The morning crept in slowly, its light pale and reluctant, bleeding through the dense canopy in broken shafts that pooled in patches of soft, wet moss. The jungle didn't wake all at once; rather, it shifted, murmuring in fragments: a cluster of insects humming beneath a rotting log, a bird shrieking once in the far distance, the creak of ancient vines sagging under their own weight. The ground steamed faintly from the night's cold breath, damp and fragrant, carrying the scent of crushed fern and bitter resin. Rain clung to the leaves in beads, falling at uneven intervals like a slow, unsteady clock.
Naera crouched near the water catch, her hands moving with habitual precision, the actions more muscle memory than focus. As she sifted through the leaf funnel, she allowed herself to glance back at the others, studying them as she had countless plants and animals in the jungle. Raif, always tense, too silent lately, his shoulders hunched as if he bore the weight of the entire camp. He reminded her of a brittle stalk of reed: flexible until it snapped. Goss was pacing again, muttering curses, but there was something brittle in his bravado. Fear masquerading as cynicism. She didn't blame him. They were all breaking in different directions.
Lira was another story, sharp-eyed, always moving with a controlled efficiency that bordered on aggression. Naera didn't trust her, not fully. There was something in Lira's silence that spoke of choices made alone. Thomund, she understood the best, steady, reliable, a man built like the earth he once dug through. He was slow to anger and slower to speak, but when he did, it carried weight. Eloin, for all his calm demeanour, kept his thoughts guarded. He worked diligently, but she saw the exhaustion in his posture, the hesitation in his pauses.
She returned to her task, wondering how much longer they could keep this fragile pattern before someone fractured. And when they did, what would the jungle do then? As she checked the leaf-funnel for debris. She brushed away a cluster of tiny red mites with a strip of bark and then paused, eyes narrowing. The water had a faint, oily shimmer. Her brow furrowed. She dipped a thin reed into the basin, brought it to her nose, and inhaled. A hint of rot. Not enough to discard, but enough to worry her. They needed filtration, maybe crushed charcoal. But they didn't have time. Not yet.
Her gaze drifted beyond the catch, tracing the dark lines of trees bent in strange, unnatural arcs. Every day the jungle seemed to reconfigure itself. Roots were never quite in the same place. Leaves changed shape, colour, thickness. She'd watched a vine retract once, curled back like a sleeping centipede. She hadn't told the others. Some things sounded worse when spoken aloud.
To her left, a patch of silver moss pulsed faintly, releasing a sweet, almost cloying scent. It reminded her of dried citrus. When she brushed it aside earlier, she'd found bones beneath, too small for a person, too delicate for a monkey. Hollow and twisted. She didn't mention those either.
She knew this place wasn't passive. It watched with the patience of a predator and the curiosity of something older than thought. Where the others saw wilderness, Naera saw design, intent in the way branches curved like broken fingers, in the unsettling symmetry of fungi patches that pulsed on opposing tree trunks. She wondered if they noticed how the birds never nested here, how the wind only moved when no one was looking. The way vines seemed to inch when backs were turned. She had watched a centipede flee a flower that hadn't bloomed. Seen beetles climb halfway up a trunk and stop, twitching, before turning back. This jungle didn't obey nature. It warped it.
A rustle broke her thoughts. Goss stumbled past, muttering about needing more bark, eyes sunken from lack of sleep. He barely registered her.
Raif stood in the middle of the camp, arms crossed, staring down the orb. Its glow had returned at some point in the night, soft and steady, as if it had never gone silent. But it still hadn't spoken. The light wasn't warm, not reassuring, it was cold. Mechanical. Watching. Testing.
He felt it in the back of his skull, a dull ache like pressure from inside. As if the orb were a lid, and something inside it was trying to remember the shape of a thought. Was it alive? Was it sentient? Was it judging them?
"I've given everything," he whispered. "So why won't you give anything back?"
No answer. Not even a flicker.
Behind him, Lira and Goss were arguing again, over something small, meaningless. Raif didn't even catch the words. Just tone. Sharp. Worn thin.
"Enough!" he snapped.
They fell silent.
