Even as he answered, Marek kept moving.
The prize stayed crushed beneath his arm, slick against his coat and too warm against his ribs. Every step dragged heat from it into him, a faint pressure that rose whenever the Vorid's mouth opened, as if the thing he carried recognized the thing trying to take it back.
Near the edge of the ruined camp, Evrin dragged Evris behind a large boulder, the chain between their ankles scraping through ash and broken glass. The iron weight lay several body-lengths away where Rist had dropped it, too close to the fighting, too far to reach without crossing open ground. Evris tried to stand, but Evrin pulled her back down before the Vorid's tail cut through the smoke above them and carved a black line through the air where her head would have been.
"Stay low," he said.
Evris pressed both hands over her mouth and nodded against his shoulder.
The Vorid came through the torn camp with its gold plates low, needle-legs stabbing through ash, broken tent cloth, and splintered wood. Magenta light bled between the seams of its armor. Its mouth opened beneath the armored front of its body, packed with inward-curving fangs and furnace-bright violet heat, and the air between it and Marek tasted hot enough to coat his tongue.
Marek brought the pistol up with one hand.
He had loaded a gem when Kestin first warned that something was moving in the darkness. At the time, he had assumed it was probably just Vulks and had taken a moment to choose his shot carefully, because apparently past-Marek had believed future-Marek would have the luxury of memory, breath, and both hands. Now the Vorid advanced through the smoke, and he could not remember a damn thing except the shape of those fangs.
"Please be a Breaker," he said.
The chamber snapped hard enough to sting his wrist, and the loaded gem struck the Vorid's shoulder in a burst of pale, needle-thin sparks that scattered across the gold plating. The light crawled over the armor in brittle lines, bright enough to irritate, too weak to cut, and died without leaving so much as a mark.
Marek saw the spent color fade.
"A Sparker?"
The Vorid's plates tightened seam by seam, magenta heat sharpening through the gaps as its faceless front angled toward the pistol. The shot had not hurt it; it had only given the creature a new point of interest.
Marek swallowed against the dryness in his throat.
"A damn Sparker. Of course I loaded the party trick."
The creature lowered itself, needle-legs pressing deeper into the dirt.
Marek jammed the pistol's feeding port into the pouch at his hip and hooked the rear trigger, keeping the prize locked against his ribs with his other arm. The suction gem inside the weapon pulled hard enough to jerk his wrist down, dragging loose gems upward through the leather in a harsh clatter until one struck the inner socket and locked. The rest spilled back into the pouch as he tore the pistol free, already hearing the deeper whine building inside the barrel.
The Vorid lunged.
Marek fired on instinct.
The gem struck beneath the creature's chest plating, and for a sliver of time the impact gave him nothing worth the price. No burst, no clean crack through armor, only the hollow slap of expensive failure arriving a heartbeat before the gem's property took hold.
Then the Driftstone spent itself.
It did not stop the Vorid. It caught the momentum already driving through the creature's body and bent that force sideways, dragging the charge off the line it had chosen. The Vorid's needle-legs stabbed down to correct, but its own speed betrayed it, and the gold-plated mass skidded across the camp with its mouth snapping shut on empty air where Marek had been standing.
Ash, torn tent cloth, and shattered supply wood tore beneath it. One forelimb carved a trench through the dirt while the rest of its body plowed through the wreckage of the camp, scattering splinters and embers into the red light spilling from the gate.
Evrin curled over Evris as splinters screamed through the air and shattered against the boulder shielding them. One jagged shard ricocheted off the stone and buried itself in the dirt inches away. Evris shook beneath him, but she made no sound, not even when the chain between their ankles snapped tight and bit into both of them.
The Vorid ripped itself free, its maw flaring brighter as its legs found the ground again. It was not wounded the way Marek had needed it to be, but it had missed, and that tiny mercy somehow made the cost worse.
Violet residue burned out of the pistol's side vents.
Marek stared at it.
"Oh, you absolute bastard."
A Driftstone.
He had spent two solid weeks scraping together enough coin to afford that gem, and this was what it did.
