The dream does not arrive like sleep.
It arrives like pressure finding a seam.
The ruins do not loom above me in this dream. The jungle is not around me. There is no ceiling of composite and vine. There is only a lattice that is everywhere at once, threaded through soil and metal and bone. It has no shape until it chooses one.
A line forms.
Not light. Not sound.
A direction.
Southeast.
The old service tunnel is a dark vein in the lattice, and something moves through it. Not one thing. Many points of contact, faint and sharp, tapping in staggered rhythms. Each tap sends a thin ripple through the root web. The ripples overlap until they become a single, busy pulse.
My secondary eyes flare in the dream without needing darkness to justify them. Heat paints itself across the lattice in smears and knots. Five warm bodies advance, tight-spaced, low to the ground. Others linger farther out, fainter, half-obscured by distance and leaf density, but present enough to stain the pattern.
The lattice tightens around the image.
Not as a trap.
As a warning.
Then something touches me.
Not claw. Not tooth. Not root.
A brush of intent across the inside of my skull, light as moisture on membrane, but undeniable in consequence. The touch is not gentle, but it is not violent. It is a boundary being marked.
Wake.
* * *
I jolt up in the shadow of the collapsed wall.
My wings tense and fold tighter on instinct. Talons grip composite and rot. Breath goes shallow for a count, then steadies. The air is cool. Night still holds the clearing, thick and damp. Drips fall from the fused roof and strike metal in soft, patient taps.
Tap. Tap.
Then another sound threads through it.
Claws.
The sound is neither scraping nor random. The contact points are controlled.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I do not move at once.
I listen, and the clearing becomes a map in sound.
The stream down the service path still sheets over plating, quieter at night, but constant. The fungus on the ruin's ribs gives off a faint, low glow where it holds moisture. Insects rasp softly along composite edges. Nothing large moves in the canopy above me.
The tapping continues, closer now, measured.
Not a single animal.
A group.
My body lowers without decision. My weight settles closer to the ground. My head angles forward. The paired queues lie along my neck, guarded but awake.
I do not rush the tunnel.
If I meet them head-on in the open mouth, I give them lines and depth. I give them time to read my size, my position, and my balance.
Instead, I quietly enter one of the other corridor openings.
I move into the nearest corridor, staying close to the wall where the old composite still retains its shape beneath the root skin. My wing-talons touch down with minimal noise. Rear feet placed carefully, points biting without scraping. The corridor smells of damp metal and fungus, but beneath it, another scent rides in, and it is not from the stream.
North.
The scent of the stripped edge has lingered in the air for days.
I draw it in and sort it, not as one thread but as layers.
Hairless hide. Hot breath. Blood residue from old kills. A sharp mineral tang from chitin armor. Something like a crushed leaf, but not a plant, more like a gland secretion.
It is too much for one animal.
The realization hits with the blunt force of physical truth.
There was never one.
The northern mark was not a single hunter's presence. It was a corridor held by many feet, many mouths, and many nights.
The tapping shifts, now closer to the clearing. A faint vocalization follows it, low and clipped, then gone. Not a call meant to carry. A signal meant for nearby ears.
I stay still and open my secondary eyes.
The world changes.
The darkness remains, but it becomes less relevant. Heat lays itself across everything in gradients. The ruined ribs hold cold; their composite skin is cooler than the damp air. Fungal shelves glow faintly in visible light, but in heat they are muted, closer to ambient. The stream is a thin ribbon of coolness, constantly moving, and stealing warmth.
And then the bodies appear.
Five heat signatures slide along the southeast tunnel's line like low flames moving under water. They do not stride upright. They flow. They are six-limbed, hovering close to the ground, yet capable of rising when necessary. Their heads stay low. Their spines hold a rigid line broken by small, precise corrections.
Behind them, farther out beyond the tunnel's mouth, more heat flickers between trunks, less defined, not yet committing to the clearing. A wider pack. A perimeter.
The five in the tunnel pause.
