There was no path. No trail. No direction but forward.
The Root Labyrinth didn't offer passage. It swallowed it. Trees didn't grow here so much as they wove—bark fused into bark, branches overlapping in dense, low canopies that blocked out the sky entirely. Roots bulged from the ground like veins, gnarled and wet, creating a floor that shifted underfoot with every step. It was like walking on the back of some giant, sleeping creature.
Cael had stopped trying to look up. The higher he looked, the more it felt like something else looked back.
They moved slowly now, not out of fear—but necessity. The deeper they went, the more the forest pressed in. The temperature didn't rise, but the air thickened, full of humidity and the smell of rot and green things. Spores floated lazily between trees, pulsing with bioluminescence. Fungi bloomed from the bark in strange spirals, colors too vivid to be safe.
No one spoke for a long while.
Finally, Lyndra broke the silence. "We can't carry much more," she muttered, adjusting the strap on the food capsule she'd tied to her back. "How many are still at the base?"
"Seven," Sora answered without hesitation. "Including the King."
"That's too many mouths."
Cael exhaled through his nose, ducking under a low-hanging branch that oozed some kind of translucent sap. "We should've split into two squads earlier."
"We're already split," Rune said, voice low. "We just don't know where the others are."
"Queen's team went north," Elara said. "They took the second Bishop and two Pawns. Their goal was resource recon."
"And the Rooks?"
"One stayed with Elijah," Elara continued. "Other one was injured. Barely made it out of training." Her tone dipped subtly, not pity—something colder. "Doubt he was field-ready."
Cael frowned. "So the King's just… sitting at the Ember base with a crippled Rook and two unevolved Pawns?"
"They have cover. Defenses. And the null field," Elara said. "He's safer than you think."
"But vulnerable if we all die out here," Pax muttered.
A silence followed. Even the insects seemed to hush for a breath.
Cael stopped near a massive, knotted root the size of a horse and rested his hand on the bark. It was warm. Not from the sun—but from within. A low, vibrating pulse traveled through his palm. Like a heartbeat.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Do we go back?"
Sora raised an eyebrow. "Now?"
"We have enough rations to carry," he said. "If we leave half here and mark the spot, two of us could return. Fast. Resupply the base."
"I'll go," Pax volunteered immediately. "My ankle's still tight. I'm slowing you down anyway."
"You're not," Cael said, but the boy was already pulling out his water pack.
"I should go too," Lyndra offered. "No offense, Pax, but I don't want you out there alone. Too many moving tiles. We've seen how random they are."
Rune nodded. "Smart. If a Detonation tile went off under his foot, we'd never hear the end of it."
"Or him," Ryve muttered. "We'd just hear boom and a memory."
They managed a small laugh—brief, but human.
Sora stood still for a long moment, then finally said, "Leave one third of the rations here. Pack the rest. You've got two hours. Get there, hand it off, get back. If you're not back by then—"
"We'll head deeper," Cael finished for her.
Rune reached into his belt and snapped off a thin chalk strip. He crouched near the roots and marked a long sigil on the underside—two horizontal lines, one vertical.
"Signal for safe zone," he said. "If someone from the other team finds this, they'll know it's ours."
Cael's eyes scanned the trees.
Still no sign of the Verdant Skulker from earlier. But that made him more uneasy, not less. It wasn't gone. It was waiting.
"We'll head east while they double back," Elara said. "Deeper. Toward the center."
Cael stiffened. "The center? Already?"
"No," Sora said. "Not to the center. But toward quadrant edge. If this zone has a serum, it'll be embedded farther in. And if the White team's here, that's where they'll go."
Rune tilted his head. "You think they're here already?"
"I think they're starving," she replied. "Same as we were."
Pax and Lyndra disappeared into the green veil like they were being swallowed. Their footsteps were soft, and then gone. Cael watched until even the sound of foliage faded. It was like the jungle had closed behind them.
Silence returned—but not stillness.
