I sat there for a long time, propped against the tree, letting the forest steady itself around me. The wind returned first—cool and slow, rustling through the high branches like someone flipping pages in a book too old to read. My heartbeat evened out. My breath stopped coming in gasps. I was alive, still. Hungry and hollow, but alive.

  The cloak was better than it had any right to be. Weighty, but not stiff. The silver thread wasn’t just for show—it was stitched in patterns, barely visible unless the light hit just right. Reinforcement maybe, or just flair. Either way, it settled over my shoulders like a second skin. The boots fit perfectly. Same with the belt. And the food from the satchel was probably enough to last me a week.

  I took half an hour to chew through some jerky and a hard hunk of bread, washing it down with a pull from the flask. The water tasted clean. Cold. No metal bite, no algae sting. I’d have to ask what the Broker laced it with—if I ever got the chance.

  I spent the night back at the shrine.

  By morning, I wasn’t dead. That was about the best thing I could say.

  Every limb felt waterloged. My joints creaked when I moved, like I’d been aging in fast-forward. My guts didn’t want food, but I forced down some dried fruit and a piece of jerky. Salt and sugar—fuel, even if my stomach churned at the effort.

  Standing took strategy. I braced myself against the altar, counted to three, and pushed up slowly, like I was hauling someone else’s body. My vision tunneled. Black at the edges, like shadows clawing inward. I didn’t fall, but I did lean against the stone long enough to consider staying there permanently.

  I shuffled outside to piss in the grass, then came back and collapsed like a sack of bones. Progress.

  The second day was better, barely. I could stand without seeing stars. My hands had stopped trembling, though they still felt weak—like the strength had been bled out with the deal and left behind in a silver cup. I walked the perimeter of the shrine, slow laps between crumbling pillars and moss-slick stone. Stiff at first, then looser. My breath didn’t catch in my throat as often. The trees stopped spinning.

  I spent the rest of the day listening. Watching. There were sounds in the woods I couldn’t place—chirring, clicking, the faint groan of old bark shifting. The kind of noises you couldn’t mistake for wind or birds, no matter how badly you wanted to.

  I stayed close to the shrine. The altar was solid, defensible. If anything came back, I’d hear it first. Maybe even have enough energy to run. Maybe.

  There were trails, barely visible. Not human. Not fresh. Small tracks like deer, larger ones like boars. A set of pawprints too wide to belong to anything I wanted to meet alone. But they were quiet trails. The kind made by animals that didn’t want to be seen. The kind I’d used back home more than once when avoiding trouble.

  I followed one of them upstream, boots quiet on the moss. The stream itself was a whisper—constant, indifferent. A reminder that this place had rhythm, even if I didn’t know the tune yet.

  The trees began to change.

  At first, I thought it was just weathering—age, maybe, or rot. But then I noticed the cuts. Subtle at first, shallow scrapes against bark. Not from claws. Not from blades. Something in between.

  Then I saw one—no, two—trees stripped like they’d been flayed. The bark wasn’t cut; it had been , torn back in curling layers, with deep gouges trailing down the grain like teeth marks. Something had carved them open. Something strong. Something methodical.

  I crouched beside the first one, pressing my fingers to the torn wood. It was damp. Recent. My gut turned cold.

  I looked up, eyes scanning the underbrush. The clearing was silent. Too silent.

  Farther upstream, more trees. More damage. The marks weren’t random. There was a path here, even if it didn’t follow any trail I recognized. Something had moved through this place. Something that didn’t walk like anything I’d ever known.

  That’s when I saw the carcass.

  Small. Deer maybe, or something close. Its hind legs had been pulled out of joint, wrenched like meat from a spit. Spine snapped clean through. And the head—gone. Torn off, not sliced. The blood had dried into the grass like old rust, but the body hadn’t been touched by scavengers.

  I didn’t stick around.

  Whatever had done that—whatever had needed to do that—I didn’t want to meet it without an army at my back. Or a bigger gun than I’d ever owned.

  I stood slowly, keeping my weight on the balls of my feet, heart ticking faster now. The forest was still too quiet. Even the stream felt farther away, like sound itself had decided not to hang around.

  I took one step back.

  Then another.

  Then I saw them.

