Chapter 134: The Ground Under Kharad Was Breathing… But Nothing Was Moving

No one went back to sleep.

For nearly twenty minutes after the bells stopped, the square remained full of people waiting for the next movement beneath their feet.

Nothing came.

That didn’t reassure anyone.

The people of Kharad only began dispersing when three men in yellow coats emerged from a municipal building and started checking the main bells around the square. One pressed his ear against a metal rod embedded between the paving stones. Another took notes while the third questioned nearby residents about what they had heard and in what order.

They didn’t look like soldiers.

They looked like technicians.

Raven watched the process from the entrance of the inn as the sky began to brighten behind the rocky formations.

"They’re not evacuating," Roland said.

"Not yet."

The innkeeper, still standing beside them, shook his head.

"If we evacuated every time the bells moved, no one would live here."

Raven pointed toward the crack that had appeared in the street.

"Is that normal too?"

"Normal? No. Not the first one either."

"Last night you said the pressure usually has a direction."

The man rubbed his beard.

"It does. A chamber collapses, a Burrower breaks through a layer of stone, a colony vents air... the bells start in one place and the movement travels somewhere else. Last night, it appeared beneath half the town almost simultaneously."

Valeria had come outside wearing a coat over the clothes she had thrown on during the night. She looked toward the municipal workers.

"What do they think it was?"

"They haven’t said yet."

"And you?"

The innkeeper looked at her.

"I think when you’ve spent thirty years living above something that can make a house disappear, you learn not to invent answers before breakfast."

Raven nodded.

"I like him."

Valeria glanced sideways at Raven.

"He has the same approach to conversation you do."

"That’s why."

The innkeeper gave a dry laugh and went back inside.

Raven remained at the entrance for several more seconds.

The bells were no longer moving.

That didn’t mean the problem was gone.

Only that it was still.

In daylight, Kharad looked even stranger.

The previous night, Raven had seen stone houses, narrow streets, and bells.

Now he understood that the settlement had been built around something much larger.

Wells.

Vent shafts.

Sealed entrances.

Tunnels.

Dozens of them.

Some galleries had reinforced iron doors. Others had been sealed with stone blocks and marked in red paint. Several houses even had staircases descending directly from their interiors into chambers excavated beneath the floor.

Kharad wasn’t simply built on rock.

It was built inside it.

Raven and Valeria walked along the main street while Roland dealt with the horses and looked for supplies. The town stretched between two shallow ravines, with roads climbing along terraces carved into the slopes. Beyond them were smaller settlements clustered around shafts and quarries.

The entire region seemed designed to force anyone living there to think about what existed beneath their feet.

A cart passed loaded with blocks of porous stone.

Raven noticed small holes along the sides.

"Natural?"

Valeria followed his gaze.

"I don’t know."

A woman walking beside the cart answered without being asked directly.

"Old Burrower tunnel."

Raven looked at the stone again.

"You reuse them?"

"Everything we can."

She pointed toward a slope where several metal doors had been built directly into the hillside.

"The small ones dig better than some miners. Once they abandon a chamber, we check the stability, reinforce it, and use the space."

"For what?"

"Water. Ore. Grain. Sometimes housing, if you’re poor enough or trusting enough."

She kept walking.

Raven studied the doors.

That changed the picture he had formed the previous night.

The Blastback Burrowers weren’t an outside infestation that had appeared around Kharad.

They had shaped the region.

And the people had learned how to build on what they left behind.

Valeria seemed to reach the same conclusion.

"If they all disappeared, Kharad would probably have problems."

"Yes."

"And if there are too many of them, also problems."

"Also yes."

"What a healthy relationship."

Raven looked toward a stone vent releasing a steady stream of cool air.

"They’ve probably been adapting to each other for centuries."

The airflow shifted slightly.

Not enough to move his clothes.

Enough for Raven to notice.

He crouched beside the opening.

The air came out in soft pulses.

Valeria stepped closer.

"Another anomaly?"

"No."

Raven held one hand near the vent.

A current.

Pause.

Another.

"Ventilation."

A man repairing a nearby wooden structure looked up.

"Old chamber. Connects to three deeper galleries."

"Burrowers?"

"Years ago."

"And this happens on its own?"

"Pressure differences move air through the whole network."

The man hammered another plank into place.

"Without them, some of the mines would turn into ovens during summer."

Raven looked back at the opening.

Subterranean creatures that excavated tunnels, moved air, and accidentally built part of the region’s infrastructure.

Useful.

Until they weren’t.

FORGE reacted faintly when Raven thought about the target.

[Environmental Analysis Updated.]

[Blastback Burrower habitats associated with interconnected pressure chambers and subterranean airflow networks.]

Raven closed the interface.

Pressure wasn’t simply an attack for these creatures.

It was part of how they lived.

That meant he needed to understand them before killing one.

The Stormhorn had already taught him the value of that.

They found Maelor Rusk in a tavern at nine in the morning.

He was drinking.

The map seller hadn’t exaggerated.

He wasn’t drunk.

Yet.

Maelor looked to be around fifty. He was lean, sun-darkened, with gray hair tied back behind his head. The tips of two fingers were missing from his left hand, and a broad scar disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.

