Chapter 5 — Part 1: The Silence Beyond the Walls
The woman shrugged, refusing a story access to her blood. "Men with symbols are just boys with heavier toys." She gave them an unripe fruit.
They turned back because Senn turned them. Not retreat. Return.
On the way past the levee, Ril stood where they had left him. When he saw his mother at Senn's shoulder, the day changed its temperature.
Kara checked the boy's pulse. "We'll walk you to the market outpost. A healer there likes to argue."
They got the family to the first chime-stone and let University law claim them.
Senn wrote the report. Bel Verran sharpened the problem. Drevar Hane put his name on a requisition that said observe. Jax filed the feather. Kara boiled her bandages. Ronan found the east yard at dawn without being told.
KrysKo went to the parapet again. "You're thinking about the door you are going to swing whether or not the hinges complain," the warm system murmured.
He lay the map of tomorrow over the map of yesterday.
The University slept badly, beautifully. Somewhere between promise and practice, four names kept their counsel: Myles. Marrow. O'Ruadhraigh. Veyne. Not a cohort yet. A hinge, beginning to remember what it's for.
[When doors learn their purpose, they stop fearing hinges.]
When the bells began again, KrysKo was already moving.
The Hinge Acquires Tools
They met at the Quartermaster's counter before dawn.
"Hands. Rings." Quartermaster Oddie slid a tray forward: four Storage Rings of matte green brass, each etched with a tiny tree over water.
"Capacity?" Jax asked, already reaching.
"Internal volume 1.5 cubic meters. Mass ceiling 120 kilos. Do not put anything inside that's trying to kill you. It'll try harder."
KrysKo turned the ring over, feeling the tiny vibration. They keyed the metal with signet and pulse.
They loaded their rings. Kara chose the Apotheion kit: antitoxin, salve, five ampoules of coagulant, and a linen roll she refused to surrender to stasis. Jax took tools: wire, shock-tine heads, resin cartridges, a pry-bar, and a tin of matches he shook like a maraca. Ronan selected like a hunter: Drakari field cloak, chime-wire, grapnels, dried meat, scent-sand, and a simple, battered tin cup. "For tea," he said when Kara looked.
KrysKo took things no one else thought to take: socks, a whetstone, wax thread, a compass, hard biscuit, oil for metal, and a folded dust-colored scarf.
"Don't lose the rings. If you die, I want them back," Oddie grunted.
The gates opened at first light. They went out walking in a square—Ronan ahead and right, KrysKo ahead and left, Kara center-left, Jax center-right. It was doctrine.
They made miles. Ronan paused where chime-wire strings had been set, plucking them gently. He read scent-sand: "Scavvers. Hungry. Not brave."
Kara paused at a stubborn little vine. "Star-thyme. You stubborn thing." She smiled at the plant without touching it. Ronan nodded, as if someone had just told him another language made a sound his heart already knew.
They ate standing up. Ronan brewed tea in his battered cup.
"Tell me something about you I couldn't guess," Kara said to Ronan.
"My mother taught me constellations," Ronan said. "She said names are bridges." He traced the sky. "Drakari call that crooked line The Anchor. It marks where a river decides to stop falling apart and become itself again."
"It's the right kind of astronomy," Kara said.
"Sentiment refueled," Jax clapped his hands. "Back to the part where everything out there wants to eat us."
Ophilim Shadow
They reached the eastern district: warehouses with their throats cut, rails that led nowhere.
Signs of the lost caravan were easier to find: an abandoned broken axle, empty ration cans, a scarf knotted with the deliberate clumsiness of a person signaling help. Kara read the knot. "Woman. Left-handed. Two days. Fear and... lavender."
Ronan put his palm on a support beam. "They held here. Small feet."
Jax dipped his fingers in a smear. "Oil. Bad oil. Ophilim skiff-grade?"
"Yes," KrysKo said. Ronan's jaw hardened. "Scavvers got brave. Or someone made them hungry."
Jax found a child's tin whistle under a fallen door. Kara took it like it was bone. "We find them," she said.
The silence became a shape that could no longer pretend it wasn't a trap. It started as a tick, then a hum. KrysKo's vision flashed red.
[Alert: Active hardware. Type: Ophilim Skiff-Drone (Feral). Secondary: Tripod Crawlers x 4.]
"Down," KrysKo said. They dropped behind the rib of a boxcar.
"Skiff first," KrysKo said. "Crawlers can be kited. Don't let them sing—if they sync, they cut bone."
Ronan closed around a pipe. Kara thumbed a gray resin cartridge into Jax's shock-tine and pressed two vials into KrysKo's palm: Blue is sight smother. Green is breath sting.
