Caelum stepped through the portal, expecting solid ground, but the earth gave way beneath him—soft and sticky, grabbing at his boots. The wet squelch grounded him. He blinked, taking in a mangrove basin full of strange, unfamiliar life. The air felt clean but old, nothing like the dry, neglected world he'd left.
Each shift of his weight draws a soft slurp of suction from the mud. The air vibrates with the whirr of a dragonfly-shaped insect and the rasp of a cyclops-eyed gecko.
The mangroves tower overhead, ancient and massive, their canopy broken by shafts of sunlight.
Caelum squints up—two suns burn in the sky here. The trunks are thick, rough, built like armour. Insects swarm over the bark, thousands of them, each tree a city. Critters are swarming around, eating them and thriving. Crabs with four claws—two huge, two small—pick off anything that strays too close to the water's edge. Even here, crabs. Carcinisation reigns supreme, he thinks.
The roots tangled and overlapped, each one competing for space, forming a network of natural paths from tree to tree. Caelum climbed along them, moving deeper into the rift. He marked trunks as he went, which was tough work, and searched for a place to stay for the next three days.
He arrived as day faded, last rays turning yellow. Gradually, he noticed something unusual.
Jellyfish-like organisms floated in the air, emitting a white glow. Nothing even seemed to try eating them, so Caelum assumed they weren't edible, but they would at least be a minor light source when night came.
After an hour picking his way from the gate, Caelum finds a hollow mangrove, raised above the mud, entrance tight enough to hold.
Claw marks scar the bark, the inside worn smooth by something else, but it will do a lot better than being outside at night. Caelum carefully gathers crab shells, large fallen seed pods, and mangrove vines, tying and arranging them into a makeshift alarm he would set at the hollow's entrance. He spears a fish with skinny hind legs at the muddy edge, watching and learning from where the crabs gather and bubbles break the surface, then drags his catch back toward the shelter.
By the time Caelum felt ready, the basin was completely dark. He had to rely on his memory and the jellyfish he called floaters to find his way back.
The world had quieted, broken only by faraway growls or croaks that carried through the roots. He returned to the hollow mangrove and gathered the brittle, lifeless branches he'd collected, arranging them into a small pyramid shape just beyond the entrance on a pad of bark and packed mud. With brisk movements, he set about coaxing a flame to life in this alien wilderness.
Using his firestarter, Caelum got the fire going and kept it small so smoke wouldn't pool inside.
The smoke still seemed to scare away the floaters; maybe it was a rare thing on this wet and moist world. Before he can rest, Caelum ties shells and seed pods along the nearest root to complete his alarm trap, sets his spear within easy reach beside him, and settles near the fire as it crackles low.
His skin tingled. He wiped his arm, expecting sweat, but his hand came away almost dry—only a fine film lifting the hairs.
He presses his palm to the mangrove's inside. The wood bites back, a jolt up his arm. He inhales, lungs stretching too far, tongue curling at the copper metallic taste in his mouth. The ARC interface flashes blue at the edge of his vision: baseline variance detected. The rift is changing him. He always knew it would happen, but feeling it is something else.
After about ten minutes, Caelum's senses calmed. This was a good sign; it meant he was adapting and might gain something from this journey. The foundation was there; he just needed an anchor for the resonant energy. It could be an action, a discovery or even an emotional response.
Tiredness suddenly returns, hitting Caelum like a truck. He chooses a spot on the far side of the hollow, opposite the entrance, and lies down, placing his spear within arm's reach. He throws a couple of branches on the fire to keep it going, then drifts off quickly. There was no dream tonight, only quiet darkness in an undiscovered world.
A slow shift of movement in the undergrowth, then the clack of shells hitting each other, sliced the silence between sleepy breaths. Something shuffled against the dry roots, two or three shells rasping together like snapped twigs. Sleeping, Caelum didn't wake in alert, but the ARC interface detected the unnatural origin of the sound and sent an electric signal that jolted him awake. He shot up, spear ready, aimed at the entrance.
The early dawn had arrived, not a sunrise so much as a pale seep through the canopy—a white haze bleeding between leaves, mist hanging low over the mud like breath that hadn't decided to leave. The basin's constant hum returned in layers as the night loosened its grip: insects warming, distant croaks sharpening into individuals, water shifting in a rhythmic and lazy tidal wave.
For a moment, he saw only the hollow's interior: ancient wood, the slick sheen of old claw marks catching thin light. Then his attention snapped to the shelter's mouth.
Outside, the tree entrance he had chosen as a choke point was half in shadow, half in fog. The shell-warning line had trembled once and settled.
He shot up in one quick motion, spear in hand, shoulders low and angled. The coals threw a weak red light onto the bark pad, and beyond that, the world was all soft edges—until something moved too well in the mist.
A streak of black, inky darkness that didn't fit in.
He reminded himself that two suns meant two shadows. Shapes doubled and shifted. But this was different—a third line, an extra patch of darkness moving in a way nothing else did.
He held his breath.
The floaters were low at dawn, their white glow almost invisible now that the sky was giving its own light again. A handful drifted near the entrance—then slowly, as if nudged by an unseen shoulder, they pulled away.
An unseen pressure rolled through the roots beneath him. Not sound exactly. More like the idea of a drumbeat transmitted through living wood.
Caelum kept the spear level and still. He fixed his gaze on the entrance and let his peripheral vision do the work. Something stepped into the edge of the embers of the fire.
It moved as it belonged to the mangroves, the same way the crabs did—utterly certain of footing. Six limbs, the front pair longer and stronger, and jointed, meant for hooking bark. Black obsidian-like fur. Whiskers like braided reed flowed over wiry, tough muscle, damp-sheened where the mist clung. Its head was narrow and wrong in the proportions, and its eyes weren't reflective; they were dark discs that swallowed light and returned nothing.
Under its jaw, a throat sac pulsed. Slow. Deliberate.
It wasn't starving. It wasn't panicked. It was hunting.
The reed-stalker angled its head, looking past the coals and into the hollow. Caelum realised, with a cold pinch of clarity, that it wasn't looking at him first.
It was looking for food.
The fish he'd speared last night was meant for his breakfast. In the dim light, he'd left it near the inner wall, away from the entrance but not far enough. The smell must have spread. Everything seemed sharper in the morning, as if the world had been washed clean and started fresh.
The reed-stalker took a step, then another, testing the ground. Its claw touched the shell line.
Tick.
The shells didn't rattle this time. It had learned the line's tension in a single touch.
Shit, this wasn't some mindless hunter, Caelum thought.
Caelum tightened his grip on the spear's metal shaft. He pointed it forward, not attacking, but holding his ground and making his message clear. This is my place.