"Predator's Domain?" Nia looked up from behind the rubble of the house. The scavenging attempt had been a success, judging by how many blankets and pillows had survived, along with a few pots and kettles.
"Yes." Haati sat solemnly, her head angled toward a place far from them, some obscure pocket of forest behind Grandpa Rahzgir's house. "A place that predators like me can call our own. A space where our rule is absolute, where our power goes unchallenged. In the presence of multiple predators, a clash is unavoidable. That is what makes a Predator's Domain important. It signifies a claim on what is rightfully ours, and what is not."
Grandpa Rahzgir popped his head out from under a pile of stone and dragged free the massive cauldron they had used to boil honeymilk. He looked pleased beyond measure that it had survived the ordeal. "It's also a thing most warriors know. That domain thingy. We call it something else, but we sure do have it."
"So it's like how we can feel the silence inside a forest just before a tiger shows itself. I've read about that once before, I think..." Nia wiped down a pillow, then crouched again.
"Precisely. It's one and the same. Prey pick it up much quicker because they have been attuning themselves to it all their lives. Poor creatures... yet we still have to eat them to survive." Haati shifted her head slightly, as if catching something in the distance. "He's... different, this boy. I knew it from the first time I laid my eyes upon him."
The river ran calm, broken only by the occasional ripple of fish. Haati rose and angled her head toward Sol's position again, listening, tasting the distance as if she could pull the shape of the hunt through thought alone.
"He knew instinctively that Helarzos are lumbering, but careful, and cowardly by necessity. To be ambushed by a smaller predator is unlikely, so they learn to fear the bigger ones instead. Their spikes protect them from Nhivens, but given time, a Nhiven can still rip them apart and feast. We Moonwolves are not too keen on hunting armored bears. They are slow. We prefer smaller, faster prey that can challenge us in speed, rabbits, deer, perhaps elk."
Haati walked closer to the house before continuing. "The Rimelord is different. It does not need to feed. It freezes, then shatters. The bears understand it is pointless to challenge death, so they cower in caves and hollow stumps and wait, patient, because blizzards always pass, sooner or later. Then they emerge to feast on Apideis' hard-earned honey."
"You saw Sol's potential even before the avalanche?" Nia glanced toward the side of the house, toward Haati's frostflame heavenly raiment billowing in the wind.
"You were there, were you not? Where did you go, I wonder?"
"I..." Nia held her words for a moment, then continued, careful. Birds swept past overhead, high above. She was embarrassed to admit it. "I... slipped, and slid down quite far from where Sol was."
"Hmhmhm!! Bound to happen if you're not wearing anything on your feet! Wear this one. It belonged to my late wife. I think it will suit you." Grandpa Rahzgir handed Nia a pair of thick boots along with a massive coat. She took them and tried the coat first, only to be swallowed by the sheer size of it. The musk was strong, even through her dulled, protected senses.
"Oof. Thank you, grampa." She chose to wear it anyway. It did not change how the weather felt against her skin. The Lightveil's protection still numbed her to the temperature.
"It suits you." Haati blinked slowly in Nia's direction, then turned her full attention toward Sol's position. "You're doing well, little sun."
"Is Sol alright?"
"Hmhmhm! You're already worried about the young'un? Even if he looks like that, he carries our blood. Nhevari blood. Those who fought at the Rims of Gehenna." Grandpa Rahzgir's gaze drifted, far away from the present. "Well... at least a quarter of his blood comes from my blood. And I was known as quite a strong warrior back in my days. And his father... is quite something indeed."
"Sol's dad?"
"Yes. A menace. That's why I left the village to my second son, the calmer, more level-headed, patient Rahzmir. Sol's father would never want to stay in one place, governing a bunch of people." Grandpa Rahzgir lifted a massive sword, its blade bent, as if it had been under repair for a long time. Now it was utterly broken, beyond patchwork, and would need professional attention. "He would prefer to... change things. Big things."
"Huh... he must have been very strong."
"Strong? Oh yes. Forty-nine parts muscle and one part brain, that one." Grandpa Rahzgir snorted. "Always going on and on about breaking barriers and creating a better place for all Geherrim to live. The type to do first and think later. Truly astonishing how he would smile so brightly when the consequences started to weigh on him." He fell quiet for a beat. "Sol's mother, on the other hand..."
"A human." Nia's answer came fast.