One signature lifts. A head rises for a brief moment, and its heat profile sharpens, jawline and neck armor outlined by contrast.
Then it drops again.
They are listening.
They are tasting the air.
They are hunting.
My forward eyes catch only shapes and faint glints. Dark hides against darker ruin shadows. Bioluminescent markings, faint, controlled patterns that would be bright in full darkness but seem dimmed here under the ruin roof's filtered glow. They do not blaze. They identify.
A body slips into the clearing.
Then another.
The first two move like scouts, not rushing, not wandering. Their spacing is deliberate, flanking the stream's line. Their paws touch metal with careful placement. The claws click softly when they make contact with the composite material. The sound is the same tapping I heard.
They are smaller than the hexapedes I hunted.
The size of the threat is smaller than what I had anticipated.
Lean bodies. Long limbs. Low-slung heads. Armor along the neck and spine catches what little light exists and returns it as a dull sheen. Their tails are not decorative. They use them for balance, adjusting with every shift.
Size does not comfort me.
Number changes the math.
They have five in the mouth and more outside. Even if each one is weaker than me, their coordination can turn weakness into leverage.
They do not know what I am yet.
They know something lives here. Something has fed. Something has claimed it.
They test.
One moves toward the broken shell's rise, its head tilting, scenting. Another drifts toward the collapsed wall where I rest at night, stopping short of the shadow line.
My paired queues flex in restrained arcs, reading vibration through the corridor wall and the root lattice beneath. Each viperwolf's footfall sends a fine, quick signal. They are light, but not fragile. Their weight is distributed across six limbs. Their movement produces minimal ground noise, but the vibration pattern is complex, full of micro-adjustments.
They are intelligent.
That matters more than size.
A third enters the clearing, then a fourth, then the fifth. They do not bunch. They spread into a loose crescent, each keeping sight of at least one other. They are building a net.
They have not found me because I have not given them scent.
The corridor's vine wall behind me is thick. The air inside is stale. My smell stays contained.
But the ruins do not belong to me in their mind.
Not yet.
One of them lifts its head again, higher this time, reading the clearing's roofline. Its heat signature sharpens in my secondary eyes. I see the line of its distensible jaw and the interior warmth of its mouth as it parts slightly. I see the heat of its eyes, two bright points in the skull, fixed toward the collapsed wall's shadow.
It takes one more step.
My body does not panic.
It calculates cost.
If I let them probe the clearing, they will map it. They will return with more. They will learn the angles, the exits, and the places where I am forced to funnel.
If I strike now, I choose the engagement.
I control distance and geometry.
If I wait, they control it.
I move.
Not out in the clearing yet.
First, I reposition.
I slide deeper along the corridor's inner edge, using shadow and wall to mask my heat. Composite holds cool. It steals warmth from my underside. My secondary eyes still show my body as a hot mass, but less sharp along the contact points where I press to the wall.
I pick my point.
If I surge from the mouth of the path and hit the nearest viperwolf on the flank, I can break the crescent before it closes.
I wait for the angle.
The closest viperwolf to my corridor drifts nearer, nose down, tasting the ground where water runs thinly. They are not looking for me. It is seeking evidence: blood, waste, and bone.
Its head turns slightly away from the corridor mouth.
That is my window.
I explode out of the shadow.
My wing talons strike first, making contact with the composite material in a sharp, controlled manner. Rear legs drive me forward. My wings stay folded tight to prevent a grab point. The finned edges compress against my sides. The stabs tuck beneath, ready to brace.
The viperwolf snaps its head toward me, heat flaring in my secondary eyes as its jaw opens. It tries to pivot, but its foot placement is too close to the streamline. Metal is slick with moisture. Its claws click as they search for purchase.
I do not give it time.
I hit it with my body, not my mouth.
Shoulder to ribcage.
Thud.
The impact drives it sideways into the shallow water sheet. Its limbs scramble, six legs flailing in a coordinated attempt to recover. It is swift. It almost finds it.
Almost is not enough.
