Night in Novaterra wasn't dark so much as quiet. The light here didn't set the way it did back on the Blue World; it thinned, as if someone were slowly wringing it from the sky. Hammers fell silent. Voices softened. The new watchtower rose like a finger testing the breeze, braces creaking as the timber settled. Chickens muttered to themselves in the pen. The cows chewed with the solemnity of priests.
Aiden walked Founders' Way with his hands clasped behind his back because he needed to do something with them. He passed the altar—quiet, silver lines dim as cooling iron—and nodded to it like a person nods to a hearth that still remembers fire. He passed the clinic where Priest Calder had hung a lantern that made the canvas glow like a promise. He passed the half-framed barracks where a recruit slept sitting up, chin on chest, spear butt tucked between his boots so he wouldn't drop it. Aiden stopped long enough to murmur, "Lie down," and the recruit startled, blushed, obeyed. 😅
"Second watch!" Elara's voice carried across the training oval, low and unhurried. "Soldiers Rinna and Dace, take flank. Recruits: pairs. If you must be stupid, be stupid in twos."
A chuckle ran along the line. Nervous. Grateful for instruction that made fear feel like a thing that could be stacked and counted. Elara moved among them like water finding low places. A tap to a wrist here, a nod there, a small correction that turned clumsy into competent.
Jory stood halfway up the tower with the horn tucked under his arm like a baby bird he was afraid to crush. He pretended he was simply leaning. He was not. His toes gripped the rung.
Aiden climbed two rungs and rested an elbow on the brace beside him. "How's the view?"
"Everything's… there," Jory whispered, as if naming it might make it run away. "The forest, the road, the pens. You can see the river glow if you squint." He lowered his voice further. "Lord, what if—what if I blow the wrong call?"
"Then you'll blow the right one after," Aiden said, and Jory blinked at the absence of anger, then nodded so hard the horn squeaked against his tunic.
Downwind, Mara's sanitation crew was laughing at some horrible latrine joke only they found funny. It was oddly comforting. Venn prowled the store stacks with a ledger in one hand and a string of curses muttered under his breath at anyone who returned a tool a hair off its proper place. Ansel argued with himself about angles at the barracks foundation, then swore cheerfully when he won.
The mine breathed cool air like a sleeping beast.
Aiden drew a slow breath and held it. The night wasn't silent. It was listening.
The first sound came like a thread pulled taut: a single, high yip from the western dark, too thin to be a dog's, too sharp to be anything friendly. The chickens stopped muttering and froze. A cow blew out a huge, wet snort.
Jory's knuckles whitened on the horn. He looked to Elara. She didn't look up. She lifted her hand without hurry and flicked two fingers. Wait.
The second sound came lower, a dragging-long howl that turned the grass between forest and fence into a wire. It swelled, broke, doubled. Three voices. Five. Aiden's skin prickled along his forearms.
Elara's hand cut the air. "Signal," she said.
Jory lifted the horn. The wail of wolves peeled out across Novaterra—thrilling, awful, clean. It bounced off the frames and skittered across the mine mouth. Chickens exploded into outraged clucks. People who had been almost sleeping were suddenly, emphatically awake. 😳
"Positions!" Elara's voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Cadre Alpha flowed the way a river flows when its banks remember the shape of water. The spear line took the gap between the livestock pens and the nearest frames. Shields—plank, rough, ugly—came up. The two bought Soldiers drifted to the flanks with the indifference of people who had learned not to advertise steel until it was time to use it.
Calder stood behind the line with a basket of bandages and a look that said he would rather never use them and absolutely would.
Aiden wanted to be anywhere except just behind the line, unable to do anything but speak. He anchored his voice instead. "Keep the line tight. Torches high. Don't chase." He said it twice, not because they needed to hear it twice but because he did.
Elara's shield thumped the ground in front of her. "Spears angled," she said. "Think ribs, not teeth. We don't bite. We block. We push. We live."
