flake; resin stringed, then snapped. The smell that came up wasn't dead — sweet, lacteal, with a mineral bite.

He eased forward and the passage unfurled into a low, long nave of resin and rib — a ward, not a corridor.

The change was immediate. Ribs bent inward to cradle shallow alcoves; the floor dipped into twin troughs where warm sap once pooled, now set into amber panes that caught the faint blue lichen. Overhead, ropey filaments ended in tiny fossilized cups, their rims ringed with pale tide‑lines.

The air changed, the initial smell only intensifying— lacteal‑sweet, a little sour where it met stone; a breath of stale humidity that clung to the tongue. A faint, almost inaudible susurrus hummed beneath the pulse.

Ash slowed, taking it in.

"What is this place?" he whispered to the stone.

Riven answered in his head, thoughtful, "Looks like a ward. Watch the walls.'

Along the inner wall ran narrow channels, carved smooth by countless passes — feeding grooves with lips glossed by resin and touch.

Between the grooves, hardened ridges climbed like vertebrae — careful increments, tally‑cuts laid by mandible to count measures and time the settling of mix.

'Looks like some sort of dose mark…' Riven spoke out Ash's observation.

Flats of stone sat at even intervals, faces burnished and shallowly scalloped — perches where nurses rested warm loads so they wouldn't cool.

'Is this a nursery?' Ash asked himself as the clues and what he was seeing seemed to click into that as the conclusion.

Here and there, a thin bloom of shell‑powder dusted the corners; on one groove's throat a chalky mineral crust glittered — fortifier residue dried in a fragile lace.

Riven again, softer, 'Calcium salts. Stops soft‑shelling. This was careful work.'

He stepped back and mapped it with his eyes — grooves to ridges, perches to corners — and the hall resolved itself into instruction rather than ruin: architecture as manual, every mark a memory of how to feed and quiet the young.

'There's a sound,' Riven hummed in his skull, "Under the pulse — hear it? A lull tone."

Ash angled an ear. Beneath the deep thrum a faint, lull‑like resonance threaded the air, there and gone. The scent shifted — sap and rust touched with burnt milk.

The alcoves told the rest: resin lips worn low where bodies leaned; gray molting chaff drifted in one; a resin paddle fused to the wall, its edge smoothed to translucence.

He moved deeper. The ward opened on a central well — a sunken ring with scalloped niches. Narrow resin siphons ran into the walls; some snapped and polished shut. Where they met the ribs, a dusting of crystalline salts.

Ash crouched at the lip. A skin of dried sap crazed the bottom; a collapsed larval husk lay there like a leaf in ice.

He studied it. The husk was paper‑thin and opaline, edges curled like burned leaf, the mouth parts sealed by a last skim of resin. No puncture wounds. No gnawing. The belly showed faint banding where mix had settled in layers.

Riven murmured, 'Starved mid‑molt. Mix cut too thin in the end, or heat failed. See the collapse at the thorax ring?'

Ash leaned closer, scenting. He traced a claw around the cracks, 'Well dried before failure. This one died before it could mature.'

'How long do you think this has been here?' he asked.

'Weeks. If not, months. Judging from this, the area should be empty,' Riven answered.

He moved a few steps more, hugging the inner wall, and turned the next bend, breath held for what might be waiting beyond.

The ward fell away into a wider bowl of rib and resin — tiered like an amphitheater — and every tier was studded with sealed bulbs. Not a handful. Rows on rows. The smoky skins were wet with new mix, faintly lit from within; pale shapes floated inside each sac, curled and flexing on the beat like leaves in slow water.

Riven's breath caught in his skull. "Larvae. Too many."

Ash's throat worked once. He counted by reflex, lost the number, tried to map tiers instead: seven to a span, four spans to a ring, rings stepping down into shadow. The lull‑tone braided under the deeper thrum, smoothing the air as if to hush a thousand small hungers at once.

Fortifier salts on the rims… fresh mix in the seams… somebody started this back up, he thought, and the notion made the fur between his shoulders rise.

He held still and listened. Beneath the pulse, the sacs themselves made a tiny sound — a soft, wet settling — as countless larval bodies shifted in their resin sleep.

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