The strangest thing about him was the small bell sitting on the table.

Not decorative.

A tiny piece of dark metal suspended from a wooden frame.

Raven sat across from him.

Maelor looked at Raven first, then Valeria, then Raven’s knife.

"If you’re here to ask me to take you underground, it costs more than you think."

"We haven’t told you where."

"Locals don’t sit like that."

Raven looked at the chair.

"Like what?"

"Like they’re counting the exits."

Valeria smiled.

Raven didn’t deny it.

"We’re looking for a mature Blastback Burrower."

Maelor took a drink.

"Then it costs even more."

"I need something specific."

"Everyone says that before they see one."

Raven placed a sheet of paper on the table.

He had drawn the approximate structure FORGE expected to find.

"Pressure Chamber."

Maelor lowered his cup.

That removed some of the indifference from his expression. ℯℯ𝑙.

"Intact."

"Yes."

The man studied the drawing.

"You don’t want a Burrower."

"That is exactly what I said."

"No. You want the hardest part to remove from one."

Valeria sat beside Raven.

"We’re getting used to that."

Maelor tapped the drawing with one finger.

"The young ones are useless to you."

FORGE confirmed it almost immediately.

[Likely Component Viability: Juvenile Blastback Burrower — INSUFFICIENT.]

Raven nodded.

"I assumed."

"The chamber keeps growing as they mature. Small ones can throw dirt, break soft stone, and ruin your afternoon. An adult can compress enough air to split a mine wall."

"Approximate Level?"

"Depends."

"Everything here depends."

Maelor smiled.

"Welcome to Kharad."

Raven waited.

The guide drank again.

"Juveniles are usually high Common or Awakened. Adults tend to be above Level Twenty. The big ones... Elite."

"I need a big one."

Maelor exhaled slowly.

"Of course you do."

"Where?"

The man rested both arms on the table.

"First tell me what you know."

"They dig. They create chambers. They accumulate pressure and release it to move or attack. Adults have an organ large enough for what I need."

"That’s what someone knows after reading a guild entry."

"That’s why I’m here."

Maelor nodded.

He seemed to like the answer.

"Burrowers don’t live like bears. You don’t find a cave and discover one sleeping inside. Their tunnels form colonies. One tunnel can have ten exits, and one exit can connect to twenty chambers. The young work near the edges. Mature ones stay where the pressure is most stable."

Raven pointed toward the drawing.

"They protect the chamber."

"With their bodies, yes. But if you want to preserve it, that isn’t your biggest problem."

"What is?"

"You don’t hunt an adult inside a colony without the others noticing."

Valeria tilted her head slightly.

"Communication?"

"Vibration. Air. Strikes against stone. No one knows exactly how much they understand, but if one part of the colony gets disturbed, the others respond."

"Then we isolate one."

Maelor looked at Raven.

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"I don’t know yet."

"Good answer."

Raven almost smiled.

Maelor pointed toward the scars across his neck.

"A young one that comes out alone is exploring. An adult outside the colony is usually changing chambers, defending a route, or following something."

"Then I can wait for one outside."

"You can."

"But you don’t recommend it."

"If you see a large one outside the colony, you probably didn’t find it."

Raven waited.

Maelor smiled without humor.

"It found you first."

Valeria looked toward Raven.

"That sounds specifically designed to interest you."

"I’m interested in the organ."

"Naturally."

Raven returned his attention to the guide.

"Last night."

Maelor’s expression changed.

Not much.

Enough.

"What about it?"

"Pressure from several directions. The innkeeper said that wasn’t normal."

Maelor looked toward the little bell on his table.

"It wasn’t."

"A colony?"

"Could be."

"You don’t sound convinced."

The man slowly rotated his cup between his fingers.

"Colonies breathe."

Raven waited for the explanation.

"Not literally," Maelor continued. "They store air in some chambers, push it through others, open tunnels, close routes. If you understand the bells, you can follow the movement. Last night, there was no movement."

Valeria frowned.

"There were pulses."

"Yes. But they weren’t traveling. They were appearing."

"In several places."

"Exactly."

Raven remembered the pattern.

A distant bell.

One to the left.

Another behind him.

No clear direction.

"Has that happened before?"

"Not like that."

"And no one seems particularly alarmed."

Maelor took another drink.

"Kharad is full of people who learned that panicking every time the ground does something strange only means you die tired."

Raven accepted the logic.

"Will you guide us?"

Maelor looked at the drawing again.

"Not today. Not after last night."

"Tomorrow?"

"Depends on the bells."

Raven placed fifty-five crowns on the table.

Maelor didn’t even look at them.

"That buys information. Not stupidity."

"How much buys both?"

Valeria lightly covered her mouth to hide a smile.

Maelor burst out laughing.

"I’m beginning to understand why you’re still alive."

"You didn’t answer."

"Tomorrow, if the ground settles. And before that, I want to see what you do when a tunnel ruptures nearby. I’m not going underground with someone who freezes the first time pressure hits."

Raven removed one of the coins.

"Then that one buys information."

Maelor took the remaining payment.

"You learn fast."