By evening the outer seal was at thirty-one percent.His left arm had gone numb twice and recovered twice. His right was back to functional at the wrist, the fingers responding cleanly when he tested them against the table edge. He had eaten once. The two hounds were asleep at the foot of the bed.He was considering the third session when the door opened.Dylan came in first. Behind him, Terra, Jolene, Cael. Caravan last, ducking slightly under the frame.They looked like they had been out in the cold for eight hours, which they had.Dylan sat on the floor against the wall with the particular collapse of someone whose legs had simply decided they were done."Three contracts." Terra said. She held up the sealed documentation. "Dylan, Jolene and I. A Ridgeback Prowler for Dylan. Stone Fang for Jolene." She set the papers on the edge of the table, away from the egg. "Mine is still pending — the beast accepted the approach but the binding didn't seal. I go back tomorrow.""What beast." Fl

Jolene came back at dusk.She knocked once and came in without waiting. Cael was behind her. Both of them carrying the particular look of people who had seen something they needed to put words to immediately."Two more bore points." Jolene said. She spread a hand-drawn map on the table. "Northeast of the first one, along the main vein line. Spaced at roughly four hundred meters apart." She marked the positions with a finger. "They're not exploratory. The depth is consistent. Whoever drilled them knew exactly where the vein ran.""Survey data." Flint said."Has to be." Jolene said. "You don't hit the vein at that depth three times without knowing the precise location beforehand."Cael sat down heavily. "The Beast-kin settlement is two miles from the closest bore point. The lower vein line runs directly beneath their eastern boundary."The room was quiet.The Void Serpent had relocated from Flint's shoulder to the top of his pack in the corner. It was awake. Its head was turned toward t

They went to the camp that night.Flint and Cael only. Everyone else stayed at the settlement. Dylan had argued this for six minutes before Flint pointed out that reconnaissance did not require six people and the camp had sentries.The northern approach to the upper ridge took two hours in the dark.Cael moved through the highland terrain the way someone moved through their own house. No hesitation. No wasted steps. He communicated in hand signals when they got within a mile of the camp position and Flint read them without difficulty. He had operated with more than forty different field partners across a hundred lives. The language of silence and gesture was one he knew better than most.The camp came into view from the ridge overhang above it.Forty meters below. Torchlit. Well-arranged — the work of someone with genuine military experience rather than the assembled mess of a force that expected no resistance. Eight tents in two rows with a command tent at the rear. The fire placemen

They left the settlement at the second hour of night.Six of them. Flint. Terra. Dylan. Jolene. Caravan. Cael at the front. The two Beast-kin observers a hundred meters above on the ridge face — Flint had confirmed their position before departure with a look and a nod from Daya at the building entrance.She had looked at him for a moment."Come back." She said. Not a plea. A directive."Yes." He said and left.---The approach took ninety minutes.The pack stayed at the settlement. The Void Serpent did not.It had moved from the doorpost to Flint's shoulder as he was leaving and it had stayed there for the first mile of walking before he understood it wasn't going to go back. He had considered the options and decided that a Primordial class creature on his shoulder in a night assault was either a liability or an advantage and that he wouldn't know which until it mattered.He left it where it was.The camp came into the same view as two nights before. Torchlit. Steady. The sentry rotat

Edran didn't answer immediately.He got up and went to the back of the hollow. The rock face there had a natural shelf, formed by two overlapping layers of stone that created a shallow covered space. He reached into it and came back with a folded piece of material that was not quite cloth and not quite leather, something between the two that had been sealed against moisture so many times it had changed consistency.He unfolded it on the flat rock between them.A map.Hand-drawn. The lines were precise in the way of someone who had drawn them from memory and checked them against the real thing more than once. Flint looked at the scale. The Northern Highlands occupied the left third. The eastern territories spread to the right. And at the far right edge, where the detail grew sparse and the lines became more tentative —The World Edge."Four hundred miles." Edran said. "East and north. The terrain changes three times. The highland gives way to the Shear Flats — two days of flatland with