The Vorid hauled itself around, magenta seams tightening as its faceless front found him again.
Marek raised the pistol with his jaw clenched.
"Two weeks," he said. "Two weeks of work." He pointed the pistol at the monster. "And all I bought was a scenic detour for the murder bug."
The Vorid gave him no time to mourn the purchase.
It came through the drifting ash lower than before, needle-legs spread wide across the ruined ground. The Driftstone had not harmed it, but the creature had corrected around the lesson. Its body no longer committed to a clean forward line. Gold plates shifted along its torso, overlapping tighter near the damaged seam beneath the chest, while the black-and-gold tail lifted behind it with the stinger held just outside the easiest angle of his aim.
"Yeah," Marek said, backing over a broken crate. "Go ahead. Learn. That's great. Love that for me."
The pistol's barrel shook in his grip.
He tried to keep his eyes on the creature, but the prize dragged at his other side, slick with blood and sweat beneath his arm. It was heavier than it looked, warmer than it had any right to be, and every time the Vorid's mouth opened, the thing pressed faintly against his ribs as if answering.
Marek tightened his hold.
"Not happening. You hear me? Mine. Crawl back into whatever nightmare pit spawned you, you vile bug."
The Vorid's headless front angled by a fraction.
It had heard him, or sensed the tension in his grip, or felt the prize shift under his arm. Marek did not know which possibility made his skin crawl harder.
A curved gold barrier flashed into place between them.
Light raced outward from the first wall, folding over itself in widening arcs until a dome snapped shut around the Vorid. Gold sealed above its back. The creature stood caged inside a sphere of shimmering force just large enough to contain its body, its stinger dragging across the inside of the barrier with a thin, shrill scrape.
Kestin hovered above the broken camp with all four arms spread. The orbs in his upper hands burned too bright and too uneven, lighting the cracks in his stone-grey skin from within, while his lower fingers flexed in short, frantic patterns as he fed power into the prison.
"Boss!" Kestin called down. "Maybe stop insulting it and run faster!"
"I am running," Marek snapped. He caught his boot on a chunk of broken stone and lurched forward, barely keeping his balance as the prize shifted under his arm. "This is what running looks like when you're carrying the retirement plan."
Behind the large boulder, Evrin used the moment of light and noise to pull Evris tighter into cover. The chain snagged on a jagged rock at the boulder's base. He reached down, fingers slipping over ash-slick metal, and freed it with a small jerk that scraped skin from his knuckles.
Evris grabbed his wrist. Her grip was too tight.
"The weight," she breathed.
Evrin looked toward the iron ball lying in the red glow near Rist. If they could reach it, maybe they could drag the chain loose. Maybe they could use it. Maybe it would only slow them enough to die in the dirt.
The Vorid struck the dome with its mouth half-open.
Fangs scraped across gold light. The entire structure shuddered, and Kestin redirected power into the impact point before the fracture could spread. The damaged section brightened, thickening as fresh layers of force gathered over it.
The Vorid slammed a forelimb into the same spot.
Gold flared again.
Kestin reinforced it again.
A third strike followed, harder than the first two, and the dome bowed inward around the impact. Cracks raced through the glowing surface before Kestin forced them shut, his lower hands clenching and opening as grit crumbled from his fingers.
The Vorid stopped.
Its faceless front remained angled toward the weakened area. One forelimb lifted slightly. Its posture tightened, every plate along its upper body drawing down like armor preparing to take a hit.
Kestin reacted before the next blow came.
The damaged section brightened as he poured more strength into it.
The Vorid lunged at the opposite side.
The attack landed so fast Marek almost missed the trick. The creature had shown Kestin where to look, waited for him to spend power there, then cut into the thinnest part of the prison with a scything forelimb.
Gold light folded inward.
Kestin's lower hands snapped toward the true impact point, but the correction came too late. Cracks shot through the thinner sections, crossing the dome in jagged veins until they met the damage Kestin had spent too much effort containing.
For one breath, the prison held.
The Vorid hit it again.
