Chapter 36: Heat Ledger!!
Heat became language.
Heat count made the ash road breathe through warm cracks. Every patch of air had a temperature, and every temperature seemed interested in the weakest pulse.
The count lived in temperature first: hotter near weak knees, colder around held breath, patient around fever.
SCRAPE!
Fourteen survivors held their breath behind Kael while the root wall listened. When the silence nick widened by a finger, Kael saw where the wild wanted the first body to fail.
The wild counted heat before mercy.
The Furnace Bone Wild counted them without eyes. Kael felt it happen before he understood it. The roots beneath the island tightened in little pulses. Not enough to trip anyone.
Enough to weigh them. Enough to know which bodies walked strong, which bodies limped, which bodies carried fever, which bodies bled through bad cloth. The hanging pods above dimmed when Orrek passed under them. They brightened when the fever girl stumbled.
One pod opened a seam and spat a clear bead onto the root beside her foot.
TSSK!
The root smoked where the bead landed. The wild was not only counting her heat. It was preparing where to spend it.
Renn saw it too.
His face went pale in the pod light. "It is watching the sick ones."
"Not watching," Vaela said. "Counting."
Orrek lifted his chain with his uninjured arm. "I volunteer to be counted as unpleasant." The root island shifted under his feet, and a thin black vine slid away from his boot like it agreed. Sair spat into a steaming pool. "Even the plants have taste."
No one laughed loudly. They had learned the land listened to vibration, heat, and sound. Jokes survived, but they had become smaller, tucked close to the mouth like stolen food. Kael stood at the front of the island bridge and watched the path ahead.
There was no road.
Only thick roots crossing red brown pools, black trunks grown around furnace bones, and steaming pockets where heat leaked from old machinery buried under corpse soil. Every path seemed open until one watched long enough. Then the roots flexed, the pools breathed, and the open spaces became mouths.
The old predator had stopped moving.
That was worse.
Something large waited beyond the black trunks, deep enough that Threat Perception Instinct felt only weight, not shape.
Kael focused.
The system answered in fragments.
====================================================================
[ HOSTILE THREAT PROFILE ]
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≫ PROFILE QUALITY: PARTIAL
≫ TERRITORY CLASSIFICATION: WILDLAND FACTION
≫ ACTIVE BEHAVIOR: HEAT COUNTING, BLOOD SORTING, VIBRATION MAPPING
≫ DOMINANT UNKNOWN: LARGE DEN PREDATOR INSIDE ROOT FOG
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[!] WARNING: Weak bodies are being indexed as primary prey.
====================================================================
Indexed.
Kael hated the word immediately.
It sounded too close to ledger work.
The pit counted bodies by debt. Malrec counted bodies by leverage. The wild counted bodies by heat and weakness. Different mouths. Same hunger. A root hair curled around a drop of blood falling from Kael’s palm.
He crushed it under his heel.
CRACK!
The island shivered.
Kael kept the order sealed behind his teeth and drove the shards into Threat Perception Instinct before heat count could take another piece of him.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Furnace Bone Wild Heat Sorting Pressure
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +1 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Threat Perception Instinct -> 8
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▲ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 5
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Five Shard Reserve Maintained.
====================================================================
The world sharpened.
Not cleaner. Crueler.
Kael saw the way the roots angled away from Orrek’s mass and toward fever heat. He saw the pods pulse faster above open wounds. He saw the fog bend around breath. The wild was not trying to kill all of them at once.
It wanted the slow first, then the separated, then the loud, then the rest.
"Clusters tighter," Kael said. "Heat in the center. Blood covered. No one steps where the pods brighten."
Renn repeated the order down the line, voice low but firm.
"Heat in the center. Blood covered. Watch the pods. Watch the pods."
Tollen Gray carried a water bladder with both hands as if it might accuse him. One of the supply carriers walked in front of Orrek, shaking so hard the fungal paste bundle thumped against his ribs.
THUMP!
A pod above him brightened.
Vaela’s blade touched the man’s back.
"Stop making dinner sounds."
He froze.
"I cannot stop shaking."
"Then shake silently."
"That is not how shaking works."
"Learn."
The root bridge ahead dipped under a curtain of pale hanging cords. Each cord ended in a small hooked bud. They swayed without wind. Miro whispered, "Are those teeth?" Sair said, "Everything here is teeth if you wait."
Kael moved under the first cord.
It did not strike him.
It brushed his shoulder, tasted the blood drying there, and recoiled as if his body was too dense, too costly, or too stubborn to begin with.
Then it drifted toward Brak.
Kael caught it between two fingers and crushed the bud.
