"Three days had passed since the drone's automated scanners forced us to extinguish our fires and huddle in the freezing dark," Elara muttered, her voice muffled by the damp air of the stone vault. "We survived the cold, but we cannot survive this." She held up a handful of wheat. The grains were soft, covered in a fuzzy gray coat of mold. The natural humidity of the forest had penetrated the storage crates, turning their precious reserve into a rotting, sour-smelling pile. Zion stood beside her, holding a sputtering oil lamp. "How much of it is gone?" "More than half," Elara said, letting the ruined grain slip through her fingers. "And what is left will not last another week. The dampness is eating it from the inside out." "But we have nothing else," Zion said, his eyes wide in the dim light. "The forest foraging is barely enough to keep the children quiet. If we lose the wheat, the base will collapse before the

"Did you hear that?" a scout whispered, his fingers trembling as he clutched a crude wooden spear. Isabella stood on the concrete lip of the dam. The sun had long dipped below the jagged peaks, leaving the valley wrapped in a cold, suffocating darkness. She closed her eyes, letting her senses stretch out into the frozen night. Clank. Screeech. It was the unmistakable sound of rusted iron dragging over frozen earth, echoing from the deep, misty forest. "They are closer than they were an hour ago," Isabella said, her voice tight but steady. "Is it Vance's bandits?" the scout asked, his breath forming a thick plume of white vapor. "The ones Zion fought?" "No," Isabella replied, her hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of a sword she no longer possessed. "Bandits make noise, but they do not sound like a grinding factory. Those are the o