At first light, the field meter began striking its glass.
The team had crossed only the first western anchor when the false cadence entered the stone beneath them. Dust jumped from the shelf in exact intervals, but the empty drainage cut remained silent.
Reth dropped to one knee and pressed his hooked stave against a pale thread crossing the retreat line. "Filament, and more than one."
Translucent strands spread through the fissures ahead, each one tightening with the rhythm. They did not grow from the old collector cable. They entered the rock from below and converged beneath a split pillar at the shelf's outer edge.
Kavos climbed to the inspected shooting ledge and looked over the wall. "Something broad is moving under us, and I can see stone coming off its back."
Nyra broke the Academy wax around her spearhead and pulled the dark cloth free. Her spear, Thronebreak, came level across the narrow shelf. "Reth, where can it feel us?"
He followed the nearest strand with the stave's hook. "Every pale line touching the shelf, but the black seams between them look clean."
Sera set her quarry hammer against the split pillar. "If I break this anchor, do we lose the ledge?"
"Only the outer lip, so wait until Vhar clears the retreat rope."
The shelf kicked beneath their boots.
BOOM!
A wedge-shaped skull burst through the shelf's edge. Vhar pulled his thigh clear as paired jaw plates drove toward the wall.
CLACK! CRACK!
The plates slammed shut, and mineral teeth sheared a fist-sized section from the wall.
The Quarrymaw hauled itself into view on digging foreclaws. It was low enough to pass beneath a wagon, yet its shoulders nearly filled the shelf. Gray hide stretched between mineral ridges, and translucent filaments bled from the roots of its jaw into every broken fissure around it.
Vhar had both hands free, but neither draw path could clear the wall and the people beside him. Radrazh could ruin the ledge supporting them, while Ulqor had no isolated connection he could reach without crossing Nyra's spear line. He left both seals intact.
"Inner wall!" Reth shouted. He pulled the retreat rope tight and gave Sera room beside the pillar.
The Quarrymaw did not look toward him. Its head snapped in the direction of the rope's vibration before Reth finished moving.
Kavos loosed first.
THNK!
His hook-tipped arrow passed beneath the left jaw plate and caught three sensory filaments against the stone. The beast twisted, loading the strands against the fissure.
SNAP!
The strands tore free, and black fluid sprayed across its neck. The Quarrymaw staggered toward the damaged side, but the remaining filaments tightened through its right jaw and corrected the charge before its eyes found anyone.
"It's steering through the stone!" Kavos called.
"Not after this," Sera said.
She drove her hammer into the split pillar where Reth had marked the anchor.
BANG! CRACK!
The outer stone broke away. A knot of living filament came with it, whipping across the shelf until Nyra trapped it beneath Thronebreak's shaft. Sera struck again, pulverizing the mineral sheath around the knot while Nyra kept the strands from reaching anyone's legs.
The Quarrymaw screamed through closed plates and lunged at them.
Nyra slid her rear hand down the spear. Thronebreak's point met the seam above its right shoulder, not trying to pierce the mineral armor but turning the body away from Sera's planted stance.
CLANG! CRACK!
The impact drove Nyra's rear boot through the shelf crust. She yielded one step, changed grip, and brought the spear butt beneath the beast's jaw. Its skull rose just enough for Sera to clear the pillar.
The Quarrymaw hooked its foreclaws beneath the broken lip and ripped upward.
CRACK!
Half the outer shelf tilted toward the drainage cut. Nyra's buried boot went with it, and Thronebreak's shaft bowed between the beast's jaw and her shoulder. She released her rear hand instead of allowing the spear to lever her knee apart.
Reth threw the retreat rope around her waist. "Don't fight the falling stone; give me your weight."
Nyra pushed once with the spear butt, freed her trapped boot, and let Reth pull her onto the inner strip as the outer slab fell.
BOOM!
The broken shelf struck below them. Dust swallowed the Quarrymaw's legs, but its jaw-root filaments remained taut through the wall, showing Reth where its body would turn before the head emerged.
"It will come left," he called.
Kavos did not shoot the beast. He fired past it into the bright strand crossing the inner wall.
THNK!
The hook caught. Reth seized the arrow line with his stave and hauled the filament away from the fissure, forcing the sensory root into open air where Sera could reach it.
Her hammer came down.
BANG! SPLAT!
The living knot burst across the stone. The Quarrymaw lunged toward the last vibration it had received and drove its blind shoulder into the wall instead of Nyra.
THUD! CRACK!
The wall cracked beneath the shoulder impact, though the mineral plate remained whole. Vhar saw the difference immediately: an ordinary strike could mark the armor, but the animal still carried its defense through the complete shoulder structure. Without room for Radrazh, he needed the team to expose anatomy the plates did not cover.
Nyra recovered Thronebreak, shortened her grip, and returned the point to the jaw lane. Dust streaked her cheek, but her stance had settled again.
"Vhar, take the head!"
He entered before the Quarrymaw could lower it.
