Chapter 40: Denheart!!!
The den heart beat below Kael like a buried drum made from all the bodies Furnace Sink Nine had thrown away.
BOOM!
The pulse hit his face as heat.
BOOM!
It hit his chest as pressure.
BOOM!
It hit his marked hand as hunger.
Kael hung from the torn rib edge with one hand while his legs swung over the red cavity. The skin of his palm split around the grip. Blood ran down his wrist and fell into the heat below. Every drop vanished before it struck the den heart, pulled apart by rising root vapor.
Above him, the Old Root Bearer crouched at the broken floor. Its antlers scraped the rib ceiling. Its wounded arm leaked black sap from the elbow Kael had cracked. Metal debt tokens rattled inside its bark with every pulse.
"Break," the Bearer said again.
The word was not a challenge alone.
It was hunger and memory, the wildland asking whether Kael was only another loud body before the roots made him quiet. Behind the Bearer, Vaela, Orrek, Renn, Sair, Sella, Miro, the fever girl, Brak, Tollen, the two supply carriers, and the rest of the fourteen survivors held a shrinking patch of den floor against roots coming from every rib gap.
Vaela cut anchor points and not bodies.
CHIK!
Her face had gone gray from rib pain, but her blade still found the right places. Orrek stood beside her, chain in one hand, ruined shoulder swollen under red soaked cloth. He smashed anything that got past her.
THUD!
Renn had the fever girl behind him and a broken rib shard in his uninjured hand. He was bleeding from the wrist again. Still counting.
"Thirteen in the cluster! Kael below! Tollen still breathing! Brak upright! Sella angry!"
Sella barked, "Count me accurately. Furious."
"Sella furious!"
Sair grinned with red teeth and slammed her metal strap into a root mouth.
CLANG!
Bad knees and worse manners kept the old woman alive past every pit rule. A pressure rod fired from outside the trunk.
BOOM!
The blast punched through a rib wall and scattered white fragments across the den. One shard sliced across Miro’s cheek. He flinched but did not drop the fever girl’s hand. Malrec’s men were still at the mouth.
They were still feeding the wild, still waiting for the forest to make Kael choose wrong.
Kael pulled once on the rib edge.
His hand slipped half an inch.
The den heart below opened.
Not like an eye.
Like a wound inhaling.
Thick red light poured upward and wrapped his legs. It did not burn skin first. It pressed inside, trying to find the weight of him, the fear of him, the point where a body agreed to fall.
Mind Soul Anchor strained.
Kael’s teeth ground together.
The Bearer watched.
"Slow fall. Strong fall. All fall."
Kael looked up at it.
"You talk too much for a tree."
Orrek crushed a root and shouted, "I like this insult!" Vaela snapped, "Focus!"
"I can admire craft and kill roots!"
Another pressure rod hit the trunk mouth.
BOOM!
It drove a crack through the floor under the survivors. The den heart pulsed harder in response. Roots surged through the crack and rose around Sair and Sella. Renn yelled, "Left split!"
Vaela moved, but two roots got through. One wrapped Sair’s waist. The other punched toward Sella’s torn knee. Miro threw himself into the second root with his shoulder, knocking it off angle. It struck his cracked wrist instead.
CRACK!
He screamed.
The fever girl screamed with him.
Something in Kael went still.
Not calm.
Decision.
He released the rib.
Vaela saw him drop.
"Kael!"
The den heart opened wider to receive him. The red light swallowed his legs, waist, chest. Roots snapped from the cavity walls and wrapped his arms. They did not tear yet.
They positioned him. Spread him. Measured the strong places and the wounded ones. The wildland had learned enough from his body.
The attempt became precise.
Pain detonated through every old wound: marked hand, throat cuts, leech bites, net cuts, root spear puncture, side hook, back hooks, thigh anchor. The den heart touched all of them and pulled at once.
CRRRRK!
Kael’s shoulders spread until joints screamed.
The system roared open.
Kael drove the command inward, forcing the shards into Core Mass Density, Gravity Vector Impact, Regenerative Dominion, and Mind Soul Anchor.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Den Heart Consumption Pressure And Old Root Bearer Territorial Judgment
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +5
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +5 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Core Mass Density -> 16
- Gravity Vector Impact -> 14
- Regenerative Dominion -> 10
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 9
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▲ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 5
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Five Shard Reserve Maintained.
====================================================================
The new density hit first.
His bones stopped spreading.
The new gravity followed.
His body ceased being a falling thing and became an anchor inside the heart’s own mouth. Regenerative Dominion forced blood to clot around tearing roots fast enough that the den could not drink cleanly. Mind Soul Anchor hardened the part of him the heart wanted most: the inner permission to become food.
Kael denied it.
He curled his fingers around two roots embedded in his arms.