The dome burst outward in shards of burning gold. Kestin recoiled in midair as the backlash slammed through him, his hovering body pitching sideways while the creature stepped through the collapsing barrier with awful certainty.
The Vorid surged forward, but Marek had gained just enough distance to keep from dying in the first stride. He threw himself sideways anyway as it closed the gap faster than his body wanted to believe.
One scythe-like claw sliced across the front of his coat. Another slammed into the ground where he had stood, blasting dirt and ash into his face.
The pistol nearly slipped.
Marek caught it against his palm with two fingers and a curse.
Inside the Blood Seed chamber, Dezcrin watched through the trembling red window.
The rift showed the camp in broken flashes: Marek bleeding from a cut along his brow, the prize pinned under one arm, Kestin wavering above him with light leaking from both orbs, Rist half-folded around his ruined hand, and the Vorid moving among them with fresh gold plating over black chitin and magenta heat burning between every seam.
Near the edge of the rift's view, two smaller shapes huddled behind a large boulder, chained ankle to ankle and almost invisible in the smoke. Dezcrin's crystal eye passed over them without slowing.
One of the Blood Guards lowered his head. His fingers tightened around his weapon before he could stop them.
"My Lord, should you enter?"
Dezcrin's violet crystal eye moved toward him.
"If I put so much as half an inch of my claw through that gate, it will collapse," Dezcrin said. "Rist's blood opened the path, but he has already spilled too much. The seed can carry only what its tribute can bear."
Beyond the rift, Marek jammed the pistol back into his pouch.
The suction gem pulled again. Loose gems clattered against the feeding port, but the angle was wrong, and nothing seated. Marek shoved harder, teeth bared, while the Vorid's stinger slid through the smoke in a black-and-gold curve.
"Come on. Eat one."
A gem clicked into place.
He tore the pistol free and fired without seeing the color.
The shot struck the dirt in front of the Vorid and burst into a spray of dull grey force that kicked ash into the air, buying him less than a second. The creature lowered through it, mouth brightening, not slowed enough for comfort but no longer on the same line.
Marek spat dirt from his mouth.
"Cheap one. Naturally."
Dezcrin watched the Vorid adjust around the shot.
His skull plates shifted by a fraction.
"Not blind," he said.
No one answered.
It had learned where the Vellon's defense thinned. It had learned the pistol mattered only when the gem did. It had learned Marek held the prize tightest when its mouth opened. And while Kestin was once again blocking the Vorid's path and reforming a new dome, the creature quickly recognized it needed to move toward the thinnest section of the forming barrier before the dome could fully take shape.
Behind the boulder, Evrin gathered a loop of chain into his hands to keep it from scraping loudly across the ground. It burned cold against his skin. Ahead of them, beyond their cover, the iron ball lay in the open, half-lit by the Blood Seed's red glare, and Rist's ruined hand twitched beside it every few breaths.
Evris saw the same thing.
"No," she mouthed.
Evrin did not move yet.
The camp had become angles and timing. Firelight. Smoke. The sweep of the Vorid's tail. Marek's stumbling path with the prize. Kestin's failing barriers. Rist's body folding lower each time blood left him.
Evrin waited for all of it to look somewhere else.
Dezcrin turned from the rift to the guards gathered behind him.
Two stood apart from the rest. One was human, lean and sharp-eyed beneath dark field armor, with a short blade resting at his hip and seed-slots built into the plates along his chest. The other was a Vyx, smaller than Dezcrin but still massive beside the guards around him, his black chitin polished to a dull sheen and his pale-blue crystal eye fixed on the unstable gate.
Early Primal, both of them.
Low enough for the gate to risk, strong enough to matter before the connection tore itself apart.
"You two," Dezcrin said. "Through."
The human guard stepped forward first. "Orders, my Lord?"
"Secure the prize," Dezcrin said. "Keep Marek alive if he remains useful. If he loses it, break his hands and bring him back breathing."
Through the rift, Marek's head jerked toward the sound of his name.
The Vorid punished the distraction at once.
