The cost of Kai's focus arrived in the faces he loved.
Tense stopped sleeping. Verification cycles that had once been a net now became ropes. Check the entrance. Check the vent. Check the shadow that never changed shape. Start over because the breath did not feel right. Start over because a drip fell where a drip never fell. Start over because what if this time the attack came from the place it never had. The young security specialist's eyes went glassy with a fear that never backed off.
Patch examined Tense without flinching. The healer's voice stayed level the way steady light stays level even as water shakes.
"Severe anxiety cascade," Patch said. "You designed constant vigilance. You succeeded. Now it is eating the kit's sleep and the kit's peace. Body and mind cannot reset."
"It is necessary," Kai said. "Tense keeps us safe."
"There is a difference between specialization and torment," Patch said. "You asked a small body to carry a wall that takes a team."
Rend pushed training with Bitey until paws shook. Aggression pooled in muscles with nowhere to go. Kai had added a questioning thread to that design on purpose, wanting a fighter who would weigh the value of force. It doubled the load. Now Rend had two forces to balance and no battle to pour them into.
"Why was I built this way?" Rend asked, breath rough. "I need to fight and then I need to wonder if fighting was right and then there is no one to fight. The energy slams against itself inside my ribs."
"I care," Bitey said. The combat specialist did not look away from the pain in front of them. "I will train you. Not this second. Kai has me holding too many lines."
Archive stopped presenting solutions and started arranging pebbles into perfect lattices along the chamber wall. The analytical specialist's eyes flicked as if language scrolled across the inside of the skull too fast to read aloud.
When Shadow walked into the preservation chamber that evening, the telepath did not speak out loud first. The touch arrived at the edge of Kai's thoughts like a paw against a shoulder.
You are chasing control, Shadow said. Cracks make us look harder for patterns. Patterns feel like safety even when they are not. The genetic memory is ancestry, not prophecy.
"I do not have time," Kai said. "The push keeps coming. If I cannot silence it, I can at least translate it."
It wants survival, not ritual, Shadow replied. Ritual will not pull anyone out of water.
Twitchy filled the doorway and counted the exits—one, two, three—and then faced Kai instead of the hall.
"You have not hunted in five days," Twitchy said. "Dig is building alone. Scout is mapping alone. Striker is not training new defenders. Tense is breaking. Rend is breaking. Archive is breaking. You are moving rocks and calling it leadership."
"The stones contain knowledge," Kai said. The defense came out smaller than he intended.
"The stones contain history," Twitchy said. "History informs. It does not decide. You are treating them like oracle bones. That is not analysis. That is escape."
Kai's jaw tightened. "You count exits every rotation. You live by a pattern too."
"I do," Twitchy said. He checked the vents again, and this time stopped at two and deliberately did not say three. "So listen to someone who understands obsession like a native language. Preparation builds strength. Hiding builds nothing. Right now, you are hiding."
The words did not burn. They chilled. They laid truth against Kai's neck and waited.
He went back to work anyway. It was easier to adjust stones than to admit he was wrong in front of the ones he was trying to protect.
On Day 149, Patch brought a ledger none of the colony wanted to read.
"Your physical recovery has stalled," the healer said after a long look at Kai's eyes and a careful press along bruised ribs. "You are underfed and unrested. Neural scarring will deepen without rest. You are burning what is left while handing off leadership to whoever happens to be closest."
"I am preserving knowledge," Kai said. The sentence tasted like grit.
"You are avoiding healing," Patch said, calm and unkind only because kindness would have let him continue. "Who coordinated hunts? Who met ScarMandible? Who trained the young? Who is sitting with Tense when the panic swells? I admire the recordings. I refuse to pretend they are leadership."
Words failed. Stone remained. Kai moved a piece and pretended it was action. It was movement, at least. Movement felt like something.
Scout kept returning from the deep runs with new reports that would fit two opposite stories depending on the slant of the listener's ear. One day the water smoothed in upper tunnels, flow even, no hidden drag. The next day eddies clung to ceiling ridges and lifted grit from places grit seldom lifted. Some days it said tide. Some days it said surge. The stones held both predictions. Kai could fit either, which meant he could hold neither steady.
Whisper's encodings strengthened. Early markers had been blunt. Citrus for "rise." Bitters for "break." Now the specialist added delicate pairings that captured grammar: a thin salt note for sequence, a slow musk for causation, a mint-snap for warning over description. The chemical text clung to the chamber like a book you could breath in. It would last. That part gave comfort even as the work hurt everything else.
The colony did not stop. It never had that luxury. Dig shored the south arch and listened to stone until it answered. Striker drilled footwork in a narrow chute that would hold a line if the water came mean. Ember sat with Quick through a long morning of fast-twitch panic and did nothing but be there on purpose until Quick's breaths evened into something like peace. Shadow linked minds where words stumbled and kept news flowing even when feet could not.
Kai carried two truths that would not stack into one thing. The stones mattered. The living mattered more. The first truth was heavy and shaped like history. The second truth was warm and took your paw when you fell.
He could name both. He could not hold both at once. So he kept returning to the one that did not cry or bleed or ask him hard questions in a voice that trembled under its weight.
He couldn't help himself, and kept returning to the stones- looking for some sort comfort and if he was lucky, a sign.