  Three silhouettes, just beyond the trees. Hulking, wrong. Insectoid in shape but nothing like any bug I’d ever seen. Limbs bent wrong. Skin that shimmered faintly like oiled metal or wet chitin. Their eyes—or what passed for them—burned faint and blue in the shadows. Limbs bent wrong. I’d seen a lot of monsters back home—human ones—but this wasn’t the same kind of nightmare.

  They had seen me.

  All three turned in unison. No charge. No sound. Just stillness—like statues halfway through a breath. Watching. Measuring.

  I didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

  And neither did they.

  I eased back a step, then another, careful not to snap a twig or shift a stone. I kept my breathing quiet, my steps lighter than the moss underfoot.

  I’d tailed men before. Slipped away from ambushes. This was the same rhythm—different stakes. I moved like a shadow cast by a dying light, mind locked in, everything else gone quiet. Just me and the route back.

  The Ledger stirred faintly at my side. I didn’t look at it, but I felt something. A pressure at the edge of my thoughts. A breath on my shoulder.

  I didn’t stop until I saw the shrine again through the trees—cracked stone, ivy crawling up its spine like veins. Safety. Or the closest thing I had to it in this goddamned world.

  I dropped to one knee at the edge of the clearing, panting hard.They didn’t seem to have followed me—thankfully. But I didn’t know how long I could keep that up. My legs were starting to shake, and my vision had that slight blur that came with adrenaline wearing thin.

  I scanned the trees one last time. Nothing moved.

  “I know you’re there,” I said, voice low but steady.

  The air thickened.

  A flicker in the corner of my eye, like heat rising off pavement—then the cold bite of something . The Ledger appeared before me, pages fluttering in a wind that didn’t touch the leaves. A breath followed it. Not warm. Not cold. Just… ancient.

  “I want to know what those things are,” I said. “Everything. What they are, what they want, what they can do.”

  My blood still hadn’t stopped racing, but my mind was clear.

  Then I felt it—a shift in the air, the way a room changes when someone steps inside it. The red mist slithered up from the corners of the clearing like it had been hiding just beneath the surface, curling around me in ribbons.

  The Broker appeared across from me, half-shaped in the haze. His silhouette wavered, built from bone and fog, that skull half-shadowed beneath his hood.

  he said.

  It wasn’t a suggestion. It was already written. The Ledger opened to a fresh page on its own.

  ? OFFER:

  ? PRICE:

  There was a pause. A silence that felt like it noticed me. Then the quill appeared again—floating, black as pitch and sharp as a thorn.

  I reached out. My hand didn’t shake.

  The moment the tip scratched the page, the deal took root.

  And then the knowledge hit.

  Not like a whisper. Not like a gentle unfolding.

  Like a scream jammed into the space behind my eyes.

  My throat seized. I tried to speak—to say something, anything—but nothing came out. Not even breath.

  The Ledger sealed with a soft snap.

  And then, just as the pressure peaked, it stopped. Something slipped into my palm.

  A single sheet of parchment. Cream-white. Crisp edges. The text was printed in neat, blocky script beneath a title I didn’t recognize. A page torn straight from some book meant for people who knew how to survive in this place.

  Excerpt from: Predators of the Verge:

  Entry: Hollow Thrum

  Classification:Pack Predator — Insectoid

  Stolen story; please report.

  I didn’t know how close they were—but I knew they were coming.

  The forest was too quiet. The wind had died without warning. Not a leaf stirred, not a bird called. There was a weight behind my ears, a pressure like I was sinking underwater.

  The page said they didn’t give up. Once they locked onto a trail—heartbeat, heat, scent—they followed it until something bled or something broke. They were trackers. That was their purpose. That was all they knew how to be.

  I’d covered my path as best I could. Circles, false starts, dragged moss and brush across my own tracks. I even waded upstream for a while, hoping the cold water would kill my scent.

  But I wasn’t stupid enough to believe it’d fool them for long.

  I crept back toward the tree line, every step measured, barefoot now, boots slung from my belt. The forest floor was cold. Damp. I used the pain to stay sharp.

  That’s when I felt it.

  A vibration—not sound, not movement. Just a sensation that rattled through the soles of my feet and settled into my spine.

  Like a heartbeat—slow, patient. But not mine.

  I froze. Dropped low behind a fallen trunk slick with moss. The thrum grew stronger, then softened again, like it was passing through me. My own pulse was thunder in my ears, and I knew—they could feel it.