Both hands closed around the jaw plates.
The beast's mass hit him through its skull. Its foreclaws tore trenches past his boots, and the plates drove his shoulders backward while the teeth ground toward his wrists. The weight bit into his palms and ran up both forearms, the same place his shoulders used to lose it.
The Quarrymaw anchored every remaining filament at once.
The shelf pulled with it.
Vhar's left hand began to numb. For one instant the strain found that weak spot and pulled, grip almost tearing away from shoulder, shoulder almost tearing away from the rest of him.
His grip did not slip.
The strain swept back across his spine, down both arms, and slammed into the plates with the full weight of his body behind it. A fifth Bloodmark locked beneath the charge, closing while the Quarrymaw still tried to crush everyone behind him.
The SSS Primeval Bloodforge answered his deliberate attention.
[SSS PRIMEVAL BLOODFORGE: Bloodmark Record]
[ REALM: Bloodless Husk ]
[ BLOODMARK: 4th -> 5th ]
[ CONDITION COMPLETED: Shoulder-Arm-Hand Return Circuit Closed ]
[ NEW FUNCTIONS: Reached Upper-Body Load Returns Through Your Shoulders, Arms, Hands, Spine, And Whole-Body Drive ]
[ UVAR CAPACITY: 42 -> 48 ]
[ UVAR RESERVE: 40 / 48 ]
[End Bloodmark Record]
The Quarrymaw still weighed the same. Vhar's shoulders and arms now drove its load back into the jaw plates.
"Now I can move it," he said.
Reth saw the beast's hind claw searching for another fissure. He threw his hook around the ankle and hauled the foot onto clean stone. "Right side is loose!"
Kavos loosed his second arrow into the exposed filament bundle.
THNK! SNAP!
The hook struck, and the remaining sensory strands parted. The Quarrymaw's head jerked toward vibrations that no longer reached it, and Nyra struck across the wounded shoulder with Thronebreak's shaft. She did not merely shove. Her hips turned beneath the spear, carrying the beast's blind lunge past Vhar's left side.
Sera met the planted foreclaw with her hammer.
BANG! CRACK!
Two hooked toes broke against the shelf. The Quarrymaw collapsed onto one shoulder, still trapped between Vhar's hands.
Its mouth opened.
Rotten heat rolled over him. Rows of mineral teeth surrounded a dark palate, while two tendon-thick roots pulled the jaw plates toward one another. The beast tried to close them on his arms.
Vhar chose the weaker hinge.
He drove his right foot against the neck, hauled the left plate outward, and punched his other hand beneath the root.
SQUELCH!
The tendon tore free in a wash of black blood. One plate sagged, but the Quarrymaw twisted hard enough to drag Vhar across the shelf.
THUD!
His hip struck the wall. Nyra planted Thronebreak behind its remaining shoulder and held the point clear of Vhar. "You have the mouth, and we have the body."
Reth locked the hooked stave against her spear shaft. Sera braced both with her shoulder, and Kavos kept his last arrow trained on the beast's eye without firing through Vhar's lane.
The Quarrymaw had no intact territory left to answer it. The team had stripped away every advantage before giving Vhar the ending.
He wrenched the broken jaw plate against its hinge.
CRACK!
The plate tore free, and the beast screamed once. Vhar reversed the mineral slab between both hands and drove its narrow root toward the open palate.
SHNK!
The plate entered the cranial carrier. Vhar drove harder.
CRACK! SQUELCH!
Bone split behind the wedge, the slab broke through the back of the skull, and black matter burst from both nostrils. The Quarrymaw's body convulsed beneath Thronebreak, hammer, hook, and arrow. Its claws scraped one final line through the stone before every filament fell slack.
Nobody moved until Reth kicked dust across the nearest strand and received no response.
The SSS Primeval Bloodforge recognized the death carried directly through Vhar's body and the beast's own plate.
[SSS PRIMEVAL BLOODFORGE: Slaughter Imprint Record]
[ DIRECT SLAUGHTER: Confirmed ]
[ KILLING CARRIER: Your Body / Quarrymaw Jaw Plate ]
[ TERMINAL ANATOMY: Jaw Hinge / Palate / Cranial Carrier ]
[ SLAUGHTER IMPRINT: Recorded ]
[ CODICE FORMATION: Insufficient Coherent Identity ]
[End Slaughter Imprint Record]
The Wildblood worker descended only after the supervisor's horn brought him from the rim. He inspected the severed sensory bundle, the shifted boundary line, and the cable pulse still trembling weakly through the rock.
"The carcass and filaments enter joint custody," he said. "Academy keeps the trial evidence, while Wildblood keeps the habitat record because this territory no longer has its governing predator."
Vhar washed black blood from his hands without touching the retained tissue again. The source belonged to the evidence chain, and he had made no choice to Devour it.
Below the shelf, the old collector cadence continued toward two narrow grooves in the sealed work platform.
The Quarrymaw was dead. Whatever had called it remained made of human preparation.