The heart pulled.
He pulled back.
The roots stretched between them, slick and red and alive. Above, the Old Root Bearer lowered its head until its antlers framed the cavity.
"Strong root," it said.
Kael lifted his face through the red light.
"Wrong word."
He ripped both roots out of his arms.
RIP!
Blood sprayed into the heart cavity. The den heart drank, then convulsed. Kael had not freed himself to escape. He had freed his arms to strike. He slammed both fists into the inner wall of the heart.
BOOM!
The cavity shook.
The pulse skipped.
Roots across the den faltered for one breath.
Orrek used that breath.
He wrapped his chain around the root holding Sair and pulled until his ruined shoulder gave an ugly pop.
POP!
His face twisted, but he kept pulling.
The root tore loose from the floor.
RIP!
Sair hit the ground, cursing so viciously the fever girl stopped crying to stare. Vaela reached Miro and cut the root around his wrist near the floor. His hand hung wrong, worse than before, but still attached.
"Do not look at it," she said.
Miro looked at it.
He nearly fainted.
"Children never listen," Vaela muttered, then shoved him behind Renn.
Another pressure blast hit from outside.
BOOM!
This one cracked the trunk mouth wide enough for Malrec’s men to see inside. The squad leader shouted, "The marked one is in the core! Fire again! Collapse it on him!"
The Old Root Bearer turned its head toward the mouth.
Its chest light pulsed once.
The den heard.
A root wall slammed down between the pressure men and the chamber.
CRASH!
Three rods fired anyway. The blasts struck the wall and rebounded through the outer trunk. Screams followed as roots answered the vibration outside. Malrec’s men had fed the forest long enough.
Now the forest fed back.
The Bearer looked down at Kael again.
For the first time, the monster’s vertical mouth opened wider than hunger required. Maybe surprise, maybe approval, maybe appetite for a more interesting enemy.
Kael struck the heart again.
BOOM!
The inner membrane split.
Hot red fluid sprayed across his face and chest. It smelled like cooked marrow and old debt paper.
He drove his knee into the split.
BANG!
The heart folded around the blow, trying to absorb rather than break.
Kael understood then.
The heart was not fragile.
It had survived years because it accepted impact and spread it through the wildland. Strike anywhere and the whole forest drank the force.
So he stopped striking everywhere.
Threat Perception Instinct found rhythm. Gravity Vector Impact found direction. Core Mass Density gave weight. Mind Soul Anchor kept the heart’s surrender pressure out of his head.
The heart pulsed in four beats: draw blood, spread heat, pull body, close membrane.
Kael waited through first.
Second.
Third.
On fourth, when the membrane closed around its own strength, he drove his elbow into the seam where the split tried to heal.
CRACK!
The seam buckled.
He hammered the same point with his forehead.
CRACK!
Then his knee.
BANG!
Then both palms.
BOOM!
The den heart ruptured.
Not exploded. Not yet.
It opened like a chest split from the inside. The pulse node at its center showed itself: a black red knot wrapped around a white furnace bone, beating too fast now, exposed and furious.
The Old Root Bearer moved.
It dropped into the cavity after him.
The impact shook the den.
THUD!
Its arm caught Kael across the ribs and drove him into the heart wall.
CRUNCH!
Two ribs bent. One cracked. His breath left hard. The Bearer leaned in, mouth grinding inches from his face.
"Den heart. Den life. Break heart, wild bleeds."
Kael spat blood onto its bark mouth.
"Then bleed."
The Bearer slammed him again.
BOOM!
This time Kael caught the arm under his own. Grapple. No distance. No clean strike. Just body against body in a heart cavity full of boiling sap.
The Bearer was stronger in the den.
Kael was denser than it expected.
It tried to crush him sideways into the exposed pulse knot. He turned with the pressure, planted both feet on the slick heart wall, and drove his shoulder into the Bearer’s cracked elbow.
CRACK!
The joint gave.
Black sap sprayed hot across Kael’s face. The Bearer opened its mouth and bit down on his shoulder.
CRUNCH!
Flat teeth punched through skin and muscle. The bite did not slice. It ground. It tried to turn shoulder and collar into pulp. Kael roared through clenched teeth and drove his thumb into the Bearer’s chest light.
CHUNK!
The bark plate split around his thumb.
The Bearer released him, staggering. Kael grabbed the broken chest plate with both hands. Above, Vaela saw what he was doing.
"Orrek! Chain!"
Orrek did not ask.
He threw the chain down into the heart cavity. It clattered past Kael’s shoulder.
CLATTER!
Kael caught it with one hand, looped it around the Bearer’s cracked chest plate, and yanked the other end back up.
Orrek caught it.
His shoulder was ruined. His body was shaking. He smiled anyway.
"Pull?"
Kael planted his feet against the heart wall.
