The tunnels hummed with renewal. Brood chambers were once again heavy with eggs, and workers scurried tirelessly, repairing walls and weaving new chambers. Food stores swelled as raiding parties returned with beetle grubs and seed husks. The rhythm of the colony beat stronger than ever.
Yet beneath that steady rhythm, I felt it — a ripple. My plumed antennae caught faint vibrations that no other ant noticed. The soil was restless. Something large was moving beyond the tunnels.
I extended my Pheromone Web, letting my mind brush across the colony. Calm, unified, efficient. But at the edges of the web, where my scouts prowled near the grass roots, sharp notes of alarm pricked through.
Predators.
Images flickered into my mind through the link: a centipede's coils sliding through a dark crack; shadowed mandibles dripping with venom; the faint musk of spiders nesting close to our border.
The veterans clicked their mandibles, eager for battle. But I held them back. Not yet. Recklessness would cost us the gains of our rebuilding.
Instead, I wove a new command into the colony's mind:
Trap tunnels reinforced with stone chips.
Hidden pheromone lures to mislead invaders.
Fresh patrol routes carved into the soil.
Above, under the dew-lit grass, the enemy's presence thickened. Not rival ants this time. Something older, something solitary, patient, and hungry.
The earth trembled as the centipede slid closer. Each segment scraped against the soil, fangs glistening with poison.
And for the first time since my evolution, I felt the truth coil in my gut:
This was no raid.
This was a test — one that would decide if a Strategist Lord could truly stand against the ancient predators of the underworld.