The Blood Moon was still low—its ruddy half-shadow faint on the horizon—but the trenches were already slick with the blackened ichor of the first kills. Riku stood above the southern embankment, boot heels balanced at the edge of the slope where the terrain broke into the older mining routes. The air, though crisp with dawn chill, stank of sun-warmed metal and scorched hide.
No horn had sounded. No beast had been seen breaching the main ridge. And yet, five corpses lay curled like burnt leaves in the mud below—unannounced, untracked.
"I don't like this," murmured Sira, wiping a long smear of sweat and ash across her brow. Her bowstring was still taut, fingers nervously testing tension. "They came up from beneath. Not through the ridge routes. Not even the south gulch."
"They didn't trip the traps either," added Kael from where he knelt beside one of the fallen creatures. His forge-leathers were still stained from last night's adjustment drills, and the reek of warm iron followed him. He tilted the beast's head with the end of his hammer—then froze. "Riku."
The monarch stepped down into the trench slowly, careful not to disturb the blood-streaked chalk markers. He knelt beside Kael, eye narrowing at the beast's jawline. Black runes—small, uneven etchings like primitive tattoos—ran under its eye and down its throat. They weren't written in any language Riku knew, but the shapes were disturbingly familiar.
He'd drawn a version of that pattern last week while diagramming the deeper tunnel systems.
"They shouldn't know these paths," Kael muttered, rising. "None of these routes were exposed. They were mapped only after the last seismic fold, and we sealed every shaft."
"They didn't walk them," Riku replied softly. "They were born down there."
A silence followed—sharp and cold, like the brief pause between lightning and its thunder.
A commotion broke further east—shouting, boots scraping mud, and a short, pained cry.
Sira was already moving. Riku followed without a word.
They arrived to find Bren, one of their younger trench scouts, gripping a bloodied pickaxe. He stood over the torn remains of another beast—this one smaller, its limbs twitching even in death. But it was the second thing that drew everyone's gaze.
The creature had bypassed the outer pressure plates, slipped past the tripwires, and had been standing—standing—within an ambush alcove designed to collapse once triggered. It hadn't set off a single mechanism.
Bren looked pale, eyes rimmed with sweat and disbelief. "I saw it crouching. It didn't run. It waited. Like it knew where we'd come from. When I charged, it didn't fight. Just… looked at me."
Riku knelt again, inspecting the floor beneath where the creature fell. Something shimmered faintly. A shimmer—not like mist, but like the air itself refused to settle.
Then it flickered.
Just for a moment, the creature's body distorted—phased in a ripple, becoming translucent. Through it, Riku saw the distant slope behind. The flicker passed, and the body was solid again.
Kael swore under his breath.
"They're not just faster. They're… phasing?"
"Or rehearsed," Riku said grimly. "Like they've run this route already."
"But how? The terrain changes after every Blood Moon. No map survives long enough."
Sira didn't speak. Her gaze lingered down the trench path, then toward the mine-mouth tunnel that once led to a venting chamber—sealed and unused since last moon cycle. Her eyes sharpened.
"Someone's been here. Someone before them."
Riku turned toward her, brow raised.
She crouched, brushed her hand over the moss beside the wall. Beneath it, an older set of boot prints—not the clawed impressions of a beast, but human tread. Days old. Worn deep into the soil. Not one of theirs. Not patrol. Not known.
"Who?" Kael asked, tension crackling in his voice.
Sira said nothing. She rose and walked toward the edge of the trench, staring down into the tunnel mouth, its darkness thick with unburned air.
Above them, the sun finally edged fully over the distant crags. The light struck the blood-stained ridge at just the right angle, illuminating a faint network of lines cut into the stone.
They formed a grid.
A map.
Not of the surface.
But the mines below.
Riku stared at it in silence.
Kael's voice came low behind him. "They're not invading."
"They're navigating," Riku finished. "They've seen it before."
He turned back toward the trench bed, reaching into his satchel and pulling out a plain black-bound book. His field journal. Unclipping the leather strap, he flipped past the last filled page and wrote slowly in charcoal:
They know the mine tunnels—before they ever entered them.
As he closed the journal, he glanced up again toward the horizon. The Blood Moon still loomed, heavier now. Its color seemed darker. Not just red—but rusted.
And something beneath the soil exhaled. A faint rumble. Too low for the ear, but not for the bones.
Whatever was coming next, it wouldn't start above ground.
Not this time.