Grandpa Rahzgir looked at her, a question in his eyes. He wanted to ask how she knew, but he also knew the answer might be something he did not have the right to hear. So he only nodded, confirming it. "Yes. Yes, she was. He brought her home in a snowstorm, already heavily pregnant, only a few weeks before she was due. Sol's father already had a wife, you see, and a son, so the news that he brought home another woman, worse, a human, hit his wife hard."
He stood, stretched, then moved toward what remained of the kitchen. He filled a heavily dented metal pot with water from a broken bucket nearby and lit the hearth.
"He's not that type of person. Not him. He loves his wife and his son dearly." Rahzgir's voice lowered, as if the broken house itself might be listening. "There must have been a reason he brought a pregnant human girl home. When I confronted him about it, he never said anything, except for..."
The water in the metal pot began to boil. Nia heard the first bubbles rise and break. Haati angled her head toward Rahzgir.
Rahzgir grabbed a cooking glove, filthy with rubble dust and wood splinters, and pulled it on. Then he lifted the pot and poured into two wooden cups, miraculously intact, each already filled with some of the finest dried flowers he had gathered weeks prior.
The clouds split somewhere above the Lowlands.
He walked outside, near Haati, and gestured for Nia to sit beside him.
"...It was the only thing he could do, to make sure the ending was reachable."
—
—
A massive swipe from the bigger male Helarzos shattered multiple trees. Their predator was nowhere to be found. The bear stared at his paws and realized he had struck nothing.
The smaller, more nimble female Helarzos had better reflexes. She used her speed to keep herself close, but not too close, to the Geherrim boy who had given her the shock of a lifetime.
Helarzos were not weak. They knew how to survive in these parts of the Stake. They understood when to hunt, when to kill, when to raid an Apideis hive, and when to lay low.
That was why the smaller Helarzos' head was crowded with questions.
Who is this new predator? Why would he appear now? How did he catch us off guard? And why does he feel different, unlike the other Geherrim they faced?
A growl from the bigger one, a loud warning. The smaller bear stopped rushing and tracked the black shadow's movement with her eyes.
He was there just now.
Where did he go?
Another roar from the bigger one. The smaller one turned, but she was too late. From the flank, Sol emerged from between the shadows of the trees and struck her in the belly with an open palm. The impact sent her hurtling into the bigger bear, knocking him down on top of her.
Their back spikes collided. The damage was not extensive, but the spikes tangled, then snapped as they tried to pry themselves apart.
The smaller one roared in complaint. The bigger one answered with a curt, dismissive growl. It wasn't his fault. If anything, it was hers. She had lost the Geherrim boy too quickly, and now they had lost him again.
From above, behind a low-hanging branch, Sol dropped with an axe kick aimed at the big bear's head carapace. The impact boomed through the trunk, sending waves of fallen leaves hurtling toward the earth.
The head carapace shattered into at least two dozen pieces, exposing fur and flesh beneath. Sol used the recoil to propel himself upward, kicked off the tree, and launched toward the Apideis hive. He landed in front of it without effort.
This would be a good time to run. The smaller bear thought. She knew she could not win. He was fast, strong, he smelled like wolves, and... he was already gone. Again.
Sol appeared in front of her and drove an open palm into her snout.
Pain flared through her skull. She forced herself to roll backward to lessen it.
Roar. They needed to move. This was not a fight they could win. But that roar was answered by a curt growl from the bigger bear.
A plan, he said.
Sol stood still, forcing his eyes to keep up with the two bears. The bigger one had recovered and was flanking to the right. The smaller one was setting up for a head-on charge. Everything felt apparent, colors sharp in his sight.
He blinked.
One hit for each bear, at most.
—
From the outskirts of the battlefield, Wanwan watched Sol with pride. He hadn't expected a member of his pack to become this strong in so short a time. He huffed, vapor puffing out with his small triumph.
Yet at the edge of his vision, something felt off.
He couldn't pinpoint it, so he looked to his siblings on the perimeter, to see if they felt it too.
Hrida was yawning.
Drifa watched Sol's fight with fierce focus, determined to learn something from her mother's chosen.
Fonn and Skafl were growling at each other.
None of them seemed to notice.
—
—
"Ending?" Nia blew across the surface of the tea, careful. It smelled faintly of jasmine, with a hint of chrysanthemum sweetness. She sipped. It tasted lightly sweet even without sugar.
