Sam did not bring the thrall through the hole.
He could not.
The fence was low enough to crawl under, but the gap was narrow and angled, and the corpse did not bend like a living body. More importantly, the camp had eyes. Too many. Even if he dragged it in wrapped in tarps, someone would ask questions, and questions were knives.
So Sam left it in the trees, kneeling in a patch of shadow beneath a collapsed retaining wall, motionless as stone.
"Wait," Sam whispered.
The thrall's glowing eyes dimmed until they were barely visible, like coals buried under ash.
Sam watched it for a full minute, forcing himself to trust the command. The network's threads held it upright. His shadow held its obedience. If either slipped, this would end with screaming.
He pushed the thought away and slid back under the fence.
Inside the settlement, the night smelled like smoke and sweat. Someone had been burning scraps again, trying to cook old grain into something edible. The air carried the stale bitterness of ideology too, the kind that made people feel righteous while they starved.
Sam moved through the sleeping tents like he belonged, because he did. At least on the surface.
A lantern flickered near the central hall. Two guards stood there, rifles slung, heads close together in quiet conversation. Their shadows stretched long behind them, thick and clear under the floodlight.
Sam slowed.
Shadow Communication hummed at the edge of his awareness. He had learned not to force it. He had learned to let the shadows come to him.
He let his own shadow brush the edge of the nearest one.
A whisper of thought slid into his mind, not words, but impressions.
Annoyance. Boredom. Hunger.
Then something sharper.
Excitement.
The guards were talking about tomorrow.
No.
Not tomorrow. Tonight.
Sam kept walking, posture loose, eyes down, hands visible. When he passed close enough, he let a single question fall into the guard's shadow like a pebble dropped into water.
"What are you guarding?"
The guard flinched slightly, barely perceptible. His eyes darted once, then settled. He did not turn. He did not see Sam.
But his shadow answered.
Words this time, rough and half-formed, like an inner voice that was not meant to be heard.
"Fuel. Torches. Oil."
Sam's stomach tightened.
He kept walking. He did not look back.
He circled wide and approached the central hall from the other side, where the storage containers were stacked two high. A padlock hung on one of them, new metal among old rust. A sign had been scratched into the paint.
CLEANSE.
Sam swallowed. His hands clenched and relaxed.
So it was happening.
He found a place in the shadows between two containers and waited. After a few minutes, the door to the hall opened and people began to drift out, quiet and purposeful. Not a meeting for morale. Not a speech. This was logistics.
Sam watched faces as they passed.
Hard eyes. Lean bodies. Scarred hands.
He recognised the leader by the way others moved aside without being told.
Kellan.
Fire-attuned, loud, charismatic, and cruel in the way that made followers feel strong. He had been one of the ones who argued that taking Sam in had been a mistake, that a child who had lived among "city rot" could not be trusted. Then Sam had learned how to be useful, and Kellan had stopped arguing.
Kellan stopped arguing because he assumed Sam was already under control.
Sam watched him speak to a small cluster near the hall door. He could not hear the words. The camp did not allow eavesdropping. People noticed. People punished.
But the shadows did not care about rules.
Sam reached again, careful, letting his shadow touch the dark smear behind one of the men.
A pulse of information struck his mind.
"Raid. Dawn. Settlement east. Burn stores. Kill resisters. Take med crates."
Another impression followed, bitter and eager.
"Make an example."
Sam's throat went tight.
A small settlement east meant the traders' pocket. He had heard about them even inside this camp. They brought antibiotics sometimes. Bandages. Salt. They traded with anyone who paid in scrap and labour, even the Pure Reclaimers, because survival made hypocrites of everyone.
Kellan wanted them gone because they kept people alive.
Sam understood the logic.
He hated it.
He forced his breathing to stay even and waited until the group dispersed. When the hall door shut again, Sam slipped away, back into the maze of tents.
He returned to his assigned shelter and lay down on a thin mat. He stared at the tarp ceiling while his mind ran through the options.
If he tried to warn the eastern settlement, he would have to travel in daylight. He would be seen. He would be followed. He would die, or he would bring the raid down on them faster.
If he tried to confront Kellan, he would be killed. Even if he somehow won, the camp would turn on him as a traitor.
If he did nothing, people who did not deserve to die would burn while he watched from behind a fence.
Sam closed his eyes.
Nyx did not speak, but he felt her presence like a hand on the back of his neck, steady and cold.
He remembered the thrall kneeling in the shadows outside the fence.
He remembered the basin's quiet, the network's voice, the way it had called him Interpreter as if the word had always belonged to him.
He did not sleep.
He waited for the camp to fall into its deepest lull.
Then he rose.