  Something moved just beyond the clearing.

  A shape slid between trees like it was part of them, all hooked limbs and liquid grace. The sensory stalk swayed as it passed, scanning in slow, precise arcs. Then another form dropped behind it, quiet as death, slipping into formation.

  They were flanking.

  My stomach turned to stone. I inched backward, slow as breath. No sudden movements, no sound. I’d used trails like this before—back home. When I was the predator. Now I was praying the rules still held.

  But then—

  Crack.

  Small. Inconsequential. A twig, nothing more. But in that silence, it may as well have been a gunshot.

  The first stalk twisted toward it with inhuman speed. It clicked—once.

  A single sound. A trigger.

  The other two moved instantly.

  Shit.

  I didn’t wait to see where they were. I moved.

  Branches lashed at my arms, thorns kissed skin, twigs snapped underfoot. Not a sprint—sprinting was panic. This was something else. I was a whisper between trees, a shadow on the run. My feet barely kissed the moss before lifting again. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t shout. Couldn’t bait them, couldn’t bluff. The world had taken my voice—but not my mind.

  And I remembered: they always traveled in threes—scout, stalker, killer. The one that clicked? That was the scout. It hadn’t charged—it was signaling. The stalker would already be on the move, cutting wide, circling fast. And the killer? The killer was patient. It would wait. Drop in silence. Land like a verdict.

  I veered hard left, down a slope slick with moss and shale. Slid most of the way, let gravity carry me. Legs hit stone, rolled, came up in a crouch behind a clutch of ferns. Pain bloomed in my side, hot and sharp—but I didn’t stop. Couldn’t.

  My breath came shallow, my ears ringing with blood. The thrum was louder now. The ground itself was warning me.

  I needed a weapon.

  My hand found a rock—smooth, palm-sized, heavy enough to break. Not much, but better than empty fists. I gripped it tight. Remembered what I’d read:

  The stalk. Behind the knees. Under the arms.

  No armor there.

  The thrum spiked—closer now.

  I narrowed my eyes. Steadied my breath. My muscles were trembling, not from fear—but from readiness.

  They wanted silence?

  Fine.

  But I wasn’t going quiet.

  The first shape burst through the ferns ahead of me—tall, fast, and wrong. Its silhouette shifted like a nightmare caught mid-molt, legs jointed all in the wrong places, its stalk sweeping wide through the fog-thick air. Antennae twitched like it was tasting my fear.

  The killer.

  I dropped low, still as bark, one hand in the dirt. My pulse hammered against my ribs, a signal flare in a world where even breath could betray me. I tried to stop it, to will myself still—but I knew the truth.

  The thrum wasn’t just a sound.

  It was how they hunted.

  Its foot hit the stone two paces away. It paused. Listening. Feeling.

  I exploded upward.

  The rock met its stalk with a sound like splitting ice. I drove it into the soft spot beneath the chitin again and again, teeth bared in silence, until the thing shrieked—not with sound, but with vibration. My skull rang. My vision blurred.

  It twisted violently, one of its claws catching my side. I felt it tear. Hot pain burst down my ribs. But I didn’t stop.

  I ducked, rolled under its second swing, and slammed the rock into the joint behind its leg. Once—twice—it staggered. The third hit cracked bone. Or something close to it. The leg buckled.

  It didn’t collapse.

  It lunged.

  The whole weight of it bore down on me, and I barely got my arms up in time. I hit the ground hard, pinned beneath two hundred pounds of killing instinct and metal-flesh. Its claws punched into the earth beside my head. The stalk lashed, blind but frenzied.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I shoved the rock up—into the underside of its throat-stalk. The impact drove my wrist back, but I didn’t let go. I hammered the same spot, over and over. The shimmer on its skin faltered. Its movements grew jerky. The vibration faded.

  I pushed. Screamed silent fury into its empty face. And finally—finally—the thing stopped moving.

  I lay there gasping without sound, chest rising in shallow, frantic gulps. My hands were slick with blood—mine, its, I couldn’t tell.

  Then I saw it: a long shard of broken broken chitin jutting from the corpse’s side. Still warm. Still sharp. I tore it free—my makeshift blade.

  But I wasn’t alone.

  Something moved behind me.

  Not loud. Not rushed. Just certain.

  The stalker.

  I turned, stumbling to my feet—and there he was. The Broker.