Its stinger snapped low through the smoke. Marek twisted away, but the vibrant barb clipped his side and tore through his coat before burying itself in the dirt behind him. The impact still threw him sideways. His shoulder struck a split crate hard enough to crack the wood, and the prize shifted under his arm.
The Vorid's mouth opened wider.
Marek clamped down on the prize until pain bit through his ribs.
The Vyx Primal's pale-blue eye clicked toward the creature. "And the creature?"
Dezcrin stepped closer to the rift, close enough for red light to crawl over the cracks in his skull plates.
"Do not destroy it. Sever limbs. Pin the torso. Damage the tail if it coils again."
The Vyx Primal tilted his head by a fraction.
"I want it alive," Dezcrin said.
The order settled through the chamber in the twitch of hands, the tightening of armor straps, the small readjustments of people trying not to show what they thought of catching an old nightmare breathing.
A Blood Guard hurried forward with a shallow black case held in both hands. Inside rested a cluster of seeds nestled in carved slots, each one different in color and shape. Dezcrin selected the largest first: a deep-blue seed about the size of a mug, its surface ridged like closed knuckles and threaded with faint azure veins that tightened under his claw.
He placed it in the human guard's hand.
"Location Seed," Dezcrin said. "Already paired with my own. The moment you cross, drive it into open ground and I will know where the camp is located."
The human's fingers closed around the seed.
Dezcrin gave the remaining seeds out with more care than patience. Dark ridged seeds went to the Vyx. Pale veined seeds went to the human. Two flat defensive seeds clicked into the guard's palm like pieces of bone.
"Capture seeds. You already know how to use them, and the defensive seeds as well." His violet eye returned to the failing gate. "Use them before it understands the pattern."
The human guard slid the seeds into the armored slots along his chest. "Understood."
The Vyx Primal closed his claw around his share until the dark seeds clicked against his chitin.
The Vorid cut through another barrier Kestin threw across Marek's path, too thin and too rushed. It split the light down the center and forced its way through the fracture as if the barrier had become something it could peel apart.
Kestin's lower hands clenched hard enough for stone dust to break from his fingers.
The Blood Seed at the camp pulsed once and spat red sparks into the dirt. The rift pinched inward, its edges peeling back like a wound trying to close around a blade.
The human guard looked at the gate. His jaw shifted once before he forced it still.
"My Lord, is our rank low enough for the passage?"
The Vyx Primal's eye stayed on the trembling rift. "Two early Primals on one Husk tribute. Thin passage."
"Rist is a late-stage Husk, and Vyx blood carries more weight than rank alone. The seed will bear you if you move now."
The crimson edges buckled again.
Dezcrin's claw scraped once against the stone floor.
"Go."
The human entered first.
The rift seized around him like muscle closing over a blade. Red light crawled across his armor, sparked along the seams, and stretched his shape wrong for a heartbeat, drawing him too long through a passage too narrow for rank. The Vyx Primal stepped in before the gate could settle, and its edges tore wider, shaking so violently that the veins around the Blood Seed chamber flashed from crimson to near-black.
The gate folded over both Primals and dragged them through.
Back at the camp, the air split with a wet crack.
The human guard hit the ground first, rolled through ash and broken supply wood, and came up with the blue seed already in hand. The Vorid's faceless front angled toward him at once.
Marek stumbled back from the shift in attention, clutching the prize tighter as if his ribs could hide it from the thing that had shaped it.
"Finally," he said, breathing hard as he checked the loose gems left in his pouch with the edge of the pistol. "Thought I was doing all the work."
The Vyx Primal landed beside the human with enough force to split the stone under one foot.
Rist, still half-folded around his bleeding arm, stared at the new Vyx with his crystal eye dimming by small degrees.
"About damn time," Marek spat.
The human ignored him.
He drove the Location Seed into the gouge left by the Vorid's rolling attack. The seed convulsed once and bit into the soil.
Azure tendrils burst outward beneath the dirt.
They did not spread like the Blood Seed's hungry red veins. These moved with purpose, thin and fast, threading through cracks in the ground until several strands snapped taut in one direction and burned brighter than the rest.