My head drops, and my jaws clamp around the back of its neck, just behind the armored ridge. My crest scrapes plating. Teeth find the gap where armor meets flesh.
The viperwolf's body convulses.
Its forelimbs hook at my wing joints. Its claws rake for grip. It tries to climb me the way it would climb prey larger than itself. It is not random. It knows exactly where leverage lives.
The pain is sharp, shallow, and hot.
I ignore it.
I bite down.
The neck does not sever cleanly at first. Armor resists. Bone holds. The viperwolf tries to twist, its distensible jaw snapping at my throat, trying to punish my bite with its own. Spittle and breath spill hot across my face. Teeth scrape my crest with a sound like stone on metal.
In a protective reflex, my paired queues flare, drawing tight to my neck to prevent entanglement.
I shift.
My wing-talons dig into the composite for leverage. I twist my head and pull, not straight back, but down and to the side, using the ruin floor as counterforce.
Crk.
The sound is more than bone.
It is the ligament giving up. It is vertebrae misaligning. It is the wet, stubborn resistance of an animal that does not want to become meat.
The viperwolf goes slack in my jaws for a half second, then kicks again in reflex, but the coordination is gone. Warmth spills into my mouth.
Blood.
It is metallic and thick. It floods across my tongue, hot enough that my secondary eyes register the spray as brief, bright flecks against the cooler floor.
Behind me, the pack reacts as one.
They do not howl to announce themselves. They make short, clipped vocalizations, sharp barks that do not travel far. They snap their heads in specific directions. Their bodies tighten and shift.
Their crescent collapses into motion.
Two peel toward my flank. One darts toward my rear legs. Another tries to swing wide, aiming for my blind wedge above my forward eyes where my head angle limits sight.
But my secondary eyes see heat regardless of shadow.
I release the first body.
It drops to the wet composite with a heavy slap. The legs cycle once, twice, as if they can still run without a command. Then they stop. The creature's mouth opens and closes as if trying to grasp something that isn't there. A thin bubble of blood forms at the throat and pops.
I do not pause to confirm death.
I move.
The closest attacker aims for my rear legs. It wants tendon. It wants me grounded. Its heat signature is a low streak in my secondary eyes, fast and deliberate.
I pivot.
My stabs extend slightly, mid-wing talons touching down as stabilizers. My rear leg steps, not back, but sideways, denying it a straight line.
The viperwolf commits anyway.
It leaps.
The viperwolf hits my flank, and its claws penetrate the membrane.
Pain flashes hot across my wing edge.
It tries to climb toward the base of my wing, where the joint is thick and vulnerable. The membrane pulls under its weight, stretching and then tearing in narrow lines that sting like fire.
I drop my wing on that side.
Not spreading it.
Pressing it.
The membrane folds over the viperwolf's body like a net. My wing-talons come down, pinning them to the composite with brutal precision. Not stabbing deep. Holding them in place hard enough that breath turns into a grunt and then into a thin, panicked rasp.
The viperwolf thrashes. Its jaw snaps upward, teeth flashing, trying to catch the softer tissue of my underside.
I lower my head and bite.
This time I do not fight armor. I go for the throat under the jaw, where heat blooms brightest.
My jaws close.
The viperwolf's neck collapses under pressure. Air and blood push out together. The sound is wet and contained, like tearing cloth under water.
It spasms once, then stills.
Two down.
The remaining three do not retreat.
They intensify.
They spread wider, two on either side of me, one climbing.
Yes.
One climbs.
The creature uses its forelimbs like hands, with its digits splayed and an opposable thumb hooking onto a ruined rib and vine, pulling itself up the wall with fluid efficiency. It rises above the clearing floor, seeking an angle, seeking a drop, seeking my neck and back, where I cannot easily bite without exposing my throat.
I track it with my secondary eyes.
Its heat signature brightens against the cooler wall. Each grip point flares and then dims as it shifts. Its tail flicks for balance.
It is not a mindless beast.
It is a hunter that understands three dimensions.