  Half-formed in mist. The Ledger open. Pages aglow. An offer waiting.

  One page in particular burned gold:

  ? OFFER: Edge of Vow — a soul-bound blade, designed to pierce carapace and kill true.

  ? PRICE: One Hollow Thrum slain within thirty seconds

  The weapon hovered over the page. Curved. Black. Alive with power. It pulsed like it knew my name.

  I reached for it. Opened my mouth to speak—

  Nothing.

  Not a whisper. Not even breath.

  I froze.

  Of course. The deal. My voice—gone. Taken. Traded for knowledge. I couldn’t accept. Not aloud. I looked to the Ledger. The quill was there, waiting. But the stalker was closing. I had no time to write. I stared the Broker down, chest heaving, blood dripping to the leaves, rage building like a second heartbeat.

  

  He didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Just watched—unblinking, unreadable. The blade flickered once. Then it vanished. So did the page.

  And I ran.

  The stalker came fast behind me, clicks echoing like gunfire through the trees. I dodged left, dove beneath a tangle of roots. A claw grazed my ankle—I felt it split the skin—but I didn’t stop. I knew how they worked. Scout. Stalker. Killer. The killer was dead. The scout was waiting. That meant this one—this one would chase.

  I led it through uneven ground, deeper into the thicket. Let it get close. I could feel the heat of its breath—or maybe just the rage in its steps. A gap in the stones. A low ledge. I dove beneath it, rolled to the side, and waited.

  It came fast. Leaping. Too tall. Too eager.

  Its stalk hit the stone with a crack like a bat to a tree. It recoiled, staggered midair. I was already moving. I lunged from the underbrush—not with the rock, but with a broken piece of its dead kin's chitin. Sharp. Rigid. Still warm. I drove it into the side of the stalker’s leg, behind the knee. It howled in that silent way—body twitching like it couldn’t process the pain.

  It slashed wildly. One claw caught my shoulder and sent me sprawling. My vision swam. Everything blurred. But it was limping now. Slower.

  I rolled to my feet,seized a branch as thick as my arm. The end was jagged, split like a spear. I aimed for the joint behind its other leg and jammed it in with everything I had left. The stalker collapsed. Twitching. Damaged. Not dead—but slowed.

  And I didn’t stick around.

  The scout gave a sharp click in the distance. Too far. Or maybe just waiting.

  I limped into the trees, blood slick down one side, a dozen cuts screaming for attention. But I was alive. Barely.

  The forest swallowed me. No footsteps behind. No clicks. No shimmer of chitin in the dark. I didn’t stop moving—not yet. Every step hurt. Every breath was fire. But pain meant I still had a body to feel it.

  Eventually, when the thrum had faded and the shadows grew quiet again, I found a hollow beneath the roots of an old tree. Damp. Cramped. But hidden. I collapsed inside, pulling branches over the entrance. Not enough to stop them—but maybe enough to confuse them. They hunted by sound, by rhythm, by heartbeat. So I held mine in.

  For a while, I lay curled in the dirt, chest tight, every inch of me screaming. Then—nothing.

  Darkness took me before I even noticed.

  ?

  When I came to, the sky was black and brittle above the canopy. Stars like cracked glass. The air had gone colder, thick with damp, every breath a weight.

  Pain brought me back first. Then hunger.

  I shifted, slow and stiff, body half-curled against the roots. My side throbbed. The cuts on my arm had dried into stinging welts, and my shoulder ached like the whole joint might come loose if I moved wrong.

  I didn’t speak—couldn’t—but I hissed out a breath between clenched teeth.

  Then I reached for the satchel.

  Somehow, it was still with me. The clasp unlatched with a tired snap, and inside, the the Broker’s provisions were mostly intact. Two days gone since I’d first made the deal, and nearly half the food was already gone. What was left might stretch another three, if I was careful.

  I tore off a strip of meat.

  Then the waterskin. Half full. Maybe less. I drank slow, rolling each swallow before letting it slide down.

  When I was done, I set the skin aside and peeled my cloak back just enough to get a look at the worst of it. Blood, crusted and fresh both. Dirt in the wounds. Nothing clean. I tore strips from the bottom of my shirt and did what I could—packing the slice along my ribs, wrapping the gouge in my shoulder tight.

  It wasn’t much. But it would hold.

  The rest could wait.