The last tongues of flame sagged into coals. Zuberi knelt beside the fire ring, coaxing embers to a low glow for warmth without smoke. Across the circle, Lisa fed twigs into the heat. Orange light flickered on her face, the dancing flames accentuating the circles of exhaustion under her eyes.
Hanz lounged against the cave wall, his shadow-weapon across his knees. "I'll take first watch," he said. He looked from Lisa to Zuberi. "Does anyone have a clue how long these cycles last? It's damn hard to tell day from night in this goddamn hell." He waved a hand dismissively. "Anyway. Lisa, you relieve me. Zuberi can take the last, when…" he sighed. "Well, when this fucking place decides to pretend it's dawn."
Zuberi inclined his head. The mantle of leadership weighed less than he expected. He hadn't wanted it and would have gladly relinquished it, but knew the role became his the moment he chose to engage the wiry stranger. His gaze shifted to the cave's rear, beyond the fire's halo. There, Eli lay curled within Shifty's protective coil. Both slept soundly, their breathing rhythmic and even. Safe. A sense of quiet responsibility for their current peace settled over him.
Lisa rose, stretched, and let out a soundless yawn. "All right, I'll take the second watch," she confirmed, adjusting the machete at her hip.
The rotation felt right. Eli, a child, and Shifty, his protector, needed rest after being hounded by the silverbacks. Zuberi had almost argued Lisa should rest with them, but recognized her need to be relied upon was as vital as her need for care. Besides, he and Hanz were just as spent.
The watch order set, Zuberi found a spot near the dwindling fire. He lay down, the stone unforgiving beneath him, but exhaustion was a swift current, pulling him under. He closed his eyes. The cave's subtle sounds, Hanz settling into his watch, the distant sigh of wind, blurred and faded. The scents of ash and damp earth receded. His breathing deepened. Soon, the familiar low hum started, a vibration behind his sternum. The darkness behind his eyelids began to swirl, the last embers of the fire painting shifting patterns against them.
The world slipped away.
One moment, there was the cold floor beneath him, the muted whisper of wind from the cave mouth; the next, he stood in a place at once chillingly familiar and utterly alien. The air hung thick with the phantom scent of old musk and dry earth, the smell of the forbidden cave near his home's northern ridge. Grandfather spoke of it in hushed tones. The den of the Simba Mweupe, the great white lion with an impossible black mane, a predator of legend. As a boy, Zuberi had felt its pull, smelled that same musty scent, but fear held him back. Now, this place mirrored it, with features borrowed from the cave in which he knew he was asleep. The cave mouth yawned, carved from dark volcanic rock, not savanna sandstone, and not the limestone of the cave he shared with his four companions. There was the sense of sleeping power, ancient and dangerous. This was no trivial dream or vision, it was truth made manifest and rooted in his deepest fears. It was a place of respect. Of reverence. A name, unbidden yet certain, settled in his mind. Den of Power.
Carefully, he entered. The air, charged and electric, vibrated with silent energy that resonated in his bones, making his teeth ache. Beneath the polished floor, faint red veins pulsed like a distant heartbeat.
The textured walls glimmered with embedded shapes—trophies of his struggles, reminders etched into the stone. Compelled, he reached out, touching the impossibly preserved, ridged hide of the rhinoceraptor he and Hanz had slain. It felt real, solid under his fingertips, the coarse fur rough against his finger, grounding, yet part of the living rock. Touching it brought a phantom jolt. The beast's dying shudder, the surprising weight of its horn, the chilling realization of this world's unnatural laws, a truth cemented that where there was death there would be rewards.
Nearby, fused into the stone matrix like dark scars, were some of the silverbacks' quill-like growths. Two long, glinting quills, mounted inside a crystal base like trophies, longer than his tallest arrows, unnerved him. He was not a hunter who desecrated his quarry. Yet, deep down, he sensed this too was far from desecration.
He inched forward, staring at stacks of raw meat. Steaks, organs, even sausages. He groaned, annoyed at having had to ration a single moon-fur rabbit with such abundance here. But when he tried to grab a handful of the steaks, his hand froze inches away, a force infinitely superior to his own denying him. Absolute. Not yet, the den seemed to whisper in the thrumming silence. Soon.
He moved deeper into a broad, warmer chamber. From the basalt floor rose a mound of rainbow-sheened pebbles, taller than himself. They mirrored the pebbles from his arrival, but these thrummed with energy, each swirling with an inner aurora, radiating unclaimed potential. Solidified power. Dormant. Potent.
Opposite the mound, three shallow basins carved into the floor seemed to yearn for the pebbles, dark stone mouths awaiting sustenance. Drawn by a strange pull, Zuberi approached the first basin. Within lay translucent crystals shot through with silver filaments, emitting a faint hum. As his fingers brushed the nearest crystal, the air blurred, time stuttered, stretching and compressing like faulty memory. Images flashed. A predator's swipe slowed to syrup, his own movements impossibly fast, the world viewed through a distorted lens. Continuum. The understanding bloomed, cold and sharp. This was power over the flow of time, the hunter's ultimate edge or trap. A strong, seductive urge compelled him to grasp a pebble, feed the basin, claim this power. He hesitated. The choice felt momentous, irreversible, a path that might foreclose others.
He moved to the second bowl. It held flat, river-gray stones that absorbed ambient light, radiating focused stillness. Touching one, the world snapped into hyper-focus. The den's distant heartbeat became a deafening drum. Zuberi tasted the metallic tang of volcanic rock, felt the subtle shifts of silent wind against his skin as if solid. Every detail leaped at him, sharp, overwhelming. Perceptus. Heightened perception, awareness a razor's edge, sight at the limits of the physical.
