"Whose life?" I asked, staring at the growing swarm of crimson death. "...Ours or its?"

"Yours," Ivy snapped immediately, her voice laced with venom and zero patience. "Obviously yours if you keep standing there asking stupid questions."

Of course she would say that. The hostility in her tone was so sharp it could have drawn blood.

"Can you think about survival for once instead of death?" Kaden added, irritation dripping from every syllable as he stomped on another ant with unnecessary force.

"She was just asking a question," Lyra said softly, frowning in quiet disapproval.

"I can’t really tell what your problem is with Nyx," Theo muttered, glancing between Ivy and Kaden with a tired sigh.

They both shrugged it off like it meant nothing. Like I meant nothing. Just another fleeting annoyance in the grand chaos of Morvalis.

"Can we focus on the actual problem?" Thorne cut in, his voice sharp, controlled, and brooking no argument. It sliced through the budding conflict like a blade.

We didn’t stop moving. Not for a single second.

Even while arguing, everyone kept shifting their weight, scanning the ground with frantic intensity, and crushing any Blood Ant that dared crawl too close. The repetitive motion became almost mechanical.

Step. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Crush.

Step.

Crush.

Tiny red bodies burst into faint, glistening smears beneath our boots. The sight should have been satisfying, but somehow it only made everything worse. They were so small. So pathetically easy to kill. And yet, according to Ashriel, even one successful bite was enough to steal a life.

I swallowed hard, throat tight with rising dread.

I had imagined Morvalis would throw massive monsters at us, towering beasts with claws and fangs, things we could see coming, things we could fight with blades and brute strength. Not this. Not something so minuscule it was practically invisible in the dim light. Not something that could crawl silently onto your skin, slip beneath your clothes, and end you before you even registered the pain.

Yeah. This place had just become infinitely more terrifying.

"What do we do about this?" Ivy demanded, turning toward Ashriel as if he were the only one capable of providing answers.

He didn’t reply right away. His dark eyes swept across the ground with predatory focus, calculating every tiny movement in the swarm.

"It’s easy to kill them individually," he said at last, voice low and steady. "But even one is enough to take a life if it finds the right spot."

A heavy pause settled over us.

Then he continued, "Just survive until sunrise. They retreat when the light grows strong enough."

Great. So we just had to not die for the next several hours. Simple. Very comforting. Almost relaxing.

"But these weren’t here before," I pointed out, still crushing ants as they appeared in unsettling waves. "We checked the clearing earlier."

Everyone nodded in agreement, their movements tense and coordinated.

Ashriel’s gaze shifted slowly toward the small pile of fruits we had carried back. His expression darkened.

"Where did you get those?" he asked.

"We were hungry," Theo answered quickly, almost defensively. "So we went a little ways into the forest and gathered them."

A long, damning beat of silence followed.

"You should have eaten them there," Ashriel said flatly. "Bringing them back was a mistake."

We all paused, the implication sinking in like cold water.

"I think... that’s what drew them here," he added, not entirely certain but sounding convinced enough to chill us all.

It made terrible, perfect sense. The sweet, sticky juice. The unnaturally warm flesh. The almost blood-like scent that must have acted as a beacon in the night.

And Ashriel wasn’t finished.

"You’re not worried the fruit itself might be poisonous?" he added with eerie calm, as if discussing the weather.

I blinked.

Really?

Now we were adding poison to the list? We were literally surrounded by a growing army of life-drinking ants, and he wanted to discuss potential toxins?

Also... wait.

Why did he sound like someone’s ancient grandfather dispensing wisdom? He couldn’t be older than twenty-one. That was the strict rule at Altheris. Right?

Yes... right?

Focus, Nyx, I scolded myself sharply. Now is not the time to spiral about age

---

"The worst has already happened," Elion said finally, his voice cutting through the tension like a steady anchor. Calm. Steady. Reassuring in its quiet confidence. "Right now, let’s focus on staying alive."

It was the first time he had spoken since we all jolted awake. Somehow, those simple words grounded me. Just a little. Just enough to keep the panic from swallowing me whole.

---

"We can’t keep killing them one by one like this," Theo said, stepping back as another cluster advanced. "My father used to deal with swarms like this back home. Soldier ants, though these are clearly worse."

We all looked at him expectantly.

"Wrap cloth around a stick. Light it with the fire," he explained rapidly. "The heat and smoke keep them away and kill dozens at once."

That... actually sounded brilliant.

Far better than using our feet like panicked idiots and risking a bite in the process

We moved with desperate speed.

Sticks were gathered. Clothing was sacrificed, some pieces painfully torn from garments we had grown attached to during our journey. But at the face of death, fashion and sentiment could wait. Survival came first.

The dying fire became our greatest weapon. We wrapped strips of fabric tightly around the ends of the branches, dipped them into the embers, and coaxed flames back to life.

Then we began sweeping.

Burning.

Dragging lines of fire across the ground in wide, glowing arcs.

It helped a ittle.

You could see the results immediately, some ants curled and shriveled the instant the heat touched them, their tiny crimson bodies turning to ash and smoke. The smell was acrid, faintly metallic, and sickeningly sweet.

But there were still too many.

For every cluster we incinerated, more emerged from the shadows, crawling over the corpses of their dead in an endless, horrifying wave.

I wasn’t sure if we were winning.

Or simply delaying the inevitable.

I was too focused.

Dangerously focused.

My eyes stayed glued to the ground, tracking every red dot, every possible crawling death that inched toward me...

When suddenly...

A hard, violent shove slammed into my back.

My balance shattered.

The world tilted.

And before I could react, I was falling forward... straight toward the burning torch in my hands, straight toward the ground, straight into the heart of the swarm.

"Ahh...!"

The scream tore out of me as the earth rushed up to meet me, flames licking dangerously close to my skin and hundreds of Blood Ants waiting below like a living carpet of death.