As the storm outside reached a point where even the mountain seemed to flinch.
The Clan Council gathered in the drafting room where the stone walls were thickest and the lanternlight steady.
No one pretended this was a normal meeting.
Talia laid out what she and her brothers had discussed earlier. The theft, the transition to a formal Clan and the new governing system, the code of conduct, new offices, mandatory training rotations, the contribution system.
One by one, the council listened and weighed the proposals and voted.
The storm punctuated each vote with lightning.
When the final hand was raised, all changes were approved. Wording would still need refinement before the public was notified and implementation would begin only after the storm, but the backbone was set.
"We'll announce the Clan name today," Talia said. "Let them talk about Deepway Clan instead of the weather."
A few relieved laughs broke the tension.
"And the new regulations?"
"I suggest holding a Clan meeting and revealing all the changes there." Theo said immediately. "If we tell them now, half the bunker will panic from boredom and fear at the same time. Not a good mix."
Council agreed.
There was a sense of unity—not excitement, but something like resolve thickened by shared fear and shared necessity.
They adjourned.
Council members fanned out through the bunker, weaving between bedrolls, whispering news, distracting restless minds. A few kids perked up at the announcement of the new Clan name. Adults began tossing suggestions toward the slate boards: values, principles, mottos.
By dawn—if dawn could even be called that under a sky boiling black-green—the noise had grown so intense that sound penetrated the citadel walls. The floors vibrated with every lightning strike, trembling like something massive was pacing just outside. Shudder. Pause. Shudder again. Each shockwave rolled through the stone and the ribs of anyone awake.
Most of Deepway was awake.
The corridor outside the office had become a river—steady, quiet, strangely purposeful. People from the core group families lingered near the railing, pretending to stir stew or mend blankets while openly watching the steady stream of people slipping in and out of Talia's makeshift office.
"Did you see Grandma Elene go in? And that nomad girl with the red hair?"
"Reese's mum was also called. Cael and the boy who fixes the water lines—why him?"
But it was the slate on the meeting table that held them captive—fresh marks and neat columns.
"Is that… rules?" someone whispered.
"No," another murmured.
"It's order."
A sound like a tree exploding—sharp, violent, gut-punching—echoed through the valley. It cracked through the cavern like the world had snapped a bone.
People froze mid-breath. A child buried their face into their mother's shoulder; an elder whispered a prayer not to gods, but to the stubbornness of stone.
Sleep had been a myth for two days already. Thunder was constant, snarling through the valley so fast the echoes overlapped, turning into something like an angry river of sound. Air pressure pushed against chests and temples, thick and oppressive, making people feel as though the storm was breathing in while they exhaled.
"This feels like a living thing," someone whispered into the dim bunker.
"Old Earth storms could get bad," an elder said, voice shaking, "but… not like this."
No one disagreed.
Talia had barely slept, but exhaustion didn't matter. People needed her steady, present, walking the halls like gravity had chosen her.
She started her rounds before the lanterns had even been re-lit.
'There's not enough Mossbulb to go around yet, Grandpa Fel's having fun with Hercules trying to propagate the moss.' She thought to herself.
Floor by floor, bunker to storage to temporary sleeping chambers. She checked families huddled together on blankets, groups curled near the walls where the mossbulb lanterns glowed, teens trying to act brave for the younger ones. She paused in each room long enough for people to realize she was there—just enough time for their shoulders to loosen and their breathing to settle. She didn't need to speak, presence was enough.
Talia returned to the office for the next round of notifications.
Nomads gathered in the hall, arms crossed, eyes sharp. They watched every person called inside the office—as if counting, measuring, weighing who belonged and who didn't.
"That's three from the core," one muttered.
"And two from the valley group," another corrected.
"And one of ours."
A hum of cautious satisfaction followed.
When the slate was mentioned—a board of ideas the Clan could write themselves—their posture shifted.
"So we get a say?"
"Looks like it."
A long silence.
Then a slow nod from an elder nomad.
"Good. About time this place treated us all as one Clan."
A new thunderclap boomed through the stone. Someone gasped. Someone else cried softly.
Talia simply said, "The mountain is strong."
People clung to that sentence like a lifeline.