He moved quietly, slipping between tents, avoiding lantern light, avoiding footsteps. He reached the fence and lowered himself into the dirt, feeling for the loosened earth by touch alone.
The hole accepted him.
Cold air hit his face as he emerged outside, and the world immediately felt wider. Less human. More honest.
The thrall was still where he had left it.
Kneeling. Silent. Eyes dim.
Sam exhaled once, then turned and moved fast through the trees.
The basin greeted him with its familiar stillness.
No insects. No birds. No wind.
A sanctuary carved out of a world that wanted him dead.
Sam knelt beside the dead log again, shadow falling over the pale caps.
"I need you," he whispered.
The voice came without delay.
"The raid begins at dawn," it said.
Sam's jaw tightened. "You already know."
"We listen," the network replied. "The thread carries intent."
Sam swallowed. "I have one thrall. I am still weak. I cannot stop them by force."
The basin's soil cooled, as if a deeper layer of the ground had exhaled.
"Then do not stop them by force," the network said. "Stop them by fear."
Sam frowned. "Fear does not change people like Kellan."
"It changes groups," the network replied. "It makes them hesitate. It makes them blame the wrong things."
Sam's hands curled into fists. "I need the raid to fail. Completely. Without them realising it was me."
A pause.
Then the network spoke again, and Sam felt the weight of its attention settle on him.
"We can shift the quiet line," it said.
Sam's stomach tightened. "You said this sanctum is avoided."
"It is," the network replied. "Because we tell the awakened tide to turn away. We can stop telling it for a moment."
Sam stared into the shadows under the log. "You can let something through."
"Yes."
Sam's thoughts sharpened. A controlled breach. A predator slipping close to the camp. A disaster that could be blamed on the wilderness.
He hated how effective it sounded.
He also saw the risk.
"If you let something through, it could reach the sleeping tents," Sam said.
The network's voice did not soften.
"We can open a narrow corridor," it said. "A line. A channel. It will draw toward heat, movement, and blood."
Sam knew what that meant.
The raid group.
Not the camp.
He felt his heart hammer in his chest.
"What comes?" he asked.
A faint pressure, like an answer formed from many minds.
"A hunter," the network said. "One that rides wind and teeth."
Sam's mouth went dry.
A wind-attuned beast.
Fast. Silent. Deadly.
He pictured the raid column moving through the trees toward the east at dawn, torches ready, oil sloshing in cans. If something hit them in the dark, they would scatter. They would retreat. They would delay.
It would buy time.
It would also kill people.
Sam forced his voice steady.
"I will not let it reach the eastern settlement," he said.
"It will not," the network replied. "Not if you guide the strike."
Sam swallowed. "How?"
"You have a thrall," the network said. "You have shadows. Use them to herd."
Sam's grip tightened on the dirt.
This was what Nyx had meant.
A tool. A chain.
He did not have the luxury of clean choices.
He had choices that saved someone and choices that saved no one.
Sam looked down at his own shadow stretching across the basin floor.
"Open your corridor," he said. "But keep it tight. Keep it away from the tents."
The network's response came like a slow closing of a fist.
"Agreed," it said. "But you will owe."
Sam did not hesitate.
"I already do."
The basin's soil glimmered faintly, blue light threading under the surface. The sanctuary's stillness shifted, not breaking, but adjusting, like a door unlocking one hinge while keeping the other sealed.
Sam rose.
"Come," he told the thrall.
It stood instantly.
They moved back through the trees toward the camp's outskirts, not directly toward the fence, but toward the ridge where the old suburb bled into thicker forest. The raid column would pass through that corridor at dawn. That was the only efficient route east that avoided the densest Rewilded growth.
Sam had walked it before, during forced scouting trips. He knew the ground.
He knew where shadows pooled.
He knew where people felt safe because nothing had attacked there in months.
He led the thrall into a hollow between two collapsed walls and left it there.
"Kneel," he whispered.
The thrall knelt.
Sam crouched and pressed his hand to the ground. He did not have earth. He did not have water. He did not have wind.
He had shadow.
He let Shadow Communication spread outward, tasting the edges of the camp like fingertips along a wire fence. He listened to the shadows of guards, of sleeping bodies, of lantern posts.
He filtered for one thing.
Kellan.
When he found him, it was like a flare in the dark. Not because of light, but because of intensity. Kellan's shadow carried heat even without flames, a restless coil of ambition.
Sam touched it with his own shadow and asked, silently.
"When do you leave?"
The answer snapped back like a thought spoken too loud.
"First light. No delays."
Sam's jaw tightened.
Good.
He needed them moving. He needed them outside the fence. He needed them away from the sleeping tents when the corridor opened.