Eyes glittered beyond the fence. Forms slipped through the outer grass like ghosts refusing to commit to a body. One, larger, came forward to the fence line—rangy, scarred, wrong in the way wild things look wrong when hunger owns them.
"Hold," Elara said.
The larger wolf paced three steps. It hit the pen with a half-leap, half-lunge to test the give. The fence held. The chickens held too, to their credit, with an indignant chorus that sounded like swearing.
"Hold."
Something gray and lean flashed left. A recruit flinched. His neighbor's shield banged his arm into place. The wolf's shoulder hit the planks with a dull whump. Elara's spear blurred—down, forward, pull—and a yelp cut short into wet silence.
"Now." Her voice snapped like a sling.
They moved.
It wasn't a charge; it was a walk that hit at the ankles. Aiden watched the line go up as one, one step, two, three, the way Elara had drilled until the rhythm went bone deep. Wolves hit like hailstones—small, fast, hard to track. But they were stone; the line was a wall. Spears bit and were withdrawn. Shields thumped, not to crush but to move fur and teeth out of the place where soft bellies lived.
A recruit on the right—thin, crop-headed, trying too hard—overreached. He stabbed, missed, panicked, and the miss became a gaping mouth between him and his partner. Aiden's breath caught. The wolf slid for the gap like water for a gutter.
"Brace!" Elara's voice cracked across the oval.
The partner didn't look. He felt. He wasn't fast enough. Calder—Calder!—stepped into the space with a staff he didn't own a breath ago and smacked the wolf in the side of the muzzle hard enough to rattle teeth. The recruit's spear found the ribs the second time. The wolf folded.
Calder didn't smile. He didn't scold. He moved on. The recruit made a sound like a sob and then remembered he was supposed to breathe.
Three wolves lay twitching in the grass now. The rest rethought their opinion of chicken fence and spear lines. The large one watched from the shadow like a bad idea that hadn't quite died.
"Don't get clever," Elara murmured to the night. "Come on. Come test us once more."
It did. It feinted left, then came right, aiming for the corner where the pen stopped being fence and started being a suggestion. Aiden yelled before he remembered it wouldn't help. The bought Soldier on that flank didn't yell. She moved. The wolf met her shield and discovered that it had been introduced to the concept of no. Her sword punched once, twice; clean, economical, contempt in the line of her wrist.
The howl broke. The shadow slid backward. The night relaxed by a hair.
Elara lifted her spear. "That's enough," she told them. "Tell your teeth we have our own."
Silence. Then—running feet. A whine. Shapes pulled back. The grass sighed.
Nobody cheered. The first breath after danger is for not dying.
"Hold," Elara said. "Count. Are you bleeding?" She walked the line, the way she always did, looking at hands, not faces. "If I ask again and you are bleeding, I will be offended on behalf of your skin."
"Scratches," someone muttered. "A bite—small," someone else added, refusing to call it big. Calder bent and lifted the edge of a tunic. "Two punctures, not deep," he said. "Wash. Honey. Bandage. You'll curse me in the morning." 🙂
Aiden let air in. He hadn't realized he'd been hoarding it like a miser. He wanted to clap someone's shoulder. He settled for being there, voice level. "Good line," he said. "You moved like you practiced. You practiced like you meant it."
The [System] slid a pane into his vision, polite as a clerk clearing his throat.
[Engagement: Wolves at Pens] • Threat repelled. Casualties: 0. Injuries: 3 (minor) • Recruits gained experience. — 27 promoted: Militia (Lv. 3) • Morale: +5 (First defense held) • Trait Unlocked (Local): "No Easy Meat" — Small predators less likely to test pens.
He could have kissed the pane. He settled for closing his eyes for a heartbeat and letting the +5 be a warm stone in his pocket. "Elara," he said, and stopped there because "thank you" felt too small.
She understood anyway. "They weren't hungry enough to be stupid," she said. "They may be hungrier tomorrow."
