The ground opened without warning.
One moment we were walking across cracked desert earth, the sun pressing down like a hand. The next, the sand collapsed beneath a ridge ahead of us, revealing a chasm that had not been there the day before.
I stopped. Durn stopped beside me.
The chasm was not deep — perhaps twenty feet — but it was fresh. The edges were jagged, the sand still settling. And at the bottom, something was moving.
I heard it before I saw it. A clicking. A chittering. The sound of many legs scraping against stone.
I stepped forward, curiosity overriding caution.
Durn's hand closed around my arm.
"Don't."
I shook him off — gently — and took another step.
The chasm floor was crawling with them. Silithids. Not fragments of carapace, not pieces of a puzzle. Living creatures, each the size of a dog, their bodies armoured in dark chitin, their mandibles clicking in the hot desert air.
There were dozens of them.
One of them turned. Its eyes — faceted, black, empty — found me.
I do not remember running. I remember the sand slipping beneath my boots, Durn's voice shouting something I could not hear, and the terrible certainty that I had made a mistake.
We ran until the desert was flat and empty and silent again.
I leaned over, hands on my knees, chest heaving.
Durn stood beside me, breathing steady, watching the horizon behind us.
Neither of us spoke.
There was nothing to say. The threat was not a rumour anymore. It was real, it was close, and it was growing.