He withdrew and waited.
Time crawled.
The sky lightened by degrees, a slow wash from black to charcoal. The camp stirred. Footsteps multiplied. Lanterns dimmed. People emerged, fastening armour, checking knives, loading crude rifles that had been repaired too many times.
Sam watched from his hiding place near the ridge, heart steadying into something cold.
He saw the raid group assemble.
Twenty, maybe twenty-five.
Enough to burn a small settlement.
Enough to die if the wilderness decided to collect.
Kellan stood at the front, speaking quietly. He carried a torch bundle and a metal can of oil. Two others carried sacks that clinked with glass. Molotovs.
Sam's stomach turned.
He waited until they moved.
The column slipped out through a gate section of the fence, one of the few controlled openings. Guards watched them leave, faces proud, as if sending people out to commit murder was a ritual that kept the camp pure.
Sam stayed still until the last of them passed the ridge line.
Then he moved.
He slid through the trees parallel to them, keeping distance, keeping cover. The thrall followed in silence, stepping over debris without hesitation. It was faster than Sam expected. More precise than a corpse should be.
The raid group entered the old corridor between thicker tree lines. Shadows deepened. The air cooled.
Sam felt it.
A subtle change in the wilderness, like a held breath being released.
The network was shifting the quiet line.
Sam's skin prickled.
He pulled the thrall into a deeper patch of shade and crouched beside it, eyes fixed on the raid column ahead.
He whispered into the shadows around the raiders, threading a message the way he had learned to do with sleeping guards.
Not a command.
A suggestion.
A seed of fear.
"Something is watching."
Several heads jerked slightly. Not turning. Just reacting. People did that when their instincts caught something their minds could not justify.
Kellan barked a low order. The column tightened. They moved faster.
Good.
Faster meant less time near the camp.
Sam whispered again, softer.
"Too late."
The air changed.
A sound moved through the trees, not a howl, not a growl.
A hiss, like wind forced through a cracked throat.
The first man at the rear of the column stiffened. He turned his head, scanning the darkness between trunks.
He did not see it.
Sam did.
Not with his eyes.
With shadow.
A shape slid through the tree shadows like liquid, low to the ground, moving too smoothly to be a normal animal. It was large, larger than a wolf. Its outline wavered, as if the air around it was bending.
Wind-attuned.
It did not need to rush. It knew it had time.
Sam's heart hammered, but his body stayed controlled.
He whispered to the thrall.
"Protect me. Do not break cover."
The thrall's head tilted slightly, as if acknowledging.
The beast struck.
It moved like a gust made solid, slamming into the rear guard. The man screamed once, a sharp burst cut short as he hit the ground. Blood sprayed dark against pale dirt.
The column exploded into chaos.
Shouts. Commands. Panic.
Kellan spun, flames flaring briefly in his palm as he tried to light a torch with raw resonance. Fire flickered, sputtered, then steadied.
Sam felt a cold satisfaction.
Kellan was powerful. But power did not stop teeth.
The beast circled, moving through shadows between trees, striking again. Another raider went down, clutching at a torn leg.
Sam forced himself to act.
This could not become a massacre.
He needed a controlled failure, not total annihilation. If too many died, the camp would not just delay. They would purge. They would search for a reason. They would look for betrayal.
He whispered into the shadows of the front line.
"Retreat."
It was not mind control. It was not domination. It was a pressure, a voice in the part of the brain that wanted to survive. It made their fear feel reasonable.
Several raiders stepped back instinctively.
Kellan roared something. He hurled a fireburst into the trees.
The flames licked trunks, briefly lighting the corridor.
For a heartbeat, the shadows thinned.
Sam felt his ability strain. He felt Shadowbound Thrall pull at his Will, even without moving. Maintaining control under flickering light was harder.
The beast hissed and recoiled from the sudden brightness, then slipped sideways, using the shadow behind a fallen wall.
Sam's eyes narrowed.
Now.
He gave the thrall a single command.
"Intercept."
The thrall moved.
It surged from the shadow hollow and slammed into Kellan's flank before Kellan could turn fully. The impact drove Kellan into the dirt. His fire flared wildly, scattering sparks.
Several raiders screamed, half in shock, half in confusion at seeing a dead man move.
Sam felt the advantage snap into place.
They would not think "traitor."
They would think "the wilderness did this."
They would think "the Awakening is closer than we believed."
Kellan roared, shoving the thrall off with brute force and heat. The thrall's sleeve burned, but it did not react to pain. It grabbed Kellan's wrist and pinned it to the ground with inhuman steadiness.
Sam's Will strained like a muscle about to tear.
