The weeks didn’t arrive cleanly.

  They crept in through habit. Through the way Ethan stopped checking the same tunnel twice. Through children learning which stones were loose and which weren’t, and then forgetting to care about it.

  Children ran again.

  Not carefully. Not between cover. They ran in straight lines, laughing too loud, feet slapping bare stone, colliding and rebounding without fear. One of them tripped and scraped a knee raw.

  No one screamed.

  The child stared at the blood for a moment, then laughed and kept running.

  Ethan watched from where he sat against a support column, journal open on his knee, charcoal idle in his fingers. He hadn’t realized he’d stopped writing until the page stayed blank.

  That should have bothered him.

  A small body slammed into his leg.

  “—hey,” Ethan said automatically, catching the child before they fell.

  They twisted free, grinning. “Sorry, boss.”

  “Don’t call me—” he started.

  Too late. Gone.

  Maurik sat nearby, scraping a blade against stone. “They do not listen when running.”

  “No,” Ethan said quietly. “They don’t.”

  Maurik glanced at the journal. “You draw paths again.”

  “I draw paths every day.”

  “You know them now.”

  Ethan hesitated. Closed the journal. “I write so I don’t forget.”

  Maurik frowned. “You forget?”

  “Maybe,” Ethan said. “Later.”

  Maurik thought about it, then shrugged. “Then draw.”

  The smoke vents were adjusted that morning. Not because they failed—because the wind had changed. The goblins noticed first. Ethan helped move stone, shifting the channel just enough that the scent bled upward instead of outward.

  Hunters came back less jumpy.

  The elder watched, silent, staff resting against stone.

  “You change little,” the elder said at last.

  “Big changes get noticed,” Ethan replied.

  “Yes,” the elder said. “Then broken.”

  That night, a child brought Ethan food without being asked.

  He took it without thinking.

  Only noticed when the child ran off without waiting.

  Included.

  That word made his chest tighten.

  Later, he sat with two hunters near the outer tunnels, listening to them argue.

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  “Wide step,” one said. “Heavy.”

  “Wind wrong,” the other replied. “Dragged scent.”

  “Both,” Ethan said after a moment.

  They looked at him.

  “Heavy foot,” Ethan explained, pointing. “But something pulled. Not clean.”

  One hunter blinked. “You hear good.”

  “I listen,” Ethan said.

  They nodded and went back to arguing.

  No ceremony. No praise.

  That was how things worked here.

  The warning came as sound.

  Sharp. High. Wrong.

  Ethan was on his feet before the runner reached them.

  “Steel,” the goblin gasped. “South.”

  “How many?” Maurik asked.

  The runner swallowed. “Many.”

  Not a number.

  A category.

  Ethan felt the shadow stir against his spine, thin and alert.

  “Children,” he said.

  “Inner tunnels,” the elder replied. “As planned.”

  Planned.

  That word landed wrong.

  Steel rang against stone before Ethan reached the choke point.

  Not clumsy.

  Not rushed.

  Measured.

  A human voice echoed down the passage. “Shields up. Clear left.”

  Ethan stopped cold.

  That tone.

  He knew it.

  “Fuck,” he breathed.

  The shadow slid free without being told, peeling off the wall like spilled ink, flowing ahead through cracks too narrow for flesh.

  Fourteen humans. Shields tight. Hooded torches. A captain at the front, eyes sharp, blade short.

  “This is a sweep,” Ethan muttered. “They know what they’re doing.”

  Maurik bared his teeth. “Then we make it cost.”

  The first clash was chaos.

  Traps snapped—barbs tearing boots, nets tangling shields. Goblins struck from dark angles, blades flashing in and out of torchlight.

  Two humans went down hard.

  Then the line held.

  “Hold!” the captain shouted. “Don’t chase!”

  They adjusted fast.

  Ethan moved.

  The shadow spread along the ceiling, thin at first, conservative. It tugged ankles, twisted wrists, disrupted balance just long enough for goblin blades to strike.

  A human stumbled.

  A goblin cut his throat.

  The shadow recoiled, thinner.

  Ethan felt it—pressure behind the eyes, the start of nausea.

  Too much already.

  Not yet, he thought. Don’t tip it yet.

  He forced it back. “Conserve,” he whispered.

  Then a scream cut through the noise.

  Ethan turned.

  A child stood in the open passage, frozen—too slow, too visible, caught between orders they didn’t understand and fear that had locked their feet in place.

  Move, Ethan thought desperately. Just move.

  One of the humans lunged.

  Ethan hit him from the side, shadow snapping into a blade that ripped across the man’s arm and face. The sword still came down—glancing, uncontrolled—cutting across the child’s torso and arms, deep and bloody.

  The child screamed.

  Ethan killed the soldier immediately.

  Shadow drove through the man’s throat as Ethan crushed him into stone.

  “Take them!” Ethan shouted.

  Goblins rushed in, lifting the child, dragging them back.

  Ethan didn’t follow.

  He turned back to the fight.

  The shadow hardened.

  Not broader. Not louder. Sharper.

  It cut torchlight. It split grips. It ruined footing. Men fell screaming, blinded by dark where light should have been.

  The backlash hit Ethan like a wave—vertigo, wrongness, the sense that his body wasn’t entirely obeying him anymore.

  He staggered but stayed upright.

  Enough, he told it. Enough.

  Three goblins were down—bleeding, groaning, alive. Dragged back by others without breaking formation.

  They didn’t run.

  They held.

  For him.

  When it ended, smoke hung low. Blood slicked the stone.

  One human still breathed.

  The captain.

  Ethan didn’t look at him yet.

  He went back.

  The child lay in goblin arms, shivering, eyes too wide. Ethan knelt, hands shaking, trying everything.

  Cloth. Pressure. Words that weren’t spells but wished they were.

  Nothing worked.

  The child clutched his sleeve.

  “Boss,” they whispered.

  Fear filled their eyes.

  “I’m here,” Ethan said. “You’re not— you’re not—”

  The child shuddered once.

  Then went still.

  “It happens,” one goblin said quietly.

  Not cold.

  Just tired.

  Ethan stood.

  Turned.

  The captain looked up at him, still breathing.

  “Wait,” the man rasped. “We can talk.”

  Ethan crouched. “Who fucking sent you?”

  The answer came fast.

  Ethan straightened, already turning away.

  Then the captain said, almost apologetically, “I didn’t mean for the kid to die. But it happens. They breed too damn fast.”

  Something snapped.

  Ethan grabbed a rock.

  He brought it down.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  When he stopped, nothing was left of the man’s face but ruined bone and red pulp.

  His hand hurt.

  “God fucking damn it!” Ethan screamed, slamming the rock down one last time.

  Silence followed.

  He dropped the rock.

  Sat down among the bodies.

  Smeared blood across his face with shaking hands.

  And began to chant.

  Not words—at least not words he recognized. The sound scraped wrong against the stone, too fast, too tight, like something forcing its way through a space it didn’t belong.

  The goblins backed away.

  The air pressed inward.

  Ethan didn’t stop.

  The chant hurt to hear.

  Then—only then—

  He reached inward.

  And forced the door open—