"Now," KrysKo said.
He broke cover in a half-sprint that became a dance. A crawler leapt. He pivoted, planted a hand, and let his heel scythe across its face. He slid under a coupling, came up near the skiff, and palmed the blue-banded vial toward the intake. A blossom of cloying smoke punched through the grille. The skiff smacked a stanchion.
Ronan hit the nearest crawler with the pipe, twisting and ripping. He hurled the crippled thing into its brother.
"Right side!" Jax called. He lanced the shock-tine forward; the tine bit the skiff hull. The gray resin cartridge vented, webbing two vanes and a sensor cluster. The skiff yawed, angry and bound.
The last crawler sprang for Kara. She sidestepped, smashed a green vial under its face. Green vapor kicked. The crawler coughed itself into stillness.
KrysKo finished the dance. He spun and drove a meia lua de compasso heel into the skiff's sensor nexus. Metal gave. The machine screamed.
"Drop it!" Jax shouted. KrysKo rolled under the skiff's belly, hauled, and toppled the machine into the rib of a boxcar.
The Lure
From the far side of the yard, a thin sound wove into the air. A thread whistled through rust and ruin.
[Anomaly: Acoustic Lure. Advisory: Do not pursue. Force it to pursue you.]
Ronan heard it. Kara's eyes were dark. "Children," she said, voice tight. "They use a whistle to teach them to run toward help."
"We don't chase a lure," Jax breathed. "We make it come here."
"Anchor," KrysKo said. "We hold. Make them come. Noise. Food. Fire."
Jax slotted an amber resin cartridge into his haft. Kara ground powdered angelica. "A sweet smoke," she said.
Ronan set chime-wire low between two fallen beams, tiny bits of wiring like fishhooks.
The first shape that came through wasn't a person. It was a long shadow with three jointed strides: The whistle lived inside it. The second was a man with a scar. "Help!" he called.
"Throat-walker," Kara breathed.
KrysKo stepped into the space between the whistle and the man. He slid inside the rope, and his heel—meia lua de compasso—found the jaw. Bone yielded. The rope learned it didn't own reach.
The throat-walker jinked. Kara popped a blue vial at its opening. The lure's song choked. Jax popped amber and a lick of wet flame took the air's hand. The machine stumbled into Ronan's wire, and the wire sang when it didn't expect to.
The fight was three moves.
Ronan checked the wire, then wiped his palms. "Two more," he said, listening. "Ahead, to the left. Small. Alive."
The alcove was a lean-to. Inside, a woman held two children in a knot that had decided to be a shield.
Kara went in first. "It's all right. It's not all right. But it's more all right now than it was."
KrysKo crouched, took the smallest child into his arms. He adjusted his weight so his too-still chest would feel like breathing and his too-cool skin would feel like shade.
"I'll hate you later," the mother said, laughing on a sob. "For now I'll walk."
Jax palmed the tin whistle away from her shaking hand. Ronan looped chime-wire around his own wrist and the mother's. "If you go, I go," he said.
They moved.
They made it thirty yards before the evening breathed, and the breath came back wrong. A pocket of the yard went too quiet.
KrysKo shifted his weight.
[Note: Provisional unit integrity—holding.]
He let the breath go. He did not let the blades out. Not yet.
🟢 LitRPG Content Lock: Session Summary (265 Words)
Vanguard Unit: O'Ruadhraigh
The system logs the team's efficiency: The Ophilim Skiff-Drone was Disabled (Critical Hull/Sensor Damage). The four Tripod Crawlers were Disabled through a mix of physical and chemical trauma. The Throat-Walker lure machine was Disabled by concussive force and a resin bind.
Acquired Loot
KrysKo's inventory registered new data drops:
Skiff Hull Fragment: Tier 2 Ophilim Alloy. Salvageable: 65\%.
Crawler Legs (3): Sharpened Chitin/Carbon Fiber. Use: Scavver Bait.
Amber Resin Cartridge: Failsafe Payload (Used 1/1).
Tin Whistle (Child's Lure): Low-grade acoustic resonator. Type: Emotional Anchor.
Provisional EXP Gain
Combat Proficiency for Jax increased by \uparrow 4\%. Apotheion Knowledge for Kara saw an increase of \uparrow 3\%. Ronan's Tracking/Evasion gained \uparrow 5\%. KrysKo's Vanguard Discipline increased by a modest \uparrow 1.2\%.
UNIT NOTE: Resource expenditure remains stable. Team cohesion is high. The primary objective (Rescue/Egress) remains incomplete. The current perimeter is compromised, and the presence of residual Ophilim signature is rapidly rising. Expect hostile re-engagement in less than 90 seconds.