Recovery came in breaths, not leaps. Kai learned to stand without the room tilting. He learned which sounds pulled panic and which could be ignored. He learned to think by writing ideas on stone with slow scratches, then following the marks back when thoughts fractured.
Twitchy rescheduled patrols to keep pressure lower in the main thoroughfares. The kit built layers of contingency, then new layers for when the first layers failed. He paired Tense with him on security circuits. Verification met paranoia, and together they mapped every entrance and exit in the upper system, then they checked again.
Bitey took Rend into combat drills. The first session ended with both of them panting and annoyed. The second ended with Rend grinning and Bitey admitting the kit's instincts were sharp. Rend did not only attack. The kit circled, probed, and then tested logic with a question no one expected in the middle of a spar: "Why do you want that angle if my retreat is already planned?" Bitey laughed, then changed footwork.
Archive attached to Whisper. The analytical pair sat in the stone gallery for hours. Whisper traced symbols and tried to extract grammar from ancient marks. Archive built sequence grids, assigned numerical weights to repeating shapes, then rotated the grid to see if meaning changed with orientation. Sometimes the kit muttered about ratios in sleep.
Quick learned to move through the den without scattering everyone's nerves. Shadow set light limits, then slowly increased stimulation while maintaining a mental link. Ember sat with Quick during the increases, an anchor that did not demand change. When Quick faltered, Ember described the room quietly until the kit's breathing evened out.
ScarMandible returned with a formal proposal. Not a treaty in the language of the ancients, but the bones of cooperation.
We will share intelligence. We will not command each other. We will hold borders but allow monitored passage. If one of us detects nest level threats, we inform the other without delay. We test responses together.
Bitey wanted punitive clauses for ambushes. ScarMandible refused, and the refusal was honest. A command cannot bind itself from using effective tactics. I will not promise never to test again. I will promise to limit the risk. I will warn if possible. I will accept retaliation if my calculus fails.
Twitchy demanded safe corridors. ScarMandible marked three, then identified constraints. When the flood rises, nothing remains safe except what we hold by action.
Kai accepted the shape of it. Respect without trust. Transparency without certainty. A net of shared information that might catch the first falling rock before the avalanche.
Scout and Current detected the first real surge from the focal point seven days after the ambush. It arrived as a shiver through the rock, then a long exhale of colder water.
"Pressure is cycling," Scout reported. "It is not a steady climb. It is building in pulses that sync with the moons moving closer to alignment."
Whisper set stones in a line and had Quick touch each as Scout called out pulse intervals. Quick's speed turned the measurements into a running pattern the pattern specialist could compare to the lunar tables ScarMandible had described.
"Every sixth pulse is stronger," Whisper concluded. "The interval between strong pulses is decreasing."
"How long before the surge that matters?" Twitchy asked.
"Not long," Scout said. "We are counting in days, not weeks."
Tense intercepted a scent trace in the northern approach tunnel: deep water predator musk diluted and set low, a testing mark. Verification became alarm. Twitchy rerouted patrols and called for a controlled response. Bitey stood ready, Rend beside him. Kai remained back with Shadow, not for lack of will but because the healer had made standing orders and Kai had agreed to obey them.
The creature that appeared was not the aquatic hunter from before. This one was smaller and faster, with hook tipped limbs for clinging to vertical stone. It entered the passage, then stopped at Tense's scent line and turned its head like reading a rule.
Whisper eased forward, released a simple marker: boundary. The creature replied with a different chemical set, a flavor Quick could feel as static: acknowledgment, then a request to pass through.
"Why would it ask?" Rend whispered.
"Because it has learned that asking can work," Bitey said.
They allowed a single passage with watchers. The creature moved through, never breaking the side lines that Tense had refreshed so many times he could draw them blind. On return, it dropped a broken fish near the border. Payment, or proof of hunting elsewhere.
After it left, Tense checked the line again, then exhaled in a short, satisfied hiss. The cycle held. The rule mattered, at least for today.
Archive began to speak in numbers. At first, the kit whispered them like comfort. Then the numbers became scaffolding. If the strong pulse ratio is six to one, and the decline in interval is by a constant fraction, then the peak will fall within eight cycles, perhaps seven.
Whisper asked for reasoning, and Archive covered the stone with marks. The kit's claws moved in small precise strokes, then in longer arcs. When the pattern emerged, it matched Scout's sensed intervals and ScarMandible's lunar estimates. It even matched Quick's recorded touches on the line of stones.
"Genius," Whisper said, soft with respect, and touching the kit's shoulder so Archive could feel the contact.
Archive smiled briefly, then frowned. "I keep seeing a second pattern under the first. It is faint. It might be nothing, but it feels like an offset, a secondary surge that rides the main."
"Can you prove it?" Twitchy asked.
"Not yet," Archive said, frustrated. "I do not have enough clean data."
"Then we gather it," Kai decided. "Carefully."
Rend cornered Kai in a quiet passage, the kit's energy compressed into stillness.
"Why did you make me this way?" Rend asked, not accusing, just honestly curious. "I feel anger before I feel anything else. I want to fight where others want to understand. It works when we need to strike, but it aches when there is no enemy."
Kai answered without softening. "Because anger stands when others freeze. Because sometimes we need a first blow to create space to think. Because I made a mistake, and I am trying to turn it into strength."
Rend considered this, then nodded slowly. "I will learn to aim it. If it is a weapon I carry, I will also decide when not to lift it."
Kai could not fight the way he had before, so he drew. He mapped the den in obsessive detail, then mapped emotion flows. Where panic rose. Where quiet lived. He drew patrol paths, supply lines, and evacuation routes. He drew how Shadow's network touched each mind, and where it thinned. He drew training rotations that balanced strain and rest.
Tense stood over the map, verifying each line against memory. Whisper annotated with symbols for language projects and Archive's predictions. Dig added load notes for reinforced beams and choke points. Twitchy circled bottlenecks.
The map became more than a picture. It became an agreement about how they would move when the water came.
For one night, nothing new attacked, no pulses rose, no stones cracked. Ember brought food and sat beside Kai without talking. Shadow dimmed the network to a murmur so each mind could rest. Quick slept with small muscle twitches that no longer turned into collisions. Tense dreamed of checking a door that stayed closed. Rend dreamed of empty hands. Archive dreamed in spirals.
Kai slept without nightmares for the first time since the ambush.