The other two wolves move in close, one positioned in front of me and the other behind me. They coordinate without speaking loudly. Their bodies twitch in small cues, head tilts, and paw gestures, micro-movements that carry meaning.
They try to force me to commit to one direction so the other can strike.
I do not commit.
I keep my posture low and compact.
Wings folded tight.
I extend my stabs for stability.
The wing-talons are prepared for pinning.
I move in short bursts. Each step is deliberate, testing composite slickness and root lattice friction.
The viperwolf at my front lunges first, aiming for my throat.
I meet it with my head.
Crest forward.
Not a ram meant to break bone. A shove meant to disrupt trajectory.
The viperwolf's leap becomes a collision.
It tumbles in the shallow water sheet, limbs flailing as it tries to recover. Its claws scrape for grip and find none. It slides belly-down, and the armor along its neck knocks against the composite with a dull, hollow clack.
The rear attacker charges, seizing the moment, going for my back leg.
I pivot and stomp.
My rear foot comes down on its forelimb.
Crunch.
The sound is small but final.
The viperwolf screams, not long, not loud, a sharp burst that turns into frantic cackling pulses as it tries to pull free. The broken limb twists under my weight in the wrong direction. Heat spikes around the fracture, bright in my secondary eyes, then smears as blood begins to seep.
The vocalization is not laughter. It is signal and stress and pack language firing too fast.
It tries to bite my ankle.
Its jaws snap shut on air.
I lift and drive weight again.
This time the foot lands across its ribcage.
The composite beneath it gives no softness.
Ribs compress. Something inside gives with a muted pop. The viperwolf's breath exits in a wet cough that sprays the underside of my foot with warmth.
Its heat signature flares bright, then dims as breath fails.
Three down.
The climber drops.
The climber launches from the wall, aiming for my neck and shoulders, where it can anchor its claws while allowing the other survivor to attack my legs.
There is only one other survivor on the floor now, and it hesitates as the climber commits. It will not hesitate long.
The climber is airborne.
My forward eyes catch only a dark blur.
My secondary eyes see the heat mass falling toward me, their limbs spread, and their mouths open. I see the interior of its jaw as a bright, wet crescent. I see its tongue. I see the heat of its throat. It is not thinking about pain. It is thinking about purchase.
I time my movements.
I open my wings a fraction.
Not to fly.
To create surfaces.
The finned members separate slightly, catching air and giving me a broader profile. The stabs angle outward. My mid-wing talons lift, ready.
The climber hits the wing surface instead of my neck.
It claws for grip.
Its digits hook into membrane seams.
Pain snaps across my wing edge again, deeper this time. The membrane tears longer, and the air touches the raw line beneath. Blood beads and then spreads, thin and slick, immediately diluted by damp.
I bring the mid-wing talon down like a hammer.
Thok.
The talon strikes the viperwolf's spine ridge, armor to armor.
The impact jars it loose. It slips. It tries to regain purchase, claws scraping, clicking, and tearing tiny lines in the membrane.
I do not let it.
I fold my wing tighter around it, trapping it against my side.
The pressure forces its breath out in short, choked bursts. I feel the vibration of its ribs through my membrane. Its claws dig for anything and find only flesh.
Then my head drops, and my jaws close around the base of its skull.
Here the armor is thick.
But there is a gap where plating meets bone, and heat points to it.
I bite into that gap.
The resistance lasts for only a fraction of a second.
Then it yields.
Crk.
The sound is bone and cartilage and something wet is tearing as the head shifts wrong. Warmth floods my mouth again, and the taste changes. This is not clean blood. This is brain heat, copper, and fat.
The climber's body goes slack.
Four down.
The remaining viperwolf on the floor makes a sound that is not panic but alarm, a rapid sequence of sharp barks and hisses that spill into the ruin ceiling and bounce back as a strange chorus.
More heat signatures shift outside the clearing.
The perimeter pack.
They do not rush in. They reassess.
They have lost four in moments.
They will not donate more bodies without advantage.
The survivor on the floor darts in and snaps at my wing edge.
It succeeds.