Every inch of the Root Labyrinth seemed to shift when unobserved. The vines twisted subtly. Leaves swayed without wind. And the deeper they moved, the more the terrain resisted them—branches bent just low enough to catch on weapons, roots tilted to catch ankles, bark flaked with sharp ridges. Like the forest resented their intrusion.
Cael adjusted his grip on his blade, stepping over a damp knot of vines. The air here clung to his skin like oil, sticky and warm.
"I don't like this place," Ryve muttered, ducking under a moss-choked arch. "It's too… awake."
"It is awake," Sora said calmly. "The whole biome is reactive. Living networks. Signal conduction through fungal threads. The roots might carry messages faster than we can walk."
"Messages to what?" Ryve asked, already regretting it.
Sora didn't answer.
They kept moving in single file, careful not to break more than necessary. Their boots made shallow prints in the sponge-like ground. The deeper they went, the more signs of battle they found—slash marks in bark, a trail of blood crusted over a root, even a spent syringe half-buried in moss. Not theirs.
"Elijah's team?" Cael asked quietly.
Elara shook her head. "No. Wrong direction."
"Then the Whites."
Rune frowned. "We're close, then."
"Or following them," Elara said.
They stopped to rest in a pocket of strange stillness. A bowl-like clearing surrounded by ringed trees and tangled overhead roots, the canopy too thick to see through. Soft bioluminescence pulsed along the wood like veins. Cael sat on a dry patch of moss and finally let his shoulders relax.
Elara didn't sit. She stood with her arms crossed, staring into the dark beyond the trees.
"She hasn't said it yet," Rune murmured beside him, "but I think Elara's nervous."
Cael looked up at her. "She's always like that."
"No." Rune shook his head. "She's never still. Stillness isn't her. She's listening for something."
Cael didn't want to admit it, but he felt it too. Like the jungle had taken a breath and was holding it.
He broke the silence. "What happens if we lose the King?"
Elara's gaze snapped toward him, sharp as a blade unsheathed.
"We don't," she said flatly.
"Yeah, but if—"
"We don't," she repeated, harder this time.
Sora, who had been kneeling at the rootline with her hand pressed to the bark, finally stood and turned.
"You need to ask the question," she said. "Even if it's ugly."
Elara's jaw flexed.
"If Elijah dies," Sora continued, "we all die. Every single one of us. The wrist devices detonate. Instant fail condition."
A hush fell. Even the insects seemed to quiet.
"Even if we're halfway across the board?" Ryve asked.
"It doesn't matter," Sora said. "The King's life is the linchpin. They built it that way so no one could desert or disobey. If he falls, we fall."
Cael swallowed.
"So leaving him in Ember Wastes…"
Elara's voice was tight. "Was the best option."
"He's with a crippled Rook and two unevolved Pawns," Rune reminded.
"And a null zone," Sora said. "He cancels powers. And the terrain is stable. If we moved him here, he'd be vulnerable to monsters, terrain hazards, ambush tiles."
"Or us not reaching him in time," Elara added.
"But it means we can't lose him," Cael said. "No matter what. If they find the base—if they guess where he is—"
"They won't," she cut in.
"And if they do?" he pushed.
She looked him in the eye. "Then you make sure they don't walk away."
The words settled cold into Cael's stomach. They weren't just orders. They were truth.
Rune was quiet a long moment. Then he muttered, "That's why we're expendable."
"No," Sora said. "That's why we're the sword. He's the lock. We're the blade that keeps it sealed."
Cael stood, unable to sit any longer.
"I hate this game."
Elara didn't respond.
Before he could say more, a sound cracked across the quiet.
A faint drag.
Like claws over bark.
Everyone froze.
Rune pointed, slow and silent, toward the rootline. Between two gnarled trunks, something had just moved. Too fast to see clearly, but not gone.
A shadow. A blink. Then silence.
"The Skulker," Elara whispered. "It's still tracking us."
"We move," she said, low and sharp. "Now. Quiet. No torchlight."
They vanished back into the weave of trees, shadows among shadows.
And behind them, something watched. Patient.
Waiting for the moment the blade slipped.