POP!
Black sap dotted his knuckles.
A hundred cords stilled.
Vaela inhaled through her teeth. "Careful."
"It was choosing."
"Yes. But if you insult every mouth in the forest, we will be here all day."
"Then we move faster."
The horn sounded from the rim above.
HOOOOOOON!
Malrec’s men had found a way to track them from the high ledges. Their armor lamps were small red dots between dry chute cracks. They were not descending yet.
Smart.
They wanted the wildland to spend Kael first. A pressure rod fired from above and struck a root wall fifty paces behind the group.
BANG!
The root wall convulsed.
Pods flared.
Fog rolled across the path.
Renn cursed softly. "They are waking it."
"Not waking," Vaela said. "Irritating. Like Orrek, but useful to cowards."
Orrek grunted. "I am useful to brave people too."
Another shot struck a hanging pod.
BOOM!
The pod burst and sprayed hot white fluid across the root bridge. Where it landed, the bridge smoked and softened.
The survivors recoiled.
Kael stepped into the steam before panic opened gaps.
"Forward."
"The bridge is melting," Renn said.
"Then forward faster."
The old predator moved again.
THUD!
The sound came from ahead and below, through roots and water. The wildland did not stop counting. It had finished the first measure and already knew which of them tasted easiest.
Kael looked at the fourteen survivors. Hunger, fear, fever, torn knees, cracked wrists, ruined breath. Then he looked toward the dim trunks where the huge thing waited.
"It wants the weak," he said.
Orrek rolled his chain once around his fist. "Then it starts with us and learns disappointment."
Vaela smiled despite the pain in her ribs.
"That was almost elegant."
"Take it back."
"Gladly."
The fog reached their ankles.
Root hairs rose inside it like listening fingers.
Kael stepped down hard.
THUD!
The hairs flattened around his foot and recoiled.
"Move," he said.
The group entered the fog.
Behind them, Malrec’s men loaded another pressure rod. Ahead, the old predator began to circle. The first crossing through the fog proved the new rule immediately. The wild did not attack the strongest pressure.
It avoided Kael’s leading foot, slid around Orrek’s chain, and curled toward the gaps between bodies. It brushed Tollen’s ankle twice and left him untouched because fear made him move fast. It touched Sair once and withdrew because she slapped the root hair with her strap so hard the little strand recoiled.
CLACK!
"Rude plant," Sair muttered.
The fever girl was the problem.
Her heat came in waves. Weak, then sharp. Weak, then sharp. Every sharp pulse made the nearest pods brighten. Miro saw it and wrapped his own body around her shoulders as if he could hide fever with bone.
Kael looked at Renn.
"Switch her covering."
Renn understood after one breath. "Do not let one body carry her heat too long. Rotate. Sair, Miro, Brak, Sella if her knee holds."
Sella gave him a murderous glance. "My knee does not hold. I hold it."
"Then hold it near her for ten breaths."
The rotation was ugly and slow, but it worked. The pods stopped locking on one heat source. The wildland had to recount every time the weak center changed shape. Vaela watched Kael while pretending to watch the roots.
"You are learning its hunger."
"It is learning ours."
"We do not eat people."
Kael looked at the black trunks ahead. "Hunger is not only food. Malrec hungers for control. The Court hungers for ownership. This place hungers for weak heat. We hunger for a path."
Orrek made a low sound. "I hunger for hitting the men above."
"Later."
"You keep spending that word like coin."
"I intend to pay."
A rod blast struck the far wall and sent a shower of furnace bone fragments into the fog.
CRASH!
The wildland counted the fragments too. Root hairs rose under each falling piece, tasted stone, rejected it, then turned back toward flesh.
It was clever in the old animal way. Kael felt the predator’s path circling wider now, using the trees as ribs around a cage. It did not rush because the wildland was already doing the work of exhaustion. The thing only had to wait until one cluster broke formation. He looked back at fourteen survivors and three dangerous almost allies who were not yet his, but were no longer simply themselves either.
"No one wins alone here," he said.
Vaela’s mouth twitched. "Careful. That sounded nearly inspiring."
"I will recover."
"Good. I was worried."
The fog thickened to the north. The old predator’s footfalls stopped.
That silence was an instruction.
A heat mark bloomed on the root path behind Brak, red as a fresh coal, exactly where he had stumbled three breaths earlier. The wild remembered weakness by temperature.
The Furnace Bone Wild had finished counting.
Taking came next.
Kael did not mistake the quiet for mercy. Quiet was only the wildland choosing where to spend its next bite.
It would spend carefully.