Its teeth rake the membrane and tear shallow lines.
The pain is bright and immediate. The membrane pulls apart in fine, parallel cuts. Blood runs in thin sheets instead of drops, slicking the edge where the finned members meet.
The viperwolf recoils instantly, trying to retreat, but I surge forward.
My wing-talons strike the composite, and the stabs stabilize my lunge. My rear legs drive.
I do not chase it out of the clearing.
I cut it off.
I angled toward the southeast tunnel's mouth, where it would flee.
The viperwolf attempts to pivot quickly and low, but the slick composite surface and shallow water cause it to lose its balance for a brief moment.
That heartbeat is enough.
I strike with my head and shoulder together, a body blow that sends it skidding.
It hits the wall line and rebounds.
I clamp my jaws around its hindquarter.
I bite deep into muscle and tendon.
The viperwolf shrieks and kicks, claws scraping metal, trying to pull free. Its jaw twists to bite my face, my crest, anything it can reach.
I hold.
My teeth sink through dense flesh until they find the corded resistance that anchors the joint. The tendon stretches, tries to survive, then begins to separate into strands. Warm blood jets into my mouth in hot pulses.
I shake once.
Not wild. Controlled.
The motion tears tissue.
The viperwolf's heat signature flares bright along the wounded limb. The leg jerks and then fails to obey. The foot drags, useless, leaving a smeared line across the composite.
Blood sprays onto composite.
The smell hits the air like a flag.
The viperwolf manages to rip free.
It staggers.
It does not run smoothly anymore.
Its gait is broken.
It leaves a clear trail.
It makes a rapid sequence of signals toward the tunnel mouth, but the other heat signatures outside the clearing shift away rather than in. They are pulling back. They are disengaging.
The wounded viperwolf limps toward the tunnel, then changes direction abruptly, choosing the outer wall line instead, hugging shadow as it flees east around the facility's perimeter.
It is trying to get back to the north.
The rest of the pack withdraws into the jungle, heat signatures fading between trunks. They do not cry out to the night in defeat. They vanish.
Silence returns in pieces.
Drip. Stream. Insect rasp.
My breath is loud in my ears for a moment.
Then it steadies.
I remain in the clearing.
I do not venture into the open jungle.
Not yet.
Night hides angles. Night hides pits. Night hides more pack bodies that could still be near. They withdrew, but they did not cease to exist.
I secure what is mine first.
I turn in slow arcs, scanning with secondary eyes.
Four heat sources lie still on the composite.
Their bodies cool gradually. Cooling starts at the limbs and creeps inward. The wet floor steals heat from them faster than air. Their mouths hang open. Teeth glint faintly. Blood gathers in shallow pools that spread along low points in the plating, thin and dark.
I sweep the tunnel mouths.
No heat hides in the shadows near the walls.
I sweep the roofline where the climber came from.
No additional signature clings above.
I sweep the southeast tunnel mouth where the pack entered.
Only cool air and faint heat from the exterior can be felt.
Good.
Then I lower my head and lick my wounds.
The membrane tears along my wing edges sting when my tongue touches them. The pain is sharp but not deep. Blood is present, but not pouring. The cuts are long, shallow tracks.
They were smart.
They went for wings.
They went for a leg.
They tried to ground me.
I do not linger in self-assessment long.
I shift to the nearest body and begin to feed.
The first bite is a flesh and armor ridge.
Chitin cracks under my teeth with a brittle snap. Under it, muscle is dense and hot. The taste is rich, predator-rich, and full of iron and tension.
When I pull, skin parts in strips. Tissue strings briefly, then tears. Blood spills onto my tongue and down my throat, warm enough to register as heat inside my mouth.
Heat answers inside me immediately.
This sensation is not the thin, fast burn associated with Teylu.
It's not the slow, anchoring warmth associated with Hexapede.
This is different.
This is a surge.
It feels as though my body is acknowledging the necessity for repair.
