Morning crept in slowly over the makeshift camp, wrapping the world in a fog so dense it felt like the ground itself had stopped breathing. The sky was a pale gray bruise, and every rock, every tree, seemed to melt into shadow. Lana stood at the edge of camp, arms folded, watching the mist with eyes that didn't blink. It wasn't just weather. It was pressure—something coming in silence, wrapped in stillness.
The fire from last night had gone cold, but its memory remained faintly in the air—woodsmoke, sweat, the taste of something real. Kieran joined her without a word. His shirt clung to him damp with dew, chest still rising with sleep and muscle. He didn't speak. His closeness was enough to tell her he felt it too.
"I feel it," she murmured.
He nodded, eyes narrowed toward the fog. "They're here."
"They're not watching anymore," she said.
"No. They're answering."
Figures began to emerge from the fog, slowly, as though peeled from another layer of the world. Four of them. Cloaked and armored in old gear, mismatched and worn. Their hoods were pulled low, but even from a distance, Lana could feel their presence. They moved like predators who didn't need to hunt anymore—because everything eventually came to them.
Jason was the first to respond, stepping from his tent with his rifle low but ready. "Fang-Born," he said, his voice tight.
Nyx confirmed it with a glance at her data slate. "Confirmed. Four figures. Scar patterns and signal interference match Fang-Born class. One carries a shard."
Lana tensed. The Fang-Born weren't ordinary shifters. They were the remnants of those whose bloodlines had been shattered during the Queen's collapse—shifters too unstable to be claimed by a faction, too dangerous to be killed easily. They survived by bonding to broken Queen shards, forming unstable connections that gave them erratic power and uncontrollable instincts.
The shard didn't give them unity. It gave them identity—partial, fragmentary, but fierce. And they followed only those they believed had the right to command the old blood.
Kieran moved to stand between Lana and the approaching strangers. He didn't draw claws, but his posture screamed readiness.
Lana didn't hide behind him.
She stepped forward.
The fog parted just enough to show their faces as they drew near. Scars ran down their necks and cheeks—silver burns left by failed blood rites. Their armor was dented and stitched with bone thread. One had a broken respirator mask hanging from his belt like a trophy. But it was the woman in front who mattered most.
She stopped ten paces away, lifting her hood. Her eyes were the flat gray of spent steel. Her skin bore the telltale shimmer of shard-contact. Not infection. Not purity. Something in between.
"I am Aelith," she said, her voice quiet but clear. "Voice of the Bound Shard. We come to see the Crownless with our own eyes."
Her hands moved to reveal a black box, thin and humming faintly in the air. The shard was inside. Lana felt it before she saw it—like a whisper behind her eyes.
"What does it want?" Lana asked.
"To know who you are," Aelith replied. "To see if you are worth following. Or if you are another pretender who must be unmade."
Jason stepped closer. "That sounds like a challenge."
Nyx murmured, "More like a test. The shard is partially conscious. It speaks in impulses, not thoughts."
The shard pulsed. Lana flinched. Not from pain—but from weight. It didn't scream. It pressed. Like a question asked with no words.
She stood still.
Aelith tilted the box slightly forward. "You can kneel. And it will mark you. Or you can resist. And it will judge you."
Lana narrowed her eyes. "I'm done kneeling."
The shard pulsed again, harder. Lana gritted her teeth. She could feel it trying to pull at her—the way Noctis tech once had. But this was older. Raw. Hungry. It wanted her name. Her identity. Her surrender.
She didn't give it any of those.
Instead, she took a breath, closed her eyes, and let the signal inside her rise—not in defense, but in response. It wasn't louder. Just deeper. A pulse of self that reached out and reminded the shard it wasn't speaking to a child.
She was the signal now.
The shard stopped pulsing. It didn't submit. But it went still.
Aelith blinked. "You calmed it."
"No," Lana said. "I told it to listen."
For a moment, there was nothing. Then Aelith knelt.
The others followed, one by one. Not as servants—but as witnesses. As those who knew the weight of truth when it passed through the air.
When she rose again, Aelith met Lana's gaze. "You are not the Queen. But the Queen is within you."
"Is that why you came?" Lana asked.
"No. We came because the shard dreamed your name. And we follow dreams when nothing else speaks."
"What now?" Jason asked from behind her.
Aelith turned toward him. "Others will come. Not to ask. But to kill. And they won't kneel."
Lana nodded. "Then we'll be ready."
Aelith gave a quiet nod and stepped back into the fog with her kin. They vanished without sound. No threat. No promise.
Only truth.
---
Back at camp, silence lingered.
Jason began packing gear without being told. Nyx copied data to her drone. Kieran waited, but he didn't look tense anymore.
Lana walked past them to the center of the camp.
"We move north," she said. "Thirty minutes."
Jason raised an eyebrow. "To where?"
"To wherever the next signal is waking. We're not hiding anymore."
Nyx nodded.
Kieran stepped to her side. "You didn't ask. You commanded."
"I'm not waiting to be chosen anymore," Lana said. "I am."
He gripped her hand, not hard, but full of heat. "And we follow. Not because we have to."
She turned to him.
"Because you make even the broken pieces of the world stop and listen."
Her fingers curled around his.
And just like that, the signal pulsed again—not in challenge.
In confirmation.
She was leading now.
And the world had no choice but to follow.