"Or angrier." Aiden looked past her, into the dark. He could swear he saw lines moving there—not wolves, not wind. Shapes small enough to hide under shrubs and mean enough to use wolves as distraction. He kept that thought behind his teeth. "Double watches until dawn."
Elara nodded. "Rinna, Dace—rotate. Jory—water. And then practice the wolf call quietly until your head does it in your sleep."
"Yes, captain!" Jory blurted, and then flushed at the captain. Elara let it pass.
Cleanup happened the way it happens after adrenaline: brisk, a little shaky, threaded with bad jokes that tried too hard. The dead wolves were hauled to the edge for skinning and burying. The blood was scrubbed from the fence rails like a superstition. The chickens forgave everyone for the disturbance the way chickens forgive all things: noisily and with immediate negligence.
Mara sidled up to Aiden with a small bundle. "Found this by the fence," she said, not quite looking at it. "Not ours."
It was a little thing, no bigger than Aiden's palm: a charm, almost, made of twigs and sinew bound into a crooked triangle. Feathers dangled from it. In the center, a bead of blue glass winked faintly in the lantern light.
Aiden's skin crawled. "We didn't put this up."
"Unless Venn has a side hobby," Mara said.
"Do not have a side hobby," Venn said, appearing like a guilty conscience. He squinted at the bead. "That's not glass. It's… wrong. It eats the light. I dislike it profoundly."
Elara took the charm and held it between finger and thumb with the indifference of someone who had held worse. The bead didn't reflect in her eye. "Marker," she said. "Or a push."
"Push?" Aiden asked.
"Wolves test fences. Wolves don't tie knots." Elara let the word wolves fall into the dirt like something that no longer applied. "Someone wants the wolves to be here."
"Bandits?" Mara's mouth was already a line.
"Maybe." Elara's gaze slid to the treeline. "Or smaller things that happen in packs and learn to love noise. I've seen goblin totems made from trash and good luck and a mean understanding of what scares people." She turned the charm. The bead caught nothing. "This isn't trash. It's… a hinge. The world itched when I picked it up."
"We'll burn it," Aiden said, because he needed to do something.
"Carefully," Elara said. "And Calder standing by."
Calder didn't ask why. He simply set a small circle, murmured something that tasted like sane, and lit the charm with a brand brought from the cookfire. The feathers popped. The sinew curled. The bead cracked soundlessly and fell into three perfect pieces that looked like tears.
Aiden didn't like that.
Neither did the [System].
[Notice: Unknown Charm (Minor)] • Foreign influence removed. • Residual trace detected near Western Forest edge. • Recommendation: Scout at first light.
He glanced at Elara. She had already read it in his face. "First light," she said. "Five soldiers, ten militia, and me."
"Take Rinna," Aiden said. "She moves like she likes dirt." He caught himself. "And—leave enough here that we don't invite a second test."
"Always," Elara said. She looked at him for a beat, as if weighing a thing he hadn't said. "Sleep, my Lord."
He almost laughed. "You, too."
"I sleep like a spear," she said. "Standing, sharp, and poorly." The corner of her mouth quirked. "Four hours."
The second half of the night stretched thin and hummed. It wasn't peaceful; it wasn't the bad kind of tense either. It felt like a story pausing between beats. Aiden dozed and jerked up at small sounds that turned out to be nothing more than mice rightsizing the universe. Jory did not blow the horn at a drifting cloud. Someone started singing low and old; someone else added a second voice. Calder made tea that tasted like bark and comfort and pressed a cup into Aiden's hands without asking.
Dawn arrived like someone lifting a blanket. Light seeped back. The mine bell rang a low, soft note. Venn ran to meet the first cart like a child on a holiday and then remembered he was supposed to be dignified and walked very fast.
"Numbers?" Aiden asked, and Venn practically vibrated with the effort of not grinning.