The third bowl cradled rough, red nuggets mottled with darker flecks, radiating palpable, earthy warmth. Touching one sent vitality surging up his arm, like plunging into cool water after hours under a harsh sun. His ankle's ache faded, deep weariness eased, replaced by resilience, enduring strength. Fortis. Endurance. The power to withstand, at any cost, to outlast.
All three bowls pulsed with quiet hunger, partially filled, representing potential awakened by survival, yet demanding commitment—and more. Choosing where to invest the pebbles' power felt permanent, a declaration, a path chosen that might never be walked back. He withdrew his hand, leaving the raw potential unclaimed, unshaped. The responsibility felt too great, the consequences unknown. For now.
Continuum. Perceptus. Fortis. The names settled with the same unwelcome familiarity as wraithlands or rhinoceraptor, and more. Words he shouldn't know, yet did, as if whispered by the land or dredged from some forgotten well within. He disliked their sound, their foreign feel. They echoed something else, something he refused to examine. Isabel. Her face swam before him, promising, for a sickening moment, to never let him go. The look she wore near the end, that terrible, fervent intensity as she pleaded with her god, tears mixing with blood from her split lip and the salty spray of endless churning waters. He shoved the memory down. In places like this, forgetting was a battle often lost before it began.
Another passage beckoned, leading deeper into rising heat. As he descended, the air warmed, shimmering like a mirage. Beneath his feet, lava veins in the rock pulsed brighter, the den's heartbeat growing stronger. The tunnel opened into a vast vault, dominated by a lake of roiling molten rock. It rolled like slow thunder, casting waves of intense heat against his face. Suspended above, a golden-white corona of flame hovered, burning with an impossible, blinding intensity. This was the essence of his fire gift, the sunshine power that had burst from him, uncontrolled, in the Wraithlands. Deep in his chest, he felt it resonate, a familiar, fierce ember calling to him. Yet as he reached, drawn by its raw power, an equal and opposite force slammed into him. A wave of profound, soul-numbing cold struck him, making him recoil, gasping, air driven from his lungs.
He turned, shivering despite the vault's heat. Across the vault, an alcove rimmed with crystalline hoarfrost glittered like captured starlight in the molten glow. Within it spun a single, flawless crystal of midnight-blue. It radiated intense cold, exhaling plumes of vapor so frigid they seemed to crack nearby rock and freeze the smoldering air. The vapor curled towards him, silent, inviting, offering a different strength, shelter from heat, pressure, the crushing weight of despair. Absolute. The power of ice, detachment, enduring the unbearable. Twin halves of a greater power, fire and ice, demanded balance. They warred within him, pulling him in opposite directions.
He retreated from the vault, heart pounding from the unsettling duality. The den responded to his turmoil. Returning to the main chamber, the floor shifted, magma veins brightening. Near the entrance, stone extruded, hardening into a statue. It was a tall, faceless figure robed in shadow-like edges, its cape dissolving into mist. The Dreadwraith. It stood, a menacing guardian at the threshold. Beneath it, a chilling understanding sank into his mind. Next debt owed. The Den of Power had revealed its truth. The face, shape in this case, of the one to whom those haunting howls and growls belonged. The hunter.
Zuberi resurfaced with a sharp inhale, the cave's cold reality jarring after the intense phantasmal warmth of the den. A damp chill clung to the air. Wind rattled the sparse, dead shrubs near the entrance, danced macabre dances as it made its way into the cave, on and on and on, until it came to swirl ash from the nearly extinguished fire pit.
Lisa sat near the refuge opening, tending to the fire's dying embers. Zuberi noted that she had, at some point, unfastened the machete's sheath, weapon included, and laid it against the wall. Only an amateur would think the weapon close enough. Zuberi would have time to kill her ten times over before she reached it. As he sat up, making enough noise to announce his presence, she gave him a small, questioning nod, her eyes searching his face.
"You were gone awhile," she said in a low murmur. "Restless sleep?"
"I'm not sure it was sleep," Zuberi said, clearing the rasp with a small cough. He rubbed his face, trying to shake off the lingering phantom heat, the cold, the thrumming energy of the den. "It was a vision. Or a warning." He lowered onto the stone next to Lisa, back to the wall, only opening in front of him, to her back. "I think I know what has been hunting us. Something called the dreadwraith is coming."
Roused by the intensity in Zuberi's voice, Hanz sat up. "Wraith?" he asked, making his way from the sleeping area to join them. "Like those things in the mist?"
"Worse," Zuberi said, the memory of the faceless statue vivid. "It felt old, angry, and hungry."
He met Lisa's searching gaze. He thought of how he could explain the den to them, but he lacked the words for now.
Lisa's brow creased. Her gaze turned distant for a moment, as if about to reveal an epiphany. "A wraith, but dreadful. This place has a flair for the obvious, at least," she said. She stood, rolling her shoulders as if shaking off a physical chill. "We'll prepare while we can still breathe." She glanced towards the cave mouth, narrowing her eyes. Just as Zuberi was about to ask if all was right, she spoke again. "Right now, I'm going to sleep. Unless there's an emergency, don't wake me."
Hanz yawned, mumbled something unintelligible, waved and crawled back to his jacket, which he had folded into a pillow. Moments later, he was snoring softly.
The coals, dying moments before under Lisa's care, now flared back to life, reminding Zuberi of the roiling magma under the den. The wilderness awaited, and somewhere within it, the dreadwraith. He picked up his spear, the wood familiar and solid in his grasp. He searched within for the terror he had felt when he had first heard the roar. He did not find it.