The forest didn’t reach this deep into the gate, giving way to a wide hollow of black root and bare stone. Three figures sat inside it, lit only by the thin purple light leaking up through the cracks in the floor.

None of them looked like the beasts prowling the forest above, though none of them looked quite human either.

The first stood near the wall, tall and narrow, a mantle of oil-dark feathers folded down his back where a coat should have been. He had long talons in place of hands, and they clicked steadily against his own forearm while he waited.

The second crouched on a low shelf of root, all lean muscle and restless motion, two pale ears rising a full head above her hair. She never stopped moving, one heel bouncing, her eyes flicking toward every small sound in the dark.

The last of them lounged across the back of the hollow, and out of the three she looked the most like a real woman.

Long dark hair fell around a face worth staring at, and she sat like a woman used to being looked at. The only tells were the four smaller eyes set above her own and the long, jointed legs folded out from behind her, half-lost in the dark.

The three of them had been going over the same problem they had chewed on for days. The gate was holding, and the corruption was spreading exactly the way it was meant to.

All that was left for them to do was wait and let the place finish ripening.

The rabbit-woman went rigid in the middle of a sentence, both ears snapping flat against her skull while her bouncing heel finally went still.

"One of mine just went out," she said quietly. "The big one we seeded near the entrance. Something put it down."

The feathered one tilted his head, his talons pausing against his arm.

"A rockslide, then or it picked a fight it had no business picking," he offered without looking away from the dark tunnel. "They do that."

"It didn’t pick anything," she said, her voice climbing a notch. "It was killed clean, and I felt the difference between the two."

Before he could answer her, his own head jerked up and the feathers along his spine stood on end. Something far above them had just snuffed out one of his fastest hunters, the swift one he had sent to sweep the upper canopy.

He had felt the hunter strain against something, then thrash hard, then simply stop.

For a long moment the spider-woman at the back said nothing at all. Then every one of her eyes opened wide at once, and the legs behind her went very still.

"My children," she said, tapping one long talon against the floor. "Several of them, gone, one after another across the last hour."

She leaned forward, and the purple glow caught the wet shine across all those eyes.

"We were promised this gate stayed sealed," she went on. "That nothing walked in until the harvest was ripe. So one of you can explain to me why my children keep dying."

The rabbit-woman rose off her shelf in one smooth motion, every trace of the fidgeting gone out of her.

"There are people in here," she said. "There have to be. No beast drops three of ours in an hour, and nothing born inside this gate would ever dare try."

The feathered one’s talons curled in slowly, the points pressing into his own palm.

"Then someone opened a door that was meant to stay shut," he said. "And from the look of it, they are carving a path straight toward us."

The spider-woman rose to her feet, her long legs unfolding beneath her until she stood taller than the other two.

"Find them," she said, and nothing maternal was left anywhere in it. "Whatever crawled into my nest and put hands on my children, you will bring it back to me alive."

The feathered one inclined his head and turned toward the mouth of the hollow.

"They won’t get far," he said.

The rabbit-woman was gone before he finished saying it, off into the dark on silent feet, her earlier nerves traded for something sharp and eager. He followed at his own pace, the click of his talons fading down the tunnel behind her until the hollow went quiet again.

That left the spider-woman alone with the purple light and her dead children.

She lowered herself back down where she had been sitting, her long legs drawing in close around her. The calm she had worn for the other two stayed exactly where it was, since neither of them needed to see what sat underneath it.

She had carried hundreds of her young into this gate, tucking them through every root and hollow of it as part of the trap.

Losing a handful of them to careless beasts was simply the cost of the work. Losing them to some stranger’s blade, one after another, was a different matter altogether.

’Whoever you are,’ she thought, her many eyes sliding shut one pair at a time, ’you should have stayed on your side of the door.’

She let the quiet settle and waited for her hunters to bring her something to take it out on.

Miles away from the hollow, the thick canopy broke apart as a massive boar finally collapsed to the ground. Its skull was completely caved in, leaking a steady stream of dark corruption into the roots below it.

Loccy pulled her hammer free from the mess with a wet crunch, completely unbothered by the gore splattering across her boots. She rested the weapon against her shoulder and smiled toward the rest of the group.

Cassie leaned back against the edge of a thick root, entirely focused on catching her breath after the intense battle. She looked like she had just been dragged through a swamp, her clothes entirely stained with sweat and grime.

But her hands weren’t shaking anymore, and the tight grip she held on her staff was very steady. When the boar had charged her directly, she hadn’t frozen up like she did during the very first attack.

She had stood her ground and raised a wall of earth just in time to break its momentum. That split-second decision had left the stunned monster completely wide open for Loccy to finish it off.

Jonas and the scout were similarly exhausted, both covered in minor scrapes from frantically dodging the boar’s tusks. But their eyes were sharp and actively tracking the treeline instead of just staring blankly in terror.

Hajin watched the three rookies catch their breath from his spot leaning against a nearby tree. He had kept his hands in his pockets the entire fight, never once stepping in to offer them a safety net.

They were still terribly weak, and their teamwork was full of glaring holes that any decent monster could exploit. But fighting with their lives genuinely on the line was already forcing them to adapt faster than he expected.

Cassie in particular was starting to figure out how to weave her magic under actual combat stress. It was brutal growth, but it was exactly the kind of progress they needed to survive this gate.

She finally managed to pull herself upright, wiping the sweat from her face before shooting an exhausted glare directly at him.

"You literally told us not even an hour ago that the training was officially over," she wheezed out, gesturing vaguely toward the dead boar.

She took a moment to catch her breath, leaning her staff against the tree root for support.

"You told us to stay close because whatever built this place was far too dangerous for us," she continued, glaring straight at him.

"So why are we still the ones fighting for our lives while you just stand there watching?" she asked, dropping her arms to her sides. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Hajin met her annoyed glare without shifting his relaxed posture against the tree trunk. "I told you the training was over," he agreed, not bothering to hide his complete lack of sympathy.

"I never said I was going to stop using you as bait to draw the real threats out," he added with a faint smile.