"Iron: one hundred. Coal: two hundred. Stone: two hundred." He made himself breathe. "Magic crystal: one."
He held it up like a heart. The thing didn't shine so much as refuse to be ignored. A cinder of blue, darker at the core, facets too stubborn to be polished. Calder leaned in, then leaned back, as if his eyes wanted to bless it and his bones wanted to drag him a step away.
Elara arrived at his shoulder with Rinna and four other soldiers, a knot of ten fresh-minted militia behind them, faces bright with I-survived-my-first-night pride and the need to prove it wasn't luck. "We go west," she said. "We follow the itch."
"Go," Aiden said. He made himself not add careful, because of course. He made himself not say come back, because that lived in his throat too near please. He did say, "If you find a den, mark and fall back. No heroics."
She touched the hilt of her sword. Not a salute. An anchor. "No heroics," she echoed, and made it a promise.
They left like morning leaving a tent flap: quick, quiet, the air colder when they were gone.
Work resumed. The blacksmith frame grew into a place a hammer would call home. The barracks lifted ribs and rafters. Riversong sent a strip of cloth with river-mud fingerprints and the words: First fish caught. First frame roofed. Send nails, rope, extra hands with steady feet. Ansel copied the request and added a please in his own hand that made Aiden smile.
He was reading that when the horn blew.
Not wolves. Not fire.
Stranger approaching.
Jory held the note steady like a bridge. The gate-that-wasn't-a-gate-yet found its purpose anyway. Two soldiers took position; four recruits lifted shields and looked like a picture of soldiers from a child's book that was learning to be real. Aiden walked to meet whoever was coming with his chin up and his stomach behaving poorly.
A runner broke from the west line, not a stranger at all—one of Elara's militia, the scar-brow woman who liked trees. She had blood on her sleeve and a look like she wasn't sure whether to be surprised or proud that it was hers and not worse.
She didn't waste time on greetings. "We found the trace," she said, gulping air. "Charms in trees. Feathers. Bones. And a cave with the smell of… people who don't wash and don't care and like knives too much." She swallowed. "We didn't go in. We marked. We fell back. Like you said."
Aiden's heart had done so many strange things in the last day he was beginning to suspect it had learned to juggle. "Any sight of—?"
"Small feet," she said. "Three toes. Drums." She shivered, once. "And laughing."
He didn't know goblins. He didn't know dungeons. He knew drums in caves and laughing near charms didn't sound like deer.
Elara appeared behind the runner three breaths later, as if she'd stepped out of the trees and into the story. Her eyes were very steady. "We can't afford to let them grow bold," she said. "Not while we're green."
"We won't," Aiden said. He looked at the scrawled Riversong note. He looked at the still-wet blood on the runner's sleeve. He looked at the altar and the mine and the brand-new pens and the training oval where men and women were learning to hold spears without shaking.
He lifted his head.
"Prep Small Scorpion One as soon as leather is in," he said. "Stage it toward the west. Double training on shield wall and torches. Riversong gets their nails and rope and five extra calm hands. Calder—bless the scorpion crew and pretend it makes a difference."
"It does," Calder said, and made it true with the way he said it.
Aiden met Elara's gaze. "At dusk," he said. "We go to the cave mouth. We don't go in." His voice didn't shake. "We make the edge of Novaterra very clear."
Elara's smile was small and dangerous and exactly what he needed. "At dusk," she said. "We press our teeth to the night and see if the night remembers to be impressed."
Aiden turned to the workers on Founders' Way. "Novaterra," he called, and the word moved like a fish through water and came back to him larger. "Today we build. Tonight we stand again. No one is easy meat here." 🙂
The wind ran through the grass. The mine bell chimed a slow agreement. Somewhere west, very faint, a drumbeat thudded like a heart that hadn't learned anyone else's rhythm yet.
Novaterra answered with hammers. And a song that wasn't quite a song yet, in the way living places hum to themselves when work and fear and purpose share a table.