Raif turned to face them. "We're tired. We're hurting. But that thing isn't going to save us. We are. So stop bickering. Stop waiting for rescue."
Eloin stood, arms folded. "And if it never speaks again?"
Raif didn't blink. "Then we build anyway. We survive anyway. Because if we don't, we die. Not together. Not heroically. Alone. And quiet. Just like this damn orb."
Lira said nothing, just sharpened a shard of bone against a rough stone, her eyes hollow. Her hands trembled, but her movements stayed precise. When a sudden snap echoed from the treeline, a branch cracking under something unseen, she flinched so hard the bone slipped, slicing her palm. She hissed and clenched her fist, blood welling between her fingers.
"Shit," Thomund said, hurrying toward her. "Let me see."
"I'm fine," she barked, yanking her hand away. Her voice cracked at the edge. "It's nothing."
Raif approached slowly. "You're not fine. You haven't been since-"
"Don't say it," she snapped. "Don't make it real."
The air between them vibrated with tension. Naera stepped closer, her gaze flicking between them. "Let me clean it."
"I said it's fine!" Lira shouted. Then, quieter, broken: "Just let me… just let me be."
She turned and walked away, cradling her hand. The others exchanged glances, but no one followed.
Naera sat against the water catch, the faint gurgle of dew into the basin the only sound she trusted. Her hands lay idle for once, fingers wrapped loosely around her knees as she stared out at the dim clearing. The others were silhouettes in the mist, hunched, silent, moving with the drained ritual of survivors. To her, they looked like ghosts. And she wondered how much of herself had already turned into one.
She studied them as she would a rare plant, slowly, curiously, from a distance. Lira with her controlled rage, eyes sharp and movements sharper. Goss, loud and brittle, folding under the pressure but refusing to admit it. Eloin, retreating into work, his silences measured but not without tremble. Thomund, ever the pillar, though even he was beginning to crack around the edges. And Raif. Raif who bore too much and said too little.
They were different from her. They spoke more than they saw. Reacted more than they read. None of them noticed how the leaves curled when touched, or how the air changed scent before the rain. They didn't notice the stone ring near the basin where insects refused to tread. But Naera did. She always noticed.
A quiet footstep behind her drew her attention, Eloin, offering her a shard of dried bark. "For writing," he said simply. A peace offering. She took it with a nod, but said nothing. The silence between them was not cold, just necessary. It was easier than trying to explain the things she couldn't prove. Her fingers traced the etched side of her bark cup. Her eyes were hollow, but alert. She thought of the marks she'd found earlier, half-scraped from the trunks near the southern ridge. They hadn't been animal.
And that scared her.
She stared into the canopy and thought of home. Not a real one. Just the image she'd built, a place with walls and no vines, with silence that didn't carry teeth. She imagined a roof that didn't leak, food that didn't rot in your stomach, a world where glowing orbs didn't choose who lived or died.
She couldn't sleep. Her eyes stung with exhaustion, yet her body refused to surrender. Every creak of the trees or rustle in the underbrush drew her attention, heart thrumming with a vigilance that sleep could not penetrate. She kept watch instead, silent beneath the hanging leaves, her breath shallow, ears tuned to every disturbance. Her thoughts drifted, not just to the jungle's ever-changing face but to the people sharing its burden. Goss's anxious muttering, Lira's hardened posture, Thomund's quiet patrols, each revealed more than they said aloud. Naera felt separate from them, yet tied to them by necessity and choice. Her mind looped through the markings on the southern trunks, through the strangeness of the orb, through the subtle yet constant changes in their surroundings. She felt the edge of something, understanding, maybe, or danger. It didn't matter. The night demanded awareness. Sleep, she knew, would not come tonight.
None of them could.
Eloin had taken to scratching lines into bark, his mind too full. Thomund circled the perimeter. Goss lay flat on his back, eyes wide open, lips moving in silent curses. Lira held her blade in both hands and stared at her reflection in the flint.
Raif sat near the orb, silent. The thoughts in his head refused to settle.
He had not asked to lead.
He had not asked to be chosen.
But the moment he'd touched the Core, he'd become something more than a survivor.
He just didn't know what that meant.
And somewhere, beyond the treeline, something watched.