I tear sections free and swallow without choking, working through neck, shoulder, and rib. I crack long bones. Marrow spills, sweet under mineral. When I bite through a joint, cartilage gives with a wet snap that echoes faintly under the roof. I consume everything that breaks cleanly. I do not leave soft organs behind. It consists of heat, salt, and concentrated life.
Then came the second body.
Then the third.
The clearing fills with the sound of tearing and crunching, but it is contained under the ruin's roof. It does not carry far.
As I consume, my core grows hotter.
Not fever.
Acceleration.
Digestion tightens into a stronger rhythm. My stomach contracts and releases with purpose, pushing heat outward into the limb and wing base.
The cuts along my membranes throb less.
This occurs due to alterations in blood flow. Because tissue shifts. My body begins the repair process as soon as it has the necessary materials.
I finish the fourth body.
The bones are gone.
The armor ridges are gone.
The clearing holds only smeared blood on the composite and the faint cooling of where bodies lay. Bits of chitin that do not digest immediately crunch between my teeth and then soften as heat works through them.
I lift my head and breathe.
The air tastes different now. It tastes of predator blood and ownership.
I sweep again with my secondary eyes.
The pack does not return.
Only then do I move.
The wounded viperwolf fled east around the ruins.
The blood trail is visible both by scent and by heat, as the droplets still retain warmth against the cooler composite and leaves. The droplets are not round. They smear. They catch on roots. They paint the wall line in irregular strokes that fade as they cool.
I follow it along the outer wall line, staying close to the ruin geometry.
The blood trail is steady at first, then becomes intermittent, and heavy again.
The viperwolf slowed.
It tried to push through.
It failed.
I find it on the east side of the facility, half in a shallow depression where the ruin wall collapses into soil. Its body lies twisted, one hind leg useless, blood pooled darkly in leaf litter. Its heat signature is almost gone.
Its chest does not rise.
Its eyes are open, reflecting nothing. The jaw is slightly parted, teeth exposed as if it died mid-signal. Flies are not present yet, but the smell is already building.
It is dead.
Its head is angled north, as if it died facing the direction it meant to reach.
The implication lands cleanly.
This was not a random hunt.
This was territory overlap, and now it is conflict.
I stand over the body for a moment and listen.
No footfalls.
No claws.
No heat signatures were approaching.
The rest of the pack did not linger here.
They withdrew deep, far enough that even my secondary eyes cannot pick them out through leaf density and distance.
I feed again.
The fifth body is cooler but still rich. Cooling has thickened the blood, making it clingy. The flesh tears in heavier strips. The smell is stronger, iron and rot beginning at the edges, but the core is still food.
I consume it fully, bones and armor and all, until nothing remains but smeared scent and a disturbed leaf. I bite through the wounded leg last. The tendon gives with a long, resisting pull, then parts.
My core heat rises again.
It becomes a sustained burn that spreads into my wings, into the torn membrane edges, and into the bruises I did not notice during combat.
The feeling is not comfort.
It is a function.
The body spikes its metabolism when necessary.
If a resource is available, the body refuses to remain damaged.
The night is still night.
It is deep.
The jungle beyond holds sounds I cannot place, but none approach the facility with weight.
I return to the clearing.
I settle beneath the collapsed wall again.
The metal beneath is cool. It draws heat from my underside, but my core remains hot enough to resist cooling.
I fold my wings tight, careful of torn edges.
I tuck my head lower.
I try to sleep, but sleep does not come cleanly.
Every drip sounds like a claw tap for the first few breaths. Every shift in the leaves outside the ruin roof feels like a return. My secondary eyes flare open at small heat changes, then close again when they resolve into nothing.
I do not dream.
Not this time.
Whatever touched me before does not return, or perhaps I am not deep enough to reach it.
I rest in shallow layers, half-alert, half-recovering, my body doing its work beneath my awareness.
Outside the wall's shadow, the jungle continues to breathe.
Somewhere in the distance, far beyond the ruins, a call rolls through the canopy and fades.
It is just the world reminding me that it does not stop, even though I survived the night.
I keep my senses half-open.
And the clearing holds, for now.