The next day, Kai was setting boundary markers when movement broke his focus. A lone ant scout stood frozen halfway down the corridor, separated from a patrol. Young. Vulnerable.
Easy kill. Smart kill. Remove eyes before they report.
Kai breathed once and let Whisper's training rise. He pressed a marker into the air: I see you. I could strike. I choose not to. Respect.
The scout fled. The scent fled with it. The corridor felt wider when it was gone, like space opened where violence could have stood.
Two days later, a young cat scout froze against a wall, too scared to move. ScarMandible stood close enough to end a life. She did not. The air around the kit carried her message back.
I see you. I could strike. I choose not to. Respect.
That evening, Kai met ScarMandible at the line with no escort, and she did the same.
"When catastrophe forces the choice," Kai said, "we stand together instead of fighting for the same dry ground."
Yes, ScarMandible said. Not because of love or liking but because partnership makes more lives. That is the only measure that matters.
"And after?"
If we learn that cooperation builds more than competition, we continue, ScarMandible said. If not, we compete without hate. Either way, we grow.
Kai extended a claw. ScarMandible touched it with the antenna she had left. The gesture was simple. It felt like a bridge they were finally willing to walk.
Kai returned to the den and did the work he had been avoiding. He checked the three kits because they were his to check.
"Tense," he said, and sat on the floor where the kit could see his paws. "Shadow will shape the checking with you. Twitchy will teach you where to stop. Your job is still your job. We change how you carry it."
Tense's next cycle slowed by a fraction. A small victory, but real. Twitchy marked a simple practice: count to three, then breathe to three, then look once more. Pattern with a breath inside it. Tense tried. The breath caught, then went through.
"Rend," he said, and stood outside the training ring. "Bitey and Striker will turn your heat into form. There will be drills. There will be rest, and rest is part of training. I will not praise you for burning yourself to ash."
Rend grunted, then smiled in a way that felt like a challenge accepted. Bitey tapped the stone twice to start the first measured bout. Striker adjusted Rend's stance by half a claw-width and the whole strike changed. Rend felt it and nodded.
"Archive," he said, and moved pebbles out of his way to sit. "Whisper turns your lists into language and tasks. Dig handles braces with you. Scout sets water checks you can track. You will never not see the cracks. You will learn which ones are loud and which can wait until tomorrow."
Archive exhaled, long and shaky, like a wall that had stopped leaning for the first time all week. The kit drew a quick map in pebbles, then pushed one toward Kai for approval. Kai pushed it to Dig. The system moved.
He checked the food stores with Current and took the long way back so he could pass Dig's new braces. He watched Striker teach footwork that looked like a dance and a fight at once. He let Ember sit beside him without saying anything and felt how that made the air easier to breathe.
He walked into the preservation chamber at dusk and did not rearrange a single stone. Whisper's new scent grammar curled through the room. It smelled like salt and cut leaf and the ghost of citrus. It smelled like memory that would last. Kai stood still long enough to let the scent settle. He thanked Whisper for building a way to remember when rock failed.
ScarMandible waited at the boundary one last time before the deep tunnels changed for good.
Your colony stabilizes, she marked. Your vacuum fills. Your specialists begin to function inside what they are. You recover from damage that should have removed you. I was measuring this. I needed to know if rebuilding was in you.
"And?" Kai asked.
It is, ScarMandible said. Not clean. Not perfect. Enough. Pressure builds faster than Scout predicted. We have less time than we hoped.
The drumbeat under Kai's ribs answered yes. He did not need the stones to confirm it. Water in the walls talked in a faster voice. Air tasted thinner at the edges. Even the fungus-light dimmed early, as if saving itself.
"Then we are as ready as we will get," he said. "Your numbers and discipline, our maneuvering and change. Together, we get further than either of us alone."
When it happens, ScarMandible said, when the deep predators come with the pressure and the water climbs the wrong direction, we defend together. We survive together. We build something neither of us could build alone.
She lifted her antenna. Kai touched it with one claw. The gesture had become a language neither species possessed before the other.
They parted without fanfare.
That night, Kai did what leaders do when there is nothing left to adjust. He sat among his people. He ate what everyone ate. He listened more than he talked. He told Tense that patterns were tools, not cages. He told Rend that rest was not surrender. He told Archive that seeing was not the same as fixing alone.
He checked on Patch, who was sorting tinctures and binding strips into small kits for fast carry. He spoke with Current about water traps and with Scout about safe routes through new tunnels. He thanked Dig for braces that would hold when panic tried to push too many bodies through one space. He stood with Shadow while the telepath braided quiet across the den so minds could sleep.
He went to the stones, thanked them without words, and left them where they were.
The catastrophe was close. The air knew it. The floor knew it. Even the fungus-light felt thinner, like a breath held too long.
They would meet it together.
Maybe that would be the difference between being a note in someone else's warning and becoming a voice that survived to write their own.
He lay down. The drumbeat inside him kept time. It did not shout. It did not command. It reminded.
Prepare.
He closed his eyes and slept anyway.