The prisoner hadn't spoken in two days.
Riku hadn't asked questions either. The man remained shackled in a dryroot chamber beneath the armory—just damp enough to feel punishment, just lightless enough to feel forgotten. They fed him once a day. Nothing else.
No interrogation. No threats.
The waiting did its own work.
Outside the walls, the world was changing faster than the tribe could measure. Patrols reported fewer beast movements and more strange signals—glinting glass left half-buried in the dirt, faint trails with single bootprints, snare triggers already disarmed.
Someone was approaching with care.
But not caution.
Ashmaw started reacting strangely by the third night.
The warhound had been obedient to a fault, maintaining consistent patrol arcs from the east cliffs to the southern gulch. But now he'd started hesitating—circling certain rootlines more often, growling low into fog with no enemy in sight.
Riku watched him from the canopy ledge.
The beast's glowing eyes narrowed at the southern path, lips drawn back without barking. Not fear. Not even territorial aggression. It was the look of something recognizing a hunter in the trees.
That same night, Riku ordered the southern perimeter cut from the torch cycle. Patrols went dark. Firepits extinguished. Sensors swapped for traps—pressure-moss and flamework nodes, set on tight delay triggers. Not designed to kill. Designed to warn.
He waited.
Just before dawn, Ashmaw shifted violently, tail rigid.
Three sharp taps echoed from the south, muffled against root and brush. Wood on wood. Human rhythm.
Riku snapped into motion, signaling a quiet strike squad. He descended silently through the lower grove paths. Juran met him near the moss traps, eyes narrowed.
"Nothing tripped," Juran whispered.
They pressed forward.
And found it.
A smoldering patch of moss. Blackened. Half the trap kit was destroyed—the flamegel pack ignited, but not cleanly. Someone had triggered the trap deliberately, then rolled it with a shield or angled brace.
There was no body.
No blood.
But one of the leaf-decoys Riku had placed was missing.
Not disturbed. Removed.
Cleanly.
Deliberately.
Riku crouched by the scorched spot and brushed aside the ash.
Only one kind of person did this: a trained scout, or worse—a rogue Sovereign agent using specialized recon units. Either way, the implication was clear:
They weren't wandering. They were searching.
Ashmaw prowled near the stump, nostrils flaring. He stopped, turned once toward the open woods, and growled low into the shadows.
Riku didn't follow the trail.
He didn't need to.
They weren't trying to get in.
They were testing response.
Back in the command hollow, he laid out a revised patrol schematic, then met with Juran and Thalya.
"No light in southern sectors for three days," Riku said. "We rotate Ashmaw. Double the silent markers. Let them look for a pattern and never find one."
Thalya raised an eyebrow. "You think this is a probe?"
"No. Probes are dumb. This is a message."
Juran folded his arms. "What kind of message?"
Riku stared at the map.
"One that says: We see you. Now let's see if you flinch."
They didn't notify the rest of the tribe.
No announcement. No alert. Not even to the Emberfront captains.
And definitely no beacon sent to the global channels.
Because no one else needed to know what Riku already understood:
The protection period was over.
The Blood Moon was survived.
And now the real war had begun—not against beasts or monsters.
But against each other.