By the time we were ready to go back for them, we'd been home the better part of a month.
The settlement didn't look the way we'd left it, either. Jihoon hadn't stopped — there were two more apartment blocks now, the start of a real perimeter wall going up around the whole grid, fused stone with shards set into it that he swore would hold a mana barrier once he worked out the last of it. Miyoung's butterflies had the whole place wrapped in silk that caught the starlight. We'd turned a patch of bare dune into something that looked, if you squinted, like a town that intended to stay.
And the month we'd given Elias was nearly up.
So we gathered in the hall again, the way we always end up doing, system interfaces glowing over the long table like blueprints made of light.
Minho sat back with his arms crossed. "The foundation's solid. Better than solid. But a foundation's not the point — the people are. Two hundred of them up in those ruins, packing to move, waiting on the escort we promised. It's time to go bring them home. Their generators and their old-world tech with them."
I had the map-key out, turning it over, its emerald glow ticking in my palm. "The vines are the problem, same as before — alive, predatory, Zeth'kar wasn't exaggerating. Cloaking five of us up that tether was one thing. Hiding a caravan of two hundred across open flats is another. We need Yuri's illusionists for this more than we ever did. Plus Taetigkon's scouts — wolves on the ground, rabbits for relays." I looked around the table. "We leave in two days. Enough to rest and pack right."
Seojin had his fingers steepled, gold threads flickering between them out of habit. "Supplies first, then. Two hundred mouths is a lot to move across that much nothing. I'll run the last of our shards through the oasis merchants tomorrow — antibiotics, seeds for the greenhouse, that vine-repellent the interdimensional stalls carry, and weapon upgrades if anyone's selling. I want those people road-ready, not just rescued."
Lisa had her notes out already. "Medical's the same priority going up as coming down. Triage kits, the portable scanners. If they've been that isolated this long, we're looking at malnutrition, infections, injuries off those vines, maybe bad exposure from running old tech. Jiyeon and I can handle the healing — but we'll want stretchers built for the ones too weak to walk the whole way."
Jiyeon, mending a little nick on Miyoung's finger without seeming to notice she was doing it, nodded. "Children first. Always. And Miyoung — your guardians could range ahead of the column, find the trouble before we walk into it."
Miyoung lit right up, Mochi Supreme riding her shoulder like he'd been appointed to it. "They can! Watch." She murmured something, and the butterfly's wings spread and threw a shimmer of light into the air over the table — a rough map of the dunes around us, scattered with the faint red dots of far-off scavengers. "They see everything now. And the silk can spin into bridges. Or nets, if we need to catch something. Or someone."
Mom reached over and folded her hand around Minho's. "Be careful out there. You've already brought home miracles. Don't go reaching so far you drop one."
Dad grunted his agreement from the end of the table, working an oiled cloth over his rifle. "I'll hold things here. Get the butterflies running aerial patrols, finish reinforcing the tower. Word of a place growing like this gets around — raiders'll come have a look eventually. But with the boy's walls up, we hold."
Jihoon flushed at the boy's walls but sat up straighter. "I'll have a lot more done by the time you're back. More housing. The full perimeter wall, mana barrier and all. Just bring me materials from the ruins — and people. I can build the place, but I can't work the greenhouse and man the tower and run the forge all by myself."
We talked it round until the stars had moved a long way across the barrier overhead. Outside, the settlement slept — the apartments dark, the greenhouse panels catching the light, the tower standing its silent watch, and the butterflies drifting the edges of it all on whispering wings.
Dawn came too soon, the way it does. Mom was up before any of us, packing preserved stew and well-water. Dad checked every weapon one more time. Miyoung and Jihoon walked the perimeter with the butterflies, laying fresh silk over the buildings that mattered most.
Minho and I stood on the porch looking east, toward the camp.
"Taetigkon first," he said. "Collect the illusionists and the scouts. Then northeast, to the ruins. Three weeks out, three back — with two hundred in tow."
I pocketed the map-key. "We've got the alliance, the abilities, and every reason in the world. Time to go bring our people home."
Seojin came out with his pack already shouldered. "And if something's gone sideways up there in the month we've been gone — raiders, cold feet, anything — we talk first. But I'll have the binds ready, just in case."
Lisa and Jiyeon stepped out of the medical center behind him, kits stocked and sealed. "We're set," Lisa said. "Let's go get them."
So we struck out west toward the red-rock amphitheater, Ryn and Kael loping along the flanks the way they had the whole road home — they'd never really stood down. The silver dunes ran out ahead of us same as always, but they felt different now. Smaller. Crossable. We had something at our backs worth coming home to, and that changes the size of a desert.
Three days put us back at the beastman camp — fires up high, drums rolling through the canyons, the whole place loud with life.
Taetigkon met us on his dais, that golden mane moving like it had a wind of its own. "Mortal Sovereigns," he rumbled. "You return for aid. The clans are yours."
And Yuri came out of the fox section with her nine tails curling up in greeting and that spark in her eye I'd been carrying a charm to remember. She'd told me to still be in one piece when she came to find me. I'd gone and found her first.
"You kept the charm," she said, like she could see it in my pocket. Maybe she could.
"Worked exactly like you said," I told her. "Sandstorm walked right past us."
She smiled, and then she was all business, because she's good like that. "Ten illusionists, ready to go. Cloaks woven with starlight thread — finest we have. We'll hide your whole caravan from vine and eye alike, the whole way there and the whole way back."
Ryn and Kael dipped their heads, and behind them Taetigkon's people brought up five more wolf trackers to run with them, and a knot of rabbit runners bounced up with their satchels already packed. "Speed for your messages, Sovereigns," one piped. "We'll carry word home if you need it."
And that was it — humans and beastmen, the whole company assembled, turning as one toward the northeast.
The salt flats were waiting for us out there. Then the canyons. Then the living vines, and the two hundred people on the far side of them who didn't know yet that we were coming back exactly the way we'd promised. And way out past all of it, that shadow nobody could see and everybody could feel — the First Incursion, grinding toward its hour.
Minho looked back once, the way he had on the porch — toward the far-off glow of the settlement, small and stubborn against the dark.
"We build it for them," he said quietly. "And for what's coming for all of us."
I followed his eyes back to that light, and thought about a hall full of people who'd decided the world wasn't done with them yet.
"Together," I said.
And the flat world opened up ahead of us — endless, merciless, and ours to take.
…to be continued.