The creature smiled.
And then the cave exploded into movement.
Something slammed into Tejas from the side — a massive arm, no warning, catching him by the collar and driving him into the ground so hard the air left his body in one brutal instant. The stone was cold against his face. His vision whited out at the edges.
"Tejas!" Diya's voice, sharp and then cut off — he heard the struggle, heard her grunt as something wrenched her arms back.
Mia's scream bounced off the cave walls, too loud, too close. "Get off — get OFF—"
"Let go of me—" Kiara, twisting, using her whole body — it didn't matter. The grip didn't shift.
Tejas tried to push himself up and was shoved back down, effortlessly, the way you'd push down a piece of paper.
They're too strong. The thought arrived clear and cold. Don't fight. Not yet.
It was over in seconds.
His arms were wrenched behind his back and something rough and fibrous was looped tight around his wrists — not rope exactly, more like twisted plant fiber, scratching into his skin with every small movement. He was hauled upright and forced to his knees.
The others were already there.
All of them.
Surrounded.
Anish had not fought.
Not because the fear wasn't there — it was, a cold wire running through his chest — but because he'd seen the numbers before anyone else had, seen the size of them, and done the math. Fighting would have cost them something they couldn't afford to lose.
He knelt with the others now, watching.
The cave felt like it had gotten smaller. The air was thicker — or maybe that was just the creatures around them, the heat coming off their bodies, the low sound of their breathing in the dark.
No one spoke.
Even Kiara was quiet, which scared Tejas more than almost anything else.
He tested the rope around his wrists carefully, just pressure, not enough to show. The fibers bit in immediately. He stopped.
Then the creatures shifted.
Not randomly. Together — a coordinated step back, opening a path down the center of the cave toward the darkness. Like they'd done this before. Like this was a specific thing, with a specific shape.
They're making room for something.
The footsteps came from deeper in.
Heavy. Measured. Each one landing with a weight that was different from the others — not just larger, but more deliberate, like each step was a choice rather than a movement.
The ogres around them lowered their heads slightly.
Tejas felt the authority before he saw it.
The leader was bigger than the others — not by a small margin, by a degree that made the others seem like a different category of thing. Its skin was darker, rougher, crossed with deep lines like old stone that had been stressed and cracked over centuries. The horns curving back from its skull were uneven and jagged, one longer than the other, both scarred at the base.
Its eyes moved across the five of them.
Not hungry. Not enraged.
Thinking.
That was the part that made Tejas's stomach drop — that careful, methodical quality, moving from face to face like it was sorting through information.
It stopped in front of Kiara.
Kiara looked back.
She couldn't help it. It was who she was — even now, kneeling in a cave with her hands tied, she met its gaze and held it. Not bravado exactly. Just refusal.
The creature studied her.
"What?" she said. Her voice came out steady. "What do you want?"
It didn't answer.
"Hey. I'm talking to you." She held its stare. "What—"
The creature reached forward and grabbed her.
"Kiara!" Diya lurched forward and was slammed back down instantly, a hand on her shoulder, immovable.
"No — no, don't—!" Mia tried to pull away from the grip on her arm. "Leave her alone—!"
Tejas twisted against the rope. "Let go of her — hey — let go—"
The leader didn't look at them.
It turned and walked back into the darkness, dragging Kiara with it like she weighed nothing at all.
"Get off me—" Her voice came back to them, indignant and furious, all her fear buried under the anger the way it always was. "I said get off—"
And then the darkness took her, and the sound stopped.
Silence.
The kind that lands on you.
Mia was shaking — full-body tremors she couldn't control, her breath coming in short, hitching waves. "We have to do something. We have to — someone has to—"
"I know." Diya's voice was tight in a way Tejas had never heard from her before. Her composure was still there, but it was thin now, stretched across something that was barely holding. "I know. We will."
Tejas stared at the darkness where Kiara had been.
Think. He needed to think. He needed to be useful right now. Think.
"…We'll get her," he said.
It didn't sound convincing. It sounded like what it was — something said because silence was worse, because the alternative was just sitting with the fear and letting it finish the job.
None of them had a hand free. None of them could move without three creatures stopping them before they got two steps. The math was what it was.
From the darkness, deeper in:
A sound — harsh, guttural, unfamiliar — echoed back to them. The leader's voice. Low and sharp, with the shape of a command in it even without the language.
Then quiet.
Then Kiara's voice, ragged: "I don't know what you're saying—"
The guttural sound again. Louder. Repeated.
"I don't understand you." Frustration cracking through the fear, the way it always did with her. "What do you want me to—"
A heavy impact. Stone. Someone hitting the ground.
Mia flinched so hard she knocked into Diya's shoulder. "Kiara—"
A roar from the creature — frustrated, not enraged, the sound of something that expected to be understood and wasn't — and then—
Kiara screamed.
The sound hit the cave walls and came back at them from every direction.
Mia broke. She pressed both hands over her mouth, tears running silently down her face, and made a sound against her palms that she was trying very hard to keep small.
Diya had gone completely still, her eyes closed, her jaw set so tight a muscle was working in her cheek.
Tejas's hands were fists behind his back, knuckles white, rope digging into his skin and he didn't care, he barely felt it.
"Kiara," he said, under his breath, to no one.
Silence again.
The creatures around them shifted. Waiting.
Anish hadn't moved.
His eyes had been working since the moment they'd been forced to their knees — moving steadily across the creatures, tracking the way they stood, the way they held themselves, the way they listened when the leader's voice came from the dark. Not scattered, not jumpy. Organized. Responsive. Following patterns.
Not feral.
Structured.
His gaze moved to the darkness at the back of the cave. Moved back. Moved to the ropes around Mia's wrists, the angle of the nearest creature's stance, the gap between two of them on the left side.
Something assembled in the back of his mind — pieces clicking together quietly, the way they did when he gave them enough space.
He exhaled through his nose.
"…I have an idea," he said.
Tejas turned to look at him. "What kind of idea?"
Anish glanced at the creatures around them, then back at Tejas. His voice was barely a breath.
"The kind we only get one shot at."
End of Chapter 4