"He never told me what it meant. In truth, he had no opportunity to..." Grandpa Rahzgir set aside his cup and sat cross-legged near both of them.
"The sky burned golden."
Rahzgir met Haati's sapphire eyes and nodded. "Yes. Korviana's ascension into an Apex, where she would be known as the Rimelord. And Sol's birth, the moment we all remember as the day the sky burned golden."
"I knew that when Korviana ascended, something wrong was happening. Skoll tried to stop the ascension on his own, sending me and our pups downhill lest the Eternal Ice swallow us all."
"And yet you never said anything to me these past fifteen years. Every time we passed each other, o dear Haati." Rahzgir's voice was dry, but not unkind. "So you did feel something was off. An Apex's ascension wasn't supposed to be that sudden, and it wasn't supposed to be accompanied by disaster, as shown by the previous ascension... your mother's."
"I had no reason to bring it up to you, o dear Rahzgir. But yes. An ascension should not be accompanied by pain. The ascension of a Guardian Beast toward an Apex usually comes with a need for the land to defend itself from something trying to break its rules. Korviana's ascension lined up with the death of almost all Rime Ravens, multiple weeks prior. And after the ascension, Korviana was no more..."
Haati's ears tipped forward. Her tail moved slowly, as if she could not decide what to do with itself. "The Rimelord arose from her corpus, as something entirely new. Skoll said something was trying to break the rules of this land surrounded by frost. I said I would have known if something was trying to invade. I... dismissed that concern. Oh... how wrong I was..."
Nia listened, quiet. If her memories were not so fractured by the Fall, perhaps she could have offered something. She lifted the cup and sipped again.
Rahzgir fiddled with his cup. It was still nearly full. He hadn't drunk any of it. "And the terrible storm that followed... coincides with..."
"The burning of the sky."
A shock ran through Nia's veins.
No. Something is missing. The terrible storm, the ascension of the Rimelord, the sky burned golden, the birth of Sol...
Her expression shifted.
—
—
—
"R███'s Fragment is prepared for Falling."
Nia could still remember that day, the busyness of the Syrca, the topmost room of the Labyrinthos. She could still remember Mother Archivist overseeing everything from start to finish, the way Sister Alecta held Nia's fragile infant body.
How could she remember this? She couldn't have been more than a few months old.
"What about the Vessel?" Mother Archivist's voice was coarse, yet strong and absolute.
"Sister Ne████ is ready." Nia couldn't remember who said it.
"Then by the Pre███sor's grace, let the Eighth Light shine upon us all." Mother Archivist's voice was muffled by the static that began to smear Nia's memory again.
"Let ██e Ei██th Lig██ shin█ up██ us all." The reply from the other Daughters of the Eighth Light was quick, uniform, and heavily muffled.
—
—
—
The memory broke.
...Sister...? Vessel?
"What's wrong, little flower?"
"No... it's just..." Nia swallowed. "Something else happened, I think. I remember my late Mother Archivist told me about it, the moment it happened..." Her brows drew tight as she tried to dig, deeper and deeper, but found only smooth stone. "I... can't remember it."
"Something else?" Rahzgir lifted his cup and finally drank.
"Yes. Something about... a vessel."
—
—
The two bears' coordination was commendable, but Sol had seen it coming a while ago. He also knew their dash speed on all fours meant they couldn't stop on demand.
So he jumped and perched above, near the branch where the top of the hive converged, and just like that, the two bears collided beside the Apideis hive. They tumbled into it, destroying it utterly. Sol had half a mind to drop down and deliver a coup de grâce to both, but something else caught his attention.
Brown-gold honey spilled from the trunk of the hive where it had cracked open under the bears' weight. It poured over them, coating them completely, almost drowning them in the thing they loved.
The surviving Apideis scattered, then converged at a single point near the top of a tree.
Their wings resonated together, forming a dissonant cacophony of buzzing that began to fill the entire area.
From somewhere deeper in the forest, another buzzing answered, harmonizing with the dissonance.
Then came the sounds of branches breaking, trunks heaving, trees uprooted. Something massive was making its way toward Sol and the five pups.
Still drenched in honey, the two Helarzos tried to rouse themselves as fast as they could.
They knew what was coming.
And what was coming was not good for them.
Lumbering, they tried to stagger away toward the Lowlands, to break through the treeline and flee.
They didn't make it.
A massive Apideis Queen burst from the trees, blazing with fury, and flew straight for them.