"Pull."
Orrek pulled from above.
Kael pulled from below.
The chain tightened across the Bearer’s chest plate.
CRRRK!
The Bearer dug both arms into the heart cavity and resisted with the weight of the den behind it. Roots snapped from the walls and wrapped the chain. Vaela cut them as fast as they came. Renn and Sella braced Orrek’s back. Sair wrapped both old arms around the chain and leaned with all the fury in her bad knees.
Miro, one wrist broken and the other shaking, grabbed the chain too. The fever girl grabbed his belt so he would not fall.
Fourteen lives pulled.
Not strong lives.
Not trained lives.
Living ones.
The chain bit into the Bearer’s chest.
CRACK!
The chest plate tore open.
The red light inside spilled out.
Kael released the chain and drove his fist through the opening. His hand entered hot root flesh, closed around the inner conduit, and ripped downward.
RIP!
The Bearer convulsed.
The den heart answered with a scream that moved through every rib, pool, vine, and trunk in the cavern.
Kael did not stop.
He turned from the Bearer to the exposed pulse knot at the heart’s center.
The knot tried to close.
Too late.
He stepped onto the Bearer’s broken chest, used it as a platform, and drove both feet into the pulse knot with all the gravity he owned.
BOOOOOOMMM!!
The den heart burst.
Red black pressure erupted upward. The cavity vomited heat, sap, old bone dust, leech husks, torn roots, metal tokens, cart rings, and fragments of everything the wildland had swallowed and failed to forget.
The blast threw Kael into the rib wall.
It threw the Bearer against the opposite side of the cavity. It threw roots across the chamber into thrashing disorder.
The survivors hit the floor.
The root wall at the trunk mouth split open from inside. Outside, Malrec’s pressure men screamed as the wildland backlash struck the rim. Vines burst through ledges. One man vanished under root fog. Another was lifted by the ankle and slammed into stone until armor and body became one broken shape.
THUD!
The Furnace Bone Wild bled.
For a long breath, the entire cavern pulsed red.
Then the pressure dropped.
Not gone.
Wounded.
Kael lay against the rib wall, half buried in hot sap, chest heaving. His shoulder was a torn mess where the Bearer had bitten. His ribs screamed. His hand smoked from the conduit he had ripped free. His whole body felt like it had been chewed by the land and spat out only because it had damaged the teeth.
Vaela slid down the cavity wall to reach him. Her boots hit hot sap. She hissed, limped, and kept coming.
"You are alive?"
Kael opened one eye.
"Unclear."
"Answer better."
"Yes."
"Good. I was going to be annoyed."
Orrek appeared at the edge above, swaying so badly Renn had one hand on his belt.
"Did we win?"
The place tried to make cruelty ordinary. Kael had started breaking ordinary things first. The pressure welt swelled under the skin of the wall, showing him where denheart force still had a mouth.
Everyone froze.
The monster pushed itself upright slowly. Its chest was torn open. Red light leaked in uneven pulses. One arm hung wrong. Its antlers had cracked against the cavity wall.
It looked at the ruined den heart.
Then at Kael.
It did not attack.
Its vertical mouth opened.
"Wild bleeds," it said.
Kael forced himself to stand.
Every part of him objected.
He stood anyway.
"So do we."
The Bearer lowered its head.
Not submission.
Not friendship.
Recognition.
The kind that existed between two things that had tried to break each other and found neither one was cheap.
"Pass," the Bearer said.
The roots behind it opened a narrow path through the den wall. Beyond it, dark tunnels sloped away from the rim and deeper toward old furnace routes. Renn laughed once, broken and breathless.
"It is letting us pass?"
Sair wiped sap from her chin. "About time the forest learned manners." Vaela looked at the Bearer. "This is not mercy."
Kael nodded. "No. It does not want Malrec feeding it either."
Above, far beyond the torn trunk and bleeding rim, Sink Warden Malrec stood before a pressure plate showing the wildland backlash, dead men, a ruptured den heart, and Kael rising from the cavity beside the wounded Old Root Bearer.
The officers around him did not speak.
The Black Ledger broker looked sick.
Malrec’s fingers rested on the edge of the plate.
He did not crush it this time.
He watched the image of Kael walking through the opened path with fourteen survivors still alive.
"The road failed," Malrec said quietly. "The Court failed. The wild failed."
No one answered.
Malrec’s eyes darkened.
"Then we stop testing what can kill him."
The broker swallowed. "Warden?"
Malrec turned from the plate.
"Now we test what he will become when survival is no longer the ceiling."
Below, Kael led the survivors through the opened wound in the den.
The Furnace Bone Wild bled behind them.
Ahead, the path sloped into darker furnace routes, away from the rim, away from the broken heart, and toward the next hunger waiting under the pit.