He could not hold this long.
The beast returned, drawn by the heat and blood.
It lunged toward Kellan.
Sam's stomach dropped.
If Kellan died here, it might solve one problem and create another. A martyr. A power vacuum. A purge led by someone colder.
Sam whispered, sharp and urgent, into the corridor shadows.
"Not him."
The words were not for the raiders.
They were for the network.
The beast faltered for a fraction of a second, as if something unseen tugged at its attention. It snapped at a different target instead, ripping into the nearest raider's shoulder.
Sam exhaled, shaky.
The corridor was still too hot. Too bright. Too chaotic.
His head pounded. A thin line of pain spread behind his eyes.
He felt the system's warning before it appeared.
[ WARNING ]
[ Will strain critical ]
[ Shadowbound Thrall duration destabilizing ]
Sam clenched his jaw and forced a final sequence of actions.
He pushed one more whisper into the raiders' shadows.
"Run."
This time, the suggestion landed on minds already breaking.
Half the column turned and bolted toward the camp gate. The other half followed, dragging wounded, stumbling, eyes wide with terror. Someone dropped a sack of molotovs. Glass shattered. Oil soaked dirt.
Kellan fought to his feet, snarling, fire flaring in both hands. He looked around wildly, trying to understand what had hit him.
His eyes landed on the thrall.
Recognition flickered, then disbelief.
"That's…" he started.
Sam did not let him finish.
He whispered to the thrall.
"Fall."
The thrall released Kellan and collapsed backward into the darkest patch of shade between roots, going limp like a puppet with its strings cut.
To anyone watching, it looked like the beast had torn it down and dragged it away.
The beast hissed again, then retreated as the fleeing column created distance. It did not chase far. It did not need to.
The network's corridor was narrowing again.
The quiet line returning.
Sam stayed crouched, breath tight, blood roaring in his ears. He watched until the last raider vanished toward the fence.
Kellan was the last to retreat, face twisted with rage and fear in equal measure.
He threw a final fireburst into the trees, lighting nothing and hitting no one.
Then he ran.
Sam waited.
He did not move until the corridor felt cold again, until the air lost that charged edge that meant a predator was near.
When he finally exhaled, it was slow and controlled.
The thrall lay still in the shadows beside him.
Sam touched its shoulder.
It did not respond.
He felt the connection thin, like a thread fraying.
Then the system confirmed what his body already knew.
[ THRALL TERMINATED ]
[ Cause: Duration limit exceeded ]
[ Recovery: Possible within sanctum ]
Sam's legs trembled as he stood.
He had stopped the raid.
Not forever. Not permanently.
But for tonight, the eastern settlement would not burn.
He turned back toward the basin, carrying himself through the trees with deliberate care. He left no tracks where he could avoid it. He stepped on stone instead of soil. He moved through shadow.
When he reached the dead basin, the air changed immediately, quiet settling over him like a cloak.
He knelt beside the mushroom.
"It is done," he whispered.
The network answered with a calm pulse of approval.
"The raid failed," it said. "The thread remains unscarred."
Sam's jaw tightened. "People died."
A pause.
"Some deaths prevent many," the network replied. "You understand this. You chose it."
Sam stared down at the pale caps, anger and guilt twisting together in his chest.
"I did not choose their ideology," he said. "I chose to stop them."
"And you did," the network replied.
Sam's head throbbed. His Will felt hollowed out.
He forced himself to ask the practical question.
"What now?"
The network's voice lowered slightly, as if speaking something it considered important.
"Now they fear what they cannot name," it said. "Fear makes them search. Search makes them stumble. If you remain hidden, their own suspicion will tear them."
Sam swallowed. "They will increase security."
"Yes."
Sam's eyes narrowed. "Kellan saw the thrall. He might remember the scout's face."
The network was silent for a heartbeat.
Then it spoke.
"Then you need more than one tool," it said. "You need a home that is not just quiet, but defended."
Sam's gaze sharpened.
"A guardian."
The mushroom caps glimmered faintly, blue light pulsing under the soil.
"We can be that," the network said. "If you build the rules."
Sam felt something settle into place. Not comfort.
Structure.
A base. A sanctuary. A future foothold.
He looked toward the direction of the camp, hidden beyond trees and fences.
He had just pulled their attention toward the wilderness.
Now he needed to survive what came next.
The system chimed softly.
[ OBJECTIVE COMPLETE ]
[ Prevent the raid ]
[ Reward: Pending ]
[ New Objective: Maintain cover during retaliation ]
Sam closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
"Tell me how to build the rules," he whispered.
The basin stayed quiet.
But the quiet felt different now.
Not empty.
Prepared.