By the time she finished checking the tunnels for structural strain, even Theo had eased slightly. "Pressure's stabilizing," he murmured. "If it were going to crack, we'd see microfractures. Nothing yet."
"Tunnels?"
"Stable."
"Good."
A blinding flash ripped sideways through the valley—so bright it illuminated the entire first floor through the stone-slide windows. The thunder that followed was late, and too heavy, like the sky's spine had cracked.
The room held its breath.
Meanwhile, The young insurgent lurked near the bunker's far corner, hovering around a cluster of bored-looking young adults who were always a little too eager for excitement.
"So," he said lightly, "they're changing everything again? Clan, rules, codes… seems like the leadership is rushing."
"We're alive," one girl snapped, nerves frayed. "I'm fine with rushing."
He smiled—thin, friendly, practiced. "Just saying. What's the rush?"
Nobody bit.
Storms bred humility. No one wanted to challenge authority while the sky outside tried to kill them.
The young man's expression tightened. He stepped away, slipping behind a supply cabinet where no one could see—and kicked it. Hard.
He winced, shook out his foot, then forced his expression smooth again before walking back out.
He didn't notice the watcher tucked behind the stacked crates. Quiet. Patient. Eyes narrowed.
Gathering evidence.
Talia's early followers—the ones who'd sprinted through collapsing cities and slept in tunnels beside her—stood near the office door with a strange mix of pride and suspicion.
Dav strode past, jaw tight, carrying three reports. Theo followed seconds later with four cups of tea and a headache in-progress.
People whispered:
"That's the third meeting today."
"Something's changing."
"Did you see the slate? They're letting us write on it."
Someone traced a fingertip down the Code's half-filled column, reading suggestions in unfamiliar handwriting.
"It feels… official," one said quietly.
"It feels like a real Clan," Luke answered.
Talia retreated to the husbandry district once the recent meeting dispersed. The storm raged through the windows, but the district felt almost peaceful—the rhythm of her shaping settled her mind the way nothing else could.
The walls hummed under her hands as she shaped them. Tap, push, draw stone upward. Reinforce arches. Clear new pathways. Smooth out the slag from yesterday's work.
She'd finished one-third of the allowable district already, by working through the nights, carving without pause, except when the healer squads forced her to drink something. She was proud of the layout—functional, efficient, room for expansion. She'd even uncovered two promising ore veins that Ben had nearly fainted over, muttering about mineral purity levels.
She'd already planned where the mineral museum would go. A natural museum, reinforced display cases, a skylight of angled light-channels to illuminate crystal structures. She wasn't building it yet, but she could see it in her mind.
She worked until her shoulders ached and her hands tingled from strain.
Only when she paused to stretch did she sense it—the shift.
The storm didn't end. It changed.
The roar softened from catastrophic to merely violent. The thunder became less constant—no longer snarling, more like the occasional bellow of a faraway beast. Rain still battered the mountainside, but the sharp knives of hail had dulled.
Talia stepped to the newly installed stone-slide windows and pushed one panel aside just enough to peer out.
The valley was still drowned in storm—but no longer suffocating.
"We're coming out of the worst of it," she whispered.
Feeling the tremble of her body catching up to its limits, Talia closed up the worksite, said goodbye to the training stone bunnies and the cheer squad bush chickens and began the walk back to the bunker.
She didn't expect to find a crowd gathering near the stairwell—not panicked, but eager in that strained, exhausted way of people who have been waiting too long for good news. Dad and Grandpa were at the front, speaking quietly to a circle of clanspeople.
"Pressure's shifting," Grandpa was saying. "Storm's weakening."
"It'll taper by nightfall," Dad added. "Maybe not stop—but weaken."
Murmurs spread—relief mixing with frayed nerves.
Talia felt it hit her suddenly: she was starving. And her muscles were trembling with delayed fatigue.
She slipped into the food line, grabbed a steaming bowl of stew—thick, simple, comforting—and headed to her bunk.
The bedding felt warmer than usual. Or maybe she was just too tired to care.
Just before sleep claimed her, a final thought drifted through her mind:
Check on the planting progress.
For now, the weakening thunder lulled her into rest—finally, mercifully—while Deepway Clan slept under a mountain that had truly begun to shelter them.