The tide was not the same.
Aruna stood at the edge of the cliff where Dawn's Seed met the sea, the wind battering her cloak and tangling her dark hair. Below, the ocean boiled in unnatural patterns, its surface fractured with streaks of crimson and green, like blood and life entangled. The shield still held, pulsing a soft green dome over the valley, but the air was tense, brittle with expectation. Somewhere in that restless sea, the Shadow Hunters stirred once more.
The seed chamber's discovery had changed everything.
In the weeks since they'd unearthed the crystalline tree beneath the Old Stones, the village had been transformed. Vines now laced the outer walls, pulsing with green luminescence, a living extension of the valley's new defense grid, linked to Lysara's buried network. Kasim and Mira had overseen the construction of the new pulse beacons, weaving roots and Machine Age circuitry into something neither fully natural nor technological. The result was a perimeter unlike any known: self-healing, self-aware, and humming with quiet power.
Yet peace was not what followed. Not fully.
Mira's warnings had proven true: as the forest's heart opened, something else awakened with it. Scouting parties vanished near the outer ridge. Tiro's team found a trail of scorched earth beyond the southern bend, too precise to be natural. And three nights ago, Kael had seen a flare of red light over the eastern cliffs, brief, searing, then gone. The Shadow Hunters were back, or worse, something new was emerging from the remnants of the Gate's destruction.
Aruna turned as Dren approached, his cloak soaked from patrol, his harpoon slung across his back like a dormant fang.
"They're probing again," he said without preamble.
"Three heat signatures beyond the perimeter, too large for animals. One circled, then vanished."
"They're testing our defenses," she murmured, gaze locked on the horizon.
"Not attacking. Watching."
Dren gave a terse nod.
"Like they're waiting for something."
"Or someone," came Mira's voice, soft but steady, as she joined them from the path behind the forge. Her shoulder was still wrapped from a fall two days ago, but she moved with familiar determination.
"They're drawn to the seed," Mira continued, eyes scanning the sea.
"Not just because of its power. It's ancient, Dren. Older than Lysara's era, maybe even predating the Machine Age. When you touched the roots, Aruna, you did more than activate it. You announced us."
Aruna looked at them both.
"Then we can't hide."
"No," Mira said.
"But we can strike first."
It was a bold suggestion, and one that had been quietly forming in Aruna's mind for days. Waiting for confirmation. The defenses could hold, but not forever. If the Shadow Hunters, or whatever they had become, were rebuilding beneath the sea or in the ruins of the Gate, they would return in force. Waiting would only surrender the advantage.
"We go east," Aruna said, resolve threading her voice.
"We take a team, small, fast. We scout the cliffs beyond the Dawn Gate ruins. If they're there, we find their base. If we're lucky, we hit it before they're ready."
Dren smirked faintly.
"Thought you'd say that."
Mira sighed, adjusting the brace on her wrist.
"Then I'll prep the map and gear."
By dawn the next day, the team was ready.
Aruna led, with Dren at her side, his silent focus matched only by the deadly calm in his eyes. Mira followed with the tactical gear, sensor spikes, energy flares, and a shard of the crystalline root to test resonance along the way. Kael volunteered to join despite Seral's protests, and Tiro, despite his youth, was insistent until Aruna relented.
Five of them, moving swift and silent through the eastern trail, cloaked by morning mist.
The path wound through forgotten ridges, where the forest thinned and the land became rock and salt. Scars from the Gate's collapse still marked the cliffs, twisted beams of alloy, scorched stone, and strange metallic roots half-buried in ash. But beyond that desolate field, something had changed. A narrow crevice had opened where none had been before, hidden behind a curtain of ivy and fractured stone.
"It wasn't here before," Kael whispered, peering down into the darkness.
"It opened during the quake last week," Mira said.
"The resonance map picked up a power spike below. I think this is where the remnants are gathering."
Aruna looked into the crevice. A dull glow pulsed below, like a heartbeat muffled by stone. The red hue was unmistakable.
"We go in," she said.
The descent was treacherous. The passage narrowed and twisted, forcing them into single file, lit only by the dim red glow ahead. As they moved deeper, the walls began to change, from rough stone to smooth, alloy-lined corridors, remnants of the Gate's core buried in the earth. Vines had found their way even here, thin tendrils of green threading through metal and bone.
Then came the chamber.
It opened like a wound, vast and circular, with a chasm at its center. Hanging above the void was a sphere, fractured, humming, suspended by metallic tendrils like the roots of a machine. Its core pulsed red and gold, and within it, vague shapes twisted, humanoid, but wrong. Their limbs moved in broken time, like puppets of some unseen rhythm.
"Shadowbound," Mira whispered, horrified.
"They didn't just survive the Gate's collapse. They've fused with it."
Dren stepped forward, his harpoon drawn.
"How do we kill them?"
"We don't," Mira said, hand trembling.
"Not yet. This… this is a node. A birthing chamber. They're not fully formed. If we strike now, we can stop them before they finish... whatever this is."
A screech tore through the air as one of the shapes writhed in the sphere and turned, its eyes lighting red, locking onto them.
"Too late," Aruna said grimly.
"Form up!"
The chamber erupted into chaos.
Three figures burst from the core, their bodies wrapped in synthetic sinew and pulsing wire. One charged Dren, harpoon meeting blade in a clash that rang across the chamber. Tiro loosed an arrow, embedding it in one creature's throat, only for it to hiss and keep coming. Kael rammed it with his shield, knocking it into the chasm's edge.
Aruna faced the largest, a beast nearly two meters tall, plated in crimson alloy. It struck with bone-blades crackling with energy. She ducked, rolled, slashed, her harpoon striking sparks as it met the creature's chest. It howled, recoiling, but not falling.
"These things aren't just soldiers," she shouted.
"They're vessels!"
"For the Gate's echo," Mira cried from behind a column.
"The core isn't dead. It's trying to remake itself, through them!"
Aruna felt the old fire stir within her, not the light of the Tide, but something deeper: the will to stand, to lead, to protect. She surged forward, striking the creature in its throat, then drove her harpoon through its chest with a roar. The creature shuddered, then collapsed, twitching.
Dren impaled the last of them, and silence fell, broken only by the pulsing of the suspended sphere.
"They're not done," Mira said, breathless.
"This node is just one of many."
"How many?" Tiro asked, pale but steady.
"Five, maybe more. Spread across the eastern coast."
"Then we take them out," Aruna said.
"All of them."
Kael stepped to her side.
"We'll need the whole valley."
"No," Aruna said, looking up at the fractured sphere.
"We need allies. The forest responded to us before. Lysara's seed, the network, it's alive. It's listening. If we're to stop the Broken Tide, we must awaken what's buried deeper. The real legacy."
They sealed the chamber with a pulse detonator, collapsing the entrance behind them. As they emerged into fading daylight, the red hue lingering on the horizon, Aruna looked toward the distant forest line. The trees moved, not in wind, but in rhythm.
Seral waited at the edge of the valley, flanked by her guards, her staff glowing faintly with the same green light as the seed's core.
"What did you find?" she asked.
Aruna met her eyes, her voice low but unshaken.
"The Tide is breaking, and what comes next won't wait for us to be ready."
Seral's face hardened.
"Then we must ready the earth. What do you need?"
Aruna looked to the forest